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In Matthew Perry’s memoir, a need for fame leads to 65 rehab stints
Review by Allison Stewart
The first time Matthew Perry went through detox, he was already as famous as a Beatle, thanks to his role as Chandler Bing on the culture-shifting 1990s sitcom “Friends.” He was also an addict, tormented by a long list of demons that eventually included Vicodin (55 pills a day, at his low point), alcohol, cocaine, Xanax and Suboxone. He went on to detox 65 more times, he estimates, spending millions of dollars and half of his ruined life in treatment facilities.
“Friends” lasted 10 seasons, and Perry was spiraling for most of them, according to his new memoir, the grimly funny, mostly unvarnished and frequently proctological “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.” His struggles played out in front of millions of viewers every week. He writes, “You can track the trajectory of my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season — when I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills.”
The book arrives at a strange time, as our understanding of addiction grows and our tolerance for the problems of rich White men shrinks. It’s both a conventional memoir and an account of the dire events of 2018, when Perry’s colon exploded, a presumed side effect of his opiate use. He fell into a coma; his family was told he had a 2 percent chance of survival. He spent five months in the hospital, and nine months with a colostomy bag and endured countless surgeries, a harrowing ordeal recounted in minute detail. By page 11, readers will become intimately familiar with the contents of Perry’s gastrointestinal tract.
In alternating chapters, the 53-year-old recalls his childhood in Canada as the son of a beauty queen and an American folk singer-turned-actor. His parents were young, ridiculously attractive and outmatched. At 2 months old, Perry was given barbiturates to stop him from crying. At age 5, he was sent as an unaccompanied minor to visit his father, who had left when Perry was 9 months old. “Not having a parent on that flight is one of the many things that led to a lifelong feeling of abandonment,” Perry writes.
Fans of Must See TV need this must-read memoir
He was a bottomless hole of neediness, desperate for his mother’s approval. He vied for her attention against rivals that included his stepfather, local newscaster-turned-“Dateline” legend Keith Morrison, and glamorous Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, for whom she worked long hours as a press secretary. (In grade school, Perry writes, he beat up Trudeau’s son, future prime minister Justin Trudeau, in retaliation.)
Perry treats his stepfather with a distant affection, often referring to him as “Keith Morrison,” as if, like us, he was merely watching Keith Morrison on TV. When an adult Perry wakes from a disorienting bender to find a worried Keith Morrison at the foot of his bed, he wonders at first if he’s in a “Dateline” episode.
As a teenager, Perry moved to Los Angeles to live with his father, a functioning alcoholic who starred in Old Spice commercials. Perry soon followed in his father’s footsteps, simultaneously pursuing an acting career, alcoholism — he took his first drink at age 14 — and, once his erectile dysfunction cleared up, an endless assortment of available women.
Desperate for the fame he was certain would cure his feelings of loneliness and inadequacy, Perry recalls kneeling on the floor of his tiny apartment and praying for the first time. “God, you can do whatever you want to me,” he writes. “Just please make me famous.”
Perry, of course, became rich and famous, while Bierko — poor Craig Bierko! — became a trivia question. In one of the book’s most wince-inducing passages, the men, estranged for years, reunite. Bierko admits to feeling jealous of Perry, who explains that fame doesn’t fix a person anyway, which Perry treats as a major revelation even though any reader of even one celebrity memoir has figured this out. Bierko does not appear to find this helpful.
“Friends” was the best job in the world, writes Perry. The co-stars genuinely adored each other, and everyone got rich thanks to an early suggestion from co-star David Schwimmer that the cast negotiate their salaries as a team. By their 10th season, they were working an easy schedule. “We were making $1,100,040 an episode, and we were asking to do fewer episodes,” Perry recalls mournfully. “Morons, all of us.”
Perry plunged deeper into his addictions, which reached warp speed when he was introduced to painkillers after a jet skiing accident on a movie set. It’s here that a familiar pattern emerges: Though he is occasionally, precariously sober, Perry spends most of the rest of the book shuttling between a series of increasingly posh rehab centers. He is sometimes better, but never well. Everyone is always vaguely worried about him, but until a celebrity poses a direct threat to someone else’s livelihood, people tend to leave them to their own devices. Jennifer Aniston once attempted an awkward mini-intervention, but it didn’t take.
Aniston, like Keith Morrison and Perry’s eventual co-star Bruce Willis, appears here as a warm, if half-sketched character. The more Perry likes a celebrity, the less he mentions them, as if out of professional courtesy.
Others bring out a latent sharpness that always seems to be simmering below Perry’s Nice Guy surface. He is (understandably) upset when a stoned Cameron Diaz accidentally hits him in the face. He repeatedly expresses unhappiness that Keanu Reeves, surely the most inoffensive person imaginable, is still alive. He is unhappy to report that former co-star Salma Hayek “always had a very elaborate and lengthy idea about how to do a scene, but her long-winded ideas weren’t always helpful.” To normies this may seem like mild criticism, but in the exaggeratedly polite way of famous people, it’s a WWE-style smackdown.
Perry’s wryly conversational, self-deprecating style will seem familiar to “Friends” viewers; it’s like a smarter version of Chandler wrote a book. He is easy to like, if prickly, and as easy to relate to as someone with multiple Banksys and a talent for repeatedly blowing up their own life could be.
Years of Olympic-level addiction have blown out his pleasure receptors — even if he wanted to relapse, the drugs probably wouldn’t work. He would change places with any of his poorer, less famous friends — even that one guy who has diabetes and lives in an apartment — if it meant his brain was no longer trying to kill him. “I would give it all up to not have that,” Perry writes. “No one believes this, but it’s true.”
Allison Stewart writes about pop culture, music and politics for The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. She is working on a book about the history of the space program.
By Matthew Perry
Flatiron. 272 pp. $29.99 | 2022-10-29T12:32:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Matthew Perry memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/29/matthew-perry-memoir/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/29/matthew-perry-memoir/ |
Wide receiver Terry McLaurin has been a leader for the Commanders during a turbulent time. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
In 1821, a group of men met at a riverside cabin near the center of a new state and picked a stretch of forest to become the capital. Over the next 200 years, Indianapolis grew and evolved with the fuels of the nation — railroads, manufacturing, logistics — and the Hoosiers built monuments to their culture, including the Motor Speedway, the Central Canal and the world’s largest children’s museum.
But for Terry McLaurin, a boy born in St. Vincent Women’s Hospital on Sept. 15, 1995, different things defined the city. His Indianapolis was his parents’ house on the northwest side of Pike Township and the Eastern Star Church on 30th Street. It was Maxine’s Chicken and Waffles downtown and Long’s Bakery doughnuts on the west side and the Castleton Square mall, where he would score discounts on sneakers from a friend who worked at Champs Sports. It was Section 340 at the RCA Dome and Section 540 at Lucas Oil Stadium. His family had Colts season tickets, and he watched Peyton Manning throw passes to his hero, Marvin Harrison, whose jersey McLaurin donned two Halloweens in a row.
McLaurin’s Indianapolis was all the football fields he dominated. He was first an elusive running back in an inner-city league run by the Tabernacle Presbyterian Church — “pretty much the ’hood,” McLaurin said. Then he was a deep-threat receiver at the “more middle class” New Augusta middle school. By the time he got to Cathedral, the private Catholic high school in a leafy enclave, McLaurin was a do-it-all offensive weapon who moonlighted as a ball-hawking defensive back.
“I feel like I saw all parts of Indianapolis,” McLaurin said, and that made him proud because he felt like so many people never saw Indianapolis at all.
On Sunday, when the Washington Commanders star receiver returns to Indianapolis for his first game against the Colts, he’ll walk back into Lucas Oil Stadium changed. The boy who used to hound his dad for pretzels from the concession stand has been replaced by a 27-year-old man with money and expectations. Yet one link between them is Indianapolis, which welcomed his grandparents and raised his mother and united his parents and imparted an identity upon their highly favored son. McLaurin, who has worked for every role he has ever had, feels a sense of kinship with his city.
“You say you’re from Indianapolis, they’re like, ‘Indiana? What’s there?’ ” McLaurin said. “There’s a lot of cool people who are from Indianapolis. I think it’s a lot of people who are that underdog story. I mean, you may not be from one of these big states, but … you pick your lunch pail up, you go to work, you grind.
“I try to embody that.”
Learning to work
In the 1940s, for reasons that remain a mystery to McLaurin, a young couple named Raymond and Grace Webb moved from Mississippi to Indianapolis. They took local jobs — Raymond at Western Electric, Grace as a teacher’s aide in the public school system — and became active in the community, especially at Eastern Star Church. Together they had 11 children.
Years later, one of their daughters, also Grace, was shopping for a car when she met a salesman who had moved to town from North Carolina. His name was Terry McLaurin. In September 1995, Grace and Terry had their first child, a son, and named him Terry Jr.
Terry Sr., who played football at Chowan University and North Carolina A&T, put his son in the sport as soon as he could. Looking back, McLaurin said, he thinks his dad started him in the tough Tabernacle league with bigger, faster, stronger kids because he wanted to test him. Did his son really love the game? Could he compete?
Tabernacle was “where I first picked up a football, and I think there’s where I learned my toughness and the affinity that I have for football,” McLaurin said. “It started there because of the discipline. They didn’t treat you like boys. They were trying to grow you into being a young man and to be someone who was going to be successful in life. So you couldn’t be late for practice, or you going to run. You couldn’t jump offsides, or there was consequences. That structure and just those type of habits — I like that.”
In AAU basketball, McLaurin met another standout athlete named Dominique Booth. One of the first things Booth noticed about McLaurin — other than the lightning speed he seemed to have been born with — was his short shorts. It was the early 2000s, when the fashion was baggy clothes and sagging pants.
“But he always wore stuff in order to be a good athlete,” Booth said. “That’s what he cared about. He never really cared about what he looked like.”
In middle school at New Augusta, Booth and McLaurin became the stars of a highflying offense. Booth was the big-armed quarterback, McLaurin the downfield threat and the Phoenix were nearly unstoppable. If McLaurin didn’t score a touchdown every game, Booth remembered, “he was going to be sad the whole next week.”
“We were putting up basketball numbers every game,” Booth said.
“We were like Peyton and Marvin dang near,” McLaurin added, laughing.
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But after eighth grade, Booth went to the local school, Pike, and McLaurin’s parents nudged him toward Cathedral, a college prep school known for its academics. “It wasn’t really my decision at first,” McLaurin once told the Indianapolis Star. That year, McLaurin gave up basketball, disliking the time commitment of AAU, and got cut from the freshman baseball team. Only football was left.
McLaurin happened to have Rick Streiff, the Fighting Irish varsity football coach, as his freshman geography teacher. Streiff remembered he didn’t think much of the “little bitty guy” who was maybe 5-foot-5 and 145 pounds.
But over the next two years, with dedication to the weight room and a growth spurt, Streiff began to notice McLaurin. The receiver was precise and consistent and so, so fast. Near the end of sophomore year, a player got injured and Streiff called up McLaurin to varsity. In his first game McLaurin returned a kickoff for a touchdown, and in his second he hauled in a deep pass for a winning score.
The next season, McLaurin excelled as a full-time starter. But it’s difficult to gauge a player’s true talent until he’s on the biggest stage, said Kyle Neddenriep, a longtime high school sports reporter for the Indianapolis Star. In Indiana, the tradition is to play the state championships at Lucas Oil Stadium on the Friday and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. The games are televised, the lights and the turf create an aura and “everyone’s watching,” Nedderiep said.
In 2012, no one shined brighter than McLaurin. In the championship against Mishawaka, McLaurin set a Class 4A record for the longest touchdown reception in a game (79 yards) and the longest punt-return touchdown (66 yards).
“I covered some good players, but his speed was something I hadn’t seen,” Neddenriep said. “It was electric. Any time he touched the ball, it was like, ‘This guy could house it.’ … That [championship game is] what set him up for the following year to be kind of the name everybody knew.”
McLaurin’s senior year was a coronation. Cathedral won its fourth consecutive state title. He won Indiana’s prestigious Mr. Football award. He famously worked hard enough between two camps at his dream school, Ohio State, to get a scholarship offer. And after graduation he did what few in his family had since his grandparents arrived in Indianapolis decades earlier: He left.
In 2014, McLaurin moved from his parents’ house to a dorm in Columbus, Ohio. One of his roommates understood the Midwest — Parris Campbell from Akron, Ohio — but another … did not. Curtis Samuel was a jabbering goofball from Brooklyn who had an accent and was fond of saying things such as, “I’m from New Yawk,” and “Ain’t nothin’ better than New Yawk City, ya know what I’m sayin’?”
“He’s always talking about this Jamaican food,” McLaurin once told a reporter in Columbus. “Something they get down in Brooklyn, oxtails and all that stuff. I guess it’s something he eats down there. I haven’t really tried it. He really wants me to, but I’m used to the food up here.”
Whenever McLaurin went home, he liked to go to Maxine’s, a family-run soul food restaurant attached to a Citgo gas station downtown. McLaurin liked the restaurant’s “home feel” — cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews running it together — as well as the chicken and waffles with apple-cinnamon butter.
Austin Bonds, the general manager, was a sports fan, Indy native and only a couple years older than McLaurin. He saw McLaurin go from a redshirt reserve to a special-teams stalwart to a breakout receiver as a junior. He noticed that, as McLaurin’s star rose, he still walked in the same understated way, usually wearing a jogging suit.
“People wouldn’t even know who he was,” Bonds said. “He wasn’t super flashy or anything like that. He would just come in and order like normal.”
In 2018, McLaurin returned to Indianapolis as one of the Buckeyes’ top receivers for a second straight Big Ten championship game. Ohio State won again — McLaurin is 6-1 all-time in Lucas Oil Stadium — and he entered the draft. The scouting reports on McLaurin were, in retrospect, tepid; NFL.com projected him as a “good backup with the potential to develop into [a] starter.”
During his senior year, McLaurin had been recruited by Buddy Baker, an NFL agent based in Indianapolis. Baker had represented other local prospects, including Joe Reitz and Jack Doyle, and one of his pitches to McLaurin was that he, unlike other agents, was ingrained in the community McLaurin loved. He lived in Fishers, a suburb about 20 minutes from McLaurin’s parents. Baker’s oldest daughter had gone to the same high school as Caitlin Winfrey, McLaurin’s longtime girlfriend.
“There’s some accountability, right?” Baker said. “I’m right here. Our office is based downtown. … There’s a lot of familiarity. There’s a lot of people we’re going to know that they know.”
Since Washington drafted McLaurin in 2019, the mentality and work ethic he attributes to his upbringing have proven vital to his team. His leadership and sterling reputation have been especially important at a time of turmoil for the organization. This summer, when Washington signed him to a three-year, $69.6 million contract extension, Coach Ron Rivera acknowledged the receiver was valuable on the field and off as they tried “to get people to understand that we’re not in the past.”
This season, the Hoosiers watching from afar have seen a familiar McLaurin. One day in September, Streiff, the high school coach, saw a video on social media of McLaurin using his birthday to give away sneakers to underprivileged kids. “That’s been Terry since [he] was a freshman in my class,” he thought.
In late October, McLaurin scored his first touchdown in six weeks and had an especially fiery celebration on the sideline, surprising some of teammates. But Booth, his middle-school quarterback, chuckled at how little had changed from their days as Peyton and Marvin.
“Of course, he’s going to be hype,” he said. “I know Terry. He’s not going for not scoring.”
This week, as McLaurin wrangled about 70 tickets for friends and family, there was another player in the locker room who was looking forward to returning to Indianapolis, too. Samuel, his old roommate from Brooklyn and current teammate, had visited the city for the first time while playing for Carolina in 2019.
“I thought it was [going to be], like, country,” Samuel said. “But the downtown area’s a little cool. It’s pretty dope. They got a lot of restaurants, and a lot of good food, so it was kind of surprising to me.”
After reminiscing this week about McLaurin’s storybook rise, Strieff took out his phone and tapped out a text.
“Take it easy on your home team this week. Good luck,” he wrote, adding a shamrock emoji, a nod to Cathedral. | 2022-10-29T12:41:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Terry McLaurin returns to Indianapolis as a Washington Commanders star - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/terry-mclaurin-indianapolis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/terry-mclaurin-indianapolis/ |
Canadian researchers have created a wired mesh inspired by Gentoo penguin feathers to naturally shed ice from surfaces
Gentoo penguins at Cuverville Island, Antarctica. (Tanya Ward Goodman for The Washington Post)
“Animals have ... a very Zen way of living with nature,” Anne Kietzig, lead researcher on the study, said in an interview. “That is something to maybe look to and to copy."
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Scientists, city officials and industry executives have long tried to prevent ice storms from derailing services in the winter. They’ve outfitted power lines, wind turbines and plane wings with de-icing wrapping, or relied on chemical solvents to quickly zap away ice.
But those fixes have left lots to be desired, de-icing experts said. Wrapping materials don’t have a long shelf life. Using chemicals is time-intensive and harmful to the environment.
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Kietzig, whose research focuses on using nature to solve complex human problems, spent years trying to find a better way to manage ice. In the beginning, she thought the lotus leaf could be a candidate, since it naturally sheds water and self-cleans. But scientists realized that in heavy rain conditions, it didn’t work, she said.
After that, Kietzig and her team took a trip to a zoo in Montreal, which housed Gentoo penguins. They were intrigued by the penguin’s feathers and developed a collaboration to study the design deeply.
Researchers replicated this design by creating a wired woven mesh using laser technology. After that, they tested the mesh’s ice-adhesion performance in a wind tunnel and found it was 95 percent more effective at resisting ice buildup than a standard surface of stainless steel. No chemical solvents were needed either, they added.
Kevin Golovin, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering from the University of Toronto, said the most attractive part of this de-icing solution is that it’s a wire mesh, which makes it long-lasting.
Other solutions, such as ice-shedding rubbers or surfaces inspired by lotus leafs, aren’t resilient.
“They work really well in the lab," Golovin, who isn’t involved with the study, said. “They don’t translate well outside.” | 2022-10-29T13:03:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This penguin inspired wired mesh could prevent havoc from ice storms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/29/penguin-mesh-winter-ice-storms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/29/penguin-mesh-winter-ice-storms/ |
Paul Pelosi, 82, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was attacked by a hammer-wielding assailant in their San Francisco home early Friday, sending shock waves across the political ecosystem amid fears of rising political violence.
What is known about Paul Pelosi’s condition?
Pelosi is being treated at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and has undergone surgery to repair a “skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands,” according to a statement issued by Drew Hammill, spokesman for Nancy Pelosi. “His doctors expect a full recovery,” he added.
“The Pelosi family is immensely grateful to Mr. Pelosi’s entire medical team and the law enforcement officers who responded to the assault.”
Pelosi was “struck at least one time” during the attack, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott told a news conference on Friday.
How did the attack at Nancy Pelosi’s home unfold?
San Francisco police say the suspect, later identified as David DePape, forced entry to the Pelosi house via a rear door.
According to a person briefed on the case, who spoke with The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to describe the details, DePape was searching for Speaker Pelosi when he entered, shouting out, “Where is Nancy?”
Police saw the suspect struggling with Pelosi, with each man having “one hand on a single hammer.”
Police, who were watching from outside the doorway, told both men to drop the hammer, at which point DePape “immediately pulled the hammer away” and “violently attacked” Pelosi with it, Scott said.
Police then tackled and disarmed DePape and arrested him, while requesting paramedic and emergency backup. Scott said DePape would be charged with attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse and burglary, among other offenses.
DePape was also taken to hospital, where he remained as of Friday evening.
How did Pelosi call the police?
Police say Pelosi was “able to call 911.” However, it seems he could not speak freely during the call.
Instead, Scott says, the dispatcher “was able to read between the lines” and “basically figured out that there was something more to this incident than what she was being told.”
“This was a well-being check and she just knew there was more to it. So she alerted — she went that extra step — and because of it, she dispatched it at a higher priority … that led to a quicker response,” he said.
Scott declined to give further details on what was said during the call, but praised the dispatcher’s “quick thinking” and “intuition.”
The Associated Press, citing a person familiar with the situation, said Pelosi had told the intruder he had to use the restroom, where his phone was charging.
What was the motive of the attack?
“This was not a random act. This was intentional,” Scott told reporters. However, he said police were not yet at a stage where they could publicly confirm what the motive was.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said her team was working with law enforcement on the investigation and would bring forward multiple felony charges on Monday and expect DePape to be arraigned on Tuesday. “DePape will be held accountable for his heinous crimes,” she added.
DePape shouted “Where is Nancy?” when he entered the home, according to a person briefed on the case — a striking echo of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack when a pro-Trump mob could be heard chanting, “Nancy, Nancy” and “All we want is Pelosi” as they ransacked the building and her office.
Nancy Pelosi has been fundraising and campaigning with Democrats around the country ahead of the midterm elections. When the attack happened she was in Washington, according to U.S. Capitol Police.
Earlier this week, the speaker had been in Croatia for a forum on Crimea and in Washington D.C. on Tuesday to meet with Israel’s president. On Wednesday morning she was briefly in San Francisco for an event at the Golden Gate Bridge before she returned to Washington.
What do we know about the attacker, David DePape?
The Washington Post confirmed that a voluminous blog written under DePape’s name and filled with deeply antisemitic writings and baseless claims — as well as pro-Trump and anti-Democratic posts — was registered to an address where DePape lives, according to neighbors.
In a single day earlier this month, the blog had seven new posts. The titles included: “Balcks Nda jEwS,” “Were the Germans so Stupid?” “Who FINANCED Hitler’s rise to Power,” “Gas chamber doors” and “I guess this is as good a time as any.” The latter implored Trump to pick Tulsi Gabbard as his running mate for 2024.
DePape’s stepfather, Gene DePape, said in an interview with CNN that DePape was estranged from his family and had grown up in Powell River, British Columbia, before leaving Canada decades ago for California.
Paul Pelosi, 82, owns Financial Leasing Services, a San Francisco-based real estate and venture capital investment and consulting firm. He met his wife while studying at Georgetown University. She was a student at Trinity College, now Trinity Washington University, at the time. The Pelosis have been married for 59 years and have five children.
He was in the public spotlight in August after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence and causing injury, following a May car crash in Northern California.
The Pelosis live in the leafy Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, which boasts multimillion-dollar homes. They have faced other incidents there, including in 2021 when it was spray-painted and a pig’s head left on the sidewalk — apparently in a protest aimed at Congress over insufficient coronavirus pandemic relief.
What reaction has there been?
President Biden has condemned the attack as “despicable,” saying there was “too much hatred, too much vitriol,” in American politics.
He told a fundraising dinner Friday night in Philadelphia that he had spoken to Nancy Pelosi directly, who told him her husband was “doing ok … and he seems to be coming along well — he’s in good spirits,” Biden said.
He said it was irresponsible for politicians to speak of elections being “stolen” and of the coronavirus being a “hoax,” and not think that such statements may “affect people who may not be so well balanced.” He also pointed to apparently similar sentiments expressed against Pelosi during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
“What makes us think that it’s not going to corrode the political climate? Enough is enough is enough,” Biden said. “Every person of good conscience needs to clearly and unambiguously stand up against the violence in our politics.”
President Biden denounced the violent attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), at a rally in Philadelphia on Oct. 28. (Video: The Washington Post)
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tweeted that he was “horrified and disgusted” by the attack and “grateful to hear that Paul is on track to make a full recovery.”
However, fellow Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin drew ire after suggesting on the campaign trail that Republican voters would soon send the House speaker back home to be with her husband.
“There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California,” he said. A spokeswoman for Youngkin later told The Post the governor wished Paul Pelosi “a full recovery and is keeping the Pelosi family in his prayers.”
Annah Aschbrenner, Eugene Scott, Perry Stein, Paul Kane, Lisa Bonos and Aaron C. Davis contributed to this report. | 2022-10-29T13:03:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paul Pelosi attack: What we know about suspect David DePape and the assault - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/paul-pelosi-attack-david-depape/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/paul-pelosi-attack-david-depape/ |
Hannah Allam
Clockwise from top left: The “Fire Pelosi” bus tour in 2010; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in Washington earlier this year; a supporter of then-president Donald Trump shows off her anti-Pelosi shirt in front of Trump Tower in New York in 2020; buttons at a tea party rally in Nevada in 2010. (Clockwise from top left: Mark Wilson/Getty Images; Tom Brenner for The Washington Post; John Lamparski/Sipa/AP; Jae C. Hong/AP)
Police arrested the suspect, 42-year-old David Depape, who attacked Paul Pelosi, 82, and authorities plan to charge him with attempted murder and other crimes, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said at a news conference Friday. Paul Pelosi was taken to a hospital and is expected to make a full recovery, the speaker’s office said.
The Washington Post corroborated that a voluminous blog written under Depape’s name and filled with deeply racist and antisemitic writings — as well as pro-Trump and anti-Democratic posts — belonged to the suspect. In a single day earlier this month, the blog had seven new posts. The titles included: “Balcks Nda jEwS,” “Were the Germans so Stupid?” “Who FINANCED Hitler’s rise to Power” and “Gas chamber doors.”
Swalwell, from a neighboring Bay Area district, has been a stalwart Pelosi ally since entering Congress a decade ago and has had an up-close seat for the attacks regularly leveled against her. On Friday afternoon, the Justice Department announced that a 22-year-old Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty to calling Swalwell’s office and, in conversations with his staff, threatening to kill him. The man told Swalwell’s aides that he had many AR-15 rifles and that he intended to come to the Capitol.
Swalwell wrote a thank-you note on Twitter to the federal investigators and prosecutors, while also urging Republican leaders to speak out in a plea that seemed to apply equally to both his and Pelosi’s situation. “MAGA political violence is at peak level in America,” he wrote. “Somebody is going to get killed. I urge GOP leaders to denounce the violence.”
Among far-right extremist groups, the anti-Pelosi memes are often cruder and more violent, but the demonization of the Democratic House leader is no fringe phenomenon. Her face — sometimes adorned with devil’s horns or a swastika — was plastered on signs at all the national rallies that led up to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. Pelosi is such a frequent target that it’s common for right-wing pundits and protesters to refer to her only by her first name, as Jan. 6 insurrectionists did when roaming the halls of the Capitol searching for her while yelling: “Where are you, Nancy?”
Political violence trackers say the attack on Pelosi’s husband appears to be a high-profile version of the same threat that has simmered for months at the local level, with the targeting of election workers, librarians and school board members — virtually any public servant perceived as an obstacle to a hard-right agenda.
But Depape’s ability to breach the Pelosi residence underscores the chilling threat faced by even more vulnerable targets.
“If somebody sets their sights on these individuals and then they decide to mobilize, there’s virtually nothing stopping them,” said Michael Jensen of the University of Maryland’s START consortium for terrorism research, which is conducting a federally funded study of extremist violence.
In June, police arrested a man with a gun and knife near the Maryland home of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. The man had threatened to kill Kavanaugh, who Trump had nominated to the court. The following month, a man was charged with attempted assault after attacking Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), the Republican candidate in the New York gubernatorial contest, onstage during a campaign event and declaring, “You’re done.”
But the threats against Pelosi have often been particularly ferocious and date back more than a decade, when Republicans worked to make her one of the faces of former president Barack Obama’s health-care law.
More recently, CNN reported that in 2018 and 2019, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — who was elected to Congress in 2020 and quickly became known for her conspiracy theory-laden views — repeatedly expressed support for executing prominent Democratic politicians, including Pelosi.
Greene liked a Facebook comment that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” as a way of removing Pelosi as speaker, CNN found. And in a video of a speech Greene gave promoting a 2019 petition she’d launched to impeach Pelosi for “crimes of treason,” Greene calls Pelosi “a traitor to our country” and says the speaker could be executed for treason.
“It’s a crime punishable by death — is what treason is,” Greene says in the video, according to CNN. “Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason.”
In February, a Republican vying for his party’s Senate nomination in Arizona to run against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly released a Western-themed ad that featured himself dressed as a sheriff shooting at actors playing President Biden, Kelly and Pelosi. A caption dubs the speaker “Crazy Face Pelosi” before the Republican candidate announces, “The good people of Arizona have had enough of you” and begins shooting at the trio of Democrats.
Kelly’s wife, former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), was shot in the head in 2011 while meeting with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket in an attack that killed six people.
Vilifying Pelosi has not always proved a successful political strategy for Republicans. In 2018, much like in previous election cycles, Pelosi regularly appeared in Republican attack ads and found herself the target of mockery and scorn — yet Democrats went on to retake the House that November.
Pelosi herself has regularly condemned heated Republican rhetoric and disinformation. In August, after the Justice Department and FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in search of classified documents he had improperly taken and refused to give back, the speaker was asked at a news conference about the increased level of violence against law enforcement and public officials.
“We need no more evidence than a presidential incitement of an insurrection on the Capitol to know about causing concern about the safety of members of Congress, of our Capitol, of our Constitution and of our law enforcement,” she said, before lamenting that the opposing party seemed unwilling to tamp down its members’ most incendiary language.
“You would think there would be an adult in the Republican room that would say, ‘Just calm down, see what the facts are, and let’s go for that,’ instead of, again, instigating assaults on law enforcement,” Pelosi said.
Some Democratic lawmakers grumbled Friday that many Republicans were slow to denounce the attack or remained silent, and that some did so while simultaneously seeming to mock Pelosi and her husband. In several tweets Friday, Mike Loychik, an Ohio Republican state representative, called political violence “unacceptable” and said he hoped Paul Pelosi made a full recovery, but he also took a swipe at the calls from some liberal lawmakers to “Defund the police.”
“I hope San Francisco dispatched their very best social worker to respond to the brutal assault of Nancy Pelosi’s husband,” he wrote.
While campaigning Friday for a House candidate in Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) quipped, “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California.” And Friday afternoon, Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, attacked the speaker at an event for Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance: “Are you ready to fire Nancy Pelosi?”
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said the U.S. Capitol Police and local law enforcement do an incredible job protecting members, but she said that the threats of violence have increased so much that “it’s impossible. You can’t keep that many people safe all of the time. If someone is crazy, they are going to find a way to get at you.”
She said it’s incumbent on local and national leaders to “dial down” the rhetoric: “Can’t we try as leaders to stand up to the violence and not add to the vitriol?” she asked, condemning Youngkin’s comments.
It has become much more common to see members flanked by a security detail around Capitol Hill, a sign that violent threats had escalated to a point of concern for the Capitol Police. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — both women of color — and members of the House Jan. 6 select committee were often seen with security at varying points of the year.
Jensen, who is studying extremist violence, said he’s been updating data lately for the number of reported incidents and was startled to see “a tremendous increase” in threats and intimidation against local politicians and judges.
“There’s always been threats against the president. There’s always been threats against senators and governors, but now you’re getting local school board members,” Jensen said. “They don’t have the security and the protection. A local school board member, a heath board member, an election volunteer — they’re not walking around with bodyguards. They don’t have a Marshal Service protecting them.”
“There was an opportunity for the more moderate elements of the Republican Party to distance themselves from the more radical elements and marginalize them, and be the start of the end of this wave,” Jensen said. “The exact opposite happened. What we saw instead was a doubling down on moving extremism into the mainstream.”
Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist and ardent Trump critic who works as a writer for the Bulwark website, said, “We should all be very concerned about the escalating violent rhetoric leading to more violent real-world action.
“After Jan. 6, there’s all this concern about how election deniers getting elected will impact 2024,” Miller said. “But I don’t think there’s enough focus on the risks of violence and danger in the next few weeks around elections.”
Michael Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland who served as RNC chairman when it launched its “Fire Pelosi” campaign, said that on the day the project debuted, he and Pelosi had appeared together at a political event “kibitzing and talking about the coming campaign.” The “Fire Pelosi” effort, he said, was political, not personal.
“We were not advocating violence against anybody,” Steele said. “We were literally talking about firing someone from their job as speaker of the House, so we are a long way from that today.”
“The difference now is you have political leaders who have personalized this and their rhetoric is hot and inflammatory — it’s not contextualized — so when Donald Trump back during the 2016 campaign talks about beating the hell out of someone, he meant that literally and people took it literally,” Steele said.
He added: “People took it literally that if I don’t like your political position or what you’re saying, it’s okay to get up in your face physically.”
Leigh Ann Caldwell, Paul Kane, and Azi Paybarah contributed to this report. | 2022-10-29T13:03:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paul Pelosi attack follows years of GOP demonizing Nancy Pelosi - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/paul-pelosi-attack-republicans-target/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/paul-pelosi-attack-republicans-target/ |
A rescuer carries a child during flooding due to Storm Nalgae, in Zamboanga, Philippines, on Oct. 29, 2022. (Philippine Coast Guard/via REUTERS)
A tropical storm unleashed floods and landslides in the Philippines, killing at least 45 people and sending rescuers on a hunt for missing victims on Saturday.
Strong winds and heavy rains slammed into the island of Mindanao, uprooting thousands of people, aid agencies said. Floodwaters submerged schools and households there, according to the U.N. children’s agency. It said more than 3 million people were living in areas affected by the cyclone, the latest of at least 20 storms to hit the Philippines during this year’s pacific typhoon season.
Emergency responders waded through thick mud and inundated streets to evacuate trapped residents on inflatable rubber kayaks, carrying children and elderly residents out.
After wreaking havoc in the south, Storm Nalgae, also locally dubbed Paeng, was moving to the northwest, the Philippine Weather Service said early Saturday. It warned of more possible flooding, landslides and torrential rains across the country, including the capital Manila.
The unique ways Filipinos are protecting their homes against floods
Last year alone, tropical cyclones in the Philippines, an archipelago and former U.S. colony in the Pacific Ocean, led to over 100 deaths and millions of dollars in damage, as The Washington Post has reported.
With scientists expecting extreme weather events to worsen around the world, most of the country’s population of 109 million lives in the path of a storm.
Saturday’s cyclone left dozens of vessels stranded at ports, canceled domestic flights and caused power outages.
The Coast Guard dispatched units to help evacuate people to shelters and suspended ferries in much of the archipelago, where traveling by boat is common.
As disaster hits the Philippines again, a farmer’s sorrow reveals the stakes
Police and soldiers also took part in rescue operations. The floods cut off roads and bridges, displacing at least 8,000 people, the country’s national disaster management council said early Saturday, as it convened an emergency meeting. Many more people were reported to have evacuated, with the storm expected to sweep through more cities. | 2022-10-29T13:16:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Philippines storm Paeng kills 45 in floods and landslides - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/philippines-storm-paeng-nalgae-floods/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/philippines-storm-paeng-nalgae-floods/ |
The most diverse Supreme Court ever confronts affirmative action
Two Black justices, one Latina justice and an ascendant conservative bloc take up race-based college admissions policies that have splintered previous courts
The official formal group photograph of the current U.S. Supreme Court, taken on Oct. 7. (Fred Schilling/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States via Reuters)
The most diverse group of Supreme Court justices in history will gather Monday to confront the issue that has vexed and deeply divided past courts: whether affirmative action in college admissions recognizes and nourishes a multicultural nation or impermissibly divides Americans by race.
The authority of college administrators to use race in a limited way to build a diverse student body has barely survived previous challenges. But even a defender of such policies, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, wrote in 2003 that racial preferences were not likely to be needed in 25 years. And a more dominant conservative majority is in place now.
It will be the first review of past decisions by a Supreme Court on which White men do not make up the majority. The body has undergone an almost complete turnover since O’Connor’s prediction, and includes justices who say affirmative action programs directly shaped their lives.
The court now has two Black members — and they seem to have opposite views of whether race-based policies are authorized by the Constitution. The court’s most senior member, Justice Clarence Thomas, is an outspoken opponent of affirmative action: “racial paternalism … as poisonous and pernicious as any other form of discrimination,” he has written.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s newest member and its first Black female justice, staked out her position on just her second day on the bench: there is no reason to believe the Constitution forbids race-conscious policies.
Americans support diversity in college admissions, but not use of race to make decisions, poll shows
Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina justice, is the boldest defender of what she prefers to call “race-sensitive” admission policies; she has offered herself as the “perfect affirmative action child” — one who would not have been transported from Bronx housing projects to the Ivy League without a boost, but excelled as a top student once she got there.
Kavanaugh’s record as an advocate and judge suggest an aversion to racial classifications. But he has also displayed an aggressive pursuit of diversity in the clerks he has hired, with repeated outreach to Black student organizations at the nation’s elite law schools. His first group of law clerks at the Supreme Court was also the first to be all-female.
Given those rulings — and just six years after the Supreme Court approved a similar race-conscious admissions program at the University of Texas — analysts say it is seems likely the right wing of the court accepted the new cases to redefine the law about race, rather than simply to affirm the lower courts.
The Supreme Court “has grappled with this question of affirmative action in higher education and the permissible uses of race for many years, but the court is more conservative now than it has been in any of those decades,” said Washington lawyer Roman Martinez, a frequent Supreme Court practitioner. “If you were just trying to count noses, I think you would think there are more votes to be skeptical of these programs now than ever before.”
How is affirmative action used in college admissions? What to know
Opponents on the court are sure to be led by Thomas, who was a dissenter in 2003 when the court upheld the limited use of race in Grutter v. Bollinger. In that opinion, O’Connor agreed with the University of Michigan Law School that its admission policies reflected a compelling interest in ensuring a “critical mass” of minority students. The Constitution “does not prohibit the law school’s narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body,” she wrote.
Thomas’s opposition has been both personal and constitutional. “The Constitution abhors classifications based on race, not only because those classifications can harm favored races or are based on illegitimate motives, but also because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all,” he wrote in dissent.
The justice contends he adheres to a “colorblind” view of the Constitution, and that only government measures that remedy specific past discrimination are allowed. But Brooklyn College political science professor Corey Robin, who wrote “The Enigma of Clarence Thomas,” says Thomas is still “a very race conscious thinker.”
“Thomas has always seen himself, from the very beginning, as someone who is trying to reconstruct how black people thought about race, first and foremost,” Robin said.
When Thomas writes about affirmative action, he “almost never focuses, or talks about, white victims. In Thomas’s mind, the real victims of affirmative action are black people,” Robin continued. “I think he’s quite sincere in this belief that affirmative action is a kind of continuation of Jim Crow and old white supremacy.”
Thomas has written dramatically about how racial preferences have affected his own life. “A law degree from Yale meant one thing for white graduates and another for blacks,” he says in his memoir My Grandfather’s Son. After graduation, “as a symbol of my disillusionment, I peeled a fifteen-cent price sticker off a package of cigars and stuck it on the frame of my law degree to remind myself of the mistake I’d made by going to Yale.”
Thomas’s focus on Black people as the victims of racial preferences have not convinced traditional civil rights activists and heroes. “He had all the advantages of affirmative action and went against it,” Rosa Parks said of Thomas in 1996.
Jackson, the newest member of the court, described a similar disconnect when she first met Thomas. As a law clerk to Justice Stephen G. Breyer in 1999-2000, she and other clerks were invited to lunch with Thomas, as part of the court’s tradition that each clerk meet each justice.
Jackson described the experience to journalists Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher for their 2007 book Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas.
Thomas “spoke the language,” Jackson said, meaning he reminded her of the Black men she knew, Merida and Fletcher wrote.
“But I just sat there the whole time thinking, ‘I don’t understand you. You sound like my parents. You sound like people I grew up with.’ But the lessons he tended to draw from the experiences of the segregated South seemed to be different than those of everybody I know,” the book quotes Jackson as saying.
Jackson, nominated by President Biden to replace Breyer, quickly made clear her own views on race-based policies, saying in an elections case from Alabama earlier this month that there was no reason to believe the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment meant the Constitution must be colorblind.
“I don’t think we can assume that just because race is taken into account that that necessarily creates an equal protection problem,” Jackson said. “I understood that we looked at the history and traditions of the Constitution, at what the framers and the founders thought about. And when I drilled down to that level of analysis, it became clear to me that the framers themselves adopted the equal protection clause, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment, in a race conscious way.”
She added: “the entire point of the [14th] Amendment was to secure rights of the freed former slaves.”
“Constitutionally permissible race-sensitive admissions policies can both serve the compelling interest of obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body, and inure to the benefit of racial minorities,” she wrote in a dissent to the court’s finding that Michigan voters can forbid the university system from considering race in admission decisions. “There is nothing mutually exclusive about the two.”
“Race matters for reasons that really are only skin deep, that cannot be discussed any other way, and that cannot be wished away,” she wrote. “Race matters to a young man’s view of society when he spends his teenage years watching others tense up as he passes, no matter the neighborhood where he grew up. Race matters to a young woman’s sense of self when she states her hometown, and then is pressed, “No, where are you really from?”, regardless of how many generations her family has been in the country … Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: ‘I do not belong here.’ ”
He is one of the biggest proponents of the colorblind view, and said it is the lesson of the court’s landmark 1954 decision ending public school segregation, Brown v. Board of Education. The chief justice dissented when the court upheld race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Texas in 2016, and wrote the decision striking down voluntary desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville in 2007. He said using race in student assignments was not permitted, even if school officials thought they had a noble reason.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” was his oft-quoted line.
Skepticism of race-conscious policies has been a through-line in Roberts’s career, from his time as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration to his consideration as the chief justice of the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, intended to remedy past discrimination.
A key question is whether those views will outweigh Roberts’s tendency to try to find a middle ground on polarizing legal issues. The challengers to Harvard and UNC urge the court not just to rewrite its rules on race but to overturn O’Connor’s ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger.
Roberts’s tendency for compromise was evident last term when he declined to join his conservative colleagues in overturning Roe v. Wade. Options in the affirmative action cases include bypassing the constitutional questions and finding that federal law prohibits the consideration of race — which would leave Congress free to make a change — or to simply find the policies of Harvard and UNC violate the court’s precedents.
But Roberts’s past decisions might indicate this is an issue on which he would not seek a conciliatory path. “This case could challenge the chief’s strong aversion to overturning precedent,” said Martinez, who is a former Roberts clerk. He “might be leading the court this year on this issue.”
Since lower courts affirmed the policies of UNC and Harvard, it seems likely that support for taking up the cases came from one or more of President Trump’s nominees to the court: Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh.
But, even when approving a South Carolina voter ID law that challengers said would have a disproportionate effect on Black voters, Kavanaugh wrote that “the long march for equality for African-Americans is not finished.”
In addition, Kavanaugh has placed an importance on hiring minorities, who are underrepresented among law clerks on the prestigious federal appeals courts. During his time on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, 13 of the 48 clerks he hired were minorities. Nine of them went on to clerk at the Supreme Court, according to statistics compiled by his former clerks.
Justin Driver, a constitutional law professor at Yale who was a law clerk to O’Connor and Breyer, said the court has upheld race-conscious policies in the past through “gritted teeth.”
“Affirmative action has repeatedly been left for dead and a series of rather improbable Republican-appointed justices have preserved it,” he said. “We will see whether history repeats itself.”
Over 6 in 10 Americans favor leaving race out of college admissions, Post-Schar School poll finds | 2022-10-29T14:08:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | With 3 justices of color, Supreme Court turns to UNC, Harvard affirmative action cases - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/scotus-racial-difference-thomas-jackson-sotomayor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/scotus-racial-difference-thomas-jackson-sotomayor/ |
What the Supreme Court justices have said on affirmative action and race
In several cases dating back to the 1970s, the Supreme Court has upheld the limited use of race in college admissions to build a diverse student body. But those narrow majorities have been replaced by a more conservative bloc of six, including three justices picked by President Donald Trump, and the court will hear two college admissions cases on Oct. 31. The three Trump nominees — along with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated by President Biden — do not have extensive records on cases involving racial preferences from their tenures as appeals court judges.
Here’s what the justices have said or written about affirmative action and race-conscious policies, starting with the chief justice and then in order of seniority.
Roberts has questioned race-conscious government policies since his time as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, where he took a skeptical view of the Voting Rights Act.
His criticisms quickly became part of his record at the Supreme Court. During his first term, he dissented in a case about drawing congressional districts to favor the ability of minority groups to elect a candidate of their choice. “I do not believe it is our role to make judgments about which mixes of minority voters should count for purposes of forming a majority in an electoral district,” Roberts wrote, adding, “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”
Roberts dissented in 2016 when the court upheld the limited use of race in admission decisions at the University of Texas. He wrote the landmark decision in Shelby County v. Holder that struck the heart of the Voting Rights Act, a provision in which Congress decided which states were subject to the requirement that election law changes be approved in advance by the Justice Department or federal judges.
And in a decision that struck down voluntary desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville, Roberts limited the role race can play in making student assignment decisions. He relied on 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education, which ended public school segregation. “Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin,” Roberts wrote. “The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again—even for very different reasons.”
He added, in perhaps his most famous comment on the subject: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Thomas has mostly advocated for a “colorblind” view of the Constitution that sees almost all government considerations of race to be a form of racial discrimination.
He dissented when the court upheld the limited use of race in college admissions in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003. “Like [Frederick] Douglass, I believe blacks can achieve in every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators,” Thomas wrote. “Because I wish to see all students succeed whatever their color, I share, in some respect, the sympathies of those who sponsor the type of discrimination advanced by the University of Michigan Law School. The Constitution does not, however, tolerate institutional devotion to the status quo in admissions policies when such devotion ripens into racial discrimination.”
When the court approved a similar program at the University of Texas 13 years later, Thomas said in a dissent that Grutter should be overturned.
“The Constitution abhors classifications based on race because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all,” he wrote. “That constitutional imperative does not change in the face of a ‘faddish theory’ that racial discrimination may produce ‘educational benefits.’ ”
On a personal level, Thomas — the second Black man to serve on the Supreme Court — acknowledged that racial preferences played a role in his recruitment to College of the Holy Cross and admission to Yale Law School. But he contends it cost him when he failed to receive a job offer as a lawyer. “Now I knew what a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference,” he wrote in his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” “I was humiliated — and desperate.” (Black classmates of Thomas who received offers from big law firms disagreed with his assessment.)
Alito joined Roberts’s opinion in the Seattle and Louisville cases, has supported narrowing the Voting Rights Act’s application to election procedures and majority-minority congressional districts, and has been a consistent vote against affirmative action.
While he has not joined Thomas’s call to overturn Grutter, he wrote the lead dissent in the University of Texas case.
“What is not at stake is whether UT or any other university may adopt an admissions plan that results in a student body with a broad representation of students from all racial and ethnic groups,” Alito wrote. “What is at stake is whether university administrators may justify systematic racial discrimination simply by asserting that such discrimination is necessary to achieve ‘the educational benefits of diversity,’ without explaining—much less proving—why the discrimination is needed or how the discriminatory plan is well crafted to serve its objectives.”
Alito said the majority’s conclusion that UT had met its burden is “remarkable—and remarkably wrong.”
Sotomayor, the Supreme Court’s first Latina justice, has established herself as an outspoken advocate of affirmative action as both a personal and legal matter.
She has called herself a “perfect affirmative action baby” — raised in New York housing projects where English was not her family’s primary language. Her test scores alone probably would not have merited her admission to Princeton and Yale Law School, she said. “The question is not: How did I get in? It’s: What did I do when I got there?” she said in a 2018 speech. “And with pride, I can say I graduated at the top of my class.”
Sotomayor was in the majority in the court’s University of Texas decision, and she dissented when the court ruled that Michigan voters had the authority to forbid the university system from considering race in admission decisions.
She wrote that she prefers the term “race-sensitive admissions policies” to “affirmative action,” and directly confronted Roberts’s statement in the Seattle case.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination,” Sotomayor wrote. “As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society.”
Kagan, on the court since 2010, has not participated in its cases on affirmative action, most likely because she played an advocate’s role as President Barack Obama’s solicitor general before she became a justice.
But she seemed to support affirmative action objectives while serving in the administration of President Bill Clinton, and during her tenure at the Justice Department, the agency filed an amicus brief on behalf of the University of Texas.
Kagan has been a steadfast defender of a robust reading of the Voting Rights Act. During oral arguments earlier this month, she said it was “one of the great achievements of American democracy to achieve equal political opportunities regardless of race, to ensure that African Americans could have as much political power as White Americans could.”
She has written stinging dissents to the court’s decisions that make it harder to use that law to challenge state election laws, including in a 2021 case.
“If a single statute represents the best of America, it is the Voting Rights Act,” Kagan wrote, adding: “If a single statute reminds us of the worst of America, it is the Voting Rights Act. Because it was—and remains—so necessary.”
Gorsuch dissented in April when the Supreme Court allowed a prestigious high school in Virginia to continue, for now, an admissions policy that administrators said opened the magnet program to a wider socioeconomic range of students. Gorsuch, along with Alito and Thomas, would have granted the request from a parents group to suspend the policy at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which challengers said discriminates against Asian American students. The dissenters did not explain their disagreement, which is not unusual in emergency applications.
In 2020, Gorsuch wrote for the majority when the court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects gay and transgender employees from workplace discrimination. Gorsuch relied on the text of the statute — rather than the legislative intent or purpose — to reach that result.
“To ‘discriminate against’ a person, then, would seem to mean treating that individual worse than others who are similarly situated,” Gorsuch wrote.
Some legal scholars say the rationale Gorsuch used in that opinion could be applied to eliminate the consideration of race from college admissions.
As a lawyer in private practice, Kavanaugh wrote an amicus brief with conservative lawyer Robert H. Bork in a case challenging a race-based voting qualification in Hawaii. In a Wall Street Journal column, Kavanaugh characterized as a “naked racial-spoils system” the state’s requirement that only Native Hawaiians vote for trustees of a state office. He quoted Justice Antonin Scalia, the late conservative, in urging the court to follow the principle that “under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or debtor race. … In the eyes of government, we are just one race here.”
Kavanaugh was serving then as an advocate, not a judge. On the bench, he has made a concerted effort to hire young lawyers from diverse backgrounds to work with him as law clerks and signaled in his rulings a sensitivity to racial discrimination.
As an appellate court judge in 2012, in a case reviewing a South Carolina voter identification law, Kavanaugh wrote that “Racial insensitivity, racial bias, and indeed outright racism are still problems throughout the United States as of 2012. We see that reality on an all-too-frequent basis. The long march for equality for African-Americans is not finished.”
But civil rights advocates said Kavanaugh’s rhetoric was less significant than the ruling, which delayed, but still allowed for, the ID requirement that the Justice Department said would have a disproportionate impact on Black voters.
In response to questions during her 2020 confirmation hearings, Barrett talked about persistent racism in the United States and the death of George Floyd, the Black man whose murder at the hands of police sparked protests across the country. She called the issue highly personal and difficult, and part of an ongoing conversation, noting that she is the mother of two Black children adopted from Haiti. But she declined to opine on policy or legal solutions.
“I think it is an entirely uncontroversial and obvious statement, given as we just talked about the George Floyd video, that racism persists in our country,” Barrett said.
“As to putting my finger on the nature of the problem, whether as you say it’s just outright or systemic racism, or how to tackle the issue of making it better, those things are policy questions — hotly contested policy questions.”
Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, recused herself from the case testing Harvard’s admissions practices; she served until May on the governing board of her alma mater, where one of her daughters is enrolled. She will, however, participate in a separate case examining the University of North Carolina’s policy.
While Jackson has not previously ruled in an affirmative action case, she has faced questions about her views. As a candidate to join the Harvard board in 2016, she declined to comment on the school’s admissions policy in a campaign survey, citing her role as a federal judge who might someday have to rule on the issue.
As a nominee for the U.S. District Court in Washington, Jackson was asked by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), her Harvard Law School classmate, about the high court’s past rulings on affirmative action and whether the “use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary” in future years, as the court majority said in Grutter.
Jackson said in a written response that she would adhere to court precedent, adding, “I have no particular insight into the future need for, or ramifications of, the continued use of race in admissions.”
*The cases the Supreme Court will hear on Oct. 31 are: Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.
Illustrations by Shelly Tan. | 2022-10-29T14:08:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Race in college admissions: What Roberts, Thomas, Sotomayor, other justices say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/supreme-justices-affirmative-action-statements/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/supreme-justices-affirmative-action-statements/ |
The vicious attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is a reminder of what the 2022 election is about. It is of course about who holds power in Congress and the states. But will these elections do anything to change the toxic environment in which politics and governing are carried out? Or could they make things worse?
The backdrop of today’s politics includes a climate of possible violence, with rising numbers of threats aimed at individual lawmakers. It includes threats to local officials and citizen volunteers who administer elections. It includes intimidation of individual voters depositing ballots at drop boxes in Arizona.
All this comes amid declining trust in the integrity of the election process itself, the reluctance of some candidates to expressly say they will accept the outcome of their elections and the possibility that many 2020 election deniers will be elected to important offices this year, potentially putting at risk future elections. A majority of Republicans on the ballot for Senate, House and key statewide races have denied or questioned the 2020 presidential election, echoing former president Donald Trump’s unfounded claims. It all adds up to what has been stated repeatedly for the past two years: democracy itself is at risk in this country.
Politically inspired violence has been aimed at leaders from both parties. This past week, three men were convicted of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). Earlier this year, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, a member of the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc, came under threat and a man with a gun was arrested near his home. In 2017, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was badly wounded by a shooter who opened fire at Scalise and his GOP colleagues at a baseball field in Northern Virginia.
In the Scalise attack, it was later revealed that the shooter had a hatred of Republicans. But the more consistent threats have and are coming from the right, from White supremacists and other groups, those who helped organize the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump’s ongoing and baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen have spawned a sea of election deniers, some of whom could become elected officials who will oversee future elections — a noxious mix at a perilous time for the country.
The intruder who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer reportedly said, “Where is Nancy?” when he was inside the couple’s San Francisco home. When and where was that first heard? Few will forget that it was chanted by rioters who were marauding through the Capitol attempting to disrupt, delay and possibly overturn Joe Biden’s victory over Trump.
Pelosi’s staff was in hiding that day, terrified. She was rushed to safety by security. On Friday, her husband — lacking security by Capitol Police when the speaker is not at their home — could not hide from his intruder. The chants about “Where is Nancy?” were frightening on Jan. 6; they must have been chilling for Paul Pelosi in the middle of the night. After the attack, he was taken to a hospital, where he underwent surgery for a fractured skull and injuries to his arm and hands.
In the 2022 election, GOP attack ads follow a few patterns when attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – which they do often. Here's how. (Video: The Washington Post)
Is there an American politician, other than Hillary Clinton, who has been demonized so much and for so long as Pelosi? She was the focus of a costly and relentless Republican campaign during the 2010 election, four years after she first became speaker. In every campaign since, Republicans have singled her out for criticism. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on political ads this year in which she is named. The ads include photographs showing her in the worst possible ways.
Was it any surprise that the rioters who invaded the Capitol were talking about her the way they did? There is no way to know what impact all that had on the man who attacked her husband early Friday morning, but the long process of demonization is also dehumanizing, with obvious possible consequences.
The attack on Paul Pelosi was widely condemned by elected officials across the political spectrum, just as Democrats joined Republicans in condemning the attack on Scalise five years ago. That is the necessary and easy response. But some Republicans put an addendum on their comments, unable to stay on the high road.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) was campaigning for GOP congressional candidate Yelsi Vega in the hours after the first reports about the attack on Paul Pelosi. “There’s no room for violence anywhere,” he said, “but we’re going to send her [Nancy Pelosi] back to California to be with him.” This from a Republican held up by many in his party as an antidote to the vile and degrading politics practiced by Trump.
The electoral process depends on the collective good will and confidence of the American people. Trump traffics in conspiracy theories and lies. The more he does, the more his followers take it as gospel. Confidence in the electoral process has declined among Republicans since the last election. Does that raise the possibility of violence? Jan. 6, 2021, provides one data big data point.
The problem exists in many forms, some now ingrained. The vernacular of political campaigns today is almost entirely negative. Read the press releases from the national political committees of the two parties or individual candidates’ reactions after a debate or after primary campaigns that select general election candidates. Opponents are routinely described as radical, extreme, dangerous, liars. Appeals for funds are couched in dire and often dishonest language. It’s now the routine, a template of negativity.
Apocalyptic rhetoric courses through the system; it’s a mentality of we-must-win-or-the-country-will-be-lost. This amped up rhetoric is reflective of the nature of politics today, the need to supersize everything to grab the attention of voters focused on their work and their families and their friends.
The news media also contributes. Politics as combat is the routine metaphor. Debates described as boxing matches are the norm: “It’s fight night!” Politicians are “targeted” by their opponents. These seem like small things, and all of us who write about politics have succumbed. But to many citizens, this kind of language contributes to the degradation of democracy.
But there is the issue of proportionality and no doubt that the single biggest contributor to the declining confidence in the electoral system and the related threat to democratic processes is Trump and those who spread his lies. The 2020 election was securely run and fairly counted, no matter how often Trump and his acolytes — elected officials, candidates and ordinary citizens — spout the opposite. No credible evidence was presented to support Trump claims of widespread fraud.
The fact that so many Republicans still accept his version of events, however, heightens the possibility that this election will face challenges from disgruntled losers or claims of irregularities by overzealous citizens. It can happen as state leaders complete the certification process or it can happen with baseless challenges at a local precinct. It can happen this year and it could certainly happen after the 2024 election.
As shocking as the attack on Paul Pelosi was, there is a danger that it could happen again. As repulsive as Trump’s claims of a stolen election were and are, there is a danger that this too could happen again. The balance of power in Washington could shift with the results if this year’s elections. The responsibility for safeguarding democracy — and elected officials — should belong to no party. | 2022-10-29T15:57:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Attack on Paul Pelosi was an assault on democracy. Risks keep growing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/pelosi-attack-toxic-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/pelosi-attack-toxic-politics/ |
Vince Dooley, famed Georgia football coach, dies at 90
Coach Vince Dooley is carried off the field after Georgia beat Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl in 1981. (Gene Blythe/Associated Press)
Vince Dooley, the football coach who carried himself like a professor and guided Georgia for a quarter-century of success that included the 1980 national championship, died Oct. 28 at his Georgia home in Athens. He was 90.
The school announced that Mr. Dooley died in the presence of his wife, Barbara, and their four children, including former Tennessee coach Derek Dooley. No cause of death was given.
Mr. Dooley was hospitalized this month for what was described as a mild case of covid, but he pronounced himself fully recovered and ready to attend his regular book-signing session at the campus bookstore before an Oct. 15 game against Vanderbilt.
Mr. Dooley had a career record of 201-77-10 while coaching the Bulldogs from 1964 to 1988, a stretch that included six Southeastern Conference titles, 20 bowl games and just one losing season. “Our family is heartbroken by the death of Coach Dooley. He was one of a kind with an unmatched love for UGA,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said.
Mr. Dooley is the fourth-winningest coach in SEC history, trailing only Bear Bryant, Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier. “Vince Dooley was one of my favorite people in the world,” Saban said. “Vince represented the University of Georgia and all of college football with tremendous integrity and class as both a coach and athletic director.”
After retiring from coaching, Mr. Dooley continued as the school’s athletic director, a job he held from 1979 until 2004. The field at Sanford Stadium was dedicated in his honor during the 2019 football season. Josh Brooks, the school’s current athletic director, said the big-money program he now guides “is what it is today because of Vince Dooley.”
Mr. Dooley was the second prominent member of Georgia’s storied football history to die in the past two weeks. Hall of Famer Charlie Trippi, who starred at Georgia in the 1940s and went on to claim an NFL championship with the Chicago Cardinals, died Oct. 19 at the age of 100.
Mr. Dooley dominated that series during his coaching career, going 17-7-1 against the Gators. The most famous victory came in 1980, when Lindsay Scott hauled in a 93-yard touchdown pass from Buck Belue in the closing minute. The improbable 26-21 triumph propelled Georgia to a perfect season and their first consensus national title.
Mr. Dooley lived long enough to see another championship. When the Bulldogs defeated Alabama in last season’s national title game, the former coach was in Indianapolis to cheer them on. He withstood the pressure of winning at a football-mad SEC school during an era when Bryant ran a powerhouse program at Alabama.
Mr. Dooley won over skeptics early on, using a trick play to upset the defending national champion Crimson Tide 18-17 in the 1965 season opener. The following year, Georgia won the first of his SEC titles. By the time Mr. Dooley stepped down from coaching at age 56, he was one of only 10 NCAA Division I-A coaches to win 200 games.
Stoic in his demeanor and elegant with words delivered in a Southern drawl, a Renaissance man who dabbled in horticulture, studied Civil War history and wrote numerous books, Mr. Dooley had his greatest run of success after landing a running back from tiny Wrightsville, Ga., Hershel Walker.
Walker, now running for the U.S. Senate, tweeted a picture of him and Mr. Dooley on the field at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium before Georgia’s season-opening victory over Oregon. “Thank you Coach Dooley, for being one of the greatest men I have ever known,” Walker wrote. “You mean more to me than you’ll ever know.”
Mr. Dooley was a graduate of Auburn, one of Georgia’s most hated rivals, and had no head coaching experience when he was hired by the Bulldogs at the age of 32. It was not a popular hire, as Mr. Dooley often noted through the years. “My qualifications were such there’s no way I would’ve hired myself,” Mr. Dooley conceded in a 2014 interview with the school newspaper, the Red & Black.
There were low moments, to be sure. Near the end of his reign as athletic director, the men’s basketball program was caught up in an embarrassing scandal that led to the resignation of coach Jim Harrick and revelations that his son, an assistant coach, taught a hoops class with a final exam that included questions such as “How many points does a 3-point field goal account for in a Basketball Game?”
Mr. Dooley never left Athens and remained a fixture around the football program, often sitting in on news conferences conducted by the last coach he hired, Mark Richt, and Smart. “Obviously one of the greatest coaches of all time,” Richt said. “But also the man who hired me and mentored me in my first head coaching opportunity at Georgia. I owe a lot to coach.”
Mr. Dooley’s younger brother, Bill, was the head coach at North Carolina, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest. Derek held the top jobs at both Louisiana Tech and SEC rival Tennessee. When Derek returned to Athens as the Volunteers’ coach in 2010, Mr. Dooley knew he couldn’t pull against his son, but he didn’t want to be seen rooting against the Bulldogs in their own stadium.
So he stayed at home, watching the game on television as Georgia romped to a 41-14 victory. “In a perfect world, I’d rather him be farther away and not in the same conference,” Mr. Dooley said.
At Georgia, Mr. Dooley coached a plethora of standout players — from Bill Stanfill to Scott Woerner to Rodney Hampton. But his most famous recruit was undoubtedly Walker. Walker made his mark in his very first college game, running right over Tennessee defensive back Bill Bates for a touchdown that helped the Bulldogs rally for a 16-15 victory.
“My god, a freshman!” longtime Georgia radio announcer Larry Munson screamed over the air. Walker rushed for 1,616 yards and 15 touchdowns that season, but the Bulldogs’ national title hopes appeared doomed when they trailed Florida 21-20. Then Belue and Scott hooked up on perhaps the most famous play in school history. Thanks to another memorable call by Munson, the game would forever be known as “Run, Lindsay, Run.”
Georgia capped its 12-0 season with a 17-10 win over Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl to clinch the national championship. That season would be the pinnacle of Mr. Dooley’s career, though the Bulldogs nearly won another national title two years later. Walker won the Heisman Trophy and Georgia was ranked No. 1 heading into the Sugar Bowl after an undefeated regular season.
But No. 2 Penn State captured the championship with a 27-23 victory in what turned out to be Walker’s final college game. He bolted for the upstart U.S. Football League after his junior season. In his first run for political office, Walker is locked in a tight battle with incumbent U.S. Sen. Raphael G. Warnock. Walker received the endorsement of his former coach in a recent ad.
Mr. Dooley was inducted into the National College Football Hall of Fame in 1998, but he also took pride in running an athletic program that was among the nation’s best in a wide range of sports. From tennis to swimming, gymnastics to baseball, the Bulldogs won 19 national championships under Mr. Dooley.
Vincent Joseph Dooley was born into an athletic family in Mobile, Ala., on Sept. 4, 1932. He earned a football scholarship to Auburn, where he also played basketball. Mr. Dooley was an outstanding defensive back and captain of the 1953 team, a year in which he played in the College All-Star Game. He graduated from Auburn in 1954 with a degree in business management before serving in the Marine Corps for two years.
Twenty-five years later, Mr. Dooley was carried off the field after his final game, a 34-27 victory over Michigan State in the Gator Bowl. In addition to his wife and son Derek, survivors include children Deanna, Daniel and Denise. | 2022-10-29T16:32:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vince Dooley, famed Georgia football coach with national title, dies at 90 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/29/vice-dooley-georgia-coach-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/29/vice-dooley-georgia-coach-dies/ |
I’m sorry I said nice things about Glenn Youngkin
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) in Smithfield, Va., on Thursday. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
I’d like to take this opportunity to retract the nice things I said about Glenn Youngkin a few months ago.
In July, I wrote a column when reports began to surface that Virginia’s Republican governor, a fresh and sunny political newcomer with proven bipartisan appeal, was already thinking about running for president.
As news was breaking Friday about the horrific attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, by an intruder in their San Francisco home, Youngkin happened to be campaigning in Stafford, Va., for Yesli Vega, the Republican running in a very tight race against Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger.
What made Youngkin’s riff not only tasteless but also dangerous is that he was not referring to some random act of “violence anywhere.” The attack on Paul Pelosi was a direct product of the toxic political culture — a culture that the governor was helping to cultivate for what he apparently sees as a political opportunity.
Evidence now indicates that the assailant who beat Pelosi with a hammer, sending the 82-year-old to the hospital with a skull fracture and serious injuries to his arm and hands, had broken into the Pelosi home because he was looking for the speaker herself. Nancy Pelosi has been demonized for years by Republicans, including in countless GOP campaign ads. The attacker’s reported shouts of “Where is Nancy?” were a chilling echo of the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters’ cries as they tried to hunt her down in the corridors of the Capitol.
Karen Tumulty: The shameless revisionism of the Capitol attack cannot be allowed to take root
Being a jerk about Pelosi is not the only Youngkin action of late that betrays who he really is and what he is willing to do in service of his ambition. During his campaign for governor, he managed a tricky balancing act on the election denialism that has gripped his party. He promised to put “election integrity” at the top of his priorities in office — indulging the lie that fraud is rampant — but also acknowledged Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and called the Jan. 6 insurrection “a real blight on our democracy.” And, notably, he kept Trump at a distance.
But more recently, Youngkin is being seen with the worst people in his party. A little over a week ago, he stumped in Arizona for GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, one of the loudest of those 2020 deniers and someone who has refused to say whether she will accept the results of this year’s election. He called her “awesome,” and she declared him a “total rock star.”
Erik Wemple: Election denier Kari Lake pleads with CNN: 'Can we talk about issues?'
Asked on CNN about his plans to campaign with Lake, Youngkin replied: “I think that the Republican Party has to be a party where we are not shunning people and excluding them, because we don’t agree on everything.” In other words, Youngkin thinks it’s fine to undermine democracy in the cause of lower taxes and school choice.
Karen Tumulty: The sedition didn't stop with the Jan. 6 attack
The governor remains popular in Virginia, with a recent poll showing his approval at 55 percent and most of his constituents saying the state is moving in the right direction. But the commonwealth limits its governors to one consecutive term, which means, come 2024, he will be looking for a new job.
Youngkin may still have some room for redemption, though it is shrinking. He could start by apologizing for his crude joke. So far, all we’ve heard is a statement from his office condemning the violence against the speaker’s husband and saying the governor “wishes him a full recovery and is keeping the Pelosi family in his prayers.” Meanwhile, his turn toward full-bore Trumpism is likely to be for naught. There are plenty of others, including the original, who do it better — and at less cost to their own integrity. | 2022-10-29T16:40:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Glenn Youngkin's comments on Pelosi are tasteless and dangerous - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/29/youngkin-comments-pelosi-attack-dangerous-tasteless/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/29/youngkin-comments-pelosi-attack-dangerous-tasteless/ |
Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center on Friday, where Paul Pelosi was recovering after being attacked in his home. (Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP)
Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was recovering in Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital on Saturday following surgery for a fractured skull and other injuries from an attack by a hammer-wielding intruder.
The attack has reignited concerns about violence amid a toxic political atmosphere in the final days before the midterm elections. It has also renewed calls for beefed-up security for lawmakers and their family members.
San Francisco police have identified the suspect in the Pelosi attack as David DePape, 42, who appears to have been deeply drawn into election conspiracy theories, QAnon and fringe rantings.
The Washington Post confirmed that a voluminous blog written under DePape’s name was filled with deeply antisemitic writings and baseless claims as well as pro-Trump and anti-Democratic posts. It was registered to a house in Richmond, Calif., where DePape lives, according to neighbors.
Attack on her husband follows years of GOP demonizing Nancy Pelosi
Police Chief William Scott would not speculate on a motive for the attack. But it appears that the assailant had been looking for the speaker, and he uttered “Where’s Nancy?,” according to a person briefed on the case.
“This was not a random act. This was intentional,” Scott told reporters on Friday.
DePape is expected to be charged with attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse and burglary, among other offenses, according to Scott.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said on Twitter that charges would be brought on Monday and DePape is expected to be arraigned on Tuesday.
The U.S. Capitol Police, the agency charged with protecting members of Congress, has reported a sharp increase in threats against lawmakers in recent years, and threats have sharply escalated since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. It said the number of cases involving threats against members of Congress rose from about 4,000 in 2017 to more than 9,600 last year.
Lawmakers and others have reacted with horror to the attack, adding that improving the security of lawmakers — and their families — must be a top priority.
“We need a fresh examination of this,” Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), who represents a San Francisco Bay area district close to Pelosi’s, said in an interview. “It’s reported constantly in the media that threats have increased, and they have. My constituents are surprised that we stand in line, go through security — they think every one of us has security.”
Eshoo described the Pelosis as “dear friends” and said the attack was devastating. “I felt like yesterday was a twilight zone. Thank God Paul wasn’t killed.”
She said she talked to a fellow representative about the security problem and they agreed there was no easy answer. “We both said, we can’t do our work by hiding. It doesn’t work that way. You have to be with people.”
In an interview, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) expressed exasperation that not all Republicans immediately and forcefully condemned the attack.
“I am very disappointed at the tepid response on the other side,” she said. “Some people have condemned it, but others have remained silent or made it into a political joke.”
DeGette noted that when GOP Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot in 2017 by a gunman during congressional baseball practice, “everyone across the spectrum condemned it.”
She also said there needs to be more concern about congressional spouses, adding, “Here was Paul Pelosi, all by himself at home.”
DeGette said she had a security detail when she was one of eight House members who managed the second impeachment of former president Donald Trump. But her husband did not have protection when she was in Washington and he was in Colorado, she said.
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), at a Democratic rally in Baltimore on Saturday, talked about the poisonous atmosphere affecting the nation’s political life.
“We must not let it become the land of the liars and the land of the purveyors of violence,” he said.
Aaron C. Davis, Dalton Bennett and Cate Brown contributed reporting. | 2022-10-29T18:34:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paul Pelosi recovering as attack renews focus on toxic politics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/paul-pelosi-david-depape-attack/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/paul-pelosi-david-depape-attack/ |
By Widlore Mérancourt
Members of the Haitian National Police patrol a street as ongoing gun battles between rival gangs have forced residents to flee their homes, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on April 28, 2022. (Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The prominent leader of a Haitian political party was killed in an alleged gang attack in the capital on Friday, the latest victim of the spiraling security crisis gripping the Caribbean nation.
Eric Jean Baptiste, lottery business magnate, and a bodyguard were killed in Laboule 12, a leafy hillside area in Port-au-Prince, after attackers opened fire on their vehicle, officials said. Jean Baptiste, 52, headed the center-left Assembly of Progressive National Democrats Party, and once sought Haiti’s presidency.
Ricardo Nordain, a party official, said Jean Baptiste’s armored vehicle flipped over when it was ambushed.
“He represented a lot,” Nordain said. “His assassination shows we do not have leadership in this country.”
Gangs have long had a presence in Haiti, but their power has grown in recent years amid a broader deterioration of democratic institutions and security conditions. United Nations agencies said this month that gang violence in the capital has displaced some 96,000 people, and that gangs have used rape to terrorize the local population.
Laboule 12 is in the crosshairs of a gang called Ti Makak. It was implicated in the assassination this year of a former Haitian senator. Three police officers were also killed there last month. The conflict that began in 2020 involves a land dispute between Ti Makak and an armed group backed by Jean Mossanto Petit, a businessman.
The Haiti-based Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights said in a report last month that Ti Makak is carrying out more shootings and kidnappings to strengthen its position in the conflict. Asked if Jean Baptiste had conflicts with the gang, Nordain said, “Honest people will always have clashes with the gangs.”
Prime Minister Ariel Henry offered his condolences to Jean Baptiste’s family on Saturday.
“The horrific assassination of the political leader Eric Jean Baptiste and his bodyguard has once against plunged the Haitian nation into turmoil,” he said in a tweet. “We strongly condemn this heinous crime against this patriot, this moderate politician committed to change.”
Haiti is confronting a confluence of humanitarian, security and political crises that threaten to plunge the country into anarchy and that have spurred Henry to appeal upon the international community for the deployment of an armed force to restore order.
The G-9 federation of gangs has for several weeks blocked access to seaports and the Varreux fuel terminal, the source of 70 percent of Haiti’s fuel, forcing businesses and hospitals to reduce their hours or shut down and imperiling access to food and clean drinking water amid a resurgence of cholera that has killed dozens.
Thousands of Haitians have poured into the streets in recent weeks to protest the insecurity situation and the government of Henry. Critics say he has been delaying progress toward new elections to replace President Jovenel Moïse, who was brazenly assassinated last year, so he can remain in power.
The protests followed a government announcement that it would no longer subsidize the cost of fuel, prompting widespread anger in an impoverished country where inflation is roughly 30 percent and a record 4.7 million people face acute hunger.
One regional leader described the crisis engulfing the country as a “low-intensity civil war.”
The United States imposed visa restrictions this month on Haitians that it said are involved in gang activity, including its financial and political backers, and the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a resolution to impose an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo on Haitian gang leaders.
The resolution named Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer who heads the G-9 federation of gangs, as one of its main targets. The United States imposed sanctions on Cherizier, who also goes by the nickname “Barbecue,” in 2020 for his role in leading “coordinated, brutal attacks in Port-au-Prince neighborhoods.”
Henry’s request for a foreign security force has proven more controversial — in Haiti and abroad.
The country has a long history of foreign interventions that critics charge destabilized the country further. During the last such intervention, U.N. peacekeepers faced allegations of sexual abuse and the organization apologized for its role in a cholera outbreak that killed 10,000 people.
Some Haitians believe that Henry, who critics accuse of having done little to respond to the security crisis, is requesting outside help to stay in power. A Chinese delegate at the United Nations this month questioned whether such a force would be supported by Haitians — or trigger more unrest.
The United States has proposed that a multilateral force, led by another country, be deployed to Haiti to clear the fuel blockades and address the humanitarian crisis, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Canadian officials this week to discuss the issue.
A Canadian delegation deployed to Haiti this week to conduct an “assessment mission” of the humanitarian and security crises, but Canadian officials were noncommittal on whether the country would join or lead the force the United States has proposed.
In the meantime, the intertwined humanitarian and security emergencies continues to deepen.
Roberson Alphonse, a well-known Haitian journalist with the newspaper Le Nouvelliste, was attacked in his car this week by armed assailants. He is recovering. In one of his last tweets, Jean Baptiste mentioned the attempt on Alphonse’s life.
“The life expectancy of people in Haiti is 24 hours,” he said. “Who will be next? Will he have the same luck?” | 2022-10-29T20:10:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Haitian politician Eric Jean Baptiste killed in apparent gang attack - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/haiti-eric-jean-baptiste-murder/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/haiti-eric-jean-baptiste-murder/ |
Colts owner Jim Irsay says that he and other NFL team owners must make the decision about ownership status of the Commanders' Daniel Snyder. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)
Nearly two weeks after he became the first NFL team owner to say publicly that serious consideration should be given to removing Daniel Snyder from ownership of the Washington Commanders, the Indianapolis Colts’ Jim Irsay isn’t backing down.
Irsay said Friday that he and other owners must remain engaged and vigilant to ensure that they make the appropriate decision about Snyder’s status once attorney Mary Jo White completes her ongoing league-commissioned investigation of Snyder and the Commanders. Irsay called the owners the NFL’s stakeholders and said that they, in his view, must take control of the process, rather than allow it to be directed by Commissioner Roger Goodell or the league.
“I’m not sure how that report’s going to come out,” Irsay said in an approximately 25-minute phone interview Friday evening. “But what already has come out is extremely disturbing, and I disagree with the process. And I most likely disagree that we haven’t discussed something more severe such as him being removed as owner. As I said, it’s not something that I’m saying we should do. I’m saying it’s something that has to be given serious consideration.”
Irsay expressed dissatisfaction with the level of involvement that he and other owners had in the NFL’s punishment of Snyder and the Commanders in July 2021, following a previous investigation of the team’s workplace.
“It’s not just what was handed down, the $10 million fine and this so-called suspension that I still don’t really understand,” Irsay said, “because I told Roger and spoke about it at our meeting, that: ‘Look, I’ve been in the league 52 years. I wasn’t even asked about this, not consulted one time.’ ”
Irsay’s latest comments came two days before his team faces the Commanders in Indianapolis.
“It’s unfortunate that Mr. Irsay continues to behave in a way that clearly is in violation of the Constitution of the NFL,” a Commanders spokesperson said in a statement Saturday. “We look forward to playing his team on Sunday.”
Irsay said at an Oct. 18 league meeting that he believes “there’s merit” for the owners to consider removing Snyder. Goodell said that day that owners “will have that opportunity” to make a decision about Snyder when White’s investigation is done, stressing that the owners should “make sure those decisions are made with facts” by withholding judgments and speculation until White’s findings are delivered.
The NFL declined further comment Saturday. The league has said that White’s findings, unlike those from a previous investigation of the team’s workplace conducted by attorney Beth Wilkinson, will be released to the public. It would require a vote of at least three-quarters of the owners to remove Snyder from ownership of his team, under a process outlined in the league’s constitution and bylaws.
Irsay made several references Friday to the “so-called suspension” given to Snyder following Wilkinson’s investigation, saying he remains unclear about the terms of the 2021 penalties following public comments made this week by John Brownlee, an attorney representing Snyder and the Commanders.
In July 2021, the NFL announced that the Commanders had been fined $10 million and that Tanya Snyder, the team’s co-CEO and Daniel Snyder’s wife, would assume control of the franchise’s daily operations for an unspecified period.
Jordan Siev, an attorney for Daniel Snyder, told ESPN in July 2021 that Snyder “was not suspended” by the NFL. Brownlee told ProfootballTalk on Thursday that “there were other restrictions as far as going out to the [team’s] facility and those kinds of things that he didn’t do, because of that sanction that was imposed by the NFL” lasting until Nov. 1, 2021.
Goodell and other league officials have said several times this year that Snyder’s ownership status has not changed since the July 2021 announcement and that Goodell and Snyder will discuss the issue when White’s investigation is done.
Irsay said he never has had a problem with Snyder on a personal level.
“Dan and I have never had a cross word in our life,” Irsay said. “I have no personal — there’s nothing that him and I have ever had any personal issues with each other on. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the toxic environment that was in that workplace for such a long period of time. And owners are expected to oversee everything that’s going on below them and that’s an assumed responsibility …. And I also don’t believe you can say, ‘Well, I didn’t know this. I didn’t know that.’ I don’t buy that at all.”
Irsay said he strongly supports Goodell as the commissioner but has been “disappointed in the in-house judicial advice that Roger’s been receiving” on a variety of issues. Irsay said he spoke to Goodell last Sunday at the Colts’ game against the Tennessee Titans in Nashville but the two did not discuss Snyder or the Commanders. He has not spoken to other owners about the matter since the New York meeting, he said, and has not received any feedback from them about his public comments.
“Like I said, I think there’s merit to consider removal,” Irsay said. “But I’m not ready to cast my vote until I hear the last report, until we discuss it as a group. But you have to be able to discuss things as a group …. I’m into transparency, and I’m into the owners running the league. That’s what it’s about. It’s our league. … Owners have to be directly involved and be very active and involved in massive decisions like this.”
Irsay said he has “no idea” if Snyder is attending Sunday’s game and does not think the two would have a pregame conversation even if Snyder is on hand.
“I only run into owners if it’s really coincidental,” Irsay said. “Most of us don’t see each other unless we happen to be passing each other on the field or somewhere at the same time. … It has nothing to do with Dan Snyder. If I was playing the Ravens, I wouldn’t know if Steve Bisciotti was going.” | 2022-10-29T20:23:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jim Irsay: Daniel Snyder's fate should be decided by owners, not the NFL - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/jim-irsay-dan-snyder-roger-goodell/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/jim-irsay-dan-snyder-roger-goodell/ |
Kyrie Irving had tweeted a link on Thursday to a film described as trafficking in antisemitic tropes. (John Minchillo/AP)
Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving on Saturday responded to accusations of antisemitism after the team and its owner condemned his recent social media post linking to a book and movie that have been described as antisemitic.
Irving on Thursday shared a post which linked to a movie called “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.”
The movie, released in 2018, is based on a 2015 book of the same name, and the film’s description says it “uncovers the true identity of the Children of Israel by proving the true ethnicity of Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, the Sons of Ham, Shem & Japheth. Find out what Islam, Judaism and Christianity has covered up for centuries in regards to the true biblical identity of the so-called ‘Negro.’”
Rolling Stone published a story Thursday noting that the film’s director and narrator, Ronald Dalton Jr., says “schools don’t mention the involvement of the Catholic Church, Arab, East African, or Islamic slave traders,” or ‘the Jewish slave ships that brought our West African negro or Bantu ancestors to slave ports owned by [Jews].’”
The Rolling Stone story also noted that the film and book flirt with and traffic in antisemitic tropes, such as a suggestion that anti-Black racism can be traced back to Jewish texts.
“Western Education and Religion tries to teach the world that blacks are cursed with their skin color by the Curse of Ham/Canaan,” the film says, per Rolling Stone. “This is also taught in European Jewish documents and in the teachings of the Talmud book in Judaism. Some can say that it established the base for black racism even before the KKK.”
Nets owner Joe Tsai on Friday expressed disappointment in Irving, adding in a subsequent tweet that the issue was “bigger than basketball.”
In a statement, the team also condemned Irving’s post.
“The Brooklyn Nets strongly condemn and have no tolerance for the promotion of any form of hate speech.” it said. “We believe that in these situations, our first action must be open, honest dialogue.”
For Irving, this recent episode comes after the Nets guard in September shared an old clip of Infowars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones talking about the “New World Order” to his Instagram story. Jones earlier this month was ordered to pay $965 million in damages to families of victims in the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting as damages after promoting for years the lie that the massacre was a hoax.
Irving, who has averaged 29.6 points through five games with the Nets this year, missed 53 games last season because of his refusal to get vaccinated, which made him ineligible for home contests because of New York City’s vaccine mandate. | 2022-10-29T20:23:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kyrie Irving responds to accusations of antisemitism in promoting film - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/kyrie-irving-accusations-antisemitism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/kyrie-irving-accusations-antisemitism/ |
VP Kamala Harris stumps for Democrats in Maryland
Harris encouraged the party faithful to urge friends in Maryland and beyond to cast ballots, arguing that Democrats have delivered
Vice President Harris speaks at campaign event for Maryland gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore on Oct. 29 in Baltimore. (Julio Cortez/AP)
Vice President Harris rallied Maryland Democratic Party faithful in Baltimore on Saturday, urging the deep blue state not to be complacent and to turn out voters to elect Democrat Wes Moore, who would be the nation’s third Black governor.
Harris said the party has a strong case to make for showing up to the polls, saying that wins in 2020 delivered the infrastructure bill, a cap on insulin prices, a child tax credit and the first Black female justice on the Supreme Court.
She urged the crowd of several hundred to rally their cousins, friends and neighbors — both in Maryland and nationwide — to ask them to cast a ballot in consequential midterm contests that will determine which party holds power in Congress and statehouses across the country.
“Remind them of what they got the last time we asked them‚” she said at the Cahill Recreation Center in the city’s Gwynn Falls/Leakin Park neighborhood, pacing the stage.
Moore, a best-selling author and former chief of a poverty-fighting nonprofit, leads Republican opponent Del. Dan Cox by more than 30 percentage points in each of the three public polls conducted this fall.
Cox has eschewed the moderated track that twice helped elect center-right, term-limited Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, instead embracing rhetoric of former president Donald Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Maryland.
But despite that advantage in the polls — and enormous fundraising gulf that puts Democratic candidates at the top of the ticket far ahead of their Republican counterparts — Democrats have launched a star-studded offensive in recent days to make sure voters show up. Former president Barack Obama released a TV ad and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton hosted a virtual rally, while Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison headlined an event Wednesday; President Biden will host an election-eve event in Maryland on Nov. 7.
State party leaders say they are worried that down-ballot races could be hurt if Democrat-leaning voters expect a blowout in the governor’s race and stay home.
“We must continue to work together with relentless energy and passion,” Maryland Democratic Party Chair Yvette Lewis said at the rally. “The only way it works is if we have Democrats up and down the ballots.”
Harris’s remarks focused more on national politics and what was at stake if Democrats lost seats in Congress.
“This is one of those moments that requires all good people make our voices louder,” she said.
With Biden’s approval ratings down, inflation at 40-year highs and the normal head winds the incumbent party faces in midterm elections, Democrats have a lot on the line in the competitive midterms. The party is trying to protect a razor-thin majority in the Senate and fend of GOP advances in the House of Representatives.
Saturday’s rally in Baltimore featured the entire statewide ticket, including U.S. Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.), who is running to be attorney general, and Del. Brooke Lierman (D-Baltimore City), who is running to be comptroller.
Republicans had no major public rallies planned over the next few days, and Cox’s campaign prohibited reporters from attending his Friday “One Nation Under God” rally featuring a controversial priest who said Democrats cannot be Catholics. Maryland Republican Party Chair Dirk Haire said Wednesday the party is focusing on using technology to turn out voters, particularly in more competitive down-ballot races.
Cox was scheduled to appear Saturday at a “Freedom Rally” hosted by conservative radio station WCBM.
Democrats running statewide are heading into the final week in a strong financial position with massive leads over their Republican opponents, according to campaign finance reports filed late Friday night.
Moore maintains a nearly 10-to-1 financial advantage he built after the primary.
He and his running mate, Aruna Miller, took in about $6 million in the past two months and have $4 million to spend on the final weeks of the campaign while Cox, and his running mate, Gordana Schifanelli, brought in almost $600,000 and have $444,000 cash on hand.
Moore’s fundraising haul has enabled him to spread his message beyond his Democratic base and to help other Democrats down ballot. This month, Moore has given about $1.4 million to the Moore Miller slate and in the past week he has aired four television ads, including one spot starring Obama. Cox has not been able to afford any statewide broadcast television ads since he launched his campaign last year, and has emailed supporters saying he needed help to finance a statewide mail campaign.
In other statewide races, Brown has a 40-fold advantage against his Republican nominee, Michael Peroutka, in his bid to become the next attorney general. Brown has $491,000 to spend compared to Peroutka, who has just shy of $12,000.
In late August, Brown had a balance of about $80,000 in his coffers after a tough primary against former District Court judge Katie O’Malley. In the past two months, his bottom line grew by more than a half-million dollars, the majority from large and small donations from inside and outside of the state. About 10 percent of Brown’s haul came from Maryland-based political action committees, including the Maryland Association for Justice PAC and the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police PAC, which each gave $6,000.
Lierman, who is in perhaps the most competitive statewide race this cycle, has outraised Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, her Republican opponent, by an almost 18 to 1 margin and has more than 60 percent more cash on hand.
Lierman raised about $762,000 compared to Glassman, who brought in $42,610. Glassman had about $443,000 in the bank in August and has spent about $183,000 on consultant fees and a digital and TV ad starring Hogan. In the final sprint, Lierman has about $484,000 on hand compared to Glassman’s $287,000. | 2022-10-29T20:40:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kamala Harris stumps for Wes Moore and Maryland Democrats in Baltimore - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/29/kamala-harris-wes-moore-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/29/kamala-harris-wes-moore-maryland/ |
Pedestrian hit-and-run victim identified in Prince George’s County
Eduardo J. Aguilar, 27, of Hyattsville, was struck on Martin Luther King Jr. Highway early on Tuesday
A Prince George’s County pedestrian killed several days ago by a hit-and-run driver has been identified as Eduardo J. Aguilar, 27, of Hyattsville, authorities said Friday.
Early Tuesday morning, police were called to the area of Martin Luther King Jr. Highway and Whitfield Chapel Road. Aguilar was pronounced dead on the scene. The driver who hit him, who was traveling west on Martin Luther King Jr. Highway, had left the scene.
The incident remains under investigation, a police spokesman said Saturday. | 2022-10-29T20:40:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pedestrian hit-and-run victim identified in Prince George’s County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/29/prince-georges-hit-and-run-identification/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/29/prince-georges-hit-and-run-identification/ |
Ohio State defensive end J.T. Tuimoloau capped a dominating performance with an interception return for a touchdown Saturday against Penn State. (Barry Reeger/AP)
Boston College (loser)
Florida International (winner)
Utah (winner)
BYU (loser)
The Stripe Out Game was no match for the J.T. Tuimoloau Game.
The Ohio State defensive end turned in one of the best individual games of the season, overwhelming Penn State as the Buckeyes pulled away in the fourth quarter for a 44-31 victory in what will probably go down as their most challenging road test of the season.
And while No. 2 Ohio State (8-0, 5-0 Big Ten) got its strongest challenge since its opener, the No. 13 Nittany Lions could not account for a wrecking ball who proved disruptive throughout the afternoon — and especially in the fourth quarter.
Tuimoloau had an early interception of Penn State’s Sean Clifford that led to the Buckeyes’ first touchdown, and his more lasting contributions were saved for the final nine minutes. Ohio State finally uncorked a big play when TreVeyon Henderson rushed 41 yards for a touchdown to secure a 23-21 lead, and two plays into the next drive Tuimoloau sacked Clifford and pounced on a fumble.
On the next snap, Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud connected on a 24-yard score with Cade Stover to create a cushion the Buckeyes hadn’t enjoyed all day. And if that wasn’t enough, Tuimoloau punctuated the afternoon with a pick-six of Clifford with 2:42 remaining, leaping at the line of scrimmage to snag a pass into the flat and then ambling 14 yards for a touchdown.
What hasn't J.T. done today? 🤯@JT_Tuimoloau x @OhioStateFB pic.twitter.com/sF3csDO4Cs
The final tally for the sophomore: Six tackles (three for loss), two sacks, two interceptions, one other pass broken up, a forced fumble he recovered and a touchdown. According to College Football Reference, Tuimoloau is the first player from the Football Bowl Subdivision to have two sacks, two interceptions, a forced fumble and an interception returned for a touchdown since at least 2000.
Loosening up the requirements doesn’t expand the company much. The only other FBS player since 2000 with two sacks, two interceptions and a forced fumble in one game is Kent State’s Andre Kirkland, who did it in 2006 against Bowling Green.
Ohio State has won at sub-.500 Michigan State, and still has trips to Northwestern and Maryland. The combined capacity of the latter two is less than the announced crowd of 108,433 in Happy Valley who largely accommodated the school’s Stripe Out pattern of alternating blue and white by section.
The Nittany Lions (6-2, 3-2) showed far more gumption than they had two weeks earlier in a loss at Michigan, and there’s a path to a 10-win regular season with Indiana, Maryland, Rutgers and Michigan State awaiting in November. Of that group, only Maryland (6-2, 3-2) owns a winning conference record, and the Terps must venture to Beaver Stadium.
Yet Penn State’s extra verve mattered little Saturday. What did was that Ohio State had J.T. Tuimoloau, and Penn State did not, which is why the Buckeyes went home on the same playoff path they were at the start of the day.
It’s easy to pick on underachieving Miami (which did beat Virginia, 14-12, Saturday in a touchdown-free game that went four overtimes and should never be spoken of again). And both Virginia and Virginia Tech are clearly struggling under first-year coaches.
Yet the worst team in the ACC might just be Boston College, which has spent nearly a decade seemingly required to remain tethered to .500. The Eagles’ final records from 2013 to 2021: 7-6, 7-6, 3-9, 7-6, 7-6, 7-5, 6-7, 6-5 and 6-6.
Considering Boston College fell to 2-6 Saturday with a 13-3 loss to Connecticut — Connecticut! — a nearly break-even season is going to be a tough ask.
Since scratching out an Oct. 1 victory over Louisville, the Eagles have been clobbered by Clemson and Wake Forest. Both of those, while unsightly, were at least understandable.
But for Boston College to produce more turnovers (five) than points against the Huskies (4-5), even if first-year coach Jim Mora has made Connecticut more respectable than it’s been in a while? Not good.
The Panthers outlasted Louisiana Tech, 42-34, in double overtime Friday night to seal their first back-to-back victories since 2019. Grayson James threw for 321 yards and three touchdowns and Lexington Joseph rushed for a pair of scores in extra time for FIU (4-4, 2-2 Conference USA).
Mike MacIntyre, who previously coaxed 10-win seasons out of San José State (2012) and Colorado (2016), has quietly made some progress in his first year with the Panthers. FIU had gone a combined 1-16 the last two seasons. Now, it needs a split of its last four games to become bowl eligible.
On some nights, a team is getting judged a bit on style points. On others, especially when everyone paying attention knows a team is nowhere near its best, survival is all that counts.
Such was the case Thursday for No. 14 Utah, which fended off host Washington State, 21-17, despite playing without starting quarterback Cameron Rising.
It turned out to be the sort of victory the Utes (6-2, 4-1 Pac-12) have rung up often over the years under Kyle Whittingham. Bryson Barnes, Rising’s replacement for the night, was perfectly competent while throwing for 175 yards and a touchdown. But it was the Utah defense that shined, limiting Washington State (4-4, 1-4) to 264 total yards.
The Utes still have a chance to live up to their preseason top-10 potential, even if their playoff hopes are effectively kaput. They’ll have a say in the Pac-12 race; their Nov. 19 trip to Oregon looks plenty meaningful heading into the final month of the regular season.
The Cougars (4-5) wrapped up a winless October with a 27-24 loss to East Carolina on Friday night, a game sealed when Pirates kicker Andrew Conrad connected on a 33-yard field goal on the last play of the game. That follows losses to Notre Dame, Arkansas and Liberty.
It’s the longest losing streak for BYU since 2017, and it certainly prompts questions of how much immediate success the program will enjoy when it moves into the Big 12 next season.
For now, the Cougars simply need to salvage a bowl berth out of their last season of independence. They should beat Football Championship Subdivision school Utah Tech on Nov. 19, meaning they need to get a split out of trips to Boise State (Nov. 5) and Stanford (Nov. 26) to extend their season into December. | 2022-10-29T22:33:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College football winners and losers: Ohio State stays on playoff path - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/college-football-winners-losers-week-9/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/college-football-winners-losers-week-9/ |
Gerald Stern, celebrated poet of nature, whimsy and memory, dies at 97
Gerald Stern speaks to the audience during the National Book Awards in New York on Nov. 18, 1998. (Osamu Honda/AP)
Gerald Stern, one of the country’s most loved and respected poets who wrote with spirited melancholy and earthly humor about his childhood, Judaism, mortality and the wonders of the contemplative life, died Oct. 27 at a hospice in New York. He was 97.
Mr. Stern, New Jersey’s first poet laureate, died at Calvary Hospice in New York City, according to his longtime partner, Anne Marie Macari. A statement from Macari, released Oct. 29 by publisher WW Norton, did not include the cause of death.
Winner of the National Book Award in 1998 for the anthology “This Time,” the balding, round-eyed Mr. Stern was sometimes mistaken in person for Allen Ginsberg and often compared to Walt Whitman because of his lyrical and sensual style, and his gift for wedding the physical world to the greater cosmos.
Mr. Stern was shaped by the rough, urban surroundings of his native Pittsburgh, but he also identified strongly with nature and animals, marveling at the “power” of a maple tree, likening himself to a hummingbird or a squirrel, or finding the “secret of life” in a dead animal on the road.
He was past 50 before he won any major awards, but was cited often over the second half of his life. Besides his National Book Award, his honors included being a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1991 for “Leaving Another Kingdom” and receiving such lifetime achievement awards as the Ruth Lilly Prize and the Wallace Stevens Award.
In 2013, the Library of Congress gave him the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for “Early Collected Poems” and praised him as “one of America’s great poet-proclaimers in the Whitmanic tradition: With moments of humor and whimsy, and an enduring generosity, his work celebrates the mythologizing power of the art.”
Mr. Stern, born in 1925, remembered no major literary influences as a child, but did speak of the lasting trauma of the death of his older sister, Sylvia, when he was 8. He would describe himself as “a thug who hung out in pool halls and got into fights.” But, he told the New York Times in 1999, he was a well-read thug who excelled in college. Mr. Stern studied political science at the University of Pittsburgh and received a master’s in comparative literature from Columbia University. Ezra Pound and W.B Yeats were among the first poets he read closely.
Mr. Stern lived in Europe and New York during the 1950s and eventually settled in a 19th century home near the Delaware River in Lambertville, N.J. His creative development came slowly. Only during free moments in the Army, in which he served for a brief time after World War II, did he conceive the “sweet idea” of writing for a living. He spent much of his 30s working on a poem about the American presidency, “The Pineys,” but despaired that it was “indulgent” and “tedious.”
As he approached age 40, he worried that he had become “an eternally old student” and “eternally young instructor.” Through his midlife crisis, he finally found his voice as a poet, discovering that he had been “taking an easier way” than he should have.
Mr. Stern mostly avoided topical poems, but he was a longtime political activist whose causes included desegregating a swimming pool in Indiana, Pa., and organizing an anti-apartheid reading at the University of Iowa. He taught at several schools, but had great skepticism about writing programs and the academic life. At Temple University, he was so enraged by the school’s decision in the 1950s to build a 6-foot brick wall separating the campus from the nearby Black neighborhoods of Philadelphia that he made a point of climbing the wall on the way to class.
Besides Macari, Mr. Stern is survived by children David Stern and Rachael Stern Martin and by grandchildren Dylan and Alana Stern and Rebecca and Julia Martin. | 2022-10-29T22:38:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gerald Stern, celebrated poet of nature, whimsy and memory, dies at 97 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/29/gerald-stern-poet-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/29/gerald-stern-poet-dies/ |
Gay bishop, whose nomination split church years ago, visits Falls Church
Bishop Gene Robinson carries the ashes of Matthew Shepard at the start of a service of thanksgiving and remembrance for Shepard in 2018 at Washington National Cathedral. (Sarah L. Voison/The Washington Post)
Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson stood before dozens of captivated listeners Saturday in a Falls Church worship space to share his personal history as the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop. It marked the first time Robinson had visited the 300-year-old church after his consecration led to the Falls Church institution splitting in two over it.
Robinson’s ordination to bishop in New Hampshire in 2003 spurred more conservative members to split from the Episcopal Church, with a large swath of worshipers who didn’t approve of having an openly gay man in the role starting their own church, The Falls Church Anglican, leaving behind a small, liberal group.
The splinter caused a lengthy legal debate over church property that ended in 2014 when the Supreme Court declined to take up a lower court’s ruling that the centuries-old property belonged to the Episcopal Church.
While each side has chartered their own path since Robinson was named bishop coadjutor in 2003, Robinson himself has had time to reflect on how he became widely known as the “gay bishop” who brought “Satan in the church,” as a Kenyan leader said many years ago of his election.
Bishop Gene Robinson gave an emotional speech during the interment service for Matthew Shepard at Washington National Cathedral on Oct. 26. (Video: Reuters)
On Saturday, Rev. Burl Salmon of The Falls Church, 51, who is openly gay, introduced Robinson.
“Your presence among us on this day is history,” he said. “It’s remarkable.”
Robinson, 75, began by telling attendees that he’s been praying for them since the split, explaining that divisions within congregations were never his intention.
He outlined his life as a boy from a family of sharecroppers who used an outhouse, to a young man who found the Episcopal church at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. Higher education was where he found a faith that he said still clings to his bones.
While living in New York, Robinson asked a therapist if it was possible to be made into a heterosexual because he wanted a family and loved children. He later married a woman and had two children, but the marriage dissolved more than a decade later.
Bishop Robinson on the Bible's reference to homosexuality
“She freed me to pursue a life with men and I freed her to pursue a life with men,” he joked.
Nearly two years later, he met his now-deceased ex-husband on a beach in St. Croix, a partnership that would span decades.
Robinson said he had the courage to be an openly gay man after reading “Embracing the Exile: Healing Journeys of Gay Christians” by John E. Fortunato, a book whose passages he read at the beginning and end of his speech.
The day Robinson found out he had been named as bishop, he received his first death threat by the time he returned home, and continued to receive death threats for two years, he said. Police would remain a presence at his New Hampshire home until he left in 2013, he said as he teared up and flushed crimson.
At the height of the frenzy surrounding him, Robinson said reporters often asked him what he thought about being the reason behind the split of so many churches.
“I didn’t make Falls Church or any other church do what they did,” he said. “I did what I did.”
Montgomery College student Victoria Turner, 27, was among the dozens who showed up to hear Robinson speak. Turner, who identifies as queer, has heard about Robinson over the years, and his election came as a surprise to her when she learned about it, she said.
“Up to that point, I had known a lot of self-identifying Christian and queer people,” she said. “I knew that those things could be in conjunction with one another. It was surprising it could create such a schism.”
The Episcopal Church’s response to Robinson made her question if she should call herself a Christian, she said. But a gay priest in her hometown of Minneapolis explained to her that the bigotry of some didn’t determine what was true for the majority, she said.
Hearing Robinson speak reminded her that she needs to work to find ways to ensure that more people feel welcome in faith spaces, she said.
“There’s nothing wrong with me that could hinder me from going to heaven,” she said. “You’re still loved and you’re still a child of God.”
Robinson isn’t as top of mind as he was among congregants nearly 20 years ago, though many know who he is, Salmon said in an interview. Most of the members of the church now are not the same members who made the choice to split in 2006, he said.
For the small number of original members, Robinson’s return offered a sense of closure for those who still carry the pain of the split many years later.
“A lot has happened in the world,” Salmon said, citing his own marriage in Mississippi to his husband. “The world has changed, the church has changed, but I think it’s because of Gene.” | 2022-10-29T23:08:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gay bishop, whose nomination split church years ago, visits Falls Church - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/29/gay-bishop-episcopal-falls-church/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/29/gay-bishop-episcopal-falls-church/ |
Harry Stevens
Videos show how the crowd crush progressed in Seoul during Halloween celebrations on Oct. 29, killing more than 149 people. (Video: Twitter)
The narrow, steep streets of Itaewon once housed Seoul’s red light district. Catering to a sprawling U.S. military base next door, the neighborhood offered cheap beer, knockoff goods and female company for sale.
But over the past two decades, Itaewon was cleaned up. By the time the American military left the South Korean capital in 2019, it already had a reputation as an open and diverse neighborhood, known for its espresso bars and independent fashion houses.
That reputation made it a natural place to celebrate Halloween, an imported holiday increasingly popular with young South Koreans. An estimated 100,000 people were in the neighborhood on Saturday, the first Halloween since pandemic restrictions were put in place two years ago.
This year, Itaewon’s Halloween turned to horror. As huge crowds pushed into the neighborhood to celebrate, there was a crush. At least 149 people were killed and around 76 injured, according to fire department officials.
Video posted on Oct. 29 in Seoul showed a crush during halloween celebrations that killed at least 149 people according to fire department officials. (Video: Twitter)
Itaewon Station
Locations where
videos show
crowding
ITAEWON-RO
Areas where videos
show CPR being
administered to victims
lined up along
this street
Many who died were trapped in a crowd crush in the alley next to the Hamilton Hotel.
Imagery from Maxar
USADAN-RO
BOGWANG-RO
Ambulances lined
up along this street
ITAEWON-RO 27GA-GIL
Imagery from Maxar via Google Maps
Investigations into what caused the tragedy are still ongoing. But footage from the scene suggest that the tight streets and alleyways that lent the neighborhood its charm hadn’t been able to cope with the scale of the revelers that descended upon it.
Videos have shown that even hours before the crush began, large numbers of people were congregating near the Hamilton Hotel, a four-star property.
According to South Korean authorities, the first call for help came at 10:15 p.m., still hours before the usual peak party time in Seoul, with emergency responders arriving just a few minutes later.
Video posted on Oct. 29 shows people trying to escape a crowd crush in Seoul that killed at least 149 people in Seoul, according to officials. (Video: Twitter)
Other videos showed large numbers of crowds in other alleyways near the Itaewon subway station. Some appeared to be trying to leave the area and were returning to the main street, seeking taxis and public transportation options.
It is not clear what sparked the stampede. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has called for an investigation.
Even as the tragedy unfolded in the neighborhood, some nearby bars were packed until at least 5 a.m. — the crowds apparently unaware of the tragedy that had taken place just a short walk away. | 2022-10-29T23:21:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How and where the Seoul stampede happened - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/where-how-seoul-itaewon-stampede/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/where-how-seoul-itaewon-stampede/ |
Iran charges female journalists who helped break Amini’s story with being CIA spies
A newspaper with a cover picture of Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being arrested by Iranian morality police is seen in Tehran on Sept. 18, 2022. (Wana News Agency/Via Reuters)
The two female Iranian journalists who helped break the story of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman whose death in the custody of the so-called morality police last month sparked a nationwide uprising, were formally accused late Friday of being CIA spies and the “primary sources of news for foreign media” — the former a crime punishable by the death penalty in Iran.
Journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi have been held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison since late September as Iran’s clerical leaders have struggled to contain an outpouring of public anger and protests calling for their overthrow. Women and young Iranians have been at the forefront of the uprising, the longest running demonstrations in decades.
In the joint statement sent to Iranian media late Friday local time, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and the intelligence agency of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the highly-feared guardians of Iran’s security state, accused the CIA of orchestrating Hamedi and Mohammadi’s reporting, and said “allied spy services and fanatic proxies,” planned the nationwide, leaderless unrest.
The CIA, along with British, Israeli and Saudi spy agencies, “planned extensively to launch a nationwide riot in Iran with the aim of committing crimes against the great nation of Iran and its territorial integrity, as well as laying the groundwork for the intensification of external pressures,” the unsubstantiated statement charged. It also claimed without providing evidence that the two journalists were trained abroad and sent to provoke Amini’s family and spread disinformation.
Both Hamedi and Mohammadi’s top editors denied the charges Saturday and said the journalists were only doing their jobs.
“What they have referred to as evidence for their charges is the exact definition of journalists’ professional duty,” the Journalist Association of Iran said in a statement Saturday.
Journalists with two Iranian news outlets outside the country who were among the first to report on Amini’s case also condemned the charges and told The Washington Post that neither Hamedi nor Mohammadi were their original sources.
“This is a threat to other journalists, other media that if they continue publishing the news... they are going to have these charges,” said Aida Ghajar, a France-based reporter with the Iran Wire news outlet, started by a former Newsweek reporter.
“This scenario" of branding reporters as foreign spies "is the scenario that the Iranian regime always uses against the journalists,” she added.
Mohsen Moheimany, a reporter with London-based Iran International, another frequent target of Iranian state propaganda, also said that they relied on their own sources and called the accusations intended “to suppress the media and the opposition.”
In a possibly ominous sign, the head of the Revolutionary Guard warned Saturday that “today is the last day of the riots” — the corps’ harshest statement yet signaling it may intensify its wide-reaching crackdown on the protests, now in their seventh week.
Rights groups say more than 200 people, including dozens of children, have been killed and more than 12,000 people arrested. Authorities on Monday began issuing the first charges against some 500 detained protesters.
Around 45 Iranian journalists have been among the arrested, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Most American news media, including The Washington Post, are barred from reporting in Iran, where widespread cellular and internet communication outages in recent weeks have made reporting extremely difficult.
Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian was previously held in Evin prison for 544 days on sham charges of being a U.S. spy.
Hamedi, a reporter with the reformist daily newspaper Shargh, published a widely-shared report Sept. 16 from Kasra hospital in Tehran, where Amini died after being hospitalized Sept. 13 while in police custody for an alleged clothing violation. Hamedi also shared a photo of Amini’s distraught family in the hospital on her since de-activated Twitter account.
Iranian authorities claimed Amini had a heart attack; her family said police beat to death their daughter, also known by her Kurdish name, Jina.
Mohammadi, a reporter with Ham Mihan, another daily newspaper aligned with Iran’s reformist politicians, reported Sept. 17 from Amini’s funeral in her hometown of Saqqez in the northwestern Kurdistan province. Security forces attacked the funeral, where mourners shouted slogans against the Islamic Republic and women removed their mandatory headscarves in the uprising’s first major protest.
Security forces arrested Hamedi on Sept. 22 and Mohammadi on Sept. 29. The two have been held in and out of solitary confinement.
Despite the dangers of publicizing state abuses, reports about Amini’s case quickly began circulating.
Sajjad Khodakarami, an Istanbul-based Iranian journalist, said he first saw an Instagram story published late Sept. 13 by a witness at Kasra hospital sharing reports that a woman had been beaten into a coma by the morality police. Khodakarami contacted the person the following morning, who said he had been summoned by Iranian authorities and told to remove the post. Khodakarami, who tweeted about the emerging reports and worked with Iran International to cover the story, shared a screen shot of the Instagram post with The Post, but did not name the person to protect their security.
The editor in chief of Shargh, Mehdi Rahmanian, who has previously been arrested for the newspaper’s reporting, issued a statement Saturday denying the state’s accusations.
“Publishing the picture and the report about Mahsa Amini was the right thing to do and we were only doing our duty toward spreading the news,” he said. Rahmanian coordinated with Hamedi “at all stages of her work,” he added.
Gholamhossein Karbaschi, a reformist politician and editor in chief of Ham Mihan, told the semiofficial ILNA news agency Saturday that an open media environment in Iran “will be more beneficial to the country’s security.” | 2022-10-29T23:34:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iran charges female journalists who helped break Amini’s story with being CIA spies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/iran-journalists-charged-mahsa-amini-hamedi-mohammadi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/iran-journalists-charged-mahsa-amini-hamedi-mohammadi/ |
By Aaron C. Davis
Dalton Bennett
David DePape is shown in Berkeley, Calif., in 2013. An intruder attacked and severely beat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband with a hammer in the couple's San Francisco home early Friday. Police discovered 82-year-old Paul Pelosi and the suspect, DePape, said Police Chief William Scott. (Michael Short/San Francisco Chronicle/AP)
The San Francisco Bay area man arrested in the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband filled a blog a week before the incident with delusional thoughts, including that an invisible fairy attacked an acquaintance and sometimes appeared to him in the form of a bird, according to online writings under his name.
He published a drawing of the Devil kneeling and asking a caricature of a Jewish person to teach him the arts of “lying, deception, cheating and incitement.” Several contain lifelike images of rotting human flesh and blood, including a zombified Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton. Others depict headless bodies against bleak, dystopian landscapes.
Before they were removed Saturday, The Washington Post reviewed those writings, as well as gory photos, illustrations and videos on a website that DePape registered under his name in early August and that his daughter confirmed was his. Notably, the voluminous writings do not mention Pelosi. Police say DePape broke into the home Pelosi shares with her husband early Friday, yelling “Where is Nancy?” and attacked 82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer.
Pelosi remained hospitalized Saturday, recovering from surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hand, according to the speaker’s office. San Francisco’s police chief and district attorney provided no update, but on Friday local, state and federal authorities said they were working together to investigate DePape’s motive.
A woman who identified DePape as her “father” said Friday that she was stunned by his arrest even though he was, she said, abusive to other members of the family. “I love my father,” Inti Gonzalez wrote in a statement posted to her website and later removed. “He did genuinely try to be a good person but the monster in him was always too strong for him to be safe to be around.”
“This attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband came as a shock to me,” wrote Gonzalez, who is 21 according to her website. “I didn’t see this coming and there was no sign of the possibility from his end.” Gonzalez wrote she followed her father’s writing online but was not aware of the website he registered in August.
DePape grew up in British Columbia, a relative told CNN. He briefly drew public attention nearly a decade ago in San Francisco when he participated in a demonstration against a city ordinance banning public nudity. The protest was led by Gonzalez’s mother, Gypsy Taub, an outspoken nudity activist.
Videos posted on YouTube show that DePape was among a group of protesters marching through San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood for the 2013 demonstration.
On his blog, DePape wrote bitterly in recent months of his relationship with Taub, who also promoted debunked conspiracy theories on her own blog, including that 9/11 was an “inside job.” He accused Taub of manipulating her children to turn them against him.
Four days before the Pelosi attack, DePape posted on his website what he presented as a 2021 email to Gonzalez. In it, he told her he struggled with the urge to end his life as his relationship with Taub and her children was falling apart. “I was extremely suicidal, Mentally I would beg you guys daily to let me kill myself,” he wrote in the email. DePape cut off contact with Taub and her children after he was he was kicked out of their home and living in a car, according to his online account. He does not say when those events occurred.
On Aug. 8, the domain frenlyfrens.com was registered under DePape’s name and to an address in Richmond, Calif., where a neighbor told a Post reporter he lived. The web address uses the phonetic spelling of “friend,” which has become a slang term adopted by many in the far right — a term that is sometimes written as an acronym for Far Right Ethno-Nationalist.
Reddit banned an openly anti-semitic group by the name /r/FrenWorld in 2019, saying it contained postings that glorified or encouraged violence. One cartoon featured repeatedly by members contained pictures of a frog character that has been appropriated by the far right. “Frens, sound the alarms!” one says. “Arm yourselves! The longnose is coming, the longnose is coming.”
Two weeks after registering the site, DePape’s first post was titled “Mary Poppins.” Amid the ongoing feud between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Disney over the company’s criticism of the state’s law known by critics as the “don’t say gay” law, the violent video depicted a SWAT team firing at Poppins.
Details of DePape’s everyday life in recent months are included in the postings that followed. He played video games at a nearby library and spent hours meditating, according to the writings. In another post, he shared an image of a fantasy miniature salamander he purchased on Etsy. He wrote that he was looking to purchase a fairy house on Etsy but was frustrated that the doors were painted and so could not be used by a fairy. “They have lots of fairy houses but NONE of them are MADE for fairies,” he wrote.
In late August, DePape became engrossed in the decision by Twitter to ban Jordan Peterson for his posts about transgender people. The Canadian psychologist-turned-conservative podcaster had once said that being transgender was comparable to “satanic ritual abuse.”
DePape published six posts in support of Peterson and then continued with his own caustic takes on transgender people, saying they should not be a protected group. “They were not BORN a freak. They are not INHERENTLY a freak threw no fault of their own … They are CHOOSING to be FREAKS,” he wrote in one post.
In the last week of September, as the Justice Department filed a motion seeking to compel former Trump adviser Peter Navarro to return government emails, DePape blogged his take: “No evidence of election fraud. Any journalist saying that should be dragged straight out into the street and shot.”
DePape was also active on the message board 4chan, a site notorious for extremist discussion, posting memes and debating other anonymous users about his beliefs, according to his website. In an Oct. 24 post titled “Disinfo Shill Tactics,” he complained that he was a target of law enforcement he described as ‘paid shills’ trying to manipulate the message board. “I would come in and lay out the facts and so all the paid shills would jump on me. To try and suppress it,” he wrote.
That same day, DePape shared images from a construction site where he worked months ago. One highlighted a jackhammer with the number ’33’ on it, an apparent reference to a conspiracy theory about Freemasons and world control. A co-worker remarked he sounded like the now deceased right-wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh after referring to feminists as “feminazis” during a discussion on feminism, according to the account.
In another post on Oct. 24, four days before the attack on Pelosi, DePape shared images of a wooden birdhouse he said he had purchased for an invisible fairy he communicated with that had begun interfering with his life. “He appears in a form that makes sense in my reality because I can’t see fairies. He’ll do things to let me know its him and he o[f]ten appears as a bird,” he wrote. | 2022-10-30T00:27:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | David DePape filled blog with delusional thoughts in days before Pelosi attack - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/10/29/david-depape-blog-pelosi-fairies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/10/29/david-depape-blog-pelosi-fairies/ |
Police officers inspect the scene where a crowd crush during Halloween celebrations killed dozens late Saturday and early Sunday. (Ahn Young-joon/AP)
Many of the victims were in their 20s and 30s, though some were teens, fire officials said. They included both Koreans and foreigners. On one street, as contained chaos swirled around them, pairs of young people desperately performed CPR on people lying on the pavement.
What wasn’t evident as of early Sunday morning was a precipitating event, if there was one. While there were rumors circulating, no reports surfaced immediately of something setting off a surge of people somewhere in the vicinity.
Emergency services agencies started receiving dozens of frantic phone calls about 10:30 p.m. local time, according to local media reports, all reporting victims in respiratory trouble or cardiac distress. Some 50 minutes later, the reports said, the fire department upgraded the seriousness of the incident, dispatching some 2,400 emergency responders and an estimated 142 ambulances.
The density of the crowd was such that people kept getting pressed closer and closer together, a situation worsened by the fact that some were still partying in the streets while others were pouring out of bars and clubs to head home.
“As people in the front fell over, those in the back were crushed,” a witness told Yonhap News Agency.
Soon, bodies covered in blue blankets were arrayed on the pavement with bewildered and confused onlookers wandering around in their midst.
People who an hour earlier had been celebrating were weeping and covering their faces in horror, videos and still images from the scene showed. Many were costumed in all manner of garb, from flashy party clothes to garish Halloween costumes.
About 45 people died on the scene, and the rest died in hospitals, a local official said at a news conference.
As reports became more serious, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol called on “all related ministries and agencies” to come to the aid of the injured. He ordered an immediate investigation, to be headed by the country’s prime minister.
Itaewon is a colorful center of Seoul nightlife. In a city that can make them feel unwelcome, foreigners flock to the area. Seoul’s gay community is also centered there. And while there are other nightlife districts — Gangnam is popular with wealthy expats and elite Seoulites, and Hongdae is popular with college students — Itaewon tends to have more diverse, consistent throngs.
With most coronavirus restrictions dropped, this was the first big Halloween celebration in Seoul since the pandemic hit in 2020. In 2021, many people stayed home, and strict rules kept the ones who came out from getting too rambunctious. The pent-up excitement let loose on Friday: At bars and clubs, patrons expressed surprise at how crowded Itaewon was — and some fears about how chaotic Saturday would be.
Disbelief, confusion and shock showed on the faces of the young people still at the scene early Sunday. On back streets just a few blocks away, some partyers were still reveling at bars. Many did not know about the disaster until they tried to leave and found themselves blocked by the emergency vehicles and officials who had taken over the main area, wheeling bodies onto ambulances.
As families searched for their missing relatives, many bodies were still unidentified. They had been moved to a nearby gymnasium for identification, which was just beginning by 4:30 a.m. local time.
Canadian Erin O’Toole, an English teacher who has been in South Korea for a decade, said the Itaewon area had become increasingly popular for Halloween celebrations. She had warned her friends to come no later than 4 p.m. for fear of crowds.
When reporters asked fire officials what families trying to locate relatives should think, one official said it was not possible to say if those still not found after several hours should be presumed dead.
Seoul officials said they were keeping a list of people calling to ask about missing relatives. Local police said there was not yet a system set up for families to be notified about the status of victims unless they knew the hospital where a loved one had been taken.
The tragedy in Itaewon appeared to be the deadliest disaster in South Korea since 2014, when the capsizing of the Sewol ferry killed 304 people.
It was the second major deadly crush this month. At least 130 people were killed on Oct. 1 at a soccer stadium in Indonesia when police fired tear gas at fans, a Washington Post investigation found.
Such crushes are often driven by panic or urgency at large events, whether celebratory, religious or circumstantial. In May, at least 31 people died after a crowd rushed to get free goods at a charity event in Nigeria, Al Jazeera reported. In January, CNN reported, at least a dozen people were killed at a holy shrine in India on New Year’s Day.
One of the deadliest stampedes in modern history occurred in Saudi Arabia in 2015 during the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. At least 2,411 people were killed, an Associated Press count found.
Choi Boseong had last texted his girlfriend about 9 p.m. local time Saturday, during what was supposed to be a fun night with his two best friends for his 24th birthday in Itaewon. But an hour later, the crowd he was in grew out of control, and one of his friends lost sight of him, the friend told Boseong’s girlfriend, Gabriela Pares, who was in the United States watching the scene on a TikTok live stream.
Worried, Pares said she tried calling and texting her boyfriend, without a response. When she called Boseong’s sister, who lives about 40 minutes away from Itaewon, the family hadn’t yet realized the extent of the tragedy.
Boseong’s father, sister and friend began searching hospitals throughout Seoul for him, Pares said. He had last been seen wearing a green jacket, a white shirt and blue jeans, but hours later, someone had found his jacket and his cellphone and returned it to his friend.
A devastated Pares said she was waiting for news from half a world away. “It’s really hard,” she said tearfully, “especially because I’m here in the U.S., so there’s not much that I can do.”
Later she heard the worst: Boseong had died. She said she would leave for South Korea on Sunday to be with his family. “This is a tragedy,” she said in a text message.
The death toll in Itaewon drew grief from world leaders.
“Horrific news from Seoul tonight,” tweeted British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “All our thoughts are with those currently responding and all South Koreans at this very distressing time.”
In a statement released by the White House, President Biden said that he and the first lady “send our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones in Seoul. We grieve with the people of the Republic of Korea and send our best wishes for a quick recovery to all those who were injured.” | 2022-10-30T00:57:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Scores dead and injured during Halloween celebrations in Itaewon area of Seoul - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/halloween-stampede-seoul-deaths/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/halloween-stampede-seoul-deaths/ |
COLLEGE PARK, Ga. — Former president Barack Obama kicked off his return to the campaign trail by taking on Georgia football icon and Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker.
“Herschel Walker was a heck of a football player,” Obama told the crowd at the Gateway Center Arena, adjacent to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. But that would make him no more qualified to be a U.S. senator than to fly an airplane or perform surgery, the former president cracked, drawing laughter and cheers from the more than 7,000 people who waited hours to see him.
With midterm elections just over a week away, Obama, 61, has stepped into the spotlight on the political stage with rallies to gin up interest in marquee midterm races in battleground states.
A day after appearing in Georgia with Sen. Raphael G. Warnock, who is in a tight race with Walker, and Stacey Abrams, who is trailing in her rematch with Gov. Brian Kemp, Obama headlined rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin.
The former president is regarded as the Democratic Party’s top communicator to base voters, more in demand than President Biden, who has not been the sought-after surrogate in the top races amid a dismal approval rating. The president spent one of the busiest campaign weekends of the cycle at his home in Delaware, where he attended his granddaughter’s field hockey game and, separately, cast his ballot.
Democratic strategists say Obama is the sole party leader able to draw major base-motivating crowds without simultaneously angering the other side.
Obama took the stage on Saturday in Detroit, where he continued to use his signature withering humor, comparing Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon to a fictional plumber spewing conspiracy theories about “lizard people.”
And in Wisconsin, Obama called out some of the GOP television ads that portray state Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is Black, as someone who is “different.”
“Mandela, get ready to dig up that birth certificate,” Obama quipped, a reference to the conspiracy theory pushed by former president Donald Trump that Obama was not really born in the United States.
But he also argued that democracy is on the ballot and offered a pitch for his party as being more serious about solutions to the issues that voters are concerned about, including abortion rights, inflation and crime.
Obama, who left office in 2017, is raising his profile at a complicated time, with polls showing Democrats losing momentum in the midterms. And political tensions rose significantly over the past few days with increased anxiety after the violent attack against Paul Pelosi by an assailant who was looking for his wife, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In Georgia, Obama walked onstage just hours after the attack. “I want to take a moment just to say a prayer for a friend of mine, Mr. Paul Pelosi,” Obama said.
He also talked about the attack in Michigan on Saturday. “One thing that we can feel, we know, if our rhetoric about each other gets that mean … that creates a dangerous climate,” Obama said.
But even as he spoke of civility in Michigan, Obama was heckled, prompting some in the crowd to chant “O-BA-MA.” The former president struggled for about two minutes to calm the crowd. “Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Obama said. “Hold up. Hold up. Hold up. Hold up.”
Later, Obama acknowledged that the political environment has gotten more difficult. Being on the campaign trail, he said, “feels a little harder than it used to — not just because I’m older and grayer,” Obama said. “It feels like that basic foundation of the democracy is at risk. … Things won’t be okay on their own.”
“Obama has the ability to talk at the same time to base Dems the party needs to mobilize and suburban swing voters they need to persuade in these closing days,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist in the White House.
“Like Clinton, Obama is also great at telling a larger story about the country, the times and the choice,” Axelrod said, referring to former president Bill Clinton, who has been noticeably absent from the campaign trail, as has his wife, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Republicans said it was a sign of weakness that the Democrats’ big closer this year is a president from the past rather than a potential future leader.
“Never look backwards in politics,” said Dan Eberhart, a major Republican donor. “It’s a sign that you’ve got a weak bench and no vision for the future. Bringing in Obama to make the closing argument for Democrats is acknowledgment that the party is rudderless under Joe Biden. It’s not a strong move.”
On the GOP side, Trump, who might again seek the White House, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have drawn big crowds.
Obama’s message to voters hits the same topics as the one coming from the current White House. It’s delivered with the former president’s unique mixture of folksy relatability and he makes a point of acknowledging challenges faced by voters as they confront difficult issues.
Abortion is “controversial” Obama said in Georgia on Friday, adding that “I genuinely believe there are people of good conscience who may differ from me on this issue.”
Inflation “is a real problem right now,” Obama said, though he points out that it’s a global one stemming from the pandemic and snarled supply chains. In Michigan, he added: “Sometimes we don’t want to talk about certain issues.”
And violent crime “has gone up,” the former president acknowledges, though he points out that the trend stretches over Democratic and Republican administrations and in red and blue states.
“Who actually voted against more resources for our police departments?” Obama asked. “Is it somebody who carries around a phony badge and says he’s in law enforcement?” he quipped, referring to an honorary sheriff’s badge that Walker flashed during a debate to demonstrate his tightness with law enforcement.
Walker, reacting to Obama’s comments that the former professional football player is a “celebrity” who has not put in the work to become a political leader, reportedly told reporters: “I’m not a celebrity, I’m a warrior for God.”
Dixon dismissed Obama’s Michigan appearance as “a last-minute fly in” that would do little to “erase all the lies and broken promises” of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has a slight lead in the polls heading into the final days of her reelection bid.
If there was a complaint from Democrats, it was that Obama didn’t hit the trail soon enough.
“In my humble opinion, they should have done this about a month ago, because it would have created more momentum,” said Carol Lewandowski, a retired nurse, waiting for Obama to speak in Detroit.
The clamor for Obama on the trail is a switch from 2010 — the first midterms of his presidency. It was Biden, his vice president, in demand and traveling to districts where Obama himself wasn’t desired.
In Georgia, audience members brought chairs and waited hours before he spoke to secure good seats, wearing 2008 era T-shirts that featured Obama’s likeness and swapping stories in line about seeing his inaugural speech in the cold.
“He proved once again that he’s the leader of the party spiritually, mentally, I mean, he’s just the greatest speech deliver of our lifetimes,” said Michael Tropp, 43, of Atlanta, after Obama spoke. “They bring out the big guns, they bring out President Barack Obama when they need him the most.”
“Some of this is a function of being an ex-president rather than a sitting president, on the receiving end of all the incoming [criticism] in midterm elections,” Axelrod said.
And after leaving the stage in Georgia on Friday night, Obama FaceTimed Rep. Karen Bass, a Democrat running to be mayor of Los Angeles. And after his Michigan address, he headed to Wisconsin and stumped for the Democratic ticket there, where Barnes is in a tight race and Gov. Tony Evers is seeking reelection.
On Tuesday, Obama is scheduled to go to Nevada, where Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto and Gov. Steve Sisolak, both Democrats, face challenging reelections. His team says that more travel is planned. Obama, through a spokeswoman, declined a request to be interviewed for this story.
A major part of his message is pushing Democrats to vote. Obama gave an interview on “Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli,” casually known as the “ManningCast,” that drove about 10 million views to a website that features information about voting, according to data from Obama’s office.
He sat down last week with a group of Tik Tok influencers who are expected to be rolling out the Obama content in coming days, and he’s penned emails on behalf of lesser known Democratic committees including the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
Obama’s also appearing in a slew of campaign commercials for Democrats, including ones airing in a number of gubernatorial contests, including in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Maryland. Obama’s team says there are more coming.
Remarkably, some Republicans running in traditionally blue states have also invoked his name in paid advertising during the general election season in a positive light.
Alek Skarlatos, a Republican running in a competitive Oregon House seat, highlights his connection to Obama in two ads. “Praised by Obama. Skarlatos will bring balance to Washington,” says a narrator in one, while another add notes that he was “praised by Obama for his service.” An Obama spokeswoman has called the ads “misleading.”
Obama has offered some hints about his plans in recent interviews. Speaking to Pod Save America, a program hosted by his former aides, he said he wants to play a role of mentor to the next generation of Democratic leaders.
“One of the things that I’m hoping to do over the next several years is in between elections maybe bring together some of this talent and see how I can lift them up and support them,” Obama said in the interview.
And though he’s warned about the divisiveness of social media, he noted his own following on Twitter. “Turns out I still have, like, a lot of Twitter followers,” Obama said. “And that’s more than some people, although I don’t really talk about it all the time.” | 2022-10-30T01:14:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Obama offers closing message as political tensions rise in U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/obama-offers-closing-message-political-tensions-rise-us/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/obama-offers-closing-message-political-tensions-rise-us/ |
Ambulances and rescue workers at the scene in Seoul where about 150 people were killed after a crowd crush late Oct. 29 into Oct. 30. (Lee Jin-Man/AP)
A stampede implies that people had space to run, which was not the case in Itaewon, he said. The more people that are in the crowd, the greater the force of the crowd crush is.
“I really felt like I would be crushed to death,” they said in another tweet. “And I breathed through a hole and cried and thought I am dying.” The person continued, writing that they were near the top of the crowd, crying, “Please save me!” and people nearby pulled them up.
During a surge, the pressure from above and below people in the crowd makes it hard to breathe because their lungs need space to expand. It takes about six minutes to go into compressive or restrictive asphyxia, the probable cause of death for people killed in a crowd crush, Still said.
Similar events have happened around the world, including this month at a soccer stadium in Indonesia, which left 130 dead, and last year at the Astroworld Festival in Texas, which left 10 dead.
Most of the dead Astroworld victims were in one highly packed area, video timeline shows
At Astroworld, most of the fans who died were near one another in the venue’s south quadrant. The venue had metal barriers surrounding it, which would have compressed people if a crowd had surged near them, allowing no way to regulate the flow of people.
Over the past year, crowds have been gathering more frequently since pandemic restrictions have been widely relaxed, another factor in recent crowd surges. More people are probably attending events such as the Halloween celebrations in Itaewon, Still said, because they’ve been restricted for so long.
He added that the increase in mass gatherings that are now allowed underscores the need for crowd-management training, which tapered off when the pandemic hit because large events were uncommon.
“The general point is that these incidents will keep happening so long as we don’t put in place proper crowd-management processes that anticipate, detect and prevent dangerously high crowd densities,” Amos said in a statement to The Washington Post. | 2022-10-30T01:32:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to know about crowd crush or crowd surge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/seoul-halloween-crowd-crush-surge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/seoul-halloween-crowd-crush-surge/ |
San Antonio Spurs guard Josh Primo has been accused of exposing himself to a former team employee, according to Texas attorney Tony Buzbee. (Darren Abate/AP)
A former employee of the San Antonio Spurs alleges that Josh Primo, the franchise’s 2021 first-round pick, exposed himself to her, according to Texas attorney Tony Buzbee, who confirmed that he has been hired by the alleged victim.
Primo, 19, was abruptly released by the Spurs on Friday, less than three weeks after the organization picked up his $4.3 million option for the 2023-24 season.
“It is our hope that, in the long run, this decision will serve the best interest of both the organization and Joshua,” Spurs CEO RC Buford said in a statement. “The Spurs organization, including front-office executives, coaching staff and players, will have no additional comments to share at this time.”
ESPN reported Saturday that Primo’s release followed “multiple alleged incidents of exposing himself to women,” while The Athletic first reported that Buzbee, who represented nearly two dozen women who brought sexual misconduct lawsuits against NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson, would represent an unidentified former Spurs employee.
In a statement to ESPN made Friday, before the nature of the allegations became public, Primo said that he was “seeking help to deal with previous trauma I suffered,” and that he would “take this time to focus on my mental health treatment more fully.”
Primo, a guard who was the youngest player in the 2021 NBA draft after spending one season at Alabama, averaged 7.0 points, 3.3 rebounds and 4.5 assists in four appearances this season. Entering the season, Primo was viewed as a key piece in the Spurs’ rebuilding effort.
Primo last took the court for the Spurs in a win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday, but was then was listed as out due to undisclosed reasons for a loss to the Timberwolves on Wednesday. Before his release, Primo was listed as out with left glute soreness for a win over the Chicago Bulls on Friday.
Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich declined to comment following the 129-124 win over the Bulls. Todd Ramasar, Primo’s agent, did not immediately return a call for comment. | 2022-10-30T02:07:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ex-Spur Josh Primo allegedly exposed himself to former team employee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/josh-primo-spurs-exposed-himself-spurs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/josh-primo-spurs-exposed-himself-spurs/ |
Portland turns back Kansas City, wins its third NWSL title
Portland forward Sophia Smith gets past Kansas City goalkeeper Adrianna Franch and scores the first goal of Saturday's NWSL championship game at Audi Field. (Nick Wass/AP)
The Portland Thorns seized on defensive mistakes early in each half Saturday and defeated the Kansas City Current, 2-0, in the National Women’s Soccer League final at Audi Field.
Sophia Smith, the NWSL MVP and rising U.S. national team star, scored in the fourth minute and the Thorns added to their total with a Kansas City own goal before 17,624 spectators, including Billie Jean King, to win their third title since the league was founded in 2013.
Portland, the No. 2 seed in the six-team playoffs, has been a pillar of excellence since the league’s launch, finishing lower than third just once and advancing to the final four times. The Thorns also raised the trophy in 2013 and ’17 and finished second in 2018.
The defeat dampened an otherwise upbeat year for the fifth-seeded Current, which finished last in 2021 with a 3-14-7 record and just 15 goals scored. This year, it went 10-6-6 for fifth place, then pulled playoff upsets at the Houston Dash and OL Reign (Seattle).
Ten years in, growing NWSL is facing more scrutiny than ever
Kansas City did it all year without its injured U.S. national team regulars, midfielder Sam Mewis and forward Lynn Williams.
The club was seeking a return to glory for the city, which once boasted an NWSL founding member, FC Kansas City, the 2014 and 2015 champion. After the 2017 season, however, the club ceased operations. Players were transferred to the expansion Utah Royals, who, after three years, were sold to a new Kansas City group.
It did not take long for the Thorns to go ahead Saturday. Kansas City center back Elizabeth Ball misplayed a through ball by Portland’s Yazmeen Ryan, leaving it for Smith to collect in stride and bear down on goalkeeper Adrianna Franch.
Franch is a top-tier goalkeeper, but there was little question how this situation would end. Quick and confident in possession, Smith wheeled around Franch and slotted the ball into the open net for her 18th goal in 25 matches across all club competitions.
New mom Crystal Dunn's return fuels Thorns' run to NWSL title game
Two days earlier, the 22-year-old forward became the youngest MVP in league history.
With a burst of brilliance, Smith almost doubled the lead in the 27th minute. She beat two defenders and warded off two others before curling a 12-yard shot fractionally wide of the far corner.
The Thorns added the second goal in the 56th minute. Ryan crossed from the right side, targeting Smith making a near-post run. Smith, Franch and defender Addisyn Merrick converged. The ball streaked past Smith, struck Franch, then Merrick and dribbled into the net for an own goal.
Franch made a sensational save in the 71st minute. Crystal Dunn, the U.S. star regaining her fitness after giving birth to a son in May, entered in the 73rd for the Thorns.
Portland had no trouble managing the Current’s few threats. The countdown to a celebration was on.
Neutral site to stay
For the foreseeable future, the league will continue staging the final at a neutral site, Commissioner Jessica Berman said.
She cited limited resources at league headquarters, saying: “To execute a marquee event with five days’ notice requires 10 floors of New York City commercial office space, and we have one.”
Aside from the game, the NWSL organizes ancillary events for fans and sponsors, and needs to secure hotel and event space.
The higher-seeded finalist did host the final the first two years but, starting in 2015, shifted to preselected locations. Last year, 10,360 spectators attended the Washington Spirit’s 2-1 extra-time victory over the Chicago Red Stars in Louisville. ...
The NWSL will begin 2023 as it did this year with the Challenge Cup, a preseason tournament mandated by a contract with a major sponsor.
Spirit coaching search
The Spirit is at least a month away from hiring a head coach, said people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could speak freely on the matter.
The club is expected to speak to Mark Parsons, who guided the Spirit from July 2013 to the end of the 2015 campaign. He led Portland to the 2017 NWSL title and most recently coached the Dutch national team.
As originally planned, Spirit interim coach Albertin Montoya returned to Northern California, where he operates a youth club. Montoya had replaced Kris Ward, who was fired in August amid a three-win season and deteriorating relations with players. ...
The Spirit is slated to again play six regular season home games at Audi Field and five at 5,000-seat Segra Field in Leesburg next year. It wants to play more in the city, but the contract with D.C. United — which owns both venues and leases space to the Spirit at its Leesburg training center — requires a split schedule.
Franch to rejoin U.S. squad
Franch, a member of the 2019 World Cup-winning squad, will rejoin the national team for its two upcoming friendlies against Germany, according to people close to the situation. Her last U.S. appearance came last fall. She will replace Washington’s Aubrey Kingsbury at No. 3 on the depth chart. The roster will be announced soon. ...
The U.S. squad is planning to conduct a January camp in New Zealand, people close to the situation said, and play two friendlies against the Football Ferns. New Zealand is co-hosting the World Cup next summer with Australia. | 2022-10-30T02:33:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Portland Thorns top Kansas City Current, win third NWSL title - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/portland-thorns-kc-current-nwsl-title/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/portland-thorns-kc-current-nwsl-title/ |
Ask Amy: My anxiety is bad at night but is fine during the day
Why does everything seem so bad at night? For the past year or so I’ve found myself waking up from bad dreams almost every night. I start thinking about everyday issues regarding family, work, health, etc., and it all seems so overwhelming and urgent.
I put myself into panicked ruminations about these problems. When the sun comes up, I inevitably realize that everything I was worried about overnight is actually manageable by day.
Do you know why things seem so bad at night when they don’t in the day? Also, do you know of anything that might help me to stop doing this?
Afraid: I suspect that your issue really begins with your sleeping problem. If you were able to sleep through the night, you wouldn’t have these anxious hours.
This is from an article titled “Nightmares and the Brain” published by Harvard Medical School (hms.harvard.edu):
Perplexed: Surely one advantage of being older newlyweds is that you have the financial stability, good sense, perspective, and maturity not to create problems where none exist.
Your relative knew you’d expressed interest in this charity. You don’t report any problems created by this donation. Yes, this was a thoughtful and appropriate gift. I hope you express your gratitude for it.
Upset: Regulations aside — this is trespassing. (They were also stealing her electricity.) I think it’s time to call the sheriff. | 2022-10-30T05:22:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My anxiety is bad at night but is fine during the day - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/30/ask-amy-dark-thoughts-panic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/30/ask-amy-dark-thoughts-panic/ |
Live updates South Korea mourns after Halloween crowd crush kills at least 151
Itaewon residents left shocked
South Korea declares period of national mourning
Police stand guard at the accident site in Seoul's Itaewon neighborhood on Sunday. (Jean Chung for The Washington Post)
Grace Moon
SEOUL — Officials said they have identified the majority of the victims of a deadly crowd crush during Halloween celebrations in the South Korean capital, Seoul, on Saturday evening that left at least 151 dead and about 82 injured.
South Korea declared a period of national mourning Sunday, as shocked residents questioned how a night of holiday festivities turned into one of the deadliest incidents in the nation’s recent peacetime history. “In the center of Seoul on Halloween, a tragedy and disaster that should have not happened, happened,” President Yoon Suk-yeol told reporters.
Yoon on Sunday toured the narrow alleyways of the Itaewon nightlife district, where the crush occurred. Police tape blocked off the scene, littered with debris from the melee the night before, including plastic pumpkin candy buckets and halloween masks.
Yoon on Sunday called for a thorough investigation into the cause of the deadly incident, to prevent future tragedies.
At least one U.S. citizen was injured in Saturday night’s crush, the State Department confirmed Sunday local time. Nineteen among the dead were foreign nationals, fire officials said. Authorities said it’s possible the death toll will rise.
South Korea’s Minister of the Interior and Safety, Lee Sang-min, said around midday Sunday that 90 percent of the dead had been identified.
A period of national mourning will be observed until Nov. 5, with flags flying at half-staff on federal buildings. A memorial site for victims will be erected in Seoul.
Sitting at a cafe about a 10-minute walk from the main street of Itaewon on Sunday morning, Jua Jang, a South Korean resident, shook her head as she spoke with her husband about the casualties incurred the night before.
The couple said they were near the alley of bars where people had been crushed, about 10 minutes before reports of deaths began surfacing.
“Korean people probably won’t come here out of respect for victims” next Halloween, she said. “It wasn’t like this with so many people before. It was too crowded and we couldn’t walk in the street, so we had to leave.”
By Julie Yoon
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has declared a national mourning period after an apparent crowd crush during Halloween celebrations in Seoul on Saturday evening killed at least 149 people and injured about 75.
The president has called for an investigation into the cause of the incident, which occurred in the capital’s Itaewon nightlife area as revelers gathered for the first pandemic-era Halloween with no distancing restrictions.
“I’m devastated. In the center of Seoul on Halloween, a tragedy and disaster that should have not happened, happened,” Yoon told reporters at a news conference Sunday morning local time. “We will launch a thorough investigation, so we can better prevent a tragic event like this.” | 2022-10-30T06:58:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seoul Halloween crowd crush in Itaewon kills at least 151 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/seoul-halloween-stampede-itaewon-south-korea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/seoul-halloween-stampede-itaewon-south-korea/ |
Amid the MAGA hats at Trump’s Doral, LIV Golf finds niche
Fans ask for autographs during the LIV Golf team championship Friday at Trump National Doral in Miami. (Lynne Sladky/AP)
MIAMI — It had been years since they had been on vacation, just the two of them. So Thursday morning, Sania and Jeremy Harper dropped off their three older kids at school, the toddler with grandparents, and started the four-hour drive south.
They decided months ago to leave Orlando and attend two days of the LIV Golf team championship, and almost from the moment they walked into Trump National Doral on Friday, Sania noticed something familiar. The music, confetti, consequence-free party atmosphere — it had the distinct feel of a Donald Trump rally.
“It’s about the vibe and the attitude,” said Jeremy, 31. “You can be outlandish and in-your-face, and you’re not disrespectful or a bad person, quote-unquote.”
“Life is short,” Sania, 32, said.
“You can unbutton a little bit and let it all hang out.”
Just then, another fan approached and complimented Sania’s red “Make America Great Again” hat, which she had bought for $36 at the course’s merchandise shop. Trump apparel and campaign signs are a common sight here; Sania estimated that 20 people had stopped her to praise her hat. “It’s about being able to just be yourself,” she said. “That’s me, that’s LIV, that’s Donald Trump.”
For much of 2022, the first-year rebel golf series has been the focus of intense scrutiny. Much of it has focused on the jaw-dropping bonuses and prize money dangled in front of golfers to defect from the PGA Tour and the fact that the source of the cash is the Saudi Arabian government’s Public Investment Fund.
But as LIV’s inaugural season ends, what’s also clear is that the series has become undeniably intertwined with Trump and perhaps is most popular among his supporters. Two of its eight tournaments were at Trump courses, the former president has continually injected himself into golf’s civil war, and ahead of the midterms and a possible 2024 presidential campaign, Trump is again using sports — this time his favorite one — as a political lightning rod.
“The PGA is being destroyed by the PGA,” Trump told reporters Thursday after playing in LIV’s pro-am event with Brooks Koepka and Sergio Garcia. “They were stupid, and they shouldn’t be stupid.”
Other major sports and leagues have political leanings, largely dictated by their target audiences and various centers of power. College football and the NFL tilt right, the NBA left, though this is often discussed in whispered tones so as to not divide the wider audience and scare off advertisers. LIV, still searching for its voice and a foothold in the overcrowded sports-entertainment space, may be emerging as something never before seen: America’s first explicitly right-wing sports league.
There are obvious comparisons between LIV and Trump, from identifying themselves as opponents of a dusty and potentially corrupt establishment to digging in their heels amid a skeptical and largely critical mainstream media. The series hired Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary under George W. Bush, as a messaging consultant ahead of its launch. Greg Norman, the former PGA Tour star who is now LIV’s chief executive and commissioner, has maintained a friendship with Trump for decades and designed courses for some of his properties. Norman sought the former president’s messaging advice before LIV’s launch in the spring, and the organization’s preferred megaphone is Fox News, with Norman’s strategy appearing to be leaning into and occasionally stoking the controversy.
“Why are they picking on the professional golfers? Why? The male professional golfers?” Norman said during an appearance in July on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” LIV was facing heavy backlash for, in some cases, offering nine-figure contracts paid by Saudi money. “Females, the LPGA Tour is sponsored by Aramco, right? … Not one word has been said about them, right? But why is it — why is it on the guys? Why are we the ogres? What have we done wrong?” (In fact, Aramco sponsors several tournaments on the Ladies’ European Tour but not the LPGA Tour.)
Atul Khosla, LIV’s president and chief operating officer, said in a recent interview that appealing to a primarily Republican fan base is the “furthest thing from my head.”
“Our objective is to attract golf and sports fans. That’s it,” he said. “Whether they are left-leaning, right-leaning does not matter to us. … Our lens is very much, at the end of the day, just attract golf and sports fans. That’s what we’re focused on.”
Its association with Trump may complicate that mission. Norman has said LIV scheduled tournaments at Doral and Bedminster this season because it simply needed places to play. Trump quickly seized the chance to collect venue fees and also insert himself into, and take a side on, a radioactive conversation.
Kevin Madden, a veteran Republican strategist who was a senior adviser on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said both Trump and LIV seem unconcerned with history and tradition, sharing a mutual focus on transactional relationships. Referring to LIV’s “golf, but louder” slogan, Madden pointed out Trump essentially markets himself as “politics, but louder.”
“It’s taking on the establishment,” Madden added, “and what [fans] love about LIV is what they loved about Trump: They’re both pissing off the right people.”
The Shark is on the attack again
Five days after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, the PGA of America canceled plans to hold the 2022 PGA Championship at Bedminster, saying moving forward at a Trump course would be “detrimental” to the organization’s brand. The British Open also announced it would remove Trump’s Turnberry Hotel from its rotation.
At Bedminster’s LIV event in July, Trump watched the tournament’s final round alongside Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and right-leaning sports media figures Clay Travis and Sage Steele were seen in and around the course’s reception hall. Trump periodically emerged onto a patio overlooking the 16th tee to acknowledge an adoring gallery and, at one point, threw hats into the crowd.
“He has just been in the background, but in the foreground, if you know what I mean,” Norman told Carlson then.
This past week, LIV players assembled in South Florida to compete for a share of the $50 million team prize, the largest purse in golf history. Trump didn’t hesitate to put himself, and perhaps his political aspirations, in full view. Eric Trump, one of his father’s pro-am teammates, played out of a golf bag with “TRUMP 2024” embroidered on it.
“A beauty!” Garcia announced after Donald Trump hit a 3-wood to reach the green on the par-3 13th hole.
“Great shot, sir,” an aide in a “MAGA” hat declared for neither the first nor last time after Trump swung.
Trump posed for pictures and chatted up onlookers, at one point waving two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson (working as a LIV broadcast analyst while he recovers from knee surgery) past Secret Service members to issue his support of Watson’s decision to flip to LIV. An autograph seeker later produced a 1990 issue of Playboy magazine with Trump on the cover, attracting the former president’s attention.
“I’ve got to show this to Sergio,” Trump said, and for the next 10 minutes Trump passed it among members of his entourage and occasionally flipped through the pages before signing and returning the issue.
It’s by no means the first time Trump inserted himself into the national sports conversation, and it’s certainly not new that a league had to weigh the cost-benefit of an alliance with him. In 2017, in response to NFL player protests, Trump suggested players be “fired” for on-field demonstrations and later instructed Vice President Mike Pence to abruptly leave an Indianapolis Colts game. Some franchise owners, such as the Dallas Cowboys’ Jerry Jones, sided with Trump, effectively causing a deeper rift between the league’s mostly White billionaire management class and its majority-Black player workforce.
Championship teams’ visits to the White House turned into a political moment, with news outlets documenting who skipped the proceedings and who attended. Trump occasionally appeared at high-profile college football and baseball games, and he ordered an Air Force One flyby of the Daytona 500.
LIV’s leadership has said privately that it wishes to move past its contentious first year and expand its fan base as it pursues a media rights deal. Amid accusations of corruption, greed and Saudi Arabia’s attempts to “sportswash” a horrific record of human rights abuses, players were frequently asked to explain their decision to join LIV and accept money from the Saudi government, which has committed $3 billion to fund the series over its first three seasons.
“If it was solely for the economics, it was a no-brainer,” Bryson DeChambeau, who reportedly received at least $100 million to sign with LIV, said during his own interview with Carlson in August. The political reverberations were a different matter. He added: “I had to weigh all those consequences, the social [consequences], how I was going to be viewed publicly.”
Trump takes center stage in run-up to LIV Golf’s third tournament
If LIV hopes to detach itself from Trump, history would indicate that can be a challenging prospect. Shortly after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, the NFL briefly united, and Commissioner Roger Goodell appeared in a video in which he said the league was wrong for its stance three years earlier and that, “We, the National Football League, believe Black Lives Matter.”
Trump went on the offensive, firing off tweets in which he criticized former Saints quarterback Drew Brees and calling the NFL “weak” in response to Goodell’s video. Fans of the country’s most powerful and popular sports league found themselves in a precarious position: having to choose between their favorite sport and their preferred politician, forces that had previously been aligned.
Though LIV hasn’t openly courted Trump, it also hasn’t rejected him. Now the association seems strong enough that some Trump supporters attend LIV’s events specifically because the former president is behind it.
“This is what the American people want,” said Alexander Davis, a 37-year-old fan who on Friday wore a red, white and blue TRUMP hat at Doral. He agreed to an interview with The Washington Post under the condition any associated article avoid “fake news.”
“It’s the freedom. The freedom to have fun, enjoy, bring people in that may not have looked at golf as a sport. Not only that, but just enjoy themselves and the camaraderie of people who don’t even know each other,” Davis said.
Another fan listening in said it seemed intentional that LIV’s Doral tournament was marketing itself to a pro-Trump audience with $8 beers, activities such as a chip-shot simulator and a Cam Smith-inspired mullet-haircut station.
“I wish I could put my finger on it,” said Ray Beninato, 67, who identified himself as a Trump supporter. “But it just seems like most of these people here are Trump — I can’t say that — but they’re moving more to the right than to the left. From what I see, the LIV thing is just open freedom.”
On Friday afternoon, Sania and Jeremy followed Koepka and Phil Mickelson (who has a villa named for him at Doral) before heading toward a set of bleachers overlooking the 18th green. Jeremy is a golf pro himself, saying he competes on mini-tours, and Sania sometimes tags along to courses. If her husband weren’t playing, she said, she’d be ready to leave after a few holes, bored by the sport’s silence and decorum.
“Go LIV! Go Trump!” she called toward another passerby who’d noticed her hat. “Here, I could say ‘PGA’ out loud and nobody will come attack me. Over there, at the PGA, I probably can’t even say ‘LIV’; they’ll probably ban me. You go to a Trump rally, you say ‘Biden,’ nobody’s going to say anything. You’re not allowed to be a human.”
Sania danced up the cart path as they approached the bleachers, running up to golfer Pat Perez, who initially looked startled before nodding at Sania and continuing on his way. Sania laughed, saying she’d “do anything” to see Trump, who, whether LIV wants it or not, has made himself into the series’s biggest star. | 2022-10-30T09:22:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amid the MAGA hats at Trump’s Doral, LIV Golf finds niche - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/30/liv-golf-trump-doral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/30/liv-golf-trump-doral/ |
Prince William board set to vote on controversial data center proposal
One of several competing signs near the proposed site of a 2,100-acre complex of data centers in a rural area of Prince William County. The county board will vote on the Digital Gateway proposal Tuesday. (Valerie Plesch for The Washington Post)
Prince William County’s board will vote Tuesday on a plan to convert 2,100 acres of rural land into a data center complex that supporters say could provide crucial tax dollars to use for crowded schools and other problems, while opponents argue it would be a death knell for Northern Virginia’s rural countryside.
The “Digital Gateway” proposal in the Gainesville area would be the largest land-use change in decades in the steadily growing county of nearly 485,000 residents. It asks the county’s board of supervisors to amend planning guidelines for that portion of what is known as the “Rural Crescent,” an 80,000-acre swath of the Occoquan watershed where development has been largely restricted to agricultural uses or one home spaced every 10 acres.
Initiated by local property owners seeking to leave the increasingly traffic-congested area, the proposal would require the sale of more than 200 homes and small farms — most of which are already under contract with either QTS Realty Trust or Compass Datacenters, the two companies that hope to build as much as 27 million square feet of data centers on the site.
Mary Ann Ghadban, an area farm owner who has been a driving force for the proposed changes, said the once-rural countryside already has changed, making the area ripe for such a development. Twelve-story-high power lines run through the area, supplying power to nearby Loudoun County, which hosts the world’s largest hub of data centers.
“We’re only doing this because we already have massive transmission power lines right in our backyard,” Ghadban said.
But the Digital Gateway proposal has generated intense opposition in a portion of the county that, over the decades, has seen sprawling countryside chipped away by residential developments and, increasingly, data centers.
Over the decades, the community has defeated proposals to build an auto racetrack near the Manassas National Battlefield Park, a mega mall and Disney theme park that became the subject of congressional hearings.
But Kathryn Kulick, vice-chair of the HOA Roundtable of Prince William County, a group of community organizations opposing the plan, called this fight more consequential because, she said, “industrial sprawl” in the form of even more data centers “will be lit like a grenade” if the project is approved.
Capitalizing on an industry
County officials regard the Digital Gateway plan — which they estimate would generate an additional $400 million in annual tax revenue — as a way to capitalize on the data center industry’s rapidly expanding footprint in Northern Virginia as more people shop online, drive smart cars or work from home, with the mega computers inside data centers making those activities possible.
The county is also studying ways to expand an overlay district abutting the Rural Crescent, where most of the data centers in Prince William are concentrated. A county-commissioned study last year found that the area is running out of land marketable to data center developers as several surrounding jurisdictions compete to attract an industry that requires few local services.
A fight over turning a `rural crescent' in Northern Virginia into a hub of data centers
Prince William has 35 data centers, covering 6 million square feet, with another 5.4 million square feet under development inside and outside the overlay district, according to the county’s economic development department.
The extra tax dollars from the Digital Gateway would allow the county to better deal with a host of problems, said county board chair Ann Wheeler (D), who supports the proposal. In some neighborhoods, portable classroom trailers have become a permanent fixture in crowded schools. Meanwhile, the region’s high cost of living has some lower-income residents struggling to keep their homes or unable to purchase one.
“This has always been about jobs and opportunities for moving Prince William County forward,” Wheeler said, adding that the county’s relatively small commercial tax base has meant relying more on residential tax revenue to pay for services. The largest employers in the bedroom community are the county government and public school system.
“We’re not like Fairfax; we don’t have Tysons Corner or even Reston,” she said. “We’re not like Loudoun that has half a billion dollars in data center revenue. Yet, we’re trying to keep up with them in terms of services and, right now, we’re doing that on the backs of residential homeowners.”
Loudoun receives about $576 million in annual taxes from the industry. Prince William, the next largest data center hub in Northern Virginia, receives about $79 million per year.
Environmental groups warn against adding more impervious surface to the Occoquan watershed, where urban runoff and sewage from homes has increased the levels of salinity in the Occoquan Reservoir, a prime source of fresh drinking water for the region.
Under the proposal, about 800 acres of the designated area would be set aside as parkland, trails and wildlife corridors, though QTS and Compass have told county officials they want to use some of that land for electrical infrastructure, storm water retention ponds and other support facilities.
The proposal includes a provision to extend public water and sewer lines to the data centers, though it adds that “efficient water usage” would be encouraged at the site, including in the form of cooling systems that use recycled water or no water at all. Noise from the data centers would also have to be kept to 60 decibels during the day and 55 decibels at night, about the volume of a normal conversation.
Fairfax Water, the utility that serves as the reservoir’s steward, urged the county board in a March letter to incorporate into its decision about the project “a rigorous evaluation of the potential impacts to water quality” before any data centers are built there, a plea echoed by Fairfax County.
Salt in DC-area water sources becoming worrisome, experts warn
A study into the effects of development in the entire watershed is underway but isn’t expected to be completed until some time next year, Thomas J. Smith, the county’s director of public works, told the county’s planning commission last month before that body recommended the proposal be approved in a 4-3-1 vote.
The proposal also seeks to have Pageland Lane, which runs adjacent to the site, expanded from two lanes to four and to reroute traffic cutting through nearby Manassas National Battlefield Park to surrounding roads.
Fairfax County also expressed concerns about those ideas, saying they could affect streams, parks and homeowners near its border with Prince William.
The site’s proximity to the battlefield — where two major Civil War battles were fought — has sparked additional opposition, including from documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and the county’s own historical commission. Unmarked graves of formerly enslaved people are also believed to be in the area.
During the historical commission’s meeting earlier this month, commission member Jim Burgess (Occoquan) called the plan “an atrocious atrocity,” in part because of the potential for data centers to be visible from the battlefields — despite guarantees in the proposal to incorporate tree and plant buffers and building height and design requirements meant to keep those structures hidden.
“It’s a horrible plan promoted by developers and people who are going to get filthy rich by it,” Burgess said, referring to the Pageland Lane area homeowners before the commission unanimously voted to urge the board of supervisors to reject the plan. “We should not be supporting this kind of development.”
Crossing political lines
The battle over the proposal has transcended local political party lines.
Some of the board’s five Democrats cast the question of allowing a lucrative industry in the Rural Crescent as one of social equity as the county seeks to accommodate more residents and businesses.
“There is a way to do this,” Supervisor Victor S. Angry (D-Neabsco) said. “We’ve just got to have a serious conversation about how do it and not just, ‘We’re not going to do it.’”
With the Dominion Energy utility company saying the Digital Gateway complex would likely require more transmission lines to serve those facilities, other local Democrats argue that the cost to the surrounding environment would be too high.
“There is not a question about whether the area’s wetlands, streams, wilderness and wildlife will be harmed; it’s to what extent that harm will take place,” Del. Danica A. Roem (D-Manassas), whose district includes the nearby 1,863-home Heritage Hunt neighborhood where most of the opposition is rooted, wrote in a local opinion column published Thursday.
As data centers bloom, a century-old African American enclave is threatened
On Friday, Supervisor Jeanine Lawson (R-Brentsville), who along with Supervisor Yesli Vega (R-Coles) has adamantly opposed the plan, called on her board colleagues to delay the vote, arguing that more time is needed to study the potential impacts.
“This freight train needs to slow down,” Lawson said, during a news conference with environmental and slow-growth groups symbolically held next to the Occoquan Reservoir at Lake Ridge Park in Woodbridge, 22 miles from the proposed site.
Supervisor Pete Candland (R-Gainesville), the board’s third Republican and a normally outspoken critic of data center development, has been quiet on the issue. He angered his GOP colleagues and supporters earlier this year when — joining his neighbors in the area encompassed by the Digital Gateway proposal — he and his wife included their family’s home in the plan.
Candland, who has said the decision to sell came after it became obvious the Digital Gateway plan would go forward, recused himself from voting on any aspect of the proposal. He declined to comment for this article.
Residents in the surrounding area launched recall campaigns against Candland and Wheeler over the issue.
They have accused Wheeler of muscling through the Digital Gateway project to personally profit from the land-use change — noting that, according to disclosures filed by Wheeler, she and her husband own several hundred thousand dollars worth of technology company stocks.
Wheeler said they recently divested their portfolio away from Blackstone, which purchased QTS last year. She provided The Washington Post with a legal opinion written by county Commonwealth’s Attorney Amy Ashworth (D) last month saying that there appears be no conflict of interest.
“Anyone who understands finances would understand that anything Prince William County does would not move the needle on those stocks,” Wheeler said, calling the allegations “ludicrous.”
Ghadban, a real estate broker, was among those who fought to keep the area rural over the years.
Now, she is representing about a dozen of her neighbors in their sales transactions with the data center companies, standing to earn as much as 3 percent commission on the multimillion-dollar deals, according to an ongoing federal lawsuit filed by one of Ghadban’s former clients.
She wouldn’t discuss those arrangements, instead arguing that data centers make the most sense for the area, given the transmission lines, and that Prince William is facing an opportunity to shed its “junkyard” economic status in the region.
If the proposal is approved, she said, “we’re going to be able to be like the other wealthy counties in Northern Virginia.” | 2022-10-30T10:10:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prince William board set to vote on controversial data center proposal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/30/data-centers-prince-william-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/30/data-centers-prince-william-virginia/ |
As election nears, D.C.’s mayor looks ahead to an expected 3rd term
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser leaves a news conference after announcing new resources for migrants being bused to the District from Texas and Arizona in September. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Muriel E. Bowser shows no false modesty when she talks about the prospect that she will soon be decisively reelected to lead her city for a rare third term as mayor — only an eager grin.
“Isn’t it remarkable? It’s remarkable,” she said of her expected mayoral victory in a recent interview. “It excites me to live up to the expectations of D.C. residents.”
Bowser, 50, handily won the Democratic nomination in June and is poised to win November’s general election in a city where Democrats dominate. After a tumultuous second term in which she drew national attention by battling with President Donald Trump, led the city through the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and the pandemic, and struggled to tackle age-old problems like crime and gentrification even as the coronavirus upended the city, she says she’s looking forward to a term focused on rebuilding.
“It’s a very important period for D.C.: how we come back from the pandemic, how we reposition our downtown, how we catch kids up in school, how we reinvest in public safety,” she said.
If Bowser wins on Nov. 8 against her competitors — independent Rodney “Red” Grant, Republican Stacia R. Hall, and Libertarian Dennis Sobin — she would be the first mayor to serve a third term since the legendary “mayor for life” Marion Barry, who began his third term in 1987 and his fourth in 1995. Some residents say they’re tired of the same, noting the continued presence of homeless encampments and four years of increasing homicides.
Mayor Bowser promised to end homelessness. Here’s how it’s going.
When Bowser visited a Ward 7 Democrats meeting this month, some took the opportunity to press the mayor on why they should trust her promises when she has had eight years to fix their problems.
“These are the same people who have been in office — why is nothing being done? Homelessness is still a problem,” Falecia Richmond said, gesturing toward Bowser and two other longtime officeholders at the meeting, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) and council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large). “With there being a Black mayor — when I call for help, I expect to get it. If you’re not there to make change and justice, there’s no justice.”
Another resident followed her: “There’s no affordable housing,” she said. “The question is, what’s going to be different from you all now? From when you first got in office, it’s the same thing going on.”
“I do have a record, and I’m proud of my record,” Bowser replied to the woman, who did not give her name. The mayor pointed to changes she has made, including recruiting a new Lidl grocery store east of the Anacostia and making plans to move a D.C. government office building to Ward 7.
Many welcome Bowser’s moderate brand of leadership over the past eight years.
“People have confidence in her: She’s weathered two storms — Trump and coronavirus — where she was a steady hand at the wheel,” said Terry Lynch, a longtime Bowser supporter who leads the Downtown Cluster of Congregations. “Among the electorate, there’s always a desire for change. But overall, they felt she handled the big issues well.”
In an interview in late October, Bowser characterized her first term as a “fresh start,” focused on new ideas, and her second as the “fair shot” term, with an emphasis on housing, among other priorities. She points to the changes she has made in the city along the way, including following through on a promise in her 2014 mayoral campaign to tear down the decrepit D.C. General homeless shelter and replace it with eight state-of-the-art shelters — and, more significantly, a concerted push that has drastically reduced homelessness among families with children, a success that she pledges to extend to childless adults in her next term.
The face of the District has changed under Bowser; she mentions proudly the new developments drawing residents and businesses, not only in increasingly upscale areas like the Wharf but in historically disadvantaged neighborhoods including Anacostia and Skyland. She touts her progress toward her overall goal of building 36,000 new housing units by 2025 to accommodate the District’s growing population and its persistent housing crunch.
D.C. to provide up to $200K to first-time home buyers in hot market
The theme of her third term, she said, will be “the comeback.”
“What excites me so much about a third term is that the job is different … Bringing the city back from the pandemic, preparing for a possible recession, preparing for the possibility of a hostile Congress. That’s why I think it’s so important and I asked voters to make sure we had seasoned leadership in the mayor’s office,” she said.
She’s still hoping to get more downtown workers back to their desks to bolster the city’s daytime economy, but she’s also looking at streateries, parades, and other uses of public space that will boost revenue without relying on a five-day office workweek that perhaps is gone forever.
Bowser said she would like to work on projects she hasn’t accomplished yet, like assuming control from the federal government of post-conviction supervision of juvenile criminal offenders, and trying to blunt crime rates after years of squabbling with the D.C. Council over the size of the police budget. Bowser favors a larger force, and has recently secured budgets to let her hire more officers.
“In many wards, the numbers have actually gone down along a lot of categories” of crime, she said. “I have been among the only people willing to say we need the police that we need, and I stand by that. Because when we can deploy in neighborhoods and neighbors see the presence of police, that does make them feel better … We’re going to do what it takes to drive crime down.”
Bowser, who grew up in the District and represented Ward 4 on the city council, became mayor after unseating incumbent Vincent C. Gray in the crowded 2014 primary, at a time when he was weakened by a federal investigation into his campaign fundraising. Four years later, she faced no significant opposition in her bid for a second term.
Running for a third term, Bowser faced primary challenges from two members of the D.C. Council, Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) and Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8), who both ran to her left, arguing that her moderate approach had failed to stop the gentrification pricing out Black families or lessen the city’s gulf between rich and poor. Former advisory neighborhood commissioner James Butler ran as well.
Bowser won easily, outpacing her opponents in seven of eight wards and coming in more than 10,000 votes ahead of Robert White, her closest competitor.
Still, more than half the Democratic electorate voted for someone else: Bowser finished with 49 percent of the vote.
“Muriel is trying to create a kind of legacy and trying to grapple with some of the issues that she’s heard the community complaining about. I think she can look at the softness of her numbers and recognize that something really needs to take place that’s going to address what people are feeling out here,” said the Rev. Graylan Hagler, a longtime community activist who led Trayon White’s campaign. Particularly on the issue of gentrification, Hagler said, “I think she’s going to try to make some conscious change.”
Hagler pointed to Bowser’s recent creation of a task force on increasing Black homeownership, which he served on, as a “clear turn” toward addressing her opponents’ criticism of her approach to inequality.
Bowser seeks to follow Marion Barry, but some Black voters are skeptical
Bowser characterizes the primary results differently. “Voters in June gave us a big win,” she said. Asked about what she learned from the fact that slightly more Democrats voted against her than for her, or about whether she learned from the campaign that she needed to change course on any issues, she does not describe any change in her approach.
Instead, she looks forward to four more years.
Every night, Bowser said, she tells her 4-year-old daughter Miranda that her favorite job in the world is being her mother. But during this election season, she has talked more with her preschooler about her other job as she headed out on the campaign trail. “I said, ‘Well, I have to ask people if I can be the mayor,’ ” Bowser recalled. “And she goes, ‘You are the mayor.’ ” | 2022-10-30T10:10:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As election nears, D.C.'s mayor looks ahead to an expected 3rd term - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/30/dc-mayor-bowser-3rd-term/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/30/dc-mayor-bowser-3rd-term/ |
Disabled kids fighting school placements ‘almost always lose,’ Va. suit says
Vivian and Trevor Chaplick say in their suit that Fairfax and the state of Virginia failed to deliver appropriate educational resources despite their child’s desperate need. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Northern Virginia school systems grant fewer than 1 percent of requests from parents of children with disabilities seeking enrollment in schools that better accommodate their needs, according to data submitted in a civil rights lawsuit.
Plaintiffs allege the state’s education department has “curated” officials who almost always decide cases in its favor, according to the class-action lawsuit filed in federal court last month by parents of an autistic student. The state has prevented disabled children from getting the educational support they need, the parents say, disadvantaging a generation of people with special needs.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, told the story of a student referred to only as “D.C.," a 19-year-old who suffers from autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and Tourette’s syndrome, among other disorders. Attorneys in the case shared the data with The Washington Post.
In 2008, according to the suit, Fairfax County Public Schools found D.C. eligible for special education services and placed him in a public school. There, the lawsuit says, D.C. struggled academically and behaviorally, exhibiting “severe aggressive behavior and violence” — sometimes including self-harm and ending with hospitalization.
When his parents, Trevor and Vivian Chaplick, asked that he be placed in a private residential program, their request was denied. Although a social worker warned the Chaplicks that they would lose, the suit said, they appealed anyway — and did lose in 2015.
During a second appeal in 2021, they filed Freedom of Information Act requests to determine how often parents like them won when challenging decisions about their disabled children’s care. What the Chaplicks found troubled them.
“Parents and disabled students in Virginia almost always lose, especially in Northern Virginia,” the suit said.
Virginia is still failing people with disabilities, say families who are pleading for lawmakers to ‘see’ them
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which protects disabled students, allows parents to appeal school placements. But between 2010 and July 2021, just three petitions out of 395 in Northern Virginia prevailed.
Across Virginia, the results were not much better, according to the data. Just 13 parents in 847 cases, or about 1.5 percent, successfully challenged school district decisions about their children’s placements. By comparison, the suit said almost 35 percent of California parents — the state with the most special needs students in the country — won such cases, as did around 15 percent of Maryland parents. Virginia served more than 169,000 disabled students from 2021 to 2022, officials said.
In an email, Virginia Department of Education spokesman Charles B. Pyle said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
“The department is committed to ensuring that students with disabilities receive all services and supports that they are entitled to under federal and state law,” he said.
In a statement, Fairfax County Public Schools said it couldn’t comment on ongoing litigation. “We stand ready to work with anyone to improve services and opportunities for our students,” the statement said.
But the Chaplicks say in their suit that Fairfax and the state failed to deliver appropriate educational resources despite their child’s desperate need.
“Most of the days we had to deal with his self-injurious behaviors,” Vivian Chaplick recalled. “He would self-harm himself. He would try to harm other people. It was a battle of trying to keep him safe.”
The suit alleges that Virginia’s education department “carefully curated” a slate of hearing officers who almost always find for the state.
These officers, who are attorneys certified by the state, can earn more than $40,000 on one case, the suit said. Because they have a financial interest in keeping the state happy — by winning referrals in exchange for denials — they are biased, according to the suit: Two-thirds of the state’s 22 officers examined in the suit have never ruled for parents statewide, nor have 83 percent in Northern Virginia.
It added that state officials “train [officers], pay them, appoint them ... all with the promise of a long-term, steady stream of income that requires no marketing expenses for hearing officers who simply refrain from biting the hand that feeds.” This creates a pool of “crony hearing officers” who, if they don’t support the state, may not get future cases.
“The result has been an entire generation of disabled children and their parents facing a near-insurmountable hurdle,” the suit said.
Trevor Chaplick, a corporate attorney, said raising a disabled child can be “one of most difficult parenting situations you can imagine.” Chaplick said he was thankful his family had resources to help his child, who now lives at his school. But the state doesn’t do enough to help those of limited means, according to Chaplick.
He recalled attending a self-defense class for parents of autistic children, learning techniques to keep themselves and their children safe during emotional outbursts.
“I’ll never forget sitting in that room seeing a cross section of society ... the poor, the middle-class,” he said. “These were people on edge financially and emotionally.”
The suit comes after the U.S. Department of Education faulted Virginia for failing to provide sufficient services for disabled students in 2020. A report from the nonprofit group the American Institutes for Research commissioned by the Fairfax school board released earlier this month also found disabled students in the state are more likely than their peers to be suspended and to fail state tests.
Callie Oettinger, an advocate for improving Virginia’s treatment of special-needs students, said in an interview that she battled Fairfax Public Schools for years after the system did not provide services she thinks were needed for her son, who is dyslexic.
Though Oettinger suspected her son had dyslexia as early as first grade, the school system refused to evaluate him until sixth grade, telling her that “boys are slower to read,” she said. (Fairfax County declined to discuss the case, citing privacy concerns.)
Once her son was diagnosed, the school system refused to provide a program Oettinger thought would be appropriate. A hearing officer agreed programming was needed, she said — but found the school had provided free and appropriate education as the law requires.
The result was inevitable: “We worked with him ourselves,” Oettinger said.
“That’s what parents do,” she said. “It rips families apart. It stresses out marriages. It puts stress on kids and siblings, and Fairfax County knows this is happening. And you see it happening over and over again.”
Bill Hogan, an investigative journalist formerly of the Center for Public Integrity and other news organizations, said he adopted his daughter at age 3 from Russia in 1993. She suffered multiple learning disabilities including dyslexia, he said, possibly because of the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome.
When she was a student in Fairfax County schools in the mid-1990s, he battled for years with the district, culminating in litigation. At one point, school experts said Hogan’s daughter would never learn to read — but they would not pay for placement at a private school that Hogan thought could help.
Hogan ended up paying out of pocket, then settling with the school system around the time his daughter turned 18. His daughter, now 33, is literate with a high-school diploma.
“The system didn’t help her,” he said. “I feel I helped her.” | 2022-10-30T10:10:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kids with disabilities ‘always lose’ Virginia school appeals, suit says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/30/virginia-idea-school-placement-disability/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/30/virginia-idea-school-placement-disability/ |
Brazil chooses between Lula and Bolsonaro
The campaign deepened division in an already polarized Brazil
Lula and allies have cast the vote as a referendum on democracy
Bolsonaro’s last-minute pitch appeals to conservative voters
T-shirts for sale in Belém, Brazil, this month show President Jair Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, opponents in Sunday's final round of the election. (Alessandro Falco/Bloomberg News)
A deeply divided Brazil votes Sunday in an election seen as the most consequential since the country’s dictatorship collapsed in 1985, pitting right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, a staunch ally of former U.S. president Donald Trump, against the leftist two-term former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Worker’s Party leader backed by a coalition fearful of Bolsonaro’s authoritarian bent.
In a country of 214 million stretching from the Amazon to the megacities of the Southeast, the outcome will affect the health of the world’s largest rainforest and the state of democracy in Latin America’s largest nation. More than 500,000 police officers are being deployed after an ugly campaign that stoked Brazil’s culture wars and in which Bolsonaro’s backers have already laid the groundwork for thus far unsupported claims of fraud.
Lula finished first and Bolsonaro second in a field of 11 in the first round on Oct. 2. Polls show Lula with a narrow lead going into the second and final round on Sunday.
Bolsonaro and supporters have cast doubt, without providing evidence, on the integrity of Brazil’s electronic voting system and suggested he can lose only through fraud.
Lula, a leading figure of the Latin American left, tacked to the center during the campaign and cast himself as defender of Brazil’s young democracy.
The voting Sunday caps the most vitriolic campaign in modern Brazilian history, polluted by misinformation, disinformation and explosive rhetoric. Cases in point: President Jair Bolsonaro’s camp spread claims on social media that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is a Satanist, and a Lula campaign ad played on an old quip by Bolsonaro that he would “eat an Indian” to insist he was an actual cannibal.
The race turned Brazilian against Brazilian, political passion blamed for 212 attacks, including at least 21 killings, from July through September. The opponents sparred over the minimum wage and social benefits to the poor. But the uptick in the culture wars — Bolsonaro’s side claimed that Lula would open unisex bathrooms in schools and close churches, charges Lula has explicitly denied — echoed the 2020 race in the United States and spoke to an era of toxic politics in democracies from the New World to Europe.
In Brazil, the political left and center are portraying the vote Sunday as a referendum on democracy, using many of the claims against President Jair Bolsonaro that Democrats used in the 2020 campaign against Donald Trump. Should Bolsonaro win, his opponents say, he would accelerate the erosion of the rule of law in Brazil. During his first term, the former army officer placed current and former generals in his cabinet and senior posts and stocked the prosecutor’s office and police with loyalists.
When former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva emerged from the federal police headquarters in Curitiba on Nov. 8, 2019, after serving more than 19 months on charges of corruption and money laundering, the hundreds of supporters waiting for him erupted in cheers.
Now Lula, who was convicted in Brazil’s sprawling Operation Car Wash scandal but released when the Supreme Court ruled that he had been denied due process, is on the verge of completing a stunning political resurrection.
President Jair Bolsonaro took to Twitter on Saturday to make his a final pitch, offering a long series of mostly conservative pledges that he said should offer “reassurance” for those still undecided.
The list of 22 “commitments” covered some of the main issues in the election, including crime, the economy and abortion. He promised to reduce the age of criminal responsibility for rape, murder and robbery, to extend jail sentences for violent crimes and to broaden legal protections for law enforcement officers.
João Evangelista remembers the lanky teenager fondly. How he would fish in the Ribeira de Iguape River, then sell his catch to help his family. A “normal guy” who teased his friends with insulting nicknames and declared that he would one day become president of Brazil.
Over the years, Evangelista, 67, has witnessed in awe how his childhood friend Jair Bolsonaro, born into a poor family with five brothers and attending public schools, became the most powerful man in Latin America’s largest country. | 2022-10-30T10:14:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brazil election live updates: Jair Bolsonaro vs. Lula in final round - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/brazil-election-lula-bolsonaro-live-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/brazil-election-lula-bolsonaro-live-updates/ |
Phil Landrum, who has been the Pickens County, Ga., attorney for 21 years, said he has noticed in the past few years a kind of mob mentality taking hold, heedless of law. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
By Stephanie McCrummen
JASPER, Ga. — Word of the hearing had been spreading for weeks, and on a bright fall Friday, election skeptics from around northwest Georgia filed into the normally quiet Pickens County Courthouse, expecting that a victory for their movement was imminent.
“Down the hall,” a security guard said to a man in an American flag golf shirt, a woman holding fliers for a possible victory rally, and others wearing stickers that read, “The machines must go,” and soon every seat was taken in Courtroom A.
Of all the counties in Georgia, this was the one where the activists believed they would succeed. Pickens County is small, rural, overwhelmingly White and Republican, an under-the-radar place where election disinformation had flourished and the people who believed it had easily overtaken the establishment GOP.
What they wanted now was a version of what people like them were going for at the grass-roots level all over the country: a way to question the results of a decided election. In their case, they wanted a hand recount of paper ballots cast in the May GOP primary. They wanted to make those sealed paper ballots public records. And they wanted a judge to grant their county election board broad powers to conduct elections in whatever manner it deemed necessary to assuage the doubts of people like them, a ruling that could be applied across all of Georgia’s 159 counties ahead of the midterm elections and beyond.
“Amazing,” one woman whispered, noting the size of the crowd, and now they all stood as the judge entered the courtroom.
“This is case 2022SUCV0327,” he began. “Is the petitioner present?”
“Yes, judge, David Oles,” said the Harvard-trained attorney for the county’s Republican Party chairman, who brought the lawsuit in the name of restoring voter confidence, telling his colleagues he anticipated “a slam dunk.”
And momentum had been going in that direction all summer long, except that what happened next turned into a different story, one that began when the lawyer for the opposing side, the Pickens County attorney, stood up from his table and addressed the judge.
“Phil Landrum for the respondent,” he said.
Among the many anonymous jobs at the grass roots of American democracy, the county attorney is one of the most anonymous of all. Phil Landrum’s office is a small brick building with a two-chair waiting room and a framed copy of the Magna Carta. His days are usually spent advising county boards on the minutiae of state law, a job that has lately included defending his corner of the nation’s voting system against a barrage of attempts to upend it.
Thousands of local officials across the country find themselves in a similar position as former president Donald Trump and his allies continue to spread false claims about the security of America’s elections, and urge their followers to take action.
Hand-marked ballots, hand tallies, hand recounts — grass-roots activists around the country are trying to persuade local authorities to rely less on electronic voting results and more on bygone processes that experts say are far more vulnerable to human error and fraud.
The activists are making their case in areas they deem friendly — mostly rural, Trump-supporting counties where disinformation is rampant, opposing views are rare, and local officials are usually people they know. And that is what happened in Pickens County.
The momentum had started to build three months before Landrum would stand up in Courtroom A, back in June when a newly organized group of activists launched their campaign at a meeting of the county election board. Typically, only a few people showed up for the meetings, but on that night board members and election staff watched as the door kept swinging open.
“What is happening?” the election supervisor remembered thinking.
In came about two dozen residents who believed electronic voting machines were corrupted. In came the new chairman of the Pickens County Republican Party, Chris Mora, who had gotten a lawyer to help them with their cause. In came the lawyer, David Oles, who had recently moved to the area, become active in the county GOP, signed up to be a poll watcher, and was now channeling the grass-roots discontent into a demand.
“I hesitate to say we’ve been lied to about the integrity of the Dominion voting system but it’s clear we’ve been massively misinformed about its security,” he said to the board members as the meeting got underway. “We are now awake to this and the voting public is asking for answers. So, we come to this board.”
What the people wanted, he said, was a hand recount of two races from the May GOP primary, the one for governor and the one for secretary of state, whose results they did not trust. Those results had been certified. The ballots were sealed, as required by law to prevent tampering. But as Oles explained it, all the board members had to do was assert their legal authority to unseal the ballots. Then just count them.
“A modest effort,” he called it, acknowledging there were some legal issues to sort out.
“We’re a relatively small county,” he said. “We have the ballots, it seems a relatively simple thing to count them. And compare those ballots to what the machines have returned.”
The crowd cheered.
“The citizens of Pickens County have lost confidence in the voting system,” a man who referred to himself as a “patriot” told the board.
“What I want to hear is, ‘We’re going to get on it,’ ” a woman sitting next to him told the board.
“As small a county as we are? We could easily knock this out,” Mora said.
“I’m not opposed,” one of the board members said, “but we need to find out what the legalities are.”
“We want to help,” the board chairman told the crowd, and after the meeting adjourned, he got in touch with the county attorney.
Landrum’s first reaction was that he wasn’t opposed to the idea, either, if that’s what the board wanted to do. He would see what the law permitted.
He went into the conference room of his office, where the walls were lined with black volumes of the Official Code of Georgia, dog-eared and marked with slips of paper. He took down the one containing Title 21, Elections, sat at the table, and began reading.
This was the job, burying himself in tiny text and footnotes.
He had been the Pickens County attorney for 21 years, the second Landrum to hold the title. His aunt had done it before him. His father had represented the county school board. His grandfather had been a U.S. congressman for the area, and the name Landrum could be found on a brass plaque in front of the historic county jail, on a green sign along a highway, and on a slab of marble in the main cemetery in Jasper, the county seat, where he planned to be buried.
He was 55, married, had a daughter in college, and was as settled into Pickens County as anyone, accustomed to its conflicts and personalities. But in the past few years, he’d felt that familiarity breaking down. He noticed what he considered a kind of mob mentality taking hold, heedless of law.
His first brush with it had been just before the pandemic, when some parents were demanding that the county school board forbid a transgender student from using the boy’s bathroom. Landrum advised the board that doing so would be illegal, a position that he said triggered a flood of pressure from friends and some political leaders urging him to just “let it go,” which he did not. Landrum’s photo wound up in Facebook posts suggesting he was part of some larger “deep state” agenda, as well as on a prominent LGTBQ website where he was amused to see it get more likes than that of the drag queen RuPaul.
He lost childhood friends, some of whom lobbied for him to be fired, saying that he was against “community values,” to which Landrum responded by explaining what being the Pickens County attorney meant.
“My role is not to represent community values,” he told them. “My role is to tell you what the damn law is.”
Other times he put it a different way: “Imagine a room, at least 40 by 40, no windows, one door. Now in each corner, put a bowl. Then in each bowl, put two parts warm milk and one part LSD. Then at the center of the room, put a cardboard box with 40 feral cats. Walk out and shut the door. Now walk back in and try to get the cats back in the box.”
In his office a few days after the June election board meeting, he decided to watch the video of it, since he’d been out of town that day.
He was not an expert in election law but he knew right away that there were at least two legal questions to address before the board could proceed. One was whether a county board had the authority to conduct a hand recount at this point, given that the results had been certified, and the candidates involved had not challenged them, and the county had conducted an audit that showed no problems.
The second issue was that a hand recount would require unsealing the already sealed ballots, and Landrum started there, reading deeper into Title 21. He flipped to Chapter 2, Article 12, Section 500, which governs what is supposed to happen to ballots after an election is over. He zeroed in on one sentence: Officials “shall hold such ballots and other documents under seal, unless otherwise directed by the superior court.” He zeroed in on five words in that sentence: Under seal. Unless otherwise directed.
So, he decided, a court order would be necessary to unseal the ballots. That seemed to clarify how things should proceed, except that then he received an official request from Mora, the GOP chairman, suggesting a different approach altogether.
Instead of going to a judge, Mora wrote, the county could simply unseal the primary ballots and declare them public records, and let Mora himself do the recount, “so we can prove to the citizens of Pickens County and I that the machines we vote on are true and accurate.”
Landrum had fielded hundreds of open-records requests in his 21 years as county attorney, and to him, this one was easy. The Open Records Act did not apply. The ballots were sealed, sealed records were exempt, and turning them over to the public could be a crime.
Given how straightforward the law seemed to him on this point, Landrum thought it was an odd request, and he found a phone call he received after that odd as well. It was from a state representative he’d known for years, urging him to grant Mora’s request. “He was saying he can’t understand why the records can’t be released,” Landrum said. “He was downplaying the repercussions.”
Landrum rejected the request, put it out of his mind, and returned to what he considered the proper path forward, which was guided by what he had been reading in Chapter 2, Article 12, Section 500 of state election law. He zeroed in again on the five words.
It was clear to him that only a court order could unseal ballots. Less clear was what exactly could justify such an order. Landrum suggested to Oles that they go to court to sort it out. He figured Oles would file what he called “a friendly petition,” a chance for two lawyers and a judge to clarify a vague part of the state election code at a time when clarity was critical.
“I thought we were engaging a question of law,” Landrum recalled.
But when Oles filed his petition on behalf of the GOP chairman, Landrum did not find it friendly at all. Instead, to his surprise, the Open Records Act appeal was back on the table.
Starting on Page 5 and going on for six paragraphs, the petition referenced Mora’s rejected request, arguing that the sealed primary ballots were public records, that Mora had been “denied access to the records,” and that the court needed to “enforce the Open Records Act.”
To Landrum, this part of the petition seemed so out of place, so unnecessary — almost tacked on — that he began to wonder whether this was the whole point. He wondered whether the original push for a hand recount was being used as a pretext to get the sealed ballots declared public records, and he began imagining what might happen if a judge agreed.
“They could send an open-records request to all 159 counties in Georgia with that judge’s order stapled to it,” Landrum said. “Any citizen could get those records for any reason. If you have that declaration, then that is your Trojan horse. You’ve gotten under the tent, and you can do whatever you want with the ballots now.”
He kept spinning out the implications, imagining citizens all over Georgia demanding sealed paper ballots, conducting their own hand tallies and coming up with a thousand different results. He imagined county election boards asserting broad authority to do whatever they wished to address the doubts of voters. And as a Southerner, Landrum could not help but see parallels to a time before the civil rights movement, when White officials used the “local authority” argument to create all kinds of rules to keep themselves in power and others out.
“There are implications to seizing this kind of authority,” he said.
The more he read into the petition, the more he found himself thinking about what had happened four hours to the south, in Coffee County, where local election officials claimed they had authority to allow a Trump-allied forensics team to copy software and other data off voting equipment, and are now under criminal investigation.
“It occurred to me that I didn’t want to be part of that web,” Landrum said. “I needed to be very damn careful.”
Meanwhile, as Landrum was in his office reading further into the law, the election board members were being barraged with form letters urging them to “officially in public session discuss and vote to conduct a hand recount.”
Then, at the next election board meeting, that is exactly what the board did.
“All in favor?” said the chairman, as they voted to adopt a resolution directing Landrum himself to write an order to unseal the primary ballots, and the crowd clapped and cheered.
“I want to congratulate the board for showing courage here today,” Oles said.
“When you came in, we heard you, and we acted on it,” said a board member. “And that’s the way a republic works.”
But when the meeting was over, Landrum told the board why he was not going to be able to do what they were asking, at least not now.
The reason, he told them, was that the petition with the six paragraphs about open records, still pending in court, had to be addressed first. He explained to the board that in his reading of it, the petition was saying that the election board had violated the Open Records Act by not turning over the ballots. He explained that violating the Open Records Act was a crime. He said that either he was going to have to go to court to defend the county, or Mora was going to have to drop his petition, at which point he could do what the board was asking him to do.
But Mora said that he was not going to drop the petition.
“There was no way I was ever going to drop this,” he said later.
“I guess we’re on now,” Landrum thought to himself.
He filed a motion to have Mora’s petition dismissed. A hearing date was set.
And in the weeks that followed, word began spreading to neighboring counties and out into the vast social media maw of the election-denier movement that the person standing in the way of progress in Georgia was a county attorney named Phil Landrum.
One story accused Landrum of “violating his oath” and ignoring “a lawful order” from the election board. Another included his photo along with a post, “The old establishment will do anything to cover up the corruption and protect the system.” A prominent lawyer in the election-denier movement posted the hearing date and location on social media: “Pack the courtroom!” he wrote. At the next election board meeting, a man in the crowd asked the board, “Who is running the Pickens County board of elections? Is it the board of elections? Or is it Mr. Landrum?” Then members of the local GOP began lobbying the county commission to fire him.
As Landrum heard about all this he kept working, a famous quote from Shakespeare’s Henry VI running though his mind, “Let’s kill all the lawyers.”
He’d always thought that people forgot the larger context of the quote. “You’ve got to realize who said that,” he said. “It was an anarchist. That was the first step in the plan.”
A few weeks later, the county attorney sat down at the defense table inside Courtroom A.
By now things had become so tense that Landrum asked a lawyer he sometimes consulted to sit next to him at the table.
A videographer from a website known for spreading disinformation set up a camera.
Now the judge, assigned to the case from Atlanta after all the local judges recused themselves, took his seat.
“All right,” he said. “Are you ready to proceed?”
“Yes sir,” Landrum said.
He walked to the podium, and aimed his argument at what he described as “an allegation of a violation” of the Open Records Act contained in the petition.
He said that the ballots Mora wanted were sealed, as required by law. He said that sealed records are “not subject to an open-records request.”
“The complaint that alleges that therefore should be dismissed,” he said.
The argument lasted two minutes, and Landrum sat down.
“I’ll hear from the other side,” the judge said, and Oles walked to the podium.
“I’d like to start with what this case is not about,” he began.
And then for roughly 30 minutes the judge listened as Oles argued that the case was not at all about making sealed ballots available to the general public, as Landrum had said, but rather it was merely about making those ballots available to the Pickens County election board for the purpose of a hand recount.
“And why are we interested in these ballots?” he continued, explaining that voters had questions about the ballot marking devices, and the QR codes on the ballots, and the scanners, and the software. “So many reports have been done about the vulnerabilities of the system that our board of elections here in little Pickens County thought it was a sensible thing to do this check.”
Oles argued that the law gave the county election board “very broad authority in how it discharges its obligation to ensure accuracy and integrity” in the voting process.
“There is nothing in here that places a limit on what they’re allowed to do,” he said, adding that he believed it was not the court’s place to “second guess” the board’s decision.
The judge listened. He asked Oles to address Landrum’s specific argument.
“I want to emphasize that we are not asking for these ballots to be released to the general public,” Oles said.
The judge gave him another chance.
“Judge, if you grant the relief that my client is asking for, the very worst that happens here is those ballots would become available to the board for the board to do what it said it was going to do,” he said. “They’re not going to be released to the public. No harm is going to come to anyone as a result of it. But we will have been able to eliminate an important roadblock in the process. So. Thank you, judge.”
Landrum walked to the podium to respond.
“The lawsuit in front of us is an open-records violation,” he said. “The board cannot agree to the commission of a crime.”
“Specifically what they are asking me to do is unseal paper ballots,” the judge said.
“Specifically, they are saying those are subject to the Open Records Act,” Landrum said. “I think once you declare them subject to the Open Records Act, you cannot limit them to anything other than full public access, which is specifically what the legislature said they did not want to do. … If it’s granted to one person, it must be granted to every person.”
“The sealing concept becomes —” the judge said.
“Irrelevant,” Landrum said.
The judge asked Oles if he had anything further.
“The Open Records Act — okay, that count is in there,” Oles said. “We’re not asking for them to be given to the entire world, as counsel seems to fear.”
“I’m not unsympathetic to your situation,” the judge said. “But I try to follow the law, because that’s my oath.”
“Judge, I respect that,” Oles said. “But it seems to me the law does grant you authority to do what it is we’ve asked … and all we’re asking —”
“Okay,” the judge said, cutting him off.
He asked Landrum if he had anything further.
“We’ve been accused of violating the Open Records Act,” he said again. “That is what this case is about and —”
The judge stopped him.
“I’m ruling in your favor,” he said.
“Thank you, judge,” Landrum said.
“I like to tell a story in my order,” the judge said. “Prepare one that does.”
If Landrum felt any satisfaction in winning, he did not show it. He gathered his papers and went back to his office off Main Street, and started working on the order for the judge.
He was not used to writing stories, but he had been an English major in college. He knew that all stories needed endings, and he knew that this one was not over yet.
On Facebook, his photo kept appearing in angry posts, calling for him to be fired.
At the county election office, more open-records requests that he would have to review continued to pour in, including an automatically generated request that kept popping into the election supervisor’s inbox every five minutes one day, until there were roughly 1,000 identical requests from 1,000 different people.
And a few days after the hearing, the Pickens County GOP convened their regular meeting, where the featured speaker was a woman gaining prominence in the election-denier movement. The crowd listened as she explained what she billed as a fresh strategy.
“My argument is that the whole 2020 election was illegal,” she began, explaining that she had filed a lawsuit in Wisconsin and was bringing one to Georgia and needed people to sign on as victims. “How many of you are hopeless?”
People raised their hands.
“I’m going to give you hope,” she said.
Meanwhile, Landrum worked on the order. He sent a three-paragraph version to the judge, who sent it back for further elaboration.
He thought about how he might tell the story if he wasn’t confined to the demands of a court order. In his mind, it would be a story about the fragility of the moment in America, and the importance of the law in holding the nation together.
He remembered a conversation he had with a neighbor who was talking about the need for a new civil war.
“I said be careful what you wish for,” Landrum said. “Some of the constructs you want to tear down so badly are the only thing keeping you alive.”
In his office now, he went back to drafting the order, settling on four pages of careful legal prose that ended with, “Respondents’ motion to Dismiss is hereby GRANTED.”
The judge signed it, and the county attorney got back to work, because he knew what was coming.
“November is going to be hell,” he said. | 2022-10-30T10:27:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Pickens County, Ga. election skeptics lost fight to make ballots open records - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/30/pickens-county-ga-election-skeptics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/30/pickens-county-ga-election-skeptics/ |
Jets fans have reason to be pleased thus far this season. (Elsa/Getty Images)
They have a combined record of 11-3 as the Jets prepare to host the New England Patriots in an early-afternoon game Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., followed by the Giants playing a late-afternoon game at Seattle. Both teams are actually jockeying for playoff positioning as the second month of the regular season closes.
It's Patriots week. pic.twitter.com/71cQjADqT1
But Saleh’s confidence has been justified, at least to this point. Wilson made his season debut in Week 4 as the Jets began a four-game winning streak that has followed their 1-2 start.
Mac Jones is expected to make his second straight start since returning from a high ankle sprain. The Patriots have to hope it goes far better than it did Monday, when Jones threw an early interception and was replaced after three offensive series by rookie Bailey Zappe. The home crowd had been clamoring for the switch by chanting Zappe’s name and it had the feel of a quarterback succession in the making when Zappe led the Patriots to a pair of quick touchdowns. But things came undone from there and, at least for now, Coach Bill Belichick is sticking with Jones as the starter.
📱: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/2HQeNdaFPc pic.twitter.com/jR9nL6KT8t
Even so, this feels very much like a milepost game for the Jets. They’ve lost 12 straight matchups with the Patriots.
And now the Jets must play without standout rookie running back Breece Hall and right tackle Alijah Vera-Tucker, who suffered season-ending injuries during last Sunday’s triumph over the Denver Broncos. James Robinson, just acquired in a trade with the Jacksonville Jaguars, could help to replace Hall.
“Nobody in our locker room will look at each other and say, ‘Well, we just got worse because we’ve got to go with this guy,’ ” Saleh said at a news conference early in the week. “I promise you the person who’s stepping up isn’t thinking that. And I promise you we’re not thinking that, either.”
The turnaround has been immediate for the Giants under their new regime of General Manager Joe Schoen and Coach Brian Daboll. Quarterback Daniel Jones and tailback Saquon Barkley, the NFL’s second-leading rusher, no longer resemble draft busts. And the Giants are well positioned to vie for their first playoff appearance since the 2016 season.
“Brian Daboll was EXACTLY WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED for Daniel Jones and the Giants,” former NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III, now an analyst for ESPN, wrote last week on Twitter. “Jones has been playing for his football life every single game and is a front runner for MOST IMPROVED PLAYER while Saquon is the front runner for COMEBACK PLAYER OF THE YEAR. Coaching matters.” | 2022-10-30T11:02:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Sunday primer: Jets and Giants are actually in the playoff hunt - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/30/nfl-sunday-takeaways/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/30/nfl-sunday-takeaways/ |
On race-conscious university admissions, SCOTUS should follow precedent
Pedestrians walk through Harvard Yard at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on April 20, 2020. (Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg)
The Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday about whether it should overrule another long-held precedent on a hot-button issue: affirmative action in higher education. In several landmark cases over the past half-century, the court has said that colleges and universities may take race into account — in a limited way — as they consider students for admission. But an activist group is suing Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, arguing that race-conscious admissions policies violate the principles of equality enshrined in Brown v. Board of Education and the 14th Amendment — and the court’s conservative supermajority might take the chance to strike at affirmative action.
In 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing the majority opinion upholding affirmative action in Grutter v. Bollinger, expressed the hope that race-conscious admissions would be unnecessary 25 years hence. Unfortunately, deep racial disparities in educational attainment — and other evidence — show American society has not changed as much as Ms. O’Connor hoped. Absent modest race-conscious admissions policies, colleges and universities say they would not be able to construct educational communities that benefit from substantial diversity.
Affirmative action is a fraught issue on which people of goodwill disagree. But the court has already been far too aggressive in overturning major precedents merely because its membership — not reality — has seen dramatic shifts. The justices should resist doing so again.
Those challenging race-conscious admissions in this case do not argue that colleges and universities receive no benefits from building diverse student bodies. Rather, they claim that universities such as Harvard “award mammoth racial preferences to African Americans and Hispanics,” while discriminating against Asian Americans, resulting in “anti-Asian stereotyping, race-obsessed campuses, declines in ideological diversity, and more.” They also charge that universities could achieve sufficient diversity by giving more of an admissions “tip” to students of low socioeconomic status.
George F. Will: Colleges will racially discriminate no matter how the Supreme Court rules
The universities — and two lower courts — disagreed with the challengers’ assertions. They pointed out that studies showing discrimination against Asian Americans focused too much on comparing students’ grades and test scores, neglecting to account for other factors that helped determine who got admitted. Harvard’s process considers race a small “plus,” benefiting only students who were already highly competitive. Meanwhile, they said, attempting to achieve diversity by considering students’ socioeconomic status would result in classes that were less impressive in academic, extracurricular and personal achievement.
Underlying the arguments is a disagreement about the intent of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. The challengers contend that the amendment requires the government and related entities adhere to strict racial neutrality. But the universities have the better argument, pointing out that those who wrote the 14th Amendment rejected language that would support such an absolutist reading. “Both state and federal authorities at the time enacted race-conscious measures to promote African Americans’ equal participation in society,” they wrote. The amendment exists to enable Congress and other institutions to combat racial disparities — not as a directive to ignore them.
There is still room for disagreement about whether this reading of the 14th Amendment authorizes race-conscious admissions, and under what terms. The court has said that the circumstances under which race-conscious policies may proceed should be extremely narrow. But that is the most important point: The court has already spoken. After overturning Roe v. Wade in June, eviscerating another long-held precedent — absent showing glaring error in the court’s previous reasoning — would be reckless. The integrity of the court is in peril. | 2022-10-30T11:20:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | In Harvard affirmative action case, SCOTUS should follow precedent - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/harvard-unc-affirmative-action-admissions-supreme-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/harvard-unc-affirmative-action-admissions-supreme-court/ |
Kathy Hochul and New York’s never-ending backlash against crime
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Aug. 31 in New York. (Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo)
NEW YORK — Here we go again.
This is one of the most Democratic states in the union. It has also, for a half century, demonstrated just how durable crime is as a political issue.
One of the earliest demonstrations of the power of police unions was the success of a 1966 referendum abolishing a New York City Civilian Review Board that oversaw the behavior of law enforcement.
In 1993, Republican Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor of New York City largely in reaction to what many New Yorkers saw as chaos in their streets.
Mario Cuomo, a three-term Democratic governor, was ousted a year later after a campaign in which the victor, Republican George E. Pataki, zeroed in on the national progressive icon’s principled opposition to the death penalty. (It’s a tribute to the delightfully byzantine nature of New York politics that Giuliani broke party ranks that year to back Cuomo.)
And it was as the tough-on-crime candidate that Eric Adams prevailed in the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary and election.
So, there is absolutely nothing novel about the efforts of Rep. Lee Zeldin, New York’s Republican nominee for governor this year and a Donald Trump enthusiast, to ride a backlash to fear against Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.
A couple of polls showing Zeldin within striking distance of Hochul, a middle-of-the-road Democrat who once seemed to be cruising to victory, have been treated by her party like a five-alarm fire on Flatbush Avenue. If Zeldin can make it here, Republicans can make it anywhere.
In fact, many pollsters and pols suspect that Zeldin’s threat to Hochul is much overstated. Sean McElwee, executive director of Data for Progress, a liberal source of reliable survey data, told me “some portion of this narrative is being driven by right-wing pollsters.” It reflects a pattern of Republican success in encouraging red wave talk even in the face of more equivocal facts.
McElwee expects Hochul to win, in part because a Zeldin victory would require a truly monumental swing away from the Democrats — or an almost entirely demobilized Democratic electorate in a state Joe Biden carried in 2020 by roughly 2 million votes and 23 percentage points.
Polls showing a closer race than anticipated might even turn out to be a blessing for Hochul, the former lieutenant governor who took over in the summer of 2021 after Andrew M. Cuomo resigned as governor over sexual harassment allegations. In recent days, alarmed Democratic-leaning groups have stepped up their exertions to boost turnout while the governor and her surrogates fanned out across the state this weekend to energize the party’s electorate as early voting began.
There is a certain irony in the attack on Hochul over crime because she anticipated the problem. Last spring — aware, as the New York Times put it at the time, of “rising concerns over crime in an election year” — she pushed reluctant Democrats in the state legislature to toughen the state’s bail laws and expand the number of crimes for which defendants can be required to pay bail.
Working closely with Mayor Adams, who supports her, she called an emergency session of the state legislature in June to pass a new gun law after the Supreme Court struck down the state’s century-old law sharply limiting the carrying of firearms outside the home. A federal district judge blocked large parts of the new law, but an appeals court left the law in effect earlier this month as the state appeals.
Hochul got high marks early for the quality of her appointments and for pursuing soothing consensus-building after a chaotic period in state government. Her burden: Nearly 16 years of Democratic rule in the state but only a short period in office to make her own mark.
Yet without the crime issue, Zeldin would not be in contention.
The repetitious cycles of backlash speak to how difficult it is to have a balanced debate over the essentials of law enforcement — not only how to protect the public and support police officers doing a tough job but also how to prevent police abuses and build trust between the forces of order and the communities they serve.
The sweeping GOP attacks require Democrats such as Hochul to empathize with and act on the public’s understandable unease without reinforcing misperceptions that crime rates are anything close to where they were during the crime wave at the end of the last century.
“People would have prayed for these relatively low crime rates in the 1980s and 1990s,” Robert Snyder, a historian and author of “Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City,” said in an interview. “But now they seem high.”
Which gives Hochul and Adams no choice but to launch urgent new measures against subway crime in New York City even as she announces grants for upstate communities to fight gun violence. A more measured conversation about crime will have to wait until after Nov. 8. | 2022-10-30T11:20:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Kathy Hochul and New York’s never-ending backlash against crime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/kathy-hochul-crime-history-new-york-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/kathy-hochul-crime-history-new-york-politics/ |
Meta’s stock plunge shows the right — and wrong — way to tax wealth
Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., in July. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
Meta’s stock price has plunged, taking founder Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth — mostly invested in his company’s shares — down with it. Having hit a peak of $142 billion in September 2021, his net worth stood at roughly $38 billion on Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. And while several tech moguls have suffered big paper losses in the current market tumult (including Post owner Jeff Bezos), Mr. Zuckerberg’s 73 percent decrease appears to be the largest.
We’ll leave market commentary, and judgments about Mr. Zuckerberg’s expensive investments in virtual reality, to others. On matters of public policy, though, the episode should not be allowed to pass without noting its implications for how Americans think about taxing wealth. Specifically, it confirms the folly of plans, such as those offered by progressive Democrats, that would claim a certain percentage of ultra-rich households’ net worth each year. And, conversely, it confirms the wisdom of the existing system, which generally taxes the profits people make when they sell assets.
Last year, legislators led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed a 2 percent annual levy on household net worth above $50 million — with an extra 1 percent on fortunes larger than $1 billion. This was premised on the notion that unrealized capital gains do not exist just on paper, but are actually a form of income, in part because wealthy individuals can borrow against them to finance their — sometimes lavish — lifestyles. The White House went so far as to publish an analysis last year claiming that the 400 richest families in the United States only pay 8.2 percent of their income in taxes — if you consider unrealized gains as income.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s predicament illustrates the fallacy of this sort of thinking. If an unrealized gain is income that should be taxed, then an unrealized loss should be deductible, which in his case would undoubtedly wipe out all his individual tax liability. Of course, even in a bad year such as this one, Mr. Zuckerberg or, say, more modestly rich people who hold Meta’s now-beaten-down stock, could be forced to sell to raise cash to pay the wealth tax. That, in turn, could feed a downward spiral, with negative repercussions for middle-class 401(k)s and pension funds.
The progressives are right, though, that there is a need for greater wealth equality, and that tax reforms could help achieve it. Capital gains should be taxed when they are realized — that is, when an asset is sold for more than it was bought for. But the top tax rate should be higher — 37 percent, just like ordinary income, instead of 23.8 percent, as under current law. Since higher income households are far more likely to report capital rather than wage income, this would eliminate a major source of inequality. It would also reduce the economically wasteful tax-avoidance strategies through which wealthy people convert ordinary income to capital gains. And unrealized gains should be taxable by those who inherit appreciated assets; current law shields such windfalls via the “stepped-up basis” loophole.
Legislative action on wealth taxation is admittedly unlikely, given Republicans’ opposition and Democrats’ failure to advance Ms. Warren’s proposal or anything similar in the current Congress. Still, in terms of understanding the issues, Mr. Zuckerberg’s loss could be the public’s gain.
The Editorial Board on Big Tech
Opinion|Meta’s stock plunge shows the right — and wrong — way to tax wealth
Opinion|The Supreme Court should tread carefully on internet speech
Opinion|Is Facebook profiting off hate? It’s complicated. | 2022-10-30T11:20:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Zuckerberg's wealth dip amid Meta's stock slip shows how to tax wealth - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/mark-zuckerberg-meta-stock-wealth-tax/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/mark-zuckerberg-meta-stock-wealth-tax/ |
The biggest and least known fight of the 2022 election
Montana Supreme Court candidate James Brown on March 23. (Thom Bridge / Independent Record)
“Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi’s socialist agenda threatens Kentucky families and our way of life,” warns one television ad in a high-stakes race there. “Joe Biden is coming for our jobs, guns, way of life,” proclaims another, running in Montana.
If these sound like typical political ads, they are — and that’s the problem. Because they’re being run in the most important races that no one’s paying attention to: seats on state supreme courts. You’d have a hard time knowing it from these ads, but judicial elections in Kentucky and Montana, where these spots ran, are supposed to be nonpartisan, meaning that the candidates don’t run with a party label attached.
Supposedly. Montana Supreme Court candidate James Brown said his comment about Biden wasn’t a partisan statement but “directed to ensuring that Montana’s court system isn’t influenced by federal overreach.”
In Kentucky, Supreme Court candidate Joseph Fischer is backed by the Republican State Leadership Committee, which is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race, including paying for the ads castigating Biden and Pelosi. Fischer touts himself as “the conservative Republican” in the race and uses what he calls a “generic elephant” on his campaign materials. The state’s Judicial Conduct Commission is investigating — and Fischer is suing the body, claiming it violated his First Amendment rights.
The Montana and Kentucky ads may be especially unseemly, but judicial elections are a shameful feature of American democracy. They shouldn’t exist, except they do, in 38 states where state Supreme Court justices either run for election in the first instance or later on to keep their seats. Over the years, spending on these once sleepy races has risen precipitously, beginning in the 1980s as an outgrowth of the war between trial lawyers and businesses over collecting huge damage awards.
Paul Waldman: Judicial elections are a time bomb that could blow up our democracy
Then came the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, and with it a gusher of spending by outside groups on judicial elections. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, spending on Supreme Court races in the 2019-2o20 election cycle set a record of almost $100 million, of which outside groups accounted for an estimated $35 million, money whose sources are often hard to trace. In Wisconsin alone, one 2020 race cost almost $10 million.
This spending has tilted heavily to the right, although liberal groups have been catching up in recent years. The spending won’t be as high this cycle — expenditures in midterm election years tend to be significantly lower — but the stakes are bigger than ever. As my colleague Paul Waldman has noted, control of the state supreme court is at stake in four of the 18 states holding judicial elections this year: Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina.
State supreme courts were already key players in the redistricting process, but their role gained new prominence this election season for another reason: After the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, they may be the last bulwark for protecting abortion rights in many red states.
The conservative majority in Dobbs found that the federal Constitution doesn’t protect abortion rights, but that ruling leaves state high courts free to come to a different conclusion about the scope of state constitutional protections. That’s how the abortion referendum that was defeated by Kansas voters this summer came about; in 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution protects the right to abortion and the referendum proposed amending the constitution to overturn that decision.
In Illinois, which is shaping up to be the biggest-spending judicial race of the cycle, two of seven seats are open, and Republicans have the chance to control the court for the first time since 1969. That’s not by accident: one of the vacancies is the result of the unprecedented $10 million spent in the previous election to defeat an incumbent Democratic justice up for a retention vote, the first such loss in the history of the state.
“It won’t matter who’s governor or who controls Springfield,” warned an ad run by an independent expenditure group, All for Justice, funded by labor unions, trial lawyers and others, and which has reported raising more than $7 million since it was created in August. “The Justice in this seat on the Illinois Supreme Court will decide if abortion remains legal in Illinois.”
On the other side, Citizens for Judicial Fairness, funded by conservative billionaire Ken Griffin, reported spending nearly $5 million this month on Supreme Court races.
Meanwhile, a federal judge earlier this month, acting in a lawsuit filed by another conservative group, Fair Courts America, funded by conservative billionaire Richard Uihlein, blocked enforcement of two state laws passed in response to the big spending on judicial elections in 2020. One barred candidates from accepting out-of-state contributions, the other limited donations to independent expenditure committees to $500,000.
“The courts that we are left with today are courts that are subject to years of money and legislative manipulation to affect who sits on them,” said Douglas Keith, who studies spending on judicial races for the Brennan Center.
This is a mess, one that promises to become even worse in coming years. It’s the last thing that the judicial system needs, at a moment when courts are increasingly — and, given the staggering sums spent on them, understandably — viewed as just another cog in the partisan political machinery. | 2022-10-30T11:20:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | State supreme court races have turned ugly and expensive - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/state-supreme-court-races-importance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/state-supreme-court-races-importance/ |
Seoul crowd crush shows gaps in Korean safety rules, experts say
Police stand guard at the accident site in Itaewon on Sunday. (Jean Chung for The Washington Post)
SEOUL — Two days before tens of thousands of partygoers gathered for the wildly popular Halloween celebrations in Itaewon, the surrounding Yongsan district unveiled its safety countermeasures for the expected celebrations. They addressed coronavirus prevention, street cleanliness, restaurant safety inspections and crackdowns on potential use of drugs.
Missing from the district’s plans were preparations to manage the anticipated daily crowd of about 100,000 — or the potential for such crowds on narrow streets and alleys to lead to a suffocating crush. But that’s what happened Saturday, killing more than 150 and injuring at least 82, one of the nation’s deadliest incidents in recent years.
The oversight highlighted limitations in the nation’s policies governing mass gatherings in public places, experts say. Although detailed safety protocols are required for official events, such as festivals, the same disaster prevention methods do not apply to public spaces where large crowds are expected to gather informally, making safety protocols ambiguous with no clear agency in charge, they said.
The exact cause of the crowd surge in a narrow alley — where so many people were jammed together that some could not move their limbs — is under investigation. The tragedy has prompted debate over the role of national and local agencies and who should be held accountable.
“Even if there is no event organizer, if a large number of people are expected to participate as they were for this event, it seems necessary for relevant institutions to take preemptive measures to strengthen their prevention efforts based on” the potential risk for disaster, said Kim Dae-jin, professor in safety engineering and disaster mitigation studies at Woosuk University in North Jeolla province.
Live updates on the tragedy in Seoul
The Halloween festivities in Itaewon, Seoul’s foreigner-friendly district popular among expats and younger Koreans, have grown increasingly popular over the past decade. This year was the first Halloween since the start of the coronavirus pandemic that didn’t include social distancing or outdoor masking restrictions, drawing even more enthusiastic crowds.
It was not clear Sunday how many people turned out on Saturday night. Police did not expect Halloween crowds to be significantly larger than in previous years and did not deploy additional personnel ahead of the celebrations, South Korea’s minister of interior and safety, Lee Sang-min, said at a briefing Sunday.
Korea’s national police force has jurisdiction over Itaewon. The U.S. military provides “courtesy patrols” for the area, which is near a U.S. military base, said Wes Hayes, spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea. U.S. military police responded alongside Korean officers and assisted with first aid and crowd control, Hayes said.
In 2021, the South Korean Ministry of Interior and Safety released a disaster and safety management manual to help oversee protocols at large events after a review of previous tragedies at mass events in Korea and other countries. A 2017 government study, for instance, found insufficient safety measures led to crowd crushing or stampedes at more than a dozen concerts, festivals and sporting events. The report recommended strict requirements for events with more than 1,000 held at “multiuse facilities.”
Witnesses reported a dense crowd, a chaotic scene
“Massive public gatherings by ordinary citizens may have been in the government’s blind spot because we have not had experiences with such accidents in the past,” said Jeong Ho-jo, disaster management expert and chief executive of Safe School, a Seoul-based firm that provides safety trainings throughout the country.
“If responsibility and authority are ambiguous, there is a high probability that no one will do it,” Jeong said.
Jeong said South Korea’s disaster response needs to leverage support from businesses in the area, community leaders and media outlets to raise awareness. In addition, Koreans in their 20s have not been exposed regularly to safety trainings on how to conduct themselves in potentially dangerous situations, he said.
Although current students undergo safety training in school after the 2014 Sewol ferry sinking, people in their 20s and 30s — like so many of the victims in Itaewon — were left to fend for themselves.
Visual reconstruction: How and where the tragedy happened
The crowds during the first night of Halloween celebrations on Friday provided an ominous preview of the disaster the next night. Video footage from the alleyway Friday night showed that people had packed tightly, though not as much as on Saturday. Earlier on Saturday evening, some people who realized how crowded the area was becoming left early, according to witness accounts.
Many people tried to escape the crowd surge in the alleyway by trying to enter clubs or other businesses along the street. But some businesses turned them away, according to witness accounts in South Korean media.
Here’s what causes crowd surges like the deadly one in Seoul
The alley, on a hill, filled up with people Saturday night, according to news reports — though it’s unclear exactly how long it took. It was so packed that when people at the top of the hill fell, it created a cascading, domino effect for the crowd. Many people toward the bottom of the hill chanted, “Stop pushing, stop pushing,” according to witnesses interviewed in South Korean media.
“Accidents are not caused by a single cause, but should be divided into policy causes, administrative causes, indirect causes, and direct causes,” Jeong said. “If even one part had worked properly, it would not have led to this disaster.”
Julia Mio Inuma in Tokyo; Grace Moon, Kelly Kasulis Cho and Julie Yoon in Seoul; and Samuel Oakford in New York contributed reporting. | 2022-10-30T11:46:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Halloween crowd crush shows gaps in Korea safety rules, experts say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/seoul-halloween-crush-korea-safety/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/seoul-halloween-crush-korea-safety/ |
A Republican Party rally in West Miami on Oct. 19. (Bryan Cereijo for The Washington Post)
“There’s no way around it. It used to be a toss-up state, but I would say it’s not even close anymore,” said the 39-year old teacher, who is a registered Democrat and Colombian American. Restrepo predicts that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is running for reelection this year, “is going to win. … All the Republicans are going to win for sure.”
Although Democrats outnumber Republicans in Miami-Dade, the GOP has continued to make headway with Hispanic voters in the state’s most populous county. A GOP victory in Miami-Dade, where Hispanics make up almost 60 percent of the electorate, would be a stunning turnaround in a county that Hillary Clinton won by almost 30 points just six years ago. DeSantis himself lost the county by more than 20 points four years ago.
The Republican Party has kept up an aggressive year-round ground operation in Miami-Dade, work that has ramped up since former president Donald Trump made major gains with Hispanics here in 2020. The GOP is hoping for a strong overperformance with conservative-leaning Cuban Americans and further gains with the county’s growing Colombian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and other Hispanic groups this election.
Democrats say they aren’t seeing enough enthusiasm from their own party.
Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo hasn’t shied from calling out Democrats in Florida and nationwide for what she calls a lack of investment and attention to Miami.
Taddeo, who is Colombian American, is facing a battle against Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar in one of the only competitive House races in the state, and she’s concerned the party hasn’t taken the current political environment as a wake-up call.
“Republicans can get slaughtered in an election, and their response is, ‘We need to be more present. We need to be there. We need to invest money,” Taddeo said. “Democrats do terrible, and they walk away. … That is definitely one of the reasons why things are so tough.”
With Election Day looming, President Biden and Trump are both coming to Miami-Dade to campaign, a sign of the continued importance of the county. On Tuesday, Biden will be campaigning for Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee for governor, and Rep. Val Demings, who is challenging Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Trump is scheduled to stump a few days later for Rubio — but not for DeSantis, who is viewed as a potential 2024 rival.
Democratic leaders and organizers caution it’s still possible they’ll win the county; the party still boasts the largest number of registered voters in Miami-Dade. But they recognize a win probably won’t rival Clinton’s performance in the 2016 presidential election but would be closer to Biden’s 2020 showing, when he won the county by only seven points.
Miami-Dade has more than 575,000 Democrats, 487,000 independents and 435,000 Republicans, according to county registration statistics. Among Hispanics, however, Republicans outnumber Democrats — a gap that is growing.
Despite his pessimism about his party, Restrepo said he’s excited to vote for Demings in her bid to unseat Rubio. He said he loves Demings’s “strong voice,” but he doesn’t plan to support Crist.
“I’m going to leave that one blank,” said Restrepo, who shared that he canvassed for Crist in past election cycles. He said it’s not that he strongly dislikes Crist but thinks of him as “just a career politician.”
Interviews with other Democratic voters here show some are not fully on board with Crist’s bid for governor — even if they aren’t fans of DeSantis — and some feel they don’t know enough about Demings.
Roger Ledesma, 43, said he’s discouraged by how contentious he’s seen politics become in South Florida and nationwide. Ledesma, a Democrat, said he doesn’t plan to vote this year because he hasn’t “seen any great looking candidates running.”
Ledesma said he doesn’t see anything positive about DeSantis, whom he compared to a bully. But he said Crist “doesn’t seem like the strongest candidate, but I guess that’s what we’re given on the Democratic side.”
Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor at Florida International University, said the issue isn’t the Democrats at the top of the ticket. He said Crist is not a bad candidate, but he’s running against a popular incumbent.
“Even the best of candidates would have a hard time against DeSantis,” said Gamarra, who polls Latino voters in the United States and throughout Latin America. “I think that’s probably the harshest reality of all.”
During his first term in office, DeSantis has built a national reputation for inflaming culture wars, which has positioned him as a top GOP contender for 2024. But beyond social issues, polls have shown a majority of voters back how he has handled the pandemic and other challenges facing Floridians.
DeSantis is leading Crist by 51 percent to 44 percent with Florida’s Hispanic voters, according to a new Telemundo/LX News poll. In southeastern Florida, which includes Miami-Dade, 50 percent of Hispanic voters are backing DeSantis, compared with 46 percent supporting Crist, the poll found.
The poll also showed DeSantis leading with Hispanic independent voters, 56 percent to 34 percent. And DeSantis also is getting 6 percent support from registered Democrats, compared with 1 percent of Republicans backing Crist, the poll found.
DeSantis’s more controversial decisions have been supported by Hispanic voters in the state, the poll found. Half of Florida’s Hispanic voters were in favor of the governor’s move last month to fly Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, while 43 percent disapproved.
“Gov. DeSantis is winning in Miami because his agenda is popular and his opponents are a walking arroz con mango,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a Republican media strategist that led Trump’s 2020 national Hispanic advertising, using Cuban slang that means “a messy situation.” “The Democrats could earnestly address their issues with Hispanics, but they prefer to attribute their losses to ‘disinformation.’ This helps them save face with donors, but there’s an electoral price to being so out of touch with reality.”
GOP leaders in South Florida also credit the national party for investing in year-round engagement. The Republican National Committee opened a Hispanic community center in Doral last year that aimed to deepen the party’s connection with the community with such programs as offering sessions for immigrants to prepare for the civics portion of the naturalization test.
Fernand Amandi, a Democratic consultant and pollster here, agreed that there is a path for DeSantis to win Miami-Dade. The last GOP candidate for governor to accomplish that was former governor Jeb Bush 20 years ago. Bush is fluent in Spanish, and his wife is Latina.
A DeSantis win in Miami-Dade “means that Florida’s electoral votes, probably in the short term, hopefully not in the long term, will be safely in the hands of the Republican Party in presidential years,” Amandi added. “At the presidential level, it will be the declaration of Florida as a solid Republican state and no longer a battleground or swing state.”
Democratic and Republican leaders alike said much of the attention in this election has been on the gubernatorial race as DeSantis is being watched nationally as a potential presidential contender. But voters are also facing a constant stream of ads about the Senate race between Rubio and Demings, the three-term congresswoman and former Orlando police chief. Although Demings has outraised and outspent Rubio, the Cuban American senator has continued to lead in polls. If Rubio wins the majority of the vote in the county, it would be the first time a GOP Senate candidate has accomplished that since 2004.
Demings’s campaign said it has made Hispanic outreach in the county a priority with efforts such as investing in Caribbean radio and TV ads targeting the Afro-Caribbean community and making campaign stops in South Florida to meet with Hispanic voters.
Crist’s campaign is “leaving no stone unturned in Miami-Dade where we’ve made multi-million dollar investments to reach voters in both English and Spanish through grassroots, radio, television, and in mailboxes,” spokesperson Samantha Ramirez said in a statement.
Noel Chavez, 49, an independent voter, said he doesn’t really agree with everything he’s seeing from DeSantis and Rubio, but he’ll still be supporting them this election. For him, the top issue is the economy as he continues to see inflation affecting his day-to-day expenses.
“I don’t like everything about Ron DeSantis, but Charlie Crist is a joke,” said Chavez, a truck driver. “I like Democrats outside of Florida, but the Democratic Party just doesn’t have good leaders in Florida.”
Chavez said Crist’s political résumé — he served as a GOP governor of Florida, lost a 2010 Senate bid in which he ran as an independent, then lost a 2014 bid for governor as a Democrat — suggests that he lacks commitment. Chavez, who came to the United States from Cuba in 2009, said he was a fan of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum in 2018, and these days, he’s a big fan of Beto O’Rourke, this year’s Democratic nominee for governor in Texas.
Several Democratic voters in Miami-Dade held out hope that the county would remain blue even if they know DeSantis has a good shot of winning.
Nancy Suarez, 46, a teacher, said she supported Crist in the past and is enthusiastically supporting him again.
“The Republicans are just anti-everything. They’re very pro-charter schools. They’re trying to privatize education here, and that’s what feeds my family,” Suarez said, adding that she’s most focused on protecting abortion rights, LGBTQ rights and public education. “People come here for freedom … and they’re trying to take that away.”
At a recent rally hosted by progressive group Latino Victory in Coral Gables, Angel Montalvo, 29, said he’s excited about some candidates down the ballot and likes Crist’s running mate, Karla Hernandez, president of the United Teachers of Dade. But, he added, “I don’t trust Charlie Crist.”
Pebble Yaffe, 32, who attended the event with Montalvo, said, “This is about finding the lesser of the evils.”
Yaffe and Montalvo said they’ll still be voting for the Democrats on the ticket, but Montalvo said he feels there’s too much messaging on fighting socialism. “We want health care. We want housing. Let’s focus on that. Nobody cares about communism,” he said.
But Republicans have found success in painting Democrats as socialists. It’s a message that has resonated in the county because it is home to a huge concentration of Hispanic voters and Latin American exiles who fled leftist violence or dictatorships in Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Raúl Martinez, a Democrat who served for decades as the first Cuban-born mayor of Hialeah, said he’s disappointed with the way campaigns are being run this cycle, with fewer in-person events and a larger emphasis on ads and social media. He’s also worried about Republicans’ success in using socialism to rile up voters and says Democratic candidates just aren’t fighting hard enough.
“It’s just not the same Miami that it was in 2016,” Martinez said. | 2022-10-30T12:42:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Republican Ron DeSantis could win Miami-Dade County in 2022 election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/30/desantis-republicans-miami-dade/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/30/desantis-republicans-miami-dade/ |
Affirmative action in college admissions doesn’t work — but it could
By Roland G. Fryer, Jr.
The Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass. (Charles Krupa/AP)
Roland G. Fryer Jr. is an economics professor at Harvard University, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and founder of Equal Opportunity Ventures.
I benefited greatly from affirmative action. I very much hope my children will not — because the current system contains significant weaknesses. The fate of the American dream depends on reforming it to make it work.
On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in an affirmative action case involving Harvard, where I am a professor. Many people who are concerned about racial representation at elite institutions fear that the justices will end the practice as we know it. But if they do, they could provide an opportunity to create a new, data-based system that would truly help level the playing field for disadvantaged kids.
I was raised, in part, by my father, who was sentenced to eight years in prison when I was in my teens. He never emphasized education — he beat me up more times than he read to me. I didn’t meet my mother until I was in my 20s. While my test scores were stellar in the early grades, I became indifferent to school and angry at the world by the time I took the SAT in high school. My score was well below the national average, partly because my only goal was to score the 700 minimum for college athletic participation, and partly because I took the test while still drunk from a party the night before.
I needed help. I needed someone to see flickers of promise in me — even though I couldn’t recognize them myself. I needed an opportunity to show that were it not for the drama at home, my full-time job, biased teachers and the anger boiling inside me, I could compete with anyone.
But for my college professors’ willingness to look beyond my past performance — but for affirmative action — I would not have benefited from twice-weekly 7 a.m. meetings with the economics professor who showed me how science could be used to help people. Or the statistics professor who marveled at my stories of my favorite uncle — a wino with sophisticated strategies of betting on Greyhound races — and helped me use formal models to explain his behavior. Or a spot at the American Economic Association’s summer school for minority students.
But affirmative action is very often not targeted at individuals who, because of disadvantage, are achieving below their potential. Seventy-one percent of Harvard’s Black and Hispanic students come from wealthy backgrounds. A tiny fraction attended underperforming public high schools. First- and second-generation African immigrants, despite constituting only about 10 percent of the U.S. Black population, make up about 41 percent of all Black students in the Ivy League, and Black immigrants are wealthier and better educated than many native-born Black Americans.
How can affirmative action be made consistent with true meritocracy? How can the minority applicants who have lower scores but high potential be distinguished from those who just have low scores?
The answer is simple: Use data more rigorously. The problem is not affirmative action, per se. The problem is lazy implementation of it as a set of blunt racial preferences.
If racial diversity is the only goal, then explicit racial preferences — which are already illegal — are the most efficient way to achieve it. Mathematically, the optimal policy amounts to treating each race as a distinct applicant pool, and then admitting the top students from each one.
Under this approach, students of all races will disproportionately come from wealthier backgrounds, because grades, test scores and other factors used in admissions are positively correlated with parental income.
What if, instead, admissions involved the use of sophisticated analytics to predict which applicants stand to become the future top performers?
Evidence is accumulating that machine-learning algorithms can make better decisions than humans, especially when bias is present. A Cornell study of data on judges’ bail decisions found that computer predictions could reduce crime as much as 25 percent with no change in jailing rates. A Stanford University study found that a machine-learning algorithm performed as well or better than trained radiologists on screening x-rays. Why not use this approach in college admissions?
A machine-learning model would be fed historical admissions data, including candidates’ family background and academic achievement, and noncognitive skills such as grit and resilience, along with outcomes of past admission decisions. It would use these data to predict new applicants’ performance — as defined by each institution, for example college grade-point average or income 10 years after graduation. The model could figure out which characteristics best predict performance for various subgroups — for example, how salient SAT scores are for public-school Black students raised in the South by single mothers versus private-school White kids from the Northeast. Using only unadjusted test scores, all that context is lost.
This approach would sidestep other thorny issues in college admissions as well. If, as some have argued, the SAT test is racially biased, the algorithm will place less weight on scores for Black students. If students who demonstrate resilience as children are more likely to be hidden gems, the data will show that, too.
The Supreme Court seems poised to strike down the explicit use of race in university admissions. My hope is that it will still leave room for data-driven approaches to affirmative action that ensure real meritocracy. | 2022-10-30T13:09:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Affirmative action in college admissions doesn't work — but the Supreme Court could help fix it - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/affirmative-action-supreme-court-college-admissions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/affirmative-action-supreme-court-college-admissions/ |
Bono’s memoir is as rambling, fascinating and maddening as he is
Review by Chris Klimek
U2 frontman Bono. (Ross Stewart)
In the book that journalist Bill Flanagan wrote after embedding with the Irish rock band U2 during their most fertile creative period, 1995’s “U2 at the End of the World,” Flanagan told a joke about why James Joyce had to leave Ireland to write “Ulysses”: Because if he’d stayed he would’ve talked it.
I found myself recalling this fragment of a book I read a quarter-century ago as I made my way through Bono’s “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story,” the fascinatingly (and occasionally maddeningly) discursive memoir of the lightning-rod U2 frontman, a 62-year-old rock star almost as infamous for his talking as he is famous for his singing. The man with the perpetually sunglassed face and soaring voice is also, as you probably know, an agitator who has devoted at least as many of his 21st-century hours to AIDS, debt relief and anti-poverty campaigning as he has to music.
That successful second career is a reason someone who isn’t a rabid U2 fan might find value in his book. Celebrity do-gooders will and should be greeted with skepticism, but it’s tough to name another who has so successfully advanced from thrilling but largely ineffectual public condemnations of social ills to doing the tedious, unsexy, year-over-year, administration-over-administration work of building relationships with people who hold the levers of power. Even when, especially when, those people are George W. Bush or Rupert Murdoch.
“You don’t have to agree on everything if the one thing you do agree on is important enough,” writes Bono, a lesson he got from one of his singer/agitator mentors, Harry Belafonte. Love the guy, hate him or just wish he would shut up — familiar emotions even to a U2 fan as wearily devout as your humble reviewer — you can’t say his activism is of the lapel-pin variety.
He’s been annoying people, not always for honorable reasons, at least since he leaped into the audience during U2’s set at Live Aid in 1985. And once he learned that the fortune raised by that star-packed charity concert was barely enough to cover the weekly interest its African-nation beneficiaries were paying to their Western debtors, he changed his strategy. His self-deprecating (really!) account of how he and his partners, over the course of a two-year lobbying effort, got the 43rd president to ask Congress for a historic $15 billion commitment to fight AIDS in Africa — and how he abstained from criticizing the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq in the bargain — makes up two of the book’s most compelling chapters. (In a moment when it appeared the Bush administration wouldn’t deliver, George Soros accused Bono of having “sold out for a plate of lentils.”)
But that’s not what most readers will be here for. Nor will they expect, or find, much “Hammer of the Gods”-style debauchery in the remembrances of a guy who’s been in a band with the same three dudes for 45 years and married to his high school sweetheart for 40; both relationships he reflects upon with candor and humility. Like the memoirs of his pals Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen, “Surrender” is more introspective than salacious or score-settling, and proof that the tunesmith who wrote it also speaks fluent prose.
A lot of it is also familiar, the author having shared many of its anecdotes — the same phrases, even — in concert introductions to songs like “Iris,” about the mother who died suddenly when he was 14, and “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own,” about the father who died slowly when Bono was 41. His story about falling asleep with a whiskey in his lap at Frank Sinatra’s house and fearing he’d peed his pants in front of the Chairman is a road-tested staple of his set list. But have you heard the one about how Bono wandered off while he and his wife were drinking with Barack and Michelle at the White House, and the president found him passed out in the Lincoln bedroom? I hadn’t.
There were already plenty of tiles in the U2 mosaic: The documentary “From the Sky Down” retold their origin story while looking back on the difficult birth of their pivotal 1991 album, “Achtung Baby.” The 2015 Innocence + Experience Tour — a roadshow built around the “Songs of Innocence” album that had materialized unbidden on your iPhone the prior September, a digital intrusion for which Bono takes sole responsibility, by the way, absolving even his accomplices/bandmates and Apple chief executive Tim Cook — had a lot of overt autobiographical narrative, too. Then there are the four longform Rolling Stone interviews Bono sat for circa 1987-2017. This is not a man who has ever been reticent when it comes to talking about himself.
Paradoxically, a 560-page memoir is a safe space in which at last no one can accuse him of long-windedness. Or at least, he doesn’t have to feel the eyes of U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. boring into the back of his skull as the timekeeper sets down his drumsticks, having realized that the singer he recruited for his band in 1976 has once again embarked upon another rambling song introduction.
Well, what about those songs? Any fan who knows U2’s catalogue will recognize that the 40 tunes that supply titles for the book’s 40 chapters are not sequenced chronologically. That’s because the tale those chapters tell is not a linear one. Beginning with an account of a critical heart operation Bono underwent in 2016, the book bobs and weaves among subjects and eras, guided by thematic links more than by temporal signposts.
The dexterity with which Bono pivots from the mysteries of songwriting to dissertations on, for example, what he learned when Mikhail Gorbachev came to his house in Dublin for Sunday dinner, is variable. There’s more than a hint of the literary ambition you might expect from a man who once co-wrote a song with Salman Rushdie. Bono knows his way around a joke, and he is well aware of his unfortunate habit of turning an earnest discussion of almost any subject that isn’t music into a TED Talk.
That doesn’t mean he can always stop himself from doing it or that he even tries. It does mean the book is a representational self-portrait, not an aspirational one. Bono isn’t consciously describing himself when he talks about “putting the messy in messianic,” but he could be. The phrase is glib, but still pretty good. Whoever thought of it should try being a songwriter.
Chris Klimek works for Smithsonian magazine and is co-host of the podcast “A Degree Absolute!”
40 Songs, One Story | 2022-10-30T13:26:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bono memoir Surrender book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/30/bono-u2-memoir/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/30/bono-u2-memoir/ |
The scene after a double car bomb attack at a busy junction in Mogadishu, Somalia on Sunday. (Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP)
NAIROBI — Twin car bombs ripped through a crowd of people outside Somalia’s education ministry, killing at least 100 people and injuring 300, the country’s president said Sunday. It was the highest civilian death toll from a single attack in five years.
The attack comes as a fiercely-fought offensive by resurgent clan militias backed by the central government has clawed back territory in central Somalia from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab insurgency. On Sunday, the government news agency announced that the military had killed around 100 al-Shabab fighters as soldiers captured territory about 100 kilometers northeast of the capital.
Mohamud blamed al-Shabab in his Sunday address, adding: “These are men who could not face our army on the battlefield and have resorted to attacking from the rear to inflict harm on innocent civilians.”
Al-Shabab has not publicly claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack, but it is the only militant group that frequently carries out large bombings in Somalia. It often does not claim attacks with large numbers of civilian casualties.
“No surprise Al-Shabaab more lethal now. Its back is to the wall. It has lost more territory in 4 months than it has in 5 years. It is facing most serious clan revolt ever. Its economic empire under strain,” tweeted Rashied Abdi, the chief analyst at the Nairobi-based Sahan Research think tank. “Brace. It will get worse before it gets better.”
Abdulkadir Adan, who runs the capital’s only free ambulance service, said there were two blasts — one that left the street strewn with dead and injured people screaming for help, and another that targeted the first responders. One of his paramedics and a driver were caught in the second blast, he said.
“He (the paramedic) had loaded three people into the back of the ambulance and was trying to start it,” he said. “The ambulance was completely destroyed. It was full of blood.” The paramedic and driver were injured, he said, and he did not think the patients survived.
“Women, children, workers in the restaurant — all the parts of human beings were scattered. You can’t imagine,” he said.
As his colleagues gathered amid the blood and shattered glass, the second bomb detonated, killing one journalist and wounding two others. It severed two of Abdulle’s fingers and peppered him with shrapnel. | 2022-10-30T13:30:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 100 dead in Mogadishu bombings, worst civilian toll in years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/somalia-mogadishu-bombings-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/somalia-mogadishu-bombings-death/ |
Biden is making the most of good economic news
President Biden delivers remarks at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, N.Y., on Thursday. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
The Biden administration got a rare chance last week to brag about economic growth after two quarters of decline. The economy grew 2.6 percent in the third quarter compared with the year before, a relief from two consecutive quarters of contraction. While inflation fears persist and many economists predict a recession, the administration seized upon the slightly-better-than-expected growth figures.
In a written statement released Thursday, President Biden crowed, “For months, doomsayers have been arguing that the U.S. economy is in a recession and congressional Republicans have been rooting for a downturn.” But here, he said, was evidence of an economic recovery. “Our economy has created 10 million jobs, unemployment is at a 50 year low, and U.S. manufacturing is booming,” he continued. “Today’s data shows that in the third quarter, Americans’ incomes were up and price increases in the economy came down.” He acknowledged that more had to be done on inflation but happily pointed out: “Even with our historic economic recovery, gas prices are falling."
While this might seem unduly rosy, Biden is striving to set up a contrast in the final run up to the election. “Congressional Republicans have a very different agenda — one that would drive up inflation and add to the deficit by cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations,” he said in his written statement. “It would raise the cost of prescription drugs, health care, and energy for American families.”
Later at a community college in Syracuse, N.Y., Biden reiterated his central message: "It’s been a rough few years for a lot of people I grew up with, hard-working Americans. For a lot of families, things are still tough,” Biden said. “But there are bright spots out there where America is reasserting itself.” He boasted about a $100 billion investment over 20 years from Micron in chip manufacturing; the creation of nearly 700,000 manufacturing jobs; and 5.4 million new small businesses.
Moreover, Biden’s emphasis on manufacturing recovery provides a counterargument for Democrats in tough races, such as Ohio Senate nominee Tim Ryan. Ryan has emphasized efforts to bring back hard-hit areas of his state, arguing in a recent debate with Republican opponent J.D. Vance, “I’m not going to apologize for spending 20 years slogging away to try to help one of the hardest economically hit regions of Ohio.” He contrasted his work with Vance’s remark that some jobs just aren’t coming back, which Ryan described as evidence that Vance has “given up” on Ohio workers.
Biden, in the days before the midterms, comes back to his question: What are Republicans for? In Syracuse, he listed what they are against and plan to reverse including prescription drug cost containment measures and green energy subsidies. He called Republicans’ plan to give power back to Big Pharma to set drug prices, eliminate the $35 cap on insulin, undo green energy investments and get rid of the newly instituted minimum corporate tax rate “reckless and irresponsible." He argued they would make inflation worse, and he panned Republicans for suggesting they would shut down the government if they don’t get their way on entitlement cuts.
In a nutshell, Democrats’ closing argument asks voters to make a choice: Do they want the side that brought investments in infrastructure and manufacturing, lower health-care costs, lots of jobs and perhaps some sign of relief from inflation? Or do they want the side promising chaos and supply-side economics?
Even if Biden’s message isn’t persuasive enough to hold off Republicans in the midterms, his argument should serve as a reminder that he’s had significant success in fulfilling his economic vision with huge investment in infrastructure and high tech manufacturing while raising taxes on big corporations. That’s his vision of an economy built “from the bottom up and the middle out.”
Of course, there are many things standing in his way going forward. This includes not only a MAGA party that aims to wreak havoc on the economy and undermine democracy, but also significant economic headwinds. This includes a war in Europe, which continues to push up energy costs, and a Federal Reserve trying to pull off the nearly-impossible “safe landing.” Plus, inflation will make further domestic spending (such as his massively expensive student loan debt forgiveness plan) more difficult.
Given all that, he should enjoy the tidbit of good economic news while he can. | 2022-10-30T14:09:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden is making the most of good economic news - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/biden-midterm-economic-growth-democrats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/biden-midterm-economic-growth-democrats/ |
Itaewon, vibrant area where tragedy struck, has complex history in Seoul
The aftermath Sunday of the deadly crush of people in Seoul's thriving Itaewon district. (Jean Chung for The Washington Post)
SEOUL — Itaewon, a hub for foreigners long known for its proximity to a major U.S. military base — and now identified with Seoul’s Halloween crowd crush that claimed over 150 lives — has long occupied a distinctive place in the South Korean capital’s history.
The nearby Yongsan area was occupied by the Japanese and then Americans. The United States occupied the Yongsan base after World War II and began leaving in 2017, largely seen as finally returning the land back to Korea, although many issues are still in dispute.
As recently as the 1990s and early 2000s, the neighborhood was known for knockoff designer goods and as a red light district largely supported by U.S. troops. But in the years since, it has reinvented itself as a nightlife hub. It caters to a large contingent of foreigners and expats, reflecting global influences and values. It is the most international district in Seoul, with hip lounges, bars and cafes modeled after venues in the United States, Europe and Russia.
More liberal societal attitudes are also present in Itaewon — particularly with regard to sexuality. The neighborhood includes gay clubs, in a country where homosexuality remains taboo. The internationally popular Korean drama “Itaewon Class,” which is set there, has a Black character and a trans character, racial diversity and gender fluidity that’s largely absent from other South Korean entertainment.
“For Seoulites, it’s kind of a touristy place,” said Woo, a gaming executive who frequents trendy venues there for business. He spoke on the condition that only his last name be used because his company does not authorize him to speak to reporters. “A lot of Koreans who hang out in Itaewon go to mingle with international people and, in a way, put away their Korean-ness. I bet a lot of young Koreans who were there last night weren’t from Seoul.”
The attractions of Itaewon are similar to those of Times Square. An estimated 100,000 people flocked to the district Saturday to celebrate Halloween — an imported holiday increasingly popular with young South Koreans.
The celebrations were the first large-scale events since the coronavirus pandemic sparked cancellations and stringent social distancing measures.
Many alleys in the neighborhood are steep, some with steps, sandwiched between large, gleaming storefronts such as Lululemon’s. But as huge crowds pushed through the same tight corridors that give the neighborhood its charm, there was a crush. Footage from the scene suggests the neighborhood wasn’t able to cope with the volume of partygoers.
The disaster occurred in an alley on an incline next to the Hamilton Hotel, which sits above a major subway station. Through its iterations, the Hamilton has remained a popular meeting place for people who then head elsewhere. When trains arrive at busy times, they can send surges of people onto streets already pulsating with revelers.
Although a cause of the surge has not been determined, experts say the pressure from such crushes makes it hard to breathe because people’s lungs don’t have space to expand. It takes about six minutes to go into compressive or restrictive asphyxia, the probable cause of death for people killed in a crowd crush, said G. Keith Still, a crowd safety expert and visiting professor of crowd science at the University of Suffolk in England. | 2022-10-30T14:49:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Itaewon, scene of Seoul Halloween crowd crush, has complex history - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/itaewon-halloween-crowd-crush-south-korea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/itaewon-halloween-crowd-crush-south-korea/ |
Police stand guard Sunday at the site of the crowd crush in Seoul's Itaewon neighborhood. (Jean Chung for The Washington Post)
SEOUL — It looked like the apocalypse had hit, one witness said — an evening of panic and disarray that would have sounded like a scene from a horror movie on any other Halloween.
The bodies of several lifeless people were sprawled on the ground in the Itaewon neighborhood on Saturday night, their shirts pulled over their faces after rescuers checked for acute injuries, videos reviewed exclusively by The Washington Post showed.
Bodies lay across the ground near the Atelier club, steps from the narrow alley where a crowd crush led to over 150 deaths. People frantically performed CPR in the area, with police running in and out of the scene.
One man had a red soccer jersey pulled over his face as he was treated with a defibrillator. A woman’s body was covered, with blood on the ground next to her. Several lay in the street with their mouths open, appearing to be dead.
“Once we saw them doing that, that’s when the music, the lights, finally got shut down,” Joshua said. “That’s when it turned dark.”
Sophia Akhiyat, a 31-year-old doctor from Florida, was led to the alley by a worried police officer some time after 11 p.m. to help those who had been hurt. She saw people marking the dead with makeup, she said, recalling a “pile of humans” at the mouth of the narrow street preventing ambulances from entering the area.
“People were laid across here all the way down, about a half mile,” he added, gesturing toward Itaewon’s main market street, where emergency responders had wheeled covered corpses into ambulances in waves for several hours later that night. “There were so many bodies on the floor.”
The Halloween crush in Seoul's Itaewon district killed over 150 people and injured dozens. South Korea declared a period of national mourning on Oct. 30. (Video: Julie Yoon/The Washington Post, Photo: Jean Chung/The Washington Post)
Dozens of reporters lingered in the streets until about 5 a.m. Sunday morning as officials from the Yongsan Fire Department provided routine updates. Bodies covered in blue sheets were wheeled past the crowd and placed into the back of ambulances in several waves throughout the night; the atmosphere was somber, with journalists speaking in a whisper, if at all, as they waited for updates on what turned out to be a swiftly increasing death toll.
The authorities did not give a time for the next press conference. Media are starting to clear out of the street after at least 146 people were killed. The mood has been somber for hours. After seeing everything we’ve just witnessed, I feel strange leaving this empty road behind. pic.twitter.com/sLirNHSeIT
By about 10:45 a.m. Sunday, the throng of reporters had returned. Trash littered the sidewalks, with a small plastic jack-o’-lantern remaining in the taped-off alley.
A coffee shop across the street posted a handwritten sign saying that it was closed for the day as a form of condolence for the victims. Shopkeepers and pedestrians swelled into the street around the site of the tragedy throughout the day, some standing in silence as they stared at the unchanging alley before them. Officials in black vests from Korea Disaster Victim Identification waited in the middle of a crosswalk near the Hamilton Hotel, conversing quietly.
Several people recalled seeing only a few police officers in the area before the crush, directing traffic on the main market street near the subway stations. South Korea’s interior minister said Sunday that many officers were assigned to monitor a protest a few miles away, in the Gwanghwamun area, and that the police had not anticipated unusually large crowds on Halloween weekend.
Dano Leemann, a restaurant manager in Itaewon, looked tired, as though he was in disbelief, when he spoke on Sunday. He said he saw no more than a dozen police officers in the area before the crush.
“I saw people dying in front of me,” he said. “I didn’t sleep last night.” | 2022-10-30T14:49:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seoul crowd crush witnesses recount Halloween night of horror - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/south-korea-witnesses-halloween-crowd-crush/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/south-korea-witnesses-halloween-crowd-crush/ |
A Seoul woman was being stalked. Now she’s dead. How can I feel safe?
I realized how little stalking and harassment are taken seriously in South Korea and around the world
Perspective by Hyesu Lee
From time to time, I feel unsafe as I’m walking home or leaving work. But I’ve always brushed it off, convincing myself that nothing serious would ever happen to me.
Then last month, a young woman was killed in a subway bathroom in Seoul, allegedly by a former co-worker who had stalked her for years. The event shook me to the core as I realized how little stalking, harassment and other gender-based crimes are taken seriously in South Korea and around the world. It has led me to reevaluate what it means to be truly safe. | 2022-10-30T16:25:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Seoul woman was being stalked. Now she’s dead. How can I feel safe? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/30/seoul-woman-was-being-stalked-now-shes-dead-how-can-i-feel-safe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/30/seoul-woman-was-being-stalked-now-shes-dead-how-can-i-feel-safe/ |
Police investigating brawl between Michigan, Michigan State players
An investigation is underway after a scuffle between Michigan and Michigan State players Saturday following the Wolverines' victory. (Paul Sancya/AP)
A police investigation is underway after a postgame scuffle in which Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh said two of his players were “assaulted” by Michigan State players in the tunnel after Saturday’s 29-7 Wolverines win at Ann Arbor’s Michigan Stadium.
Video via The Detroit News showed Spartans players throwing punches and kicking at defensive back Ja’Den McBurrows. Melissa Overton, Michigan’s deputy police chief, said (via the Free Press) that an investigation was underway in conjunction with Michigan State’s police and Michigan’s athletic department and football program.
“Just like anybody, you want to protect your players,” Harbaugh told reporters. “Ten on one, whatever it was, it was just bad. It needs to be investigated and brought to a conclusion. Our athletic director will make sure that takes place.”
Although Harbaugh said “two of our players were assaulted,” only McBurrows was visible in some videos, although the Free Press noted that another video entering the tunnel showed Michigan cornerback Gemon Green also working his way through Spartans players. Harbaugh said one player appeared to have a nose injury but did not identify him.
Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel joined Harbaugh in addressing the media and called the incident “completely unacceptable. I’ve talked to the [Big Ten Conference] commissioner — he’s looking into it. The police are also looking into it, because they’ve seen the video and they’re addressing it. We will leave it in their hands, but this is not how we should interact after a game.
The Michigan Daily identified some of the Spartans surrounding McBurrows as linebacker Itayvion Brown, defensive end Zion Young and safety Angelo Grose.
Michigan State Coach Mel Tucker told reporters after the game that he did not discuss the matter with his players in the locker room because “I don’t know what happened. … I know it was a heated game. Things were heated. We were trying to get our guys in the locker room. We’ll have to figure out what happened.”
Another video showed a fan leaning down from the stands and touching Tucker’s head as he entered the tunnel. Tucker batted the man’s hand away in the brief video.
Kevin Warren, the conference commissioner, was at the game and the Big Ten later released a statement promising “appropriate action” after an investigation.
“The Big Ten Conference is aware of an incident this evening at Michigan Stadium between student-athletes from Michigan State University and the University of Michigan,” it said. “The conference is currently gathering information, will thoroughly review the fact, and will take appropriate action.”
Early Sunday morning, Michigan State Athletic Director Alan Haller said in a statement: “I have been in contact with Commissioner Warren. We will cooperate with the conference office and other efforts to gather more information.”
Tucker issued a statement about the incident Sunday morning, tweeting in a thread, “As Spartans our program has a responsibility to uphold the highest level of sportsmanship. While emotions were very high at the conclusion of our rivalry game at Michigan Stadium, there is no excuse for behavior that puts our team or our opponents at risk.“ “In complete cooperation with law enforcement, the Big Ten Conference and MSU and UM leadership, we will evaluate the events in Ann Arbor and take swift and appropriate action.”
The incident is the second to occur in the tunnel of Michigan stadium, which opened in 1927, in as many games. Penn State and Michigan players got into a heated exchange as they entered the tunnel at halftime of last weekend’s 41-17 Wolverines victory.
“All you got to do is walk into their locker room,” Harbaugh told reporters Monday. “Like, you saw pretty clearly that they completely stopped. They weren’t letting us get up the tunnel. And it just seemed like a sophomoric ploy to keep us out the locker rooms.”
There is only one entrance to the locker rooms from the field at the Big House and the visiting team usually goes in first. After the Penn State game, an unidentified Michigan player appeared to be in the tunnel while the team was still celebrating on the field.
“There really should be a policy that the first team that goes in, there is a buffer,” Penn State Coach James Franklin said afterward. “If not, this team starts talking to this team, they start jawing back and forth, and something bad is going to happen.” | 2022-10-30T17:12:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Michigan-Michigan State brawl under police investigation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/30/michigan-michigan-state-brawl-police/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/30/michigan-michigan-state-brawl-police/ |
Twitter’s new owner sowed doubt about law enforcement’s account as suggestions of a ‘false flag’ flooded social media sites
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi leaves her office on Jan. 21, 2021, with her security detail. (Drew Angerer/Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty)
The skepticism didn’t stay in right-wing echo chambers but seeped also into the feeds of popular online personalities, including Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk.
“There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” he wrote Sunday morning, pointing his 112 million followers to a sensationalist account of the episode published by a site known for spreading right-wing misinformation.
The rush to sow doubt about the assault on Pelosi’s husband illustrates how aggressively influential figures on the right are seeking to dissuade the public from believing facts about the violence, seizing on the event to promote conspiracy theories and provoke distrust. The House speaker has long been a bugbear for the right, which has intensified its rhetorical blitz on her in recent years — even as extreme threats against members of Congress have increased.
“They are creating a dystopia wherein lying and physical violence become part of our politics,” he said.
Dinesh D’Souza, whose recent film “2000 Mules” burnished his right-wing bona fides by pushing Trump’s debunked claims of widespread voter fraud, aired falsehoods and innuendo in a viral Twitter thread suggesting the attack on Paul Pelosi was a form of intentional misrepresentation sometimes referred to as a “false flag.”
The basis for his skepticism seemed to be mistaken reporting by a Fox affiliate, which later appended a correction to its article, that the assailant was in underwear at the time of his arrest. In fact, the suspect, identified by law enforcement as David DePape, 42, demanded to know, “Where is Nancy?” — a call echoing the exclamations of pro-Trump protesters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — before bludgeoning her husband with a hammer.
D’Souza did not accept those details. Nor did many of his 2.5 million Twitter followers, according to their replies, which included calls of “amen.”
“The Left is going crazy because not only are we not BUYING the wacky, implausible Paul Pelosi story but we are even LAUGHING over how ridiculous it is,” he wrote early Sunday morning. “What this means is that we are no longer intimidated by their fake pieties. Their control over us has finally been broken.”
Musk, who calls himself “Chief Twit,” also appeared unconvinced by the official story forming in the days after the attack. In response to a tweet from Hillary Clinton condemning the attack and claiming it resulted from “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” spread by Republican politicians, he pointed instead to a story in the Santa Monica Observer claiming without evidence that Paul Pelosi was drunk at the time of the assault and “in a dispute with a male prostitute.” Musk, who later deleted the tweet, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
The website of the Santa Monica Observer, described by fact-checkers as a low-credibility source favoring the extreme right, was offline Sunday morning. But an archived version of the story promised to explain “what really happened early Friday morning in San Francisco.”
It unspooled a lurid tale about nudists and a tryst gone terribly wrong. It also speculated about Pelosi’s medical condition and the security at the home he shares with the House speaker in San Francisco’s tony Pacific Heights neighborhood. And it featured tweets reposted by Sebastian Gorka, a former White House adviser to Trump who attended a 2017 inaugural ball wearing the insignia of a Hungarian nationalist group historically linked to the Nazis.
The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times has called the site “notorious for publishing false news,” highlighting its fantastical claim, in 2016, that Clinton had died and been replaced by a body double.
Scores of tweets included claims that the attack was a false flag, including some responding directly to messages from the House speaker. “@SpeakerPelosi Accountability is coming,” one user warned. “Tired of your Lies and False flags. Your Treasonous.” Another wrote, “I don’t know why the Paul Pelosi story falling apart is such a surprise. False flag attacks are a common tool of the left.”
Many focused on next month’s high-stakes midterm elections, which will decide control of Congress.
“This was way too coincidental,” wrote a user whose bio included the “#MAGA” rallying cry. “A week before a big election, to make Pelosi out to be a figure of needing sympathy, after being a lying, nasty, aggressive, vindictive, bullying b---- for decades. She doesn’t get a pass.”
Elected officials and other popular figures on the right also heaped mockery on Pelosi’s husband even as he remains hospitalized for his injuries.
Wendy Rogers, a Republican state senator in Arizona who has set fundraising records in her state while aligning herself with right-wing extremists, shared a spurious Amazon listing for a “Paul Pelosi Fake Attack Novelty Item Headpiece.”
Larry Elder, a conservative radio host who mounted a failed bid for governor of California in the recall election last year, reacted to the assault by ridiculing Pelosi for a charge earlier this year of driving under the influence. “First, he’s busted for DUI, and then gets attacked in his home,” the commentator wrote on Twitter. “Hammered twice in six months.”
When asked Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether Republicans should “do more to reject conspiracy theories and dangerous rhetoric,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who chairs the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, said it was important to “condemn the violence” and to convince people preparing to vote that the upcoming midterm elections would be “free and fair.”
Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed to this report. | 2022-10-30T18:52:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paul Pelosi attack prompts Elon Musk and political right to spread misinformation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/30/paul-pelosi-attack-misinformation-elon-musk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/30/paul-pelosi-attack-misinformation-elon-musk/ |
A Post reporter drove more than 400 miles along the drought-stricken Mississippi River. Here’s what he found.
Visitors swarm around Tower Rock — which is usually isolated by the waters of the Mississippi River — near Brazeau Township, Mo., on Oct. 23. (Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Finley, Tenn. — ‘A blessing and a curse’
Wickliffe, Ky. — ‘I can handle a flood’
Osceola, Ark. — ‘$50 million is sitting here’
Cairo, Ill. — A river traffic jam
Memphis — ‘It’s going to impact all of us’
Portageville, Mo. — Sunset on the ‘desert’
Over several days this past week, Washington Post climate reporter Brady Dennis drove more than 400 miles in five states, from Memphis to Cairo, Ill., talking with people whose lives and livelihoods are inextricably linked to the Mississippi River and with people who had come to marvel at how drastically the ongoing drought has weakened it.
Historically low water levels have caused far-reaching concerns over yet another rupture in the international supply chain and what that could mean overseas and for typical Americans. The Mississippi, after all, is the nation’s aquatic superhighway, carrying roughly 60 percent of the nation’s corn and soybean exports south, and critical supplies such as fertilizer and fuel back north.
But along the Mississippi, the worries these days are more visceral and immediate.
A scorching summer has given way to a dusty and disquieting fall for those who depend on the river, with few signs of relief in sight. Drive through communities that line its banks, and you will encounter a mixture of faith, frustration, anxiety and acceptance — along with agreement that few can remember a time when the mighty river has been so weakened.
Jeremiah Hollingsworth climbed down from the massive combine that had been rumbling across his family’s 4,200 acres, harvesting soybeans on yet another bone-dry fall day.
He stood on the land his father and grandfather had farmed, steps from the earthen levee that overlooks the Mississippi. He’d seen the river’s waters swell many times, including in 2011, when the river inundated the farm and flooded an equipment garage and multiple family homes.
But now, a shrunken, drought-stricken river was forcing hard choices. Prices for his crops had fallen as the cost to transport them spiked. Local grain elevators had run out of capacity as they competed for space on the few barges headed south.
“It’s halting our progress drastically,” he said.
For the first time, Hollingsworth had decided to store tens of thousands of bushels of beans in plastic containers. He would sell them weeks from now when, he hoped, he could get a better price and barges could again reliably navigate to New Orleans.
Waiting was risky, but then life along these banks always has been. Those who depend on it long ago learned to take the good with the bad, to have faith that better days lie ahead.
“The river is a blessing and a curse,” said Hollingsworth, 45. “Every year has got its differences.”
Down a long and winding dirt road sits a concrete boat ramp stretching 200 feet down an embankment. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s an awfully important spot to Larry Barnes.
For decades, he and his employees at Barnes Marine Services have delivered groceries and other supplies to the barge crews traversing the river. These days, that job is proving more daunting than ever.
Over a 120-mile stretch of parched river, this is the one remaining boat access ramp from where he can reliably launch a 24-foot boat full of supplies. The other ramps that dot the banks are no longer long enough to reach the shrunken river.
“The water isn’t even up on them,” he said. “It’s making it tougher to do what we do.”
Barnes figures his business has fallen off about 15 percent over the past month as river traffic has stalled and dredging operations have closed the river in numerous places, leaving barges backed up with nowhere to go.
Like so many others, Barnes has carried on through his share of river flooding. He also remembers past droughts, in 1980, 1988 and 2012. This bout is as rough as any he can recall.
“I can handle a flood better than I can handle a drought. I think everyone on the river will tell you that,” he said. “It’s at a standstill right now.”
But experience tells him that this scourge will pass.
“It’ll come and go,” Barnes said. “You keep plugging along. And have faith. And just pray that it’ll start raining.”
In the fall, the heartland’s economic engine is on full display along roads up and down the river, where flat, fertile land stretches toward the horizon. Mile after mile, against the backdrop of changing leaves, farmers are harvesting endless rows of golden soybeans and corn, their tractors enveloped by clouds of dust rising from the thirsty soil.
Massive trucks loaded with grains rumble along narrow country roads, heading toward the river and the grain elevators that purchase crops and send them south toward the Gulf of Mexico.
Only when you reach the river’s edge, at places like Poinsett Rice & Grain’s loading facility, do the immediate impacts of the drought become startling and unmistakable.
“Probably close to $50 million is sitting here,” said Jeff Worsham, the port’s manager, as he stood high on a loading dock, looking out over the roughly 75 barges stranded in this small offshoot of the Mississippi.
Below, trucks heavy with soybeans from nearby farms continued to pull into the grain elevator complex. But Worsham has only so much room left to put the crops he buys from farmers these days.
With restrictions on how many barges can travel on the river at a time, as well as limits on how heavily each can be loaded, the logjam isn’t likely to ease anytime soon. And higher transportation costs are sure to cut into his bottom line.
Worsham’s quandary in this one corner of the Mississippi is a microcosm of the struggle playing out again and again these days.
“I’ve been here 20 years, and we’ve never had this issue,” Worsham said. “Normally, high water is what causes us pain.”
Two of the facility’s loading docks were out of commission on this day, the water too low for loading barges. Nearby, Worsham pointed to massive plastic grain bags, each stuffed with about 30,000 bushels — or about 30 truck loads — of soybeans. He can store the crops there for a while, but each day they sit brings more risk.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever done that,” he said.
Worsham hopes it’s that last time, but he isn’t so sure. The river seems to experience more violent fluctuations now than it did long ago, he said.
“It rises fast and falls fast. It makes it difficult because you don’t know what to expect,” Worsham said. “It’s always been unpredictable, but it just seems like it’s more extreme than it used to be.”
2.7 feet below
low stage
14.3 feet below
Standing at the tip of Fort Defiance State Park, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, it’s impossible not to encounter history.
It was here that Ulysses S. Grant helped launch efforts to give the Union control of the Mississippi River during the Civil War. And before that, where Lewis and Clark set up camp, practicing navigation skills they would need on their journey west. And where, before any of them, Native Americans populated these and other fertile lands nearby.
On a recent morning, history of another kind was being made.
Barges were parked alongside the river banks as far as the eye could see. Their tug boats, with names such as Addi Belle and Miss Deborah and Harvest Maiden, sat idle in a way that tugs on the Mississippi rarely do.
Just down the river, Casey Showers was standing on a tug that had slowly worked its way north from Vicksburg, Miss. He has spent more than six years working on the vessels that travel the river, pushing barges through the heart of the country. But this most recent trip had startled him in a way few others had.
“There was no traffic,” said Showers, 29. “A lot of people just aren’t moving.”
Showers, a steersman, said even many of the old-timers he encounters say water levels are lower than they can remember. But stay on the river long enough, they tell him, and you will see everything.
“The river does what she wants,” Showers said, “We just work with her.”
Tourists still flock to the gates of Graceland and the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. From the barbecue joints to the bustling, neon-studded bars of Beale Street, a sense of normalcy reigns in Tennessee’s second-largest city.
It’s only by the waterfront that nothing seems quite normal. In recent days, water levels here hit historic lows. The city’s famed riverboats, while still running, are docked far down a steep embankment usually covered by water. Gawkers come, cameras in hand, to snap photos of the withered river.
“It’s the worst I’ve seen in my lifetime,” said John Butler on a recent afternoon. He’s a fifth-generation farmer from West Tennessee but now runs a Memphis-based educational and research nonprofit, Agricenter International.
Even in the city, his thoughts are with farmers out in the countryside.
“It’s feast or famine when you farm along the river,” he said, explaining that this year alone, farmers grappled with soaring fertilizer prices and crippling amounts of rain early in the year, followed by scorching summer heat and now drought.
When Butler looks out at the strangely quiet river, he thinks of the crops that aren’t making their way south, the supplies that aren’t coming north and the reverberations that have yet to come.
“It’s going to impact all of us,” Butler said. “It’s really catastrophic.”
The Mississippi River suffered historically low water levels in October 2022 due largely to volatile weather cycles caused by climate change. (Video: John Farrell/The Washington Post)
Nearby, at the Memphis Yacht Club, a different kind of disaster is on display.
General manager Joe Weiss points to a nearby piling, where the high-water mark from the flood of 2011 is shown. It’s more than 50 feet above where he now stands. Around him, more than 80 boats are parked in their slips, mired in mud, with little hope they will escape soon.
Some owners have called recently to ask Weiss if their boats are stuck on the river bottom. “You’ve been in the mud for two weeks,” he tells them.
Weiss said the river typically would be about 35 feet deeper at the marina than it is now. But these days are anything but typical.
“It’s sad,” he said, “but it’s what we are dealing with.”
People these days have been flocking to a spot known as the Old Ferry Landing, where the road runs out. And who could blame them? Here, where the mighty Mississippi once stretched from tree line to tree line, you can walk out a half mile or more on the ancient river bottom, now just dust and rock.
On a recent evening, families arrive in minivans to see the surreal sight. Couples walk their dogs, dodging the bony carcasses of long-dead fish. Teenagers take selfies. All of them grasp for words to describe the indescribable scene of a fierce river all but vanished.
“It’s like a desert,” said John Nelson, who came 40 miles. He and his wife were exploring long-submerged tree trunks and texting relatives photos of the spectacle. “I’m 66, and I’ve never seen it this low.”
Historic droughts in the Mississippi River region in October 2022 dried up much of the river, revealing vast portions of land and threatening wildlife. (Video: John Farrell/The Washington Post)
David and Terry Finley were making their third trip from their home in Arkansas to the spot on a recent evening. Something keeps drawing them back — maybe the vast emptiness that feels so unfamiliar, or the realization they might never experience this again.
“You see it at its most powerful, and now, at its weakest,” Terry said, her arms filled with souvenirs of driftwood as the sun set purple and orange behind her.
In the distance, other explorers were walking the arid landscape where the powerful river had once flowed. They looked like ants in the distance, against the backdrop of the sprawling riverbed.
“It’s surreal and eerie at the same time,” Terry said. “It just makes you think how small we all are.” | 2022-10-30T20:28:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Scenes from the Mississippi River show hope, frustration amid drought - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/30/mississippi-river-drought-impacts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/30/mississippi-river-drought-impacts/ |
Paul Pelosi, 82, was continuing to recover from injuries, Nancy Pelosi said in a letter Saturday night, following surgery for a fractured skull and other injuries from an attack early Friday. San Francisco police have identified the suspect in the attack as David DePape, 42, who appears to have been deeply drawn into election falsehoods, political conspiracy theories like QAnon and fringe rantings from various right-wing sites.
On CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, called the attack on Paul Pelosi “disgusting.”
He then shifted the discussion to reports that Republicans have been vulnerable to politically motivated attacks, too.
“We had a door knocker in Florida that was attacked,” he said, referring to a recent attack on a Republican canvasser that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) claimed was politically motivated. Police have not backed up that assertion. “I mean, this stuff has to stop.”
Asked whether Republicans should do more to reject conspiracy theories and dangerous rhetoric that fuels such attacks, Scott said the focus should be condemning violent attacks and ensuring election integrity.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” host Margaret Brennan questioned Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) about his Twitter post last week of a video of him firing a gun at a shooting range with the hashtag #FirePelosi.
Emmer, who is chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, defended the imagery, saying he was touting the Second Amendment rather than promoting violence.
He also returned to arguing about both sides when asked about armed people in Arizona staking out ballot drop boxes.
“Again, no one should feel intimidated when they’re exercising their right to vote,” Emmer said. “You’ve got stories on both sides of the aisle. You get stories in many different states about how people have felt as though their right was infringed on.”
Emmer also brought up the 2017 shooting of House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) “by a Bernie Sanders supporter,” telling Brennan that he “never heard you or anyone else in the media trying to blame Democrats for what happened.”
At the time, Nancy Pelosi condemned the “despicable and cowardly attack,” which took place at a practice for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. “On days like today, there are no Democrats or Republicans, only Americans united in our hopes and prayers for the wounded,” Pelosi said then.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) wrote on Twitter that the Facebook page of the suspect in Paul Pelosi’s attack “looks identical” to those of Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).
“We must draw the straight lines that connect violent political rhetoric and violent acts,” Swalwell tweeted Saturday evening. “All three of them have glorified violence and [DePape] acted on it.”
The Washington Post confirmed that a voluminous blog written under DePape’s name was filled with deeply antisemitic writings and baseless claims as well as pro-Donald Trump and anti-Democratic posts. It was registered to a house in Richmond, Calif., where DePape lives, according to neighbors.
Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said Sunday it was “unfair” for Democrats to link Republicans’ inflammatory rhetoric toward their political opponents to the attack on Paul Pelosi.
“I think this is a deranged individual,” McDaniel said on “Fox News Sunday.” “You can’t say people saying, ‘let’s fire Pelosi’ or ‘let’s take back the House’ is saying ‘go do violence.’ It’s just unfair. And I think we all need to recognize violence is up across the board.”
McDaniel cited an attack in July against New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin at a campaign event, and also falsely claimed that President Biden “didn’t talk about the assassination attempt against” Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, which Biden condemned.
“But, of course, we wish Paul Pelosi a recovery,” McDaniel added. “We don’t like this at all across the board. We don’t want to see attacks on any politician from any political background.”
When asked if there was a connection between rising political violence and Trump’s rhetoric, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) said there was “a connection to everybody in all of this.”
“Look, it’s not just about former president Trump,” he said. “I mean, people are getting upset about inflation. They’re getting upset, with you know, issues that happened on what we would consider a very minor level, but to them, it’s passionate, it’s the end.”
Several lawmakers have also used the latest attack to press for better security measures. The top leaders of the House and Senate have protective details but that protection does not extend to their families.
Changes to that legislation should be “strongly considered,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” noting that many members of Congress beyond the “top four” receive threats.
Klobuchar also slammed social media companies for making money by allowing election falsehoods and hate speech to proliferate. Her remarks came shortly after Elon Musk, who just acquired Twitter last week, amplified a conspiracy theory about the Paul Pelosi attack on the platform that he now owns. Several hours later, Musk deleted the tweet.
“I think it is really important that people realize that it is not just this moment of this horrific attack, but that we have seen violence perpetrated throughout our political system,” Klobuchar said. “This has to end. And there are several things we can do from the security standpoint … but it is also about making sure we don’t add more election deniers to our political system.”
Pelosi, who has vehemently denounced political violence in the past, including the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, has so far not linked politics to the attack on her husband.
In a Dear Colleague letter to members of Congress late Saturday night, Nancy Pelosi confirmed that “a violent man broke into our family home, demanded to confront me and brutally attacked my husband Paul.”
“Our children, our grandchildren and I are heartbroken and traumatized by the life-threatening attack on our Pop,” she wrote. “Please know that the outpouring of prayers and warm wishes from so many in the Congress is a comfort to our family and is helping Paul make progress with his recovery. His condition continues to improve.”
Stephanie McCrummen, Laurie McGinley, Kim Bellware and Paul Kane contributed to this report. | 2022-10-30T20:46:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Republicans condemn Paul Pelosi attack but are quick to blame ‘both sides’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/30/paul-nancy-pelosi-attack/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/30/paul-nancy-pelosi-attack/ |
A change for the presidential line of succession
The U.S. Capitol building on Aug. 12. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg News)
After reading Paul Kane’s Oct. 23 @PKCapitol column, “A 90-something in the presidential succession? Experts say it’s time for a change.” [news], I wished that the article had explored the option of replacing, for the purpose of succession, the Senate president pro tem with the Senate majority leader. Like the speaker of the House, also in the line of succession, the Senate majority leader is elected by the majority-party members.
A senator who hasn’t earned and retained the respect of his or her colleagues will not win the post. Additionally, the demands of the position indicate that the person who holds it is more likely to be able to meet the challenge of being president than the senator who has served the longest.
Dominic Del Pozzo, Chevy Chase | 2022-10-30T20:54:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A change for the presidential line of succession - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/change-presidential-line-succession/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/change-presidential-line-succession/ |
The Fed has failed at its primary responsibility
The Federal Reserve in Washington in 2013. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Eloquently critical of the Fed’s mission creep, George F. Will correctly noted in his Oct. 27 column, “The Fed has its own take on the Peter Principle,” that “the Fed’s primary purpose is to preserve the currency as a store of value: to prevent inflation.” Mr. Will also correctly reported that, in this primary responsibility, the Fed has failed. But the link documenting this failure — offering data going back only to January 2021 — doesn’t adequately convey this failure’s magnitude.
In a 2012 paper, economist George Selgin, along with co-writers William Lastrapes and my colleague Lawrence White, asked “Has the Fed been a failure?” Their answer is a resounding "yes." Mr. Selgin and the others found that from 1790 until the Fed’s creation in 1913, the dollar lost — over this entire span of 124 years — only about 8 percent of its 1790 value. In contrast, over the course of the Fed’s first 100 years, the dollar lost about 96 percent of its 1913 value. Of course, today’s inflation drains the dollar’s value even further.
Mr. Will is right: A central bank that performs its primary responsibility so poorly has no business taking on other tasks.
Donald J. Boudreaux, Fairfax | 2022-10-30T20:54:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Fed has failed at its primary responsibility - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/fed-has-failed-its-primary-responsibility/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/fed-has-failed-its-primary-responsibility/ |
How polling could affect partisan strategies
A line of early voters outside a polling station in Columbus, Ga., on Oct. 17. (Cheney Orr/Reuters)
Regarding Henry Olsen’s Oct. 25 op-ed, “Three ways to gauge the midterm races”:
With the midterms looming and polls showing GOP candidates closing the gap in states where Democrats have led all summer, it appears that Democrats have pivoted from a single-issue strategy, women’s reproductive rights, to a more broad-based campaign. Recognizing that the electorate, for the most part, is focused on inflation, crime and immigration, the shift seemed prudent. But was it? Is it possible the Democrats were on the right track with a single-issue gambit, but focused on the wrong matter in question?
Polls throughout the summer showed that the perceived deterioration of democracy in the United States was resonating with a majority of the electorate, but then in late June the Supreme Court overturned the long-standing constitutional right to an abortion, reversing Roe v. Wade, and Democrats, with an air of bravado, went all-in.
Changing course again might be too little, too late, but if Republicans, with their assemblage of election deniers, are voted into office — especially in Congress — democracy might be at risk of collapse, rendering all else subordinate.
Jane Larkin, Tampa | 2022-10-30T20:55:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How polling could affect partisan strategies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/how-polling-could-affect-partisan-strategies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/how-polling-could-affect-partisan-strategies/ |
Justice Alito and the legitimacy of the Supreme Court
Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg News)
Regarding the Oct. 26 news article “Alito says leaked abortion opinion made majority ‘targets for assassination’ ”:
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. stated during his address to the Heritage Foundation that he is taking issue with those that question the legitimacy of the court. He also said that taking such issue is questioning the character of some members of the Supreme Court. My reply, is “Yes, Mr. Alito, it does question the character of some members of the Supreme Court. Directly.” Look at the behavior of some of the members of the Supreme Court, behavior that would cause regular recusals on cases in lower courts. The Supreme Court badly needs a code of conduct. Relying on only the justices’ personal perspectives is not working.
Kevin M. Murphy, Bethesda
So Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. thinks the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leak was a “betrayal of trust”? Let’s meet him on his own terms. If Supreme Court justices are trustees, then the duties they owe are not to each other, or to the court, but to the American people. And among them is a duty to disclose information to the beneficiaries.
Millions of Americans needed to know about the Dobbs decision. Abortion would soon become far less available. Americans might have wanted to adjust their private lives accordingly, months ahead of time.
Whoever leaked the draft fulfilled a trustee’s duty to disclose.
Jeremy C. Bates, New York
It is a mystery as to why a leaked draft would carry more weight than the actual ruling in the Dobbs case. But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. tried to make this illogical case in his speech at the Heritage Foundation. The draft did not in any way differ from the final ruling. Justice Alito talks about the threats of assassination following the leak, but he seems oblivious to the culture of violence Americans now live in with weekly mass shootings, armed vigilantes threatening voters, death threats against public figures and rioters who wanted to hang Vice President Mike Pence. Why would Justice Alito even think that a greatly unpopular ruling would somehow exempt him from threats?
George Magakis Jr., Norristown, Pa. | 2022-10-30T20:55:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Justice Alito and the legitimacy of the Supreme Court - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/justice-alito-legitimacy-supreme-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/justice-alito-legitimacy-supreme-court/ |
Marine Corps Marathon: Fixture of D.C. fitness returns after 2 years
The annual event, nearly five decades old, is a fitness and social fixture in Washington
Runners begin the 47th Marine Corps Marathon on Sunday in Rosslyn. (Nathan Howard/AP)
Like many runners, Kyle King was gearing up to run the Marine Corps Marathon last year. But the coronavirus was still too prevalent, and a month before the race, organizers called it off for the second year in row.
“That was tough,” the 33-year-old said.
But in another sign of life returning to normal, of society opening back up, King and about 11,400 others took off Sunday morning near Arlington National Cemetery for the 26.2-mile race past the area’s most storied monuments and buildings. Crowds cheered. Runners pushed each other along. No one was stuck in their house or running out on their own.
“I loved it,” King says. “It was really high energy.”
The active-duty Marine, an artillery officer, certainly had a good vantage point. He led the whole way and finished first. “I’d been looking forward to having full-blown races again,” he said.
King’s mood was echoed by countless others Sunday. The race, a fixture of Washington’s fitness and social calendar for nearly five decades, was canceled in 2020 and 2021. A feeling of togetherness — and shared pain — was everywhere.
“The sense of community is coming back,” said Justin Huemme, 29, moments before starting the race with his wife Sierra, 27. “People are not afraid to get out and be social and be part of the race.”
The couple, both active-duty members of the U.S. Coast Guard, also ran to honor Sierra’s grandfather, a Marine. They’d had to wait for two years.
“We were preparing for it last year, looking forward to it,” Justin Huemme said. “Then it became like a lot of things: weddings, family get-togethers, friends, vacations. All those things that make life a solid journey. There’s only so much you can do without being outside your house.”
The race dates to 1976, when it started as the “Marine Corps Reserve Marathon.” Responsibility was transferred two years later to active-duty Marines. The race has grown into the nation’s largest marathon that doesn’t offer prize money, said race spokeswoman Kristen Loflin, and as such is known as “The People’s Marathon.”
Large crowds have come out for memorable moments.
In 1989, according to race officials, Bob Wieland, a medically discharged Army medic who lost both his legs in Vietnam, started the marathon several days early. He completed it, on his hands, in 79 hours and 57 minutes, with his last mile accompanied by 100 Marines marching in cadence.
Five years later, Oprah Winfrey ran the race to celebrate her 40th birthday. Vice President Al Gore ran the race with his daughters in 1997. And in 2006, 20,000 runners in one race crossed the finish line for the first time.
As covid swept the globe, shutting down road races, Marine Corps Marathon organizers held “virtual” races in which participants could chart their own routes. But it was hardly the same.
This year’s winner, King, certainly knew about the virus’s impact on races.
He’d run competitively in college and graduate school, joined the Marines, and around 2018 started training again for high-level racing. In 2019, at the World Military Games in of all places Wuhan, China, King finished 8th in marathon.
Then came covid shutdowns.
They didn’t slow down King’s training. He shifted a bit — more toward trail-running and ultramarathons. But he certainly missed the camaraderie and competition of large races.
And he naturally had his eye on the Marine Corps Marathon, a race that beyond its name has the corps stamped all over it. Uniformed Marines line the course, cheering on runners, handing out water, working security and picking up litter. “It was awesome to run in front of them,” King said after the race, “and bring in the win for the home team.”
Masks were virtually nonexistent Sunday. Interviews with runners — including those who still mask at certain indoor settings — said that reflected their vaccination status and what they know about limited outdoor transmission.
Georgetown law student Becca Ebert was more worried about her late decision to run the race — and a lack of preparation — than crowds or covid. Her longest recent training run was a half-marathon last month, and since then her runs had been a lot shorter.
“We all must live with the decisions we make,” she joked moments before the start.
Ebert said she’d grown tired of being cooped up and taking virtual classes. Vaccinated and boosted, she felt safe Sunday. She ran about 75 percent of the course and walked the rest. “There’s something nice about people being together,” she said of the crowd around her, “just being part of a community — and it’s a beautiful day.” | 2022-10-30T21:38:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marine Corps Marathon returns to DC after 2-year pandemic hiatus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/30/marine-corps-marathon-returns-pandemic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/30/marine-corps-marathon-returns-pandemic/ |
Historically diverse Supreme Court hears disproportionately from White lawyers
The court is grappling with several cases involving race, including two affirmative action cases set to be argued Monday
Tobi Raji
(Lucy Naland/Washington Post illustration; iStock)
When the White House held a celebration in April to mark Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate confirmation, President Biden hailed the moment as one that would let the “sun shine on so many young women, so many young Black women, so many minorities.”
Jackson’s confirmation means the Supreme Court is now more diverse along racial and gender lines than ever before, with four female justices, two Black justices and one Latina justice.
The elite group of lawyers who argue before the justices, however, remains mostly White and male.
Black and Hispanic attorneys are starkly underrepresented among Supreme Court litigators, according to a Washington Post analysis of lawyers who have delivered oral arguments in recent years. Women are also significantly underrepresented. And there are particularly few women of color.
Vanessa Malone, a federal public defender in Akron, Ohio, was shocked when she learned while preparing to argue before the court in 2019 how few Black women had ever done so.
“What are we doing here?” she said. “Our benches are diversified, but the people who are coming before the benches are not.”
Since the start of the Supreme Court’s 2017 term, 374 lawyers have argued before the justices. Some have argued more than a dozen times, while others have done so only once.
To determine the demographics of this group, The Washington Post asked each of them to share their race or ethnicity, gender and other information about their backgrounds. More than 290 responded. The Post confirmed the race of seven more lawyers based on articles, speeches and interviews in which they described how they identify. The Post also confirmed lawyers’ gender identities based on their biographies on law firm and other professional websites and how the justices referred to them during oral arguments.
In total, The Post ascertained the gender identities of all 374 lawyers who have argued before the high court since the start of the 2017 term and the race of more than 80 percent of them.
This story was reported and written by The Post's Early 202 team. To get scoops and accountability journalism in your inbox each morning, sign up for The Early 202.
Of those, nearly 81 percent are White, and 62 percent are White men. Nearly 9 percent are Asian American. While 19 percent of Americans and nearly 6 percent of lawyers in the United States are Hispanic, according to the American Bar Association, only 3.6 percent of the Supreme Court attorneys in the Post analysis were Hispanic. And while almost 14 percent of Americans and 4.5 percent of lawyers nationally are Black, only 2.3 percent of the lawyers in the Post analysis were Black.
Hispanic and Black lawyers were even more underrepresented when measured by the number of arguments they made. Hispanic lawyers have made 2.3 percent of Supreme Court arguments since the 2017 term, and Black lawyers made only 1 percent.
The gender disparity was also stark: While 38 percent of American lawyers are women, according to the ABA, women make up only 20 percent of those who argued before the Supreme Court, according to the Post analysis.
Women of color were particularly underrepresented: Just six Asian American women, two biracial women, one Hispanic woman and one Black woman have argued before the court since the start of the 2017 term.
When Lisa Blatt, who heads Williams & Connolly’s Supreme Court and appellate practice, accepted an award at Georgetown University in April, she decried the “appalling disparity” in the backgrounds of the Supreme Court bar. A lawyer at her firm, Luke McCloud, is one of the few Black men who have argued before the court in recent years.
“The numbers won’t change until we act instead of just talk,” said Blatt, who is White. “It cannot be that Luke is the only living superstar advocate at a law firm who happens to be a Black lawyer.”
As the Supreme Court grapples with several cases involving race, including affirmative action cases set to be argued on Monday, the paucity of Black and Hispanic lawyers who argue before the court spotlights how people of color are often excluded from the rooms in which decisions that affect them are made.
Randolph Ortega, 56, recalled how intimidating it felt to be the only Hispanic lawyer arguing in front of an appellate court early in his career. “When I walked into the hearing room with the three-person panel, all three judges were older White males, every advocate in the courtroom was an older White male, and I was a 20-something Hispanic male,” he said.
Decades later, as he sat in the lawyer lounge waiting to argue before the Supreme Court in 2019 about whether the family of a Mexican teenager killed by a Border Patrol agent could sue in U.S. courts, Ortega and his co-counsel were still the only Hispanic people in the room.
How Supreme Court diversity has shaped American life
The dearth of women and lawyers of color who argue before the court reflects a system in which they are underrepresented at every level, even as the most prestigious law schools have moved to admit more students of color, and as many top law firms have boasted about their commitments to diversity, according to interviews with more than 50 lawyers who have argued before the court, law professors, former clerks and advocates.
The people who secure the opportunities that prepare lawyers who argue frequently before the court — clerking for Supreme Court justices, working in the U.S. solicitor general’s office and serving as a state’s solicitor general — are disproportionately White and male. And law firms’ clients with cases before the Supreme Court often insist on being represented by the lawyer at the firm who’s done the most arguments in the past — who is usually a White man.
While some justices have made a point of hiring women and lawyers of color as clerks in recent years, they have said little about the lack of diversity among the lawyers who appear before them. All nine were presented with The Post’s findings through the court’s press office. They all declined to comment, said Supreme Court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe.
Without addressing diversity, some justices have praised the emergence of a group of five or six dozen lawyers who regularly appear before them, some of whom the justices also know socially.
“One of the things that has happened over the last 20 years or so at the Supreme Court is the development of a kind of ‘Supreme Court bar’ — people who are repeat players, and who have been there before, and who know what the whole enterprise is about, know the way we think, know the kinds of questions we ask, know the kinds of things that matter to us as we reach a decision,” Justice Elena Kagan said in 2015. “And I think it’s an unqualified good for the court.”
Many conservatives are skeptical of institutional efforts to increase racial diversity. But some have chafed at what Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican whose parents immigrated from the former Yugoslavia, described as Supreme Court lawyers’ “smugness and arrogance.”
“There are a lot of great advocates who may be men, may be women, may be from diverse economic backgrounds or diverse cultural, racial backgrounds, that we have kind of excluded because they didn’t go to Ivy League schools, or didn’t work in the solicitor [general’s] office, or didn’t clerk for a Supreme Court justice,” Brnovich said. “And that’s the problem.”
The impact on the Court
Several lawyers and civil rights advocates argue the country would be better served by a more diverse group of lawyers arguing before the court. And greater diversity of perspective and experience could inform how lawyers present and frame arguments for the justices.
“That’s ultimately what we do as lawyers — tell stories and get people to try to relate to them and understand our perspective,” McCloud said.
In the case McCloud argued earlier this year, which concerned sentencing for drug crimes, “the vast majority of the people affected by the law were Black men,” he said. “And so I think that having the opportunity to be a voice for those Black men in an environment where there’s not many Black men to begin with was a real honor — and hopefully an opportunity that more diverse attorneys will get, especially when it comes to matters that affect diverse individuals in our country disproportionately.”
Several lawyers referenced Thurgood Marshall’s oral argument in Brown v. Board of Education, more than a decade before he became the first Black American on the court in 1967.
“There was a moment in his rebuttal, his closing argument, when he started to describe what segregation looks like,” said Amir Ali, the executive director of the MacArthur Justice Center, who is North African and Middle Eastern and has argued before the court several times. “And he starts talking about kids walking to school together, White and Black, getting along and laughing together, and then having to part ways suddenly when they reach the corner and one has to go to the White school and one has to go to the Black school. And in describing this, he pauses and he says, ‘I’ve seen them do it.’ ”
“The power of that, for him to be able to say, ‘I’ve seen it’ — I think in part what he’s implicitly saying is, ‘You may not have seen that, but I have,’ ” Ali added.
But others argued that it’s not clear whether more diverse lawyers would lead the justices to rule any differently. While it was “symbolically significant” that Marshall argued the case, it’s unlikely that it would make a difference for the current bench, said Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor. “That was in a different era,” he said.
The role of clerkships
Supreme Court lawyers place a heavy emphasis on credentials, and perhaps no credential is more crucial to arguing before the court than clerking for a justice.
More than half of arguments since the 2017 term have been made by former clerks. Clerking is also increasingly a prerequisite to working in the solicitor general’s office: Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar and all but four of the 21 other lawyers in her office are former Supreme Court clerks.
And those clerkships have been disproportionately White and male.
In 1998, Tony Mauro, a reporter for USA Today, found that of the 394 law clerks hired by the Supreme Court justices at the time during their tenures, fewer than 2 percent were Black. Four justices had never hired a Black law clerk. Fewer than a quarter were women.
When Mauro repeated the study in 2017 for the National Law Journal, he found that clerks had become marginally more diverse: 85 percent of clerks hired between 2005 and 2017 were White. Only a third were women.
The Supreme Court doesn’t track the racial or ethnic backgrounds of its clerks, but a Washington Post review of the 197 clerks hired since Mauro’s study found the gender disparity has continued to shrink. Fifty-four percent were men and 46 percent were women, according to an analysis of the 171 clerks whose gender The Post ascertained.
Some justices hire more women than others. More than half of the clerks hired by Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Sonia Sotomayor between 2018 and 2022 were women. Slightly more than a quarter of those hired by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch were.
Among the conservative justices, Kavanaugh is credited with making the most effort to diversify his clerks. “The only reason that I applied to the Supreme Court was because he encouraged me to do that,” said McCloud, who clerked for Kavanaugh when he was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and went on to clerk for Sotomayor.
Lawmakers have pressed the justices for years during congressional budget hearings on the lack of diversity among clerks. The justices have responded by saying they’re doing better than their predecessors or arguing that it’s tough to hire diverse clerks because clerks on the appeals courts from which they hire are disproportionately White and male.
“We receive what the law schools prepare,” Justice Clarence Thomas told lawmakers during a 2009 hearing.
“Each of us have had minority law clerks with whom we were very satisfied and [who] have done outstanding jobs,” Thomas added. “But there’s not a plethora coming from the band that we select from in law schools. It’s as simple as that.”
There are nascent efforts to diversify Supreme Court clerkships and the appellate bar more broadly. Juvaria Khan founded the Appellate Project in 2019 to pair law students interested in appellate work with mentors such as former solicitor general Donald B. Verrilli Jr., Roman Martinez and Michael Dreeben, all whom argue often before the Supreme Court.
The law firm Orrick recently started hiring a handful of associates each summer to work in its Supreme Court and appellate practice. The firm helps them apply to become a clerk “as a way to break the cycle of racial disparity in prestigious clerkships,” said E. Joshua Rosenkranz, who leads the practice and has argued 20 times before the court.
But winning Supreme Court clerkships and the appellate clerkships that lead to them often depends on forming relationships with well-connected “feeder” professors who can guide students and write letters of recommendation, Khan said.
“Yes, it’s your grades. Yes, it’s your school. Yes, it’s your appellate clerkship. But it is also your relationship with certain professors who have influence and power,” said Brook Hopkins, who clerked for Justice David Souter from 2010 to 2011 (retired justices typically hire one clerk per term). “Those people tend to be White men.”
Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School “feeder professor” who has argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court and once taught Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Kagan, said that some justices have cared more about diversity than others.
“Justice [William J.] Brennan [Jr.] — even though very liberal and very inclusive and very much in favor of diversity and affirmative action — for almost the entirety of his tenure on the court never had a female law clerk,” Tribe said. “He, being of an earlier generation, used to say that he would be uncomfortable working late into the night with a female law clerk, and I would try to persuade him that he shouldn’t feel that way.”
The role of the solicitor general
The easiest way to rack up Supreme Court arguments as a young lawyer is to work in the solicitor general’s office, which argues on behalf of the federal government. All but five of the 31 lawyers who have argued most often since the start of the 2017 term are veterans of the solicitor general’s office or currently work there.
Prelogar is the second woman to be confirmed as solicitor general, but only seven of the 21 lawyers who work under her are women. All five deputy solicitors general — one of whom is a political appointee and the rest of whom are civil servants — are White men. (There have been four Senate-confirmed solicitors general of color: Marshall, Wade H. McCree Jr. and Drew S. Days III, who were all Black, and Noel Francisco, who is Filipino American.)
Four of the lawyers in the solicitor general’s office are Asian American, but there don’t appear to be any Black or Hispanic lawyers, nor any women of color. (While the Justice Department declined to provide a breakdown of the office’s lawyers by race and ethnicity, The Post confirmed how all but one identify.)
Prelogar declined an interview request.
“As the second woman confirmed to serve as Solicitor General in the 152-year history of the office, I am especially mindful of the importance of all forms of diversity in the Office of the Solicitor General and the Supreme Court bar as a whole,” Prelogar said in a statement to The Post. “While we have as many women lawyers in our office today as there have been at any point in the office’s history, I know there is more work to be done to ensure that we reflect the American people as we represent them before the Court.”
More and more states have moved to hire their own solicitors general in recent years, creating another opportunity for young lawyers eager to argue before the Supreme Court. Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone II, 39, racked up five Supreme Court arguments last term alone.
But state solicitors general who argue before the court are also mostly men.
Of the 49 state solicitors general and deputy solicitors general who have appeared before the court since the 2017 term, fewer than a quarter are women.
Five of the 35 solicitors general and deputy solicitors who argued before the court and confirmed their race or ethnicity with The Post are Asian American. Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud is Arab American; Tera Heintz, Washington state’s deputy solicitor general, is biracial; and Jesus Osete, who argued before the court while serving as Missouri’s deputy solicitor general, is Hispanic. None of them are Black.
The role of firms
The lack of diversity among Supreme Court clerks and in the offices’ of solicitors general help to explain why more women and lawyers of color don’t work in law firms’ appellate practices, but it doesn’t account for why some of those at firms rarely argue before the court.
“The most significant problem in my view is the clients,” said Cate Stetson, the co-director of Hogan Lovells’s appellate practice.
Many companies say they value diverse representation. When they have a case before the Supreme Court, though, it’s tempting to go with the lawyer who has done the most oral arguments in the past — who tends to be an older White man. As one lawyer put it: No corporate general counsel has ever been fired for hiring Paul Clement — a former solicitor general who’s argued more than 100 cases before the court — even if the company loses.
Some Supreme Court practice heads said they encourage clients to take a different route.
WilmerHale has been “aggressively promoting to the clients our younger, more diverse lawyers so our clients get a measure of comfort with them,” said Seth Waxman, a former solicitor general who is White and who chairs the firm’s appellate and Supreme Court litigation practice. “Then when it comes time to decide who’s going to argue the appeal, who’s going to argue in the Supreme Court, we’re not genuinely in the position of asking the company to make any sacrifices at all.”
“I have a rule: Any Supreme Court case I can give to an associate I will,” said Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general who leads Hogan Lovells’s appellate practice with Stetson.
Still, Katyal, who is Indian American, estimates that he’s only succeeded five times in the past five years. “At the end of the day, clients will sometimes say, ‘Nope, I want the person who’s argued many times before to argue my case,’ ” he said.
Not every lawyer who heads a top Supreme Court practice appears to have made securing arguments for less-experienced lawyers a priority.
Lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis argued 30 Supreme Court cases since the start of the 2017 term — more than any other firm. Clement, who left Kirkland in June to start his own firm, argued all but six of them. Just two were argued by women.
Clement didn’t respond to requests for comment. Kirkland said in a statement the firm was “committed as an institution to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) both within our Firm and across the legal profession more broadly.”
Other firms have better track records.
Three of the five lawyers at Williams & Connolly who have argued before the court since the 2017 terms are women. The fourth, Kannon Shanmugam, who left the firm in 2019 to lead Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison’s Supreme Court and appellate practice, is an Indian American man. The fifth, McCloud, is a Black man.
And of the eight WilmerHale lawyers who have argued before the court since the 2017 term, three are women and two are biracial. Still, Waxman argued six of WilmerHale’s 14 cases himself — far more than any other lawyer at the firm. Waxman is representing Harvard in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, one of two affirmative action cases the court is set to hear on Monday.
The pace of change
When Verna Williams, who is Black, argued a Title IX case before the Supreme Court in 1999, she said she felt like an outsider. The justices frequently interrupted her. She likened her experience to a sparring match.
When she returned to the court eight days later to watch the arguments in another Title IX case, Williams saw a veteran White Supreme Court lawyer engaging in friendly banter with the justices.
His name? John Roberts.
“It was clear that he had a relationship with the justices and they had inside jokes,” with the justices encouraging Roberts to finish his thoughts, she said. “My experience couldn’t be more different.”
Williams won her case, but like many attorneys of color, she never delivered another argument before the Supreme Court. She went on to lead the University of Cincinnati’s law school and started last month as the chief executive of Equal Justice Works, a nonprofit. She expressed dismay at how few Black women have argued before the court in recent years.
“You’d think we could make more progress,” she said. “But the reality is that the barriers to transforming the legal profession into something that resembles the nation are enormous and compounded the higher up one goes in the system.”
Dave Clarke, Anu Narayanswamy, Alice Crites and Monika Mathur contributed to this report. | 2022-10-30T21:51:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court justices more diverse, but the lawyers who argue are not - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/30/supreme-court-justices-diversity-lawyers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/30/supreme-court-justices-diversity-lawyers/ |
Police accused of suppressing Lula vote in Brazil election
Members of Brazil's Federal Highway Police are seen at the agency's headquarters in Brasilia on Friday. (Adriano Machado/Reuters)
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s most bitterly fought election since the collapse of the military dictatorship descended Sunday into allegations of police attempting to suppress the vote in regions supportive of presidential challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The Federal Highway Police, an organization closely allied with right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, allegedly set up roadblocks to delay voters in the country’s impoverished Northeast and other centers of support for Lula, a former president.
Highway police director Silvinei Vasques had earlier posted a call to vote for Bolsonaro on Instagram, according to the O Globo newspaper. It was later deleted. Sen. Randolfe Rodrigues, a Lula supporter, demanded his immediate arrest. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, Brazil’s chief electoral authority, ordered Vasques to stop the operations immediately or face personal fines of nearly $100,000 per hour.
Later Sunday, however, Moraes sought to calm concerns of a broader effort that could taint the vote. He said each incident would be investigated, but police had complied with the demand to cease the operations. He said checkpoints had delayed, but not prevented, voters from casting their ballots, and he would not extend voting hours beyond the planned 5 p.m. close.
“The damage caused to the voters was a delay during the inspections,” Moraes said. “There was no prejudice to the right to vote and, logically, there will be no postponement of the end of voting … There is no need to overstate this issue. There were no cases where voters went home.”
Brazil election live updates: Polls close; vote counting begins as sides debate alleged police suppression
Despite the statement from Moraes, who has frequently locked horns with Bolsnaro, Lula’s Worker’s Party demanded an extension of the polls in the 560 places where it said the “illegal” police operations had taken place. The party called for prioritizing extensions in the Northeast, where it said the operations were carried out “with greater intensity.”
The Rio-based Igarapé Institute, a think tank that studies security and violence, said the operations appeared to physically delay “thousands” of voters, but might have had a broader reach as news of the disruptions spread online.
“Since his election, Bolsonaro has tried to subvert Brazil’s democratic institutions,” said Ilona Szabó, the institute’s president. “What we are seeing today — hundreds of federal road police operations impeding citizens from casting their vote — is yet further proof of his efforts to undermine the democratic process.”
G1 and O Globo reported Sunday that Bolsonaro asked his justice minister, Anderson Torres, to order the operations. Aides to the president hoped that the police would be able to prevent possible transportation of Lula’s voters by the Worker’s Party, the outlets said. In Brazil, it is illegal for parties to transport voters to polls.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, a member of Congress and the president’s son, seemed to confirm knowledge of the operation on Twitter.
“We have operation ‘flip vote,’” he tweeted on Sunday. “The [Worker’s Party] has a vote buying [operation] and they are upset that the police are working. Number 302 of the penal code says it’s a crime to buy food and transportation on election day. Please let the police work, and arrest anyone who wants to stop them.”
The highway police confirmed launching special election operations to “guarantee the mobility, safety and fight crime on federal highways.” They said in a statement they had escorted nearly 800 voting machines to their polling stations, and seized 4.5 million reales — $850,000 — in 12 incidents. The result, they said, was a 43 percent reduction in road deaths and a 72 percent reduction of injuries. They did not offer further details for those assertions.
“The PRF remains firm in its constitutional purpose of guaranteeing the security of society,” the agency said.
Eduardo Bolsonaro son, tweeted that the police statement showed the police were complying with the law “as usual.”
The operations left some officials shaken. Charles Cristiano, mayor of one of the towns allegedly affected, said a highway police team had checkpoints up when polls opened at 8 a.m. Sunday and kept them up for three and half hours. The stated objective: To cite motorcyclists who were not wearing helmets or had out-of-date documents.
Motorcycles are the primary means of transportation in In cuité, Cristiano said, especially for rural residents, who cannot always afford to keep their vehicle documents up to date. Lula won 79.69 percent of the valid votes in the interior city of 22,000 in the first round of the election Oct. 2. Bolsonaro won 15.31 percent.
As a result of the checkpoints, Cristiano said, at 3 p.m., about 40 percent of voters had yet cast a ballot.
“I think it is [an attempt at suppression],” Cristiano told The Washington Post. “Coincidentally, on election day, a blitz on the main access to the city? We are trying to get around it, calling people to come and vote, but unfortunately, many people are not voting. I think it will increase the number of abstentions.”
The Civic Vigil, a coalition of dozens of civil society organizations monitoring voting, expressed concern.
Bolsonaro, critics say, has undermined democracy during his first term in office by stocking the prosecutor’s office and police with loyalists and appointing current and former generals to his cabinet and other senior posts. Should he win, he has signaled possibility of expanding after the Supreme Court — a body that Bolsonaro says is biased against him.
So strong was concern over such moves that the leftist Lula this year garnered the backing of center-right leaders and former opponents, including former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso. | 2022-10-30T22:26:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brazil election: Police accused of suppressing Lula votes for Bolsonaro - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/brazil-highway-police-vote-suppression/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/brazil-highway-police-vote-suppression/ |
Taylor Heinicke led the Commanders to their third straight win Sunday. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
INDIANAPOLIS — For all of their dysfunction, their turbulence, the storm that hovers over even the well-meaning people inside this franchise, the Washington Commanders, in their own way, possess stability.
Don’t laugh. It’s true. They’ve won their past three games because of this elusive trait.
Against Chicago, their advantage was the calming presence of their leader Ron Rivera, in the middle of his third season, over the Bears’ first-year head coach. Against Green Bay, it was their top wide receiver, Terry McLaurin, highly paid and yet still humble, coming up huge when a playmaker of his caliber has not emerged like that for the Packers this season.
And Sunday inside Lucas Oil Stadium, a small measure of stability showed up a little late and a bit sloppy but at the most critical point in the game — and from the most important position on the field.
The Commanders have a quarterback they can count on. Even as their starter will wear a brace over his throwing hand for the next several weeks, they pushed their winning streak to three games — the latest a 17-16 escape over the Indianapolis Colts — with everybody’s favorite backup, Taylor Heinicke.
Heinicke had been picked off, sacked twice and thrown for only 128 yards when he took the field with 11:12 left in the fourth quarter. At that point, the Heinicke experience made you want to look away, and Washington trailed a bad Colts team by two scores.
But then, while playing the maestro on a scoring effort that ended in a field goal, Heinicke completed a gotta-have-it pass to Curtis Samuel for 18 yards on fourth and six. And when he took the field again with 2:39 remaining and the Commanders down 16-10, Heinicke played with the tempo that he has been so comfortable with since his college days, leading a nine-play, 89-yard drive that included another fourth-down pass to Samuel and a 33-yard strike to McLaurin.
Heinicke punctuated the moment with a one-yard touchdown run off tackle with 22 seconds remaining and, waiting until he was back outside the end zone, spiked the ball like a madman.
“Like we say all the time, he’s a competitor. He’s going to show up regardless of what’s going on in the game,” running back Antonio Gibson said. “If he’s having a horrible start — not saying that he had one — but if he’s having a bad drive, he’s going to show up that next play and make it count at the end. That’s all we need.”
While the Commanders (4-4) have some sense of stability under center, the Colts (3-4-1) are still riding a quarterback carousel. And oddly enough, the last two guys they thought would stick both spent Sunday wearing team-issued clothing, the chic look of an inactive player.
Sunday should have been the Carson Wentz reunion game. Wentz played last season — and only last season — with the Colts before team owner Jim Irsay grew fed up with his poor performances near the end of the season and pulled the plug. Now with Washington, Wentz has missed the past two weeks while recovering from surgery on his ring finger.
Matt Ryan, Wentz’s replacement to start this season and the guy who was supposed to clean up the mess, was benched this week in favor of third-stringer Sam Ehlinger, who made his first career start.
Irsay, who never shies from the spotlight, has recently inserted himself as the outspoken owner railing against his Commanders counterpart, Daniel Snyder. On that particular topic, Irsay has made common sense points — yes, the owners shouldn’t wait on the NFL to decide Snyder’s fate. They need to step up. However, Irsay hasn’t been nearly as clear-minded and spot-on with his methodology in stabilizing the quarterback position in his franchise.
If, as French author Charles Baudelaire says, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist, the second greatest has to be Irsay convincing Indianapolis that the Colts were a Super Bowl contender if only they had the right quarterback.
Irsay sold a fable.
And — ducks for cover — anyone believing a 37-year-old Matt Ryan was an upgrade over Wentz was all too gullible to buy that lie.
Maybe Ehlinger as QB1 shouldn’t have been a surprise, considering how impatient Irsay can be and how tempestuous the Colts’ quarterback room has been since Andrew Luck’s shocking retirement in 2019. They’ve tried six starters since then. So while the Colts were dealing with the aftershocks from the massive change, back in Ashburn, Va., the Commanders’ defense should have been sharpening their knives.
They would face a quarterback whose sizzle reel consisted almost exclusively of preseason plays. Understanding that, Washington defenders also knew the Colts’ playbook would be drastically reduced for Ehlinger. Their main focus would be staying disciplined and expecting a buffet of short, quick passes intended to get Ehlinger into a rhythm.
“They’re going to give him the easy [plays],” cornerback Benjamin St-Juste said during the week, “the stuff that can nickle-and-dime us down the field.”
At least in the first quarter, the death-by-a-thousand-dumpy plays seemed to work. Ehlinger was conservative but effective and completed six of his eight attempts for 42 yards. He would operate from the shotgun, use his feet (unlike his predecessor) to get out of the pocket and find a receiver a few yards away. Using this method, and mixing in last year’s rushing champ, Jonathan Taylor, the Colts capped an 11-play, 64-yard drive that continued into the second quarter, striking first with a 46-yard field goal.
But Ehlinger didn’t always look comfortable. And credit that to Washington’s front. In the second quarter, Ehlinger showed his ability to scramble for a first down, moving his team to the Washington 13. On the next play, however, he thought he had another opening to get out of trouble but a crush of Commanders closed in. Defensive tackle Jonathan Allen got to him first, and as Ehlinger lost the ball while taking the sack, linemate Daron Payne recovered the fumble.
Overall, Ehlinger played okay in his first start, completing 17 of 23 passes for 201 yards and producing a slightly better passer rating than Heinicke (100.1 to 98.7). Still, Washington has a quarterback who can right himself when necessary. It may not seem like much, but Indianapolis would love to have that luxury.
“It’s just more experience. The more reps you get, the more experience you get, the more comfortable you get,” Heinicke said about his past two games as the replacement starter. “That’s not to say I’m very comfortable with where I’m at right now. There’s a lot to improve on. But the more reps you get, the more comfortable you get.”
In Washington’s final two drives, when it scored 10 unanswered points to come back and win, Heinicke went 12 for 14 for 151 yards. And his best completion of the night seemed as though it played out like one of those cheesy movie moments, at least to McLaurin.
“[Heinicke] does a great job … extending the play, and it was just like slow motion,” McLaurin said. “He saw me, and I saw him, and that ball was up in the air. My eyes were just on the ball the whole time.”
Back in his hometown and playing on the same field where he won high school state championships, McLaurin hauled in a contested ball over cornerback Stephon Gilmore at the Indianapolis 1-yard line.
“I can’t say enough [good] things about Terry,” Heinicke said. “He brings the people in the locker room together, he carries himself in a very professional way, and people want to fight for him. And to see him fight for everyone else, too, it speaks volume. The guy’s a treasure.”
Then, on the next play, Heinicke scored the clinching touchdown. He stalked off the field and back to his sideline, the recipient of all the hugs and all the high-fives. Because he’d wobbled, but he was stable when they needed him. | 2022-10-31T02:43:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Taylor Heinicke gives the Commanders a bit of stability - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/30/commanders-taylor-heinicke-stability/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/30/commanders-taylor-heinicke-stability/ |
Who is Lula? What to know about Brazil’s next president.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s return to Brazil’s highest office completes an extraordinary political comeback.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva meets with Brazilian mayors days before his election as president. (Fernando Bizerra/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Luis Inácio Lula da Silva was elected the next president of Brazil on Sunday, following a contentious and tight race in one of the most populous democracies in the world. He received 50.89 percent of the vote, with 99.76 percent of the vote counted, defeating incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who had 49.11.
A two-time president and former union leader, Lula ran on a campaign of upholding democratic values, casting his win over Bolsonaro as indispensable to uphold Brazil’s democracy.
A charismatic politician, Lula is a powerhouse of the American left. Born in Pernambuco, in the northeast, his parents were farmers who could not afford to feed their eight children. At age 7, his mother and six siblings moved to São Paulo state in search of a better life, first to the port city of Santos and three years later to the most populous city and state capital.
While in São Paulo, he dropped out of school to become a shoe-shiner and later got a job at a factory. He lost his little finger on his left hand in a machinery accident when he was 17.
He started his career in trade-union activism in his early twenties. At 25, he lost his wife of two years, Lourdes, who was eight months pregnant, to hepatitis. He continued his work as a union leader, and in 1975 he was elected president of the powerful metal workers’ union. Lula organized several strikes challenging Brazil’s dictatorial government, cementing his image as a symbol of democracy and the worker’s movement, prompting comparisons to Poland’s Lech Walesa.
When was he president?
In 1980 Lula and a group of workers, intellectuals and artists founded the Workers’ Party in response to the military regime, a pluralistic left-wing party that brought together trade unionists, intellectuals, artists and liberation theology practitioners, among others.
He ran for the presidency three times before being elected in 2002, becoming part of Latin America’s pink tide. During his time, Brazil enjoyed an economic boom triggered by an uptick in the global demand of commodities, and his time in office is remembered for massive social welfare programs that lifted millions out of poverty.
Why was he in prison?
In April 2018 Lula was sent to prison for corruption as part of the “Operation Car Wash” (“Lava Jato”) investigation, heralded by Judge Sérgio Moro. The sprawling investigation looked into a kickbacks scheme involving Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras that had ramifications across Latin America.
Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that inmates cannot be jailed if their appeals are still pending, a decision that affected thousands of prisoners, among them Lula. The court’s decision came days after The Intercept published revelations that Moro had collaborated with prosecutors during the former president’s case, breaking the rules of due process. Lula was released in November of 2019 after spending 580 days in prison.
The tight results of the first round of the presidential election (48% of the vote for Lula, 43% for Bolsonaro), showing that the polls underestimated Bolsonaro’s popularity, forced Lula to build a broad coalition and move to the center. He will also face challenges in Congress, where Bolsonaro’s party made important gains.
Brazil was hard-hit by inflation in the second half 0f 2021. And although inflation is now coming down and the country’s economy is recovering, real income has not returned to the levels before the coronavirus pandemic. | 2022-10-31T03:00:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who is Lula? What to know about Brazil’s next president - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/lula-da-silva-president-brazil/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/30/lula-da-silva-president-brazil/ |
Carolyn Hax: My mother-in-law is terrifying, and she’s visiting soon
Hi Carolyn: My new mother-in-law scares me. She’s rude, and she yells at everyone. Every conversation with her is either negative or aggressive. She also loves to give unsolicited advice. Attempts to install a boundary with her resulted in her taking it out on my spouse indirectly, causing us many problems (i.e., threatening to cut off his inheritance).
Before meeting her, I had been warned by my spouse that she could be a bit of a bully. Most of her family had cut her off because of her rude behavior, and she cut off the rest. I thought this had nothing to do with me and that I could get along with her. I was wrong. She yells a lot to get her way. (Not at me, but she yells at her husband, my spouse, the waiters, my neighbors, etc.) One time, she attempted to yell at me, but my spouse stopped her, and we removed ourselves from the situation. (This wasn’t the end of the story.)
My spouse appreciates her, because she helps him with some aspects of his business. They are very close.
I sometimes wish I could talk to her normally without this fear. When she’s in a good mood, I can see a glimpse of kindness, but when she wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, I just want to run and hide.
That’s just not me.
I realize it is not personal. I realize also that she means well sometimes, but her delivery is way off. But I also hate seeing her abuse others. I have been abused and have volunteered in the past to help victims of domestic violence, and speaking up for people is part of who I was. Seeing me put this part away and become so scared of her bullying is frankly traumatizing.
My spouse is encouraging me to minimize interactions with her. But she’s coming to visit us soon, and I am physically ill from fear. What can I change in my behavior to help me accept her as she is? How can I reconcile my desire to stand up to abuse (“Please, Mom, don’t yell at the waitress because there’s no Diet Coke, she’s just doing her job”) with the need to just ignore and let her do whatever she wants to do? How do I stop being afraid?
— Destabilized by Fear
Destabilized by Fear: Holy crackers.
Develop a joint plan with your husband, stat, for managing your relationships with this highly destructive person. In marriage counseling if he resists, and in counseling solo if he resists going with you.
Put financial planning on the schedule, too, so you can imagine a future without her blood money.
Good for him for standing up for you and encouraging you to limit your exposure — that is no small thing — but his obligations to you, to himself, to unsuspecting restaurant staff and, ultimately, to her demand more from him. They’re close, and she’s ill. I’d like to see him get individual counseling to find out whether and how he can help his mom without enabling her — or biding his time till he’s paid.
Readers’ thoughts:
· Cancel the visit. Seriously, no excuses, no yeahbuts. “It’s just not a good time.” And counseling in which your husband commits to setting and defending boundaries. Otherwise, this is your life, now and forever.
· Leave every time your mother-in-law yells. If you are in the same room, you leave. Same house? Go to a friend’s or a hotel.
I have done this when my mother-in-law lectures me. It is slowly filtering into her brain that I won’t be lectured or yelled at. | 2022-10-31T04:27:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Mother-in-law is terrifying — and visiting soon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/31/carolyn-hax-scary-mother-in-law/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/31/carolyn-hax-scary-mother-in-law/ |
Two workers protested Kroger’s ‘rainbow’ logo. Now they’re getting payouts.
The supermarket chain, which fired the employees, denied that the logo was a rainbow but settled the religious discrimination lawsuit by agreeing to pay $180,000
The Kroger supermarket chain's headquarters in Cincinnati. (REUTERS/Lisa Baertlein)
Brenda Lawson tried to reconcile her Christian faith with the “rainbow” heart on Kroger’s new uniform by covering it with her employee name tag. Co-worker Trudy Rickerd offered to buy her own apron, one that didn’t have the logo.
Their managers at the Conway, Ark., store repeatedly told them the logo wasn’t related to LGBTQ rights and disciplined both employees in 2019 for violating the supermarket’s dress code. But when Lawson and Rickerd continued refusing to display a symbol they equated with the Pride flag, they were fired.
More than three years later, Kroger agreed last week to pay $180,000 to settle a religious discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Lawson and Rickerd. The supermarket chain also agreed to create a religious accommodation policy and to give managers more intense religious discrimination training.
David Hogue, the attorney representing Lawson and Rickerd, told The Washington Post that “this lawsuit is not about casting aspersions or judgments” on those in the LGBTQ community but asserting his clients’ “rights not to be compelled into adopting or approving of any certain lifestyle.”
Neither the EEOC nor Kroger immediately responded to a request for comment from The Post.
Supreme Court will hear another clash pitting religious rights against laws protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination
The case stems from events that happened in April 2019 when Kroger changed its dress code, requiring employees to wear a newly designed apron with “a rainbow heart embroidered on the top left portion of the bib,” according to the EEOC’s lawsuit.
A post shared by Kroger (@krogerco)
Both women, who said they believe in literal interpretations of the Bible and that “homosexuality is a sin,” presumed the new logo represented support for and endorsement of the LGBTQ community, the suit states.
“Although Lawson personally holds no animosity toward the individuals who comprise the LGBTQ community, the practices of that community violate her sincerely held religious belief,” the lawsuit states. “Lawson believed wearing the logo showed her advocacy of the community, which she could not do.”
In court documents, the chain said the multicolored heart represented the supermarket’s new “Kroger’s Promise” marketing campaign. The four colors of the heart — blue, yellow, red and light blue — represented the chain’s promises to give customers friendly and caring service, to provide them with fresh goods, to uplift in every way and to improve every day, the company said.
Kroger described the heart as a “non-religious Promise branding symbol.”
“Notably, the symbol is not a rainbow and only encompasses four colors,” the company said in its response to the EEOC’s allegations.
A pagan says she faced religious discrimination while working at Panera. Now, she’s suing.
Lawson, who had worked in Kroger’s deli department since 2011, and Rickerd, as a cashier and file clerk since 2006, requested exemptions from their store manager multiple times in the weeks after the uniform change, the EEOC says. Lawson asked that she be allowed to wear her name tag over the heart logo. Rickerd refused to wear the store-provided apron altogether but offered to buy an apron of her own at her expense.
When they were rebuffed, both women appealed in writing to higher-ups at the company.
Meanwhile, when Lawson worked, she either refused to wear the apron or wore it with her name tag covering the heart logo. Rickerd didn’t wear it.
Instead of granting the requests for an exemption, Kroger repeatedly disciplined the women for violating the supermarket chain’s dress code. On May 29, 2019, Kroger fired Rickerd, who was 57 at the time. Three days later, the company fired Lawson, then 72.
Kroger in court filings said it terminated the women for “repeated insubordination and failure to comply with the uniform policy.”
The EEOC filed the lawsuit in September 2020, claiming Kroger had violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After spending more than two years jousting in dueling court filings, the EEOC on Thursday announced it had reached an agreement that would end the case.
Hogue said his clients’ refusal to wear what they believed was an LGBTQ-themed logo wasn’t born out of hate.
“A lot of people may look at this story and think Ms. Lawson, Ms. Rickerd and myself, that we are these LGBTQ haters,” Hogue said. “But we all have friends and loved ones — even family members — that fall into that category.” | 2022-10-31T05:02:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kroger will settle religious discrimination lawsuit over 'rainbow' logo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/31/kroger-lawsuit-discrimination-lgbtq-rainbow/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/31/kroger-lawsuit-discrimination-lgbtq-rainbow/ |
South Korea begins confronting the traumas of Halloween crowd crush
A woman cries outside a subway station in the district of Itaewon in Seoul on Monday, two days after a deadly Halloween crush in the area. (Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images)
SEOUL — As the names of those killed in Saturday’s crowd crush in Itaewon trickle out and the installation of mourning altars near the site begins, those living in South Korea are reeling from the trauma of the horrific images and memories of the tragedy that killed at least 154 people and injured dozens more.
The soaring death tolls. Social media images and videos of the chaos and suffering. Endless news coverage. Thousands of witnesses and emergency personnel, and countless more who have heard their accounts and grieved with them. The collective psychological trauma for South Korea is only just beginning.
Korean government and medical officials are warning about trauma, urging people to take care in consuming information and to seek mental health care and support. But mental illness and psychiatry still carry taboos in this country, which likely will pose barriers for the healing process.
Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have been in Itaewon on Saturday, the night that partygoers were trapped in a crowd crush in a narrow alleyway. Survivors recalled the horrors of what they experienced and saw that night, and said they worry about the effects of those traumatic memories in the aftermath.
‘It was almost post-apocalyptic’: A reckoning awaits Seoul’s crowd tragedy
Juliana Velandia Santaella, 23, recalled feeling squeezed by the packed crowd, which was slowly pushing hundreds downhill in the alley, and feeling the weight of other people’s bodies crushing her.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to be next.’ I really thought I was going to die,” the medical student from Mexico said. “I was completely paralyzed. At some point, I couldn’t feel my legs. I couldn’t even move my toes.”
“I really am worried about PTSD,” Velandia said. “I suffer from depression and anxiety.”
The Korean Neuropsychiatric Association on Sunday released a statement warning people about the lasting damages of the tragedy for bereaved families and friends; those who were injured and their loved ones; the witnesses; and the medical and emergency staff who responded. The association said the incident has triggered the need for large-scale mental health support.
The government has begun offering some resources. The South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare set up a support group for a limited number of people affected by the disaster, offering psychological support for about 1,000 family members, witnesses and survivors.
But the need for healing will be far greater. In the days immediately following the tragedy, friends and family members privately were sharing their memories. Their expressions of grief and trauma poured out publicly, as well.
At a community center in Hannam — a neighboring area to the site where the crush occurred — concerned families and friends had gathered in search of information on missing people. As they registered missing people, they waited and milled about the center with somber expressions. Around lunchtime Sunday, family after family received the news that the people they were looking for were among the dead.
Most burst out of the center in tears and screams, dashing to cars or the subway station, or simply running away as they processed the news. One elderly man stopped to speak, as his wife and a young woman ran ahead of him, speechless and trembling with emotion.
“We called and then came all the way from a village far from here with the hopes that we’d find them as just injured in a hospital,” he said of his missing family member. “But they were found as a body.”
Another woman sprinted out of the center and into a car. She paused before getting in, facing reporters with tears in her eyes, but was unable to utter any words. At the center, her colleague, an official with the presidential office, explained that she was also an employee of the presidential office who had worked overnight helping families search for loved ones. While working, she had learned that a family member was one of the missing. Then she received the news that the family member, a high school student who was underage, was one of the dead.
Yoon-sung Park, a 24-year-old tech worker from Texas, was one of the people helping victims on Saturday. He carried people to clearer ground, where they could be sprawled out for medical treatment.
“People were laid across here all the way down, about a half-mile,” he said, gesturing toward Itaewon’s main drag. “There were so many bodies on the floor.”
Earlier on Saturday night, Park and his friend had attended the Atelier club at the top of the alley as part of their month-long vacation to South Korea.
Sitting with a bottle of water at a cafe near the scene, Park appeared to be in a state of shock.
“If we stayed there, we could have died,” he said. | 2022-10-31T06:03:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | South Korea confronts trauma of Halloween crowd crush in Itaewon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/seoul-halloween-trauma-korea-mental-health/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/seoul-halloween-trauma-korea-mental-health/ |
Palestinian Israelis are divided and disillusioned as election nears
By Claire Parker
A campaign billboard of the Palestinian Israeli lawmaker Mansour Abbas, the head of the United Arab List, is seen from a busy road in Haifa, Israel, Oct. 12. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
LOD, Israel — In Israel’s last election, just a year and a half ago, Anwar Sawalhi cast his ballot for the Arab Islamist party Raam. Its leader, Mansour Abbas, went on to make an unprecedented gamble: taking Raam into Israel’s governing coalition, a first for an Arab party.
In Sawalhi’s view, the bet did not pay off. The 52-year-old father of four has seen little improvement in the lives of Palestinian citizens in this mixed Arab-Jewish town. This time around, he’s voting for the left-wing nationalist Balad party, which pollsters say has little chance of surpassing the threshold required to enter the Knesset, Israel’s 120-member parliament.
On the eve of the election, disillusionment reigns among Israel’s Palestinian citizens, who say discrimination and violence still punctuate their daily lives — even with an Arab party in the government.
In a razor-thin contest between political camps divided over their stance toward former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is angling to return to office, every seat counts. The Palestinian vote could prove decisive.
Israel has roughly 2 million Palestinian citizens, many of whom are descended from families that remained in Israel after the country’s creation in 1948, when many Palestinians fled or were expelled. Although they hold Israeli citizenship, they face bigotry from many of their Jewish compatriots and marginalization by the state.
Palestinian Israelis are divided over whether to cast a ballot at all. Those who plan to vote Tuesday face a more fragmented Arab political landscape — “the exact opposite dynamic of what the Arab public wanted,” according to the political analyst Mohammad Darawshe.
Before the last election, Abbas’s Raam party broke off from the Joint List, the Arab umbrella party that won 15 seats in the Knesset in 2020. This year, there are three Arab slates: Raam, a coalition composed of the communist Hadash party and the secular nationalist Ta’al, party, and Balad. Recent polls predict they will get a combined eight seats.
Sami Jariri, 40, the owner of a hookah shop in Lod, has sworn off voting entirely. His father cast a ballot for Raam in the last election, Jariri said, when the moderate Islamist party joined a diverse coalition united by opposition to Netanyahu. But having an Arab party in government — and, since July, a center-left prime minister, Yair Lapid — has not led to safer neighborhoods, he said.
“Before, we cared about who is going to be the prime minister,” he said, sitting behind the counter and puffing on a water pipe. “Now, my only concern is who is going to protect Lod.”
The city’s Palestinian neighborhoods have grown more dangerous, he said, and politicians have ignored the problem. Nearly 130 Arabs died in crime-related killings in Israel in 2021, according to the Abraham Initiatives, a nonprofit organization.
Jariri has lost friends and a 21-year-old cousin to the violent crime wave. He mounted a CCTV camera on his house. But when a man was shot dead in front of his home, Jariri said, the police did not ask to see the footage.
“People get killed here left and right, and nobody cares,” he said. “One Jewish person gets killed in the same circumstances and the whole of Israel gets turned upside-down.”
Concerned about the safety of their sons, ages 11 and 18, Jariri and his wife are considering moving to Turkey.
After Arab-Jewish violence erupts in Israeli towns, a divided country may never be the same
A lack of jobs and opportunities for young Palestinian residents has prompted some to turn to crime, Jariri said. Lod also experienced an outbreak of communal violence during the Israel-Gaza war in May 2021, when several people were shot in clashes between Palestinian residents, far-right Jews and police.
About 70 percent of Lod’s nearly 80,000 residents are Jewish, and Jewish nationalists have moved into Arab neighborhoods in recent years to increase their majority. Since the clashes last year, Sawalhi said, racism has intensified.
“Before, if you wanted to buy an apartment from a Jewish guy, you could,” he said. “Now, he will tell you frankly, ‘I will not sell to Arabs.’ ”
Sawalhi says he will vote for Balad on Tuesday because he sees the party’s leader, Sami Abou Shehadeh, as someone who “can fight racism.” Ahmad Hassouna, 49, sitting across from Sawalhi at a horse training center in Lod, agrees. “What’s good about Sami Abou Shehadeh is he asks for coexistence and equality,” Hassouna said. “It’s not too much to ask; these are our rights.”
The disillusionment is magnified by Israel’s ongoing security crackdown in the occupied West Bank, where many people here still have relatives and where clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians have escalated in recent months. So far, 2022 has been the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in 16 years, according to the United Nations. The situation is fueling a sense that Lapid’s “change government” has brought more of the same.
Many Palestinian Israelis have grown frustrated with Jewish center-left parties, traditionally seen as their natural political partners, Darawshe said, a circumstance that is likely to depress Palestinian turnout.
Sill, Hassouna said, it is important for Palestinian Israelis to play the political game and to partner with Jewish parties to foil the rise of the far right.
“It’s in our best interest not to have a right-wing government. We don’t want to see Ben Gvir as the interior minister — he hates us Arabs,” Hassouna said, referring to Itamar Ben Gvir, an extreme right-wing, Jewish nationalist politician who is allied with Netanyahu and is surging in the polls. Ben Gvir has advocated for expelling “disloyal” Palestinian citizens from Israel.
But many Palestinian voters are focused instead on which Arab politicians can best deliver tangible improvements to roads, schools and housing.
Zaher Hamad, a court translator who lives in Jaffa, said that living standards have deteriorated in her community and that people think political leaders are out of touch. Still, she’s encouraging her fellow Palestinian citizens to vote.
“The most important issue in Jaffa is the housing problem; it’s very difficult,” she said. Hamad plans to vote for Shehadeh, whom she knows personally. “Anything you need, he will do his best to help you,” she said.
Shehadeh’s party has climbed slightly in the polls but remains below the 3.25 percent of the vote required to win a seat in the Knesset. The Joint List and Raam, meanwhile, are projected to win four seats each.
Shehadeh told The Washington Post on Friday that he thought his party would pass the threshold and that Arab turnout would be strong.
“Maybe a month ago, I would have been much more worried, but it seems to be that the competition between the three different parties has raised the voting,” he said.
A poll released Thursday by the Israel Democracy Institute appeared to substantiate that view, indicating that just over 50 percent of Israel’s Palestinian citizens are “certain” they will vote, compared with earlier polls’ findings that turnout would be closer to 40 percent. Arab turnout in the last election was just under 45 percent.
But, depending on how the election math shakes out, there’s a real possibility that Israel could go from having an Arab party in the government to having no Arab representation at all in the Knesset.
“I think we’re at the edge of a very negative earthquake in Arab politics,” Darawshe said. | 2022-10-31T06:25:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Palestinian Israelis are angry and disillusioned as election nears - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/israel-palestinians-election-netanyau-lod/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/israel-palestinians-election-netanyau-lod/ |
The body of a cardiac arrest victim was transported in the popular nightlife district of Itaewon in Seoul on Sunday. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images)
Juliana Velandia Santaella took a photo of young women dressed up as bananas, a hot dog and french fries on the streets of Itaewon at 10:08 p.m. Saturday night. Then she decided to go home, descending down a tight alleyway where she would narrowly escape her death.
The 23-year-old medical student from Mexico began to feel squeezed by the packed crowd, which was slowly pushing hundreds downhill in an alley that became the center of an accident that left at least 153 people dead. Velandia was quickly separated from her friend, 21-year-old Carolina Cano of Mexico, and started to feel the weight of other people’s bodies crushing her.
“At some point, my feet weren’t even touching the ground anymore,” she said. “There was an unconscious guy on top of me, which was affecting my breathing.”
Velandia focused on taking shallow breaths through her mouth as her lungs began to feel like they were being flattened. People around her were screaming for help or calling for the police, she said, but then they progressively fell silent as their bodies grew limp above and below her. Stuck in a pile of people, she recalls only being able to freely move her neck as the rest of her body was restrained.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to be next.’ I really thought I was going to die,” she said. “I was completely paralyzed. At some point, I couldn’t feel my legs. I couldn’t even move my toes.”
She was left like that, unable to feel parts of her body, until a young South Korean man who was standing on an elevated ledge grabbed her arms and ripped her from the crowd. She said she was able to then look at her phone and saw that it was 10:57 p.m.
After a few minutes, she started regaining sensation in her legs; at first, “there were so many unconscious bodies on the floor that I couldn’t even walk,” she said.
Velandia’s extensive injuries show what could happen during a dangerous crowd crush. On Sunday, she rapidly developed a fever and spent four hours in the emergency room at St. Mary’s Hospital at the Catholic University of Korea, where she was diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis, a life-threatening condition that involves muscle injury and necrosis as cells begin to die. Speaking from her dorm room on Monday, she said that the pain has gotten worse. One leg is swollen and purple, and she is unable to place her entire foot on the ground as she walks.
Even now, her chest hurts if she breathes too deeply.
G. Keith Still, a crowd safety expert and visiting professor of crowd science at the University of Suffolk in Britain, told The Post that compressive or restrictive asphyxia is the probable cause for most people who are killed in a crowd crush. It takes about six minutes for people to enter this condition if their lungs do not have room to expand.
According to Velandia, many people were trying to move bodies to clearer ground to perform CPR as she escaped the crowd. Some people who appeared to be lifeless had vomit in their mouths and around them, suggesting that they had choked to death, she said.
She found her friend, Cano, who had borrowed a stranger’s cellphone to call her. The two met in front of Itaewon Station, the place where so many partygoers had started their Halloween night.
“We hugged and we cried a lot when we saw each other, because we really thought the other was dead,” Velandia said. “It’s a miracle that we are alive, really.” | 2022-10-31T06:25:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mexican survivor of Seoul Halloween crush feared she'd die in Itaewon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/seoul-halloween-crush-mexico-survivor-itaewon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/seoul-halloween-crush-mexico-survivor-itaewon/ |
Rhys Hoskins, a leader in a rowdy clubhouse, is ‘Philly through and through’
Until October, Rhys Hoskins's Phillies career had been defined more by what his team hadn’t done than what it had. (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
HOUSTON — About 2½ hours before any of them were due for their scheduled batting practice Saturday, Kyle Schwarber, Alec Bohm, Bryson Stott and other Philadelphia Phillies were out on the field taking swings off a pitching machine, their hitting coach nowhere in sight. Schwarber had lugged out a giant speaker, turned up the Blink-182 and slowly but surely transformed the whole thing into something of an impromptu home run derby.
Rhys Hoskins, polished and professional, emotive on the field but steady off it, was leaning on the cage, waiting his turn. He is the senior in a clubhouse full of rowdy underclassmen, a Phillie through the recent worst as well as this stunning best, the kind of guy no one could blame for trying a little too hard to be a little too serious at a time like this.
But as Schwarber hit a ball that fell just short of the center field wall at Minute Maid Park in a meaningless batting practice session, Hoskins was jumping up and down, hooting and laughing, fully consumed by it all.
Few Phillies know better than Hoskins how important it is to absorb this moment. No player on the Phillies’ roster has played more games for them than he has. Since the Phillies drafted him in 2014, they have had five managers, three general managers and their first president of baseball operations. They had never been in the playoffs before this year.
Until October, his Phillies career had been defined more by what his team hadn’t done than what it had. But disappointing teams have leaders, too, even if they don’t get validation on the postseason stage. And as the Phillies transformed around him, thanks in part to the arrival of big-name, high-priced stars such as Schwarber, Bryce Harper and Nick Castellanos, he grew into exactly what they would need when this magical October came.
“We call him our captain. He answers the questions we don’t want to. He does the [players union] stuff for us. He goes out and does the things we as a team need him to,” Harper said. “He’s Philly through and through, man. He’s been here when they were really bad, and I know that was hard for him, and being here now, being able to reap the benefits. It’s so good to see.”
Hoskins is 29 years old on a team populated with 30-something stars and a bunch of mid-20s players such as Stott and Bohm, whose candor and exuberance often make them seem far younger. For those homegrown Phillies, Hoskins has always been the example, the one who came through the same affiliates and emerged in the majors, the truest of Phillies.
“He’s been so instrumental for me as a young guy coming up, just that steady voice — always there, calm and collected — who can get fired up when you’re doing well,” second-year outfielder Matt Vierling said. “But he’s just that leader, that veteran voice in the clubhouse that you need. If you ever need anything as a young guy, he’s one of the guys you go to, especially as a guy who came up through this system.”
Hoskins has never been a Silver Slugger or an all-star. He is a .242 career hitter who once led the National League in walks. But since his first full season in 2018, he has been the Phillies’ steadiest offensive constant with a regular season on-base-plus-slugging percentage of .833, 45th in baseball in that span, the same as shortstop Corey Seager, a few points behind Castellanos, Anthony Rizzo and Brandon Nimmo, for comparison. And when the Phillies added Harper for the long haul, then Castellanos and Schwarber and Zack Wheeler and other stars unlike any they had during the Hoskins era, he did not find himself in anything resembling a clubhouse power struggle.
“I don’t know if it’s changed the way I see my role. I feel like I understand what I do well within a group, within a team,” Hoskins said. “I don’t know if who’s in that group or team changes that — maybe you become more aware to some of the personalities that enter the room. But I think really from Day 1, the organization just asked me to be myself. And that’s what I’ll try to continue to do.”
Harper is a different person than he was in his Washington Nationals days, when he never quite solidified himself as a leader or even a consistent type of presence in a clubhouse still firmly in the hands of an older Nationals generation. He always seemed to try to fit in, couldn’t help standing out and could never fully disappear into the ranks. Perhaps Harper could never be just another guy, could never be the kind of steady, relatable veteran so many teams rely on. But he slid in alongside Hoskins with seeming ease, and he seems to know exactly who he is here — not to mention exactly who he wants to be.
“They opened their arms to me. They wanted me to be myself. They wanted me to just be Bryce. And as a team, that’s who we all want you to be,” Harper said. “We want you to be yourself. We want you to come in and be who you are. I think being able to learn that from Rhys and other guys in the clubhouse was easy for us.”
Hoskins has 10 hits this postseason. Five of them are homers. All of them — the three-run shot with which he shocked Spencer Strider and the Atlanta Braves in the division series clincher, his two blasts in Game 4 of the NL Championship Series against the San Diego Padres, his bomb in the clincher a day later — put him at the heart of this 2022 postseason legend just as much as Harper or Schwarber or the rest of them. And none of his teammates understands the magnitude quite like he does.
“We understand what’s going on in the city, what’s gone on historically with this organization in the last 10, 12 years. I have a little different perspective than some of the other guys on the team because I’ve been here for almost half of that,” Hoskins said. “Naturally, I think you try a little harder because you care about the city that you play for.”
Hoskins said that even as Dave Dombrowski’s arrival in the front office and the subsequent acquisition of elite talents such as Harper made the Phillies’ rise seem somewhat sudden or even overdue, he has seen smaller changes building all along, bubbling beneath the surface until they combusted this October.
“I think obviously you had some change in the front office and the direction those people think. But also you have the addition of one or two people on the medical staff, the implementation of a dietitian, offseason plans and packets that are totally specified to you,” Hoskins said. “That type of thing has evolved throughout my time here. You may not be able to see it on the field, but it allows the product on the field to come out the way it is because we are so much better prepared.”
Hoskins admitted neither he nor his teammates have had much time to think about what the last four weeks have done to their team and to their lives and to their franchise. Perhaps it is better that way, that they sit here on the field listening to old Blink-182 songs, jumping for joy before any of them realize just how hard this is supposed to be. Many of them could never fully understand it anyway, not like Hoskins can and will. Because these Phillies are, like the disappointing Phillies of years gone by, like they have been every day since the 2017 season — his.
“He exemplifies the Phillies about as good as you could. He’s a huge voice, leader of our team, and a phenomenal talent,” deadline acquisition Brandon Marsh said. “I’m so excited for guys like him. He’s been here since Day 1, and they’ve gone through all the struggles, all the goods and the bads, and he’s finally getting rewarded.” | 2022-10-31T08:35:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Phillies' Rhys Hoskins reaches World Series stage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/31/rhys-hoskins-phillies-world-series/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/31/rhys-hoskins-phillies-world-series/ |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Strikes hit Kyiv and key cities, targeting...
Smoke rises on the outskirts of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, during a after a Russian missile attack on Monday morning. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)
Ukrainian officials said that Russia launched dozens of cruise missiles, many of which were intercepted by air defenses, and they warned again that civilians should prepare for long-term power and water outages. There were no immediate tallies of casualties, but officials said there were people wounded.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the strikes had left 80 percent of the capital city without water supply — disrupting the Monday morning routine for hundreds of thousands of residents, and that engineers were working to restore electricity at a damaged facility that supplies power to 350,000 Kyiv apartments.
As air raid sirens wailed across Ukraine, strikes and power outages were also reported in Kharkiv region in the northeast, in the Cherkasy, Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions in central Ukraine, and in Zaporizhzhia in the southeast. Several hydroelectric dams appeared to be specific targets on Monday.
Moldova’s Interior Ministry also confirmed that a missile fell in the northern border town of Naslavcea, about 95 miles southwest of the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, after being intercepted by Ukrainian air defenses — in a rare and dangerous example of the war spilling into a neighboring country.
Monday’s airstrikes, many apparently launched from fighter planes over the Caspian Sea, or from the Rostov region in southern Russia, were the latest attack in recent weeks deliberately targeting Ukraine’s energy system, a strategy officials say is intended to punish civilians as winter approaches, and to compensate for Russia’s setbacks on the battlefield with long-range bombing.
The bombings followed Ukrainian attacks over the weekend on Russian naval targets in occupied Crimea, where Russia has long maintained the headquarters of its Black Sea fleet, in Sevastopol, under a lease agreement before its invasion and illegal annexation of the peninsula in 2014. Russian ships were damaged by apparent drone strikes but Ukraine has not yet claimed responsibility.
“Instead of fighting on the battlefield, Russia fights civilians,” Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter. “Don’t justify these attacks by calling them a ‘response.' Russia does this because it still has the missiles and the will to kill Ukrainians.”
Klitschko urged residents of the capital to prepare for hardship. “We ask you to stock up on water from the nearest pumps and points of sale” he wrote on Telegram.
Ukraine’s air command claim to have shot down 44 out of 50 of the missiles targeting different areas of Ukraine.
After the strikes on naval vessels on Saturday the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was abandoning an agreement to allow the export of grain from Ukraine, which is a crucial supplier to many developing countries.
Moscow said it could “no longer guarantee the safety of civilian dry cargo ships participating in the Black Sea Grain Initiative,” referring to the U.N.-brokered deal to safeguard grain being exported from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
Russia’s withdrawal from the deal, triggered renewed concerns about global food supplies. The grain deal brokered by Turkey in July, had allowed exports to resume from Black Sea ports, where they had been halted after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Isabelle Khurshudyan in Kyiv, Ukraine and Leo Sands in London contributed to this report. | 2022-10-31T10:59:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Missiles slam Ukraine as Russia strikes infrastructure in new air barrage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/airstrikes-missiles-infrastructure-russia-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/airstrikes-missiles-infrastructure-russia-ukraine/ |
Covid uses our proteins against us. A new strategy seeks to block that.
Scientists are exploring treatments that would remain effective regardless of how the virus evolves.
A government worker tells people how to take a coronavirus test last week on a Beijing street. (Tingshu Wang/Reuters)
With the U.S. headed into its third full winter of the pandemic amid fears that new variants will evade immunity from vaccines and prior infections, some scientists are seeking ways to blunt the coronavirus’s slippery evolution by blocking the human proteins it uses against us.
If the strategy works, it has the potential to address several shortcomings of current treatments and vaccines, including their inability to prevent infections and maintain effectiveness in the face of a changing virus. The approach could also protect people with immune systems too weak to tolerate vaccines.
The virus depends on our proteins to make copies of itself and perform other functions. Shutting off its access to a crucial protein would be like depriving a predator of food or oxygen. Moreover, since some human proteins are hijacked by multiple viruses, a single treatment could be used to fight a broad spectrum of illnesses.
In the past month alone, two studies have appeared supporting the promise of targeting human proteins in treating covid-19 ― one published Tuesday in the journal Science Signaling, the other, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, posted on the science website bioRxiv.
But there is serious disagreement about the potential risk involved in disrupting our own proteins, and some scientists claim insufficient money has been committed to exploring this approach.
The $577 million in government funding devoted to speeding development of antivirals to combat covid-19 excluded work targeting human proteins, said Charles Rice, a virologist at the Rockefeller University and winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in medicine, along with two others, for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus.
“Many of us were quite disappointed with that exclusion,” Rice said. “Both of those approaches should work and should be pursued.”
Carl W. Dieffenbach, director of the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, defended the funding for the nine Antiviral Drug Discovery Centers, saying it addressed a “critical gap.” He added that investigators can apply for grants to examine treatments that act on human proteins, an approach covered by a National Institutes of Health program called ACTIV.
“If you choose the right target, you can get things to work,” Dieffenbach said, adding, “I have a healthy skepticism” about developing drugs that target human proteins.
He pointed out that both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine target human proteins but have yet to show any value in fighting covid-19. In addition, he said that aiming drugs at our own proteins “runs the significant risk of serious harm.”
But others downplay the potential for harm, since treatment regimens for covid-19 would be brief.
“Toxicity is much less of an issue if you take a drug just five days, instead of five years,” said Nevan J. Krogan, an author of the study posted on bioRxiv and director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute at the University of California at San Francisco. He stressed the importance of understanding and tailoring treatments to the specific actions of the virus.
Early in the pandemic, Krogan and a group of international collaborators mapped out hundreds of human proteins and the viral proteins that rely on them, and came up with a list of 69 compounds with the potential to disrupt those interactions. Almost 20 have entered clinical trials against covid-19. Krogan is especially keen on one, plitidepsin, which comes from a species of sea squirt found only in the waters off the Spanish island of Ibiza. He said the drug has been effective in treating mice infected with each of the major coronavirus variants.
The Spanish pharmaceutical company PharmaMar has launched a Phase 3 clinical trial of plitidepsin, which is also being explored as a possible cancer treatment.
“The thing not widely understood is that for every disease except infectious diseases, we do target our own proteins,” said Marc Feldmann, a professor emeritus at the University of Oxford. “Targeting the host is not unusual. It’s absolutely routine.”
One example is rheumatoid arthritis, the inflammatory disease that afflicts about 1.3 million Americans. The disease, in which the body’s immune system attacks its own tissue, results in painful swelling and joint pain. Treatments target human proteins involved in inflammation.
To date, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given full approval to two covid-19 treatments: the antiviral remdesivir, which is given intravenously to adults and some children, and the immune system regulator baricitinib, administered to some hospitalized adults. The agency has also granted emergency use authorization to several lab-made antibodies, as well as two antiviral pills, Paxlovid and Lagevrio, that can be taken at home by patients with mild to moderate covid-19 to reduce the development of severe disease.
Doctors say there is a clear need for more treatments.
“My feeling is that we really need to focus on the host,” said Otto Yang, associate chief of the division of infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Part of the reason we don’t have better treatment is we don’t fully understand the process leading to severe illness.”
In particular, Yang said, more needs to be understood about the massive immune response called a cytokine storm, which often is what kills covid-19 patients.
Raymond Dwek, emeritus director of the Oxford Glycobiology Institute, believes one key to potential treatments lies in preventing viral proteins from folding into the correct three-dimensional shape needed to bind to the receptors on our cells.
Since the virus does not have the protein-folding system it needs, it hijacks the machinery used by our own proteins.
This year, Dwek and others wrote in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that seeking treatments aimed at our own proteins could enable scientists “to develop drugs with broad potential against viral families with pandemic potential, not only other coronaviruses.”
Still, some scientists believe the virus will eventually defeat whatever barriers scientists erect.
“No matter what drug you approve, viruses will ultimately find a way around it,” said Craig Wilen, an associate professor of laboratory medicine and immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine. For example, the drug might find another protein that can provide the same benefit as the blocked protein, just in a less efficient manner.
Wilen and other researchers believe that ultimately, the solution is likely to be a combination therapy, or cocktail, that cuts off the virus’ escape options. Doctors already use this strategy to treat HIV and hepatitis C.
Developing a drug cocktail, however, raises other challenges, since it may require developers of different covid-19 drugs to reach financial agreements.
“Trying to develop a combination therapy is more of a business challenge than a scientific challenge,” Wilen said. | 2022-10-31T10:59:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Scientists explore new strategy for covid-19 treatments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/10/31/covid-treatment-options-protein-research/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/10/31/covid-treatment-options-protein-research/ |
A 12-year-old sells his artwork for charity. So far, he’s raised $15,000.
Arsh Pal has sold about 500 paintings in the past four years, with price tags up to $800
Arsh Pal, 12, has spent the past four years selling his artwork to raise money for charities. (Courtesy of Arsh Pal)
Arsh has always been artistically inclined, his mother said. When he was a young boy, Divya Pal and her husband, Sanjeev, signed their son up for extracurricular activities such as piano, karate and gymnastics, but “he would lean toward art,” Pal said.
The price of his work, he explained, ranges based on size and complexity. For instance, small pieces have sold for $10, while larger paintings — which can reach five feet — have sold for $800. He auctioned two pieces at a charity event last fall for a total of $10,000.
Arsh mainly uses acrylic paint to produce his art, but he also works with watercolor and mixed media. He particularly enjoys crafting abstract pieces.
“They’re always excited when I come teach them,” said Arsh, who has also volunteered at other nursing homes to teach art lessons. | 2022-10-31T11:12:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arsh Pal, 12, sells his art for charity. He’s raised about $15,000. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/31/arsh-pal-art-charity-stjude/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/31/arsh-pal-art-charity-stjude/ |
It’s true, Martin Luther King Jr. paid the hospital bill when actress Julia Roberts was born
Roberts’s parents were friends with the civil rights activists, and welcomed the King children into their theater school
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is welcomed with a kiss by his wife Coretta Scott King after leaving court in Montgomery, Ala., in a file photo from March 22, 1956. The two were married at a now-vacant house near Marion, Ala., three years earlier. (Gene Herrick/AP)
When actress Julia Roberts was born 55 years ago in Smyrna, Ga., a couple swooped in and paid her parents’ hospital bill. It was Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King.
The story, not widely known, recently resurfaced on social media. A retweet of a video compilation of Roberts from a fan on Oct. 21 read: “Martin Luther King Jr paying for her birth is still a little known fact that sends me.”
The collective jaw of the internet hit the floor.
While countless people were touched, others wondered whether it was even true.
“It sounds like fake news,” someone wrote in response to the tweet.
A few days later, though, it became clear that the Kings’ kind deed was far from a myth. To mark Roberts’s birthday on Oct. 28, Zara Rahim, who has a significant social media following, shared a video clip on Twitter, in which Roberts confirms the story during an interview with television personality Gayle King.
“The day you were born, who paid for the hospital bill?” King asked Roberts during HISTORYTalks, a September event in D.C., hosted by the History Channel and A&E Networks.
“Her research is very good,” a seemingly surprised Roberts quipped.
Then, Roberts provided a definitive response: “The King family paid for my hospital bill.”
“Not my family,” King replied, clarifying that Roberts was referring to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. “Why did they do that?”
“My parents couldn’t pay for the hospital bill,” Roberts said.
She explained that her parents — Walter and Betty Roberts — owned a theater school in Atlanta called the Actors and Writers Workshop, which they welcomed the King children to attend.
“One day Coretta Scott King called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school, because they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids,” Julia Roberts said. “My mom was like, ‘Sure, come on over.’ And so they just all became friends and they helped us out of a jam.”
Bernice King, the youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, tweeted Sunday that she was grateful the story was getting attention, “and that so many people have been awed by it. I know the story well, but it is moving for me to be reminded of my parents’ generosity and influence.”
While the tale of Roberts’s hospital bill wasn’t widely known until recently, stories had previously been told about the two families and their friendship in the 1960s, a time of Jim Crow laws and segregation in the South.
A 2001 CNN interview featuring Julia Roberts, her mother and Yolanda King — the firstborn child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King — highlighted their connection.
“It was an extended family, it really was. And all of these Black kids and White kids getting along, no problems,” Yolanda King said.
A 2013 essay by Georgia-based author Phillip DePoy also discusses the families’ relationship — and how it led to turmoil and targeting. He described a story from 1965, when he — then a 15-year-old boy — was part of a production put on by the Roberts’ theatrical group. In the play, which was based on a story by writer Joel Chandler Harris, he and Yolanda King kissed, sparking uproar.
“I was primarily Caucasian and Yolanda wasn’t,” wrote DePoy, who did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post. “That’s what the trouble was about.”
According to him, “a tangential member of the Ku Klux Klan” witnessed the kiss and subsequently blew up a vehicle parked nearby. “The cops who had been watching the show just wandered over, talked to him, put him in handcuffs and took him away with very little energy.”
Beyond chronicling the incident, DePoy also explained the impact the Roberts family had on those who attended their theater school — and the Atlanta acting scene more broadly.
“Yolanda King spent the rest of her life involved in theater; my brother, Scott DePoy, who had joined the workshop before I had, continues to work all over the Southeast. Eric Roberts eventually went to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London,” he wrote.
Just as the Roberts left an impact on the King family, the same was true in the reverse.
Like her parents, Roberts has long been a racial justice advocate. While filming “Sleeping with the Enemy,” in the spring of 1990 in a small South Carolina town, Roberts got into a heated argument with a local bar owner, who denied entry to a crew member because he was Black.
“I was enraged, I was out of my mind,” Roberts said in a 2001 interview with CNN.
In response to hearing Roberts recount the hospital bill story, Gayle King said: “I think that’s extraordinary, and it sort of lays the groundwork for who you are.” | 2022-10-31T11:12:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Martin Luther King Jr paid hospital bill when Julia Roberts was born - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/31/julia-roberts-mlk-birth-hospital/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/31/julia-roberts-mlk-birth-hospital/ |
Is the idea of ‘maternal instinct’ a myth?
Perspective by Rebecca Gale
Like so many women in this country, Chelsea Conaboy went back to work shortly after having her first baby. She sat in a makeshift closet, trying to pump breast milk, and wondered when the magical “maternal instinct” she’d heard so much about would kick in.
“I had this ingrained sense that there would be a biological process that carries me through those early hard days,” she said. “When it didn’t happen as I expected, I thought something was broken in me.”
Conaboy eventually realized she was like countless others who struggle with some part of the transformation to new parenthood. So Conaboy, a health and science journalist, began researching what she calls the myth of the maternal instinct, and how it has been perpetuated.
She talks to us here about her new book, “Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood,” the science behind parenting, gender roles and human attachment, and how we need to reshape the outdated and false narrative that has limited our lives and experiences. (This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.)
Q: You write that this concept of a maternal instinct was created as a cheap, nonscientific device designed to push women to have a lot of babies. Why has that concept been so widely accepted as truth, and what has begun to change?
A: The thing that I take issue with is that this is an “instinct.” An instinct is a rigid idea, a fixed pattern of behavior. Parenthood is not automatic. It’s a major transition and an upheaval from the brain.
The maternal instinct idea was written into scientific theory in the early part of the 20th century by religious men who had a stated interest in compelling White, well-off women to have more babies.
One of my favorite parts of the book is when Leta Hollingworth calls these myths “cheap devices.” She was this pioneering psychologist who wrote in 1916 how women are being compelled to have babies by the same methods that compel soldiers to go to war. There was this glorification of motherhood and the obfuscation of the hard parts. The rates of maternal mortality were 60 times higher [in 1916] than by the end of the [20th] century.
There’s a reason why the maternal instinct feels true. There are these hormonal, experiential, neurobiological processes that happen in parenthood, but they aren’t what we’ve been told. They aren’t these automatic, innate things that women have from the time they are born, and only women.
Q: You mentioned that you thought postpartum depression was going to be like the flu — either you would have symptoms or not. How does the myth of the maternal instinct play a role in our inability to address postpartum mood disorders, and what can we change to improve outcomes?
A: We need to be normalizing the sense of distress and challenge. This transition to motherhood can be really grueling. It can be joyful and full of wonder and love. [But] I don’t actually know anyone who got through to parenthood without some psychological distress, whether it was infertility, or pregnancy loss, or childbirth difficulty or trauma, guilt around breastfeeding or the return to work. It’s just grueling.
I don’t want the message to be that it’s hard for everyone so stop complaining. This is really hard, we all need support through it. Our systems in place are not enough — for many of us we are going to need more support.
It is true that biological processes happen to parents, but it requires so much of us.
Requiring support is not a sign of you being a bad mother. It’s you going through a difficult transformation. In a society that doesn’t recognize that as such, it’s perfectly normal to need help.
The parallel I like to draw is with the adolescent brain — the hormonal shifts and that it’s fundamentally adaptive and [this developmental time] has a major increase for the risk of mental illness. We have used that science to build more support for teenagers — later school start times, how we talk about substance use and risky behaviors, and how we’ve changed how discipline is used at school. We need a similar conversation with the parental brain.
Q: This concept of a maternal instinct has shaped so many of our public policies. As more nontraditional families take shape and more men are stepping into caregiving roles, do you see a shift in public policy as well?
A: It makes me really hopeful that this conversation could change, as more people experience being captured by their babies, how caregiving can be transformative.
The standard [for clinical care] is now one six-week appointment for birthing parents. That is not the standard in our peer countries. [The American College for Obstetricians and Gynecologists] has called it inadequate, and called for a more holistic approach — for physical needs and mental health needs.
This is a time of development. We need to give all parents the time and financial security to focus on that. It’s true for mothers and non-gestational parents. The things that change the brain are hormones and exposure to the babies. You get that exposure through time in direct care of the child. Non-gestational parents need that [time] also.
We also need to change the conversations we have and how we talk to one another about our individual experiences of parenthood and what expectant parents can expect. We can be talking more frankly about what it’s been like for us, helping other people to know what to expect and what kind of support they might need.
Q: What are some of those examples of individual change and changing how we talk about the postpartum experience?
A: After my first son was born, there was a breastfeeding support group at the hospital. I got assurances that he was growing and getting the latch right. But at this gathering of 20 women and their babies, we never talked about the mental health part of it. I kept thinking, “Am I the only one that is feeling the shift in myself?”
My hairdresser is 20 weeks pregnant. She was talking about the nursery and baby shower, the cute onesie. I kept trying to talk about how to be an advocate for herself for her physical and mental health. She was receptive to it, but it’s uncomfortable because it’s not the norm. We celebrate so much in that time and we build mothers up, but we also need to be having frank conversations with them about what they are going to need.
Q: Researchers have found that as more mothers have entered the workforce, not only have the standards for what we think a good mother is ratcheted up, but so has the expectation that mothers should shoulder all of these burdens with ease and grace. Your book is an attempt to poke holes in that punishing narrative. Ten years from now, when we’re talking to new parents about their experience, what could that shift look like?
A: In 10 years, I would love for expectant parents to have an opportunity and take stock and acknowledge that this is going to be a major shift in themselves and not just their time and sleep schedule. They can think about their own mental health history and if they might need more support — and if they do, have it available to them. This would be a very normalized part of the conversation with their doctors and doulas.
But this is just a starting place and only one piece of the process. You can’t really know what it’s going to look like until you’re in it.
We can recognize that this old idea shaped so many of our public policies, including our beliefs around reproductive rights and who should have babies and why they should have babies. Reproductive justice, paid leave, gender equity — there is this social acceptance that mothers know what to do and they belong at home and have the capacity to do it all. These things are scientifically false.
In order to thrive we need to have our struggles be seen.
Rebecca Gale is a reporting fellow at the Better Life Lab at New America. | 2022-10-31T11:13:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is the idea of 'maternal instinct' a myth? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/10/31/maternal-instinct-motherhood-exhaustion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/10/31/maternal-instinct-motherhood-exhaustion/ |
Powerball jackpot hits $1B again. An expert says it’ll happen more often.
Dave Colbert buys a Powerball ticket in Prospect, Pa., on Friday. (Keith Srakocic/AP)
The estimated Powerball jackpot has crested the $1 billion line, which would be the fifth-largest lotto pot in American history. The prize could be won Monday.
Saturday night marked the 37th consecutive draw without someone getting the six numbers needed to win the grand prize.
This is the second time the Powerball kitty has reached 10 digits. The Mega Millions game has surpassed $1 billion three times, all in the past four years.
If you feel like top payouts seem to be getting larger, you are correct — and it is absolutely on purpose, lottery expert Victor Matheson said.
“They’ve been engineered to get bigger,” said Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.
He won Powerball’s $314 million jackpot. It ruined his life.
Matheson said lottery companies make the grand prize roll over more often by lowering the odds and directing more of the $2 per ticket into the jackpot. News reports (such as this one) also fuel excitement.
The Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, changed the game’s format in October 2015, The Washington Post previously reported.
The association upped the number of those white balls that fill the tumbler from 59 to 69, which doubled the combinations of white balls. The odds of winning the jackpot went from 1 in 175 million to 1 in 292 million. But the group did make it easier to win non-jackpot prizes by decreasing the number of red Powerball balls from 35 to 26 — jackpot winners must correctly guess the five white balls and the final red ball.
The Powerball organization started in 15 states and now operates in 45 states, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Even with that growth, Matheson said, the frequency at which players win big has stayed about the same because of changes to the game.
“The chance of winning has increased at roughly the same rate as the population of the states offering the game,” he said.
You’ve won the Mega Millions jackpot! Time to hide.
Matheson said a winner who elects to receive earnings via an annuity can expect to yield a bit over $600 million — but they’d be joining the nation’s highest income-tax bracket of between 35 percent and 37 percent. He said a winner should also expect that they aren’t alone because big jackpots of round numbers draw more players, which means an increased chance of splitting the pot.
It’s possible, he said, that if there are two winners of a $1 billion jackpot, they each could net as low as $185 million after taxes.
But, let’s be real, he said: “I wouldn’t shed too many tears for a person who walks away with $185 million.”
Winner of a $560 million Powerball jackpot can keep the money and her secret, judge rules
When asked about his prospects of getting a winning ticket, Matheson turned to statistics.
“As an economist studying gambling, I know the math. And the math doesn’t work out very well for gamblers,” he said.
It’s all a matter of perspective, he said. If someone is spending $2 to play the lottery for financial gain, that’s a terrible reason to buy a ticket. But if it’s about entertainment and spending $2 to dream with friends and family, that’s a sound investment.
“That’s different than thinking about what you’d do with the $47 you win at the 50-50 raffle you win at the high school girls volleyball game,” Matheson said.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has analyzed lottery data and found that households in the second highest of five income groups spent the most on tickets and pooled betting, laying down an average of $94.72 from the third quarter of 2017 through the second quarter of 2018. That number for all households was $69.52. The next-biggest spenders were households in the second-to-lowest-income bracket, spending an average of $81.98.
As expected for any financial risk available at a gas station, the lottery has awful odds when it comes to beating the house.
Matheson said states sell about $100 billion worth of lottery tickets every year and keep $30 billion annually after paying out prizes and covering retailer and administrative costs.
Matheson said the statistics give him enough peace not to play.
“The chances of me winning are almost exactly the same whether I buy a ticket or not,” he said.
The next Powerball drawing will be Monday at 11 p.m.
Top 10 Powerball jackpots, according to a Powerball news release:
1. $1.586 billion — Jan. 13, 2016 (Calif., Fla., Tenn.)
3. $768.4 million — March 27, 2019 (Wis.)
4. $758.7 million — Aug. 23, 2017 (Mass.)
5. $731.1 million — Jan. 20, 2021 (Md.)
6. $699.8 million — Oct. 4, 2021 (Calif.)
7. $687.8 million — Oct. 27, 2018 (Iowa, N.Y.)
8. $632.6 million — Jan. 5, 2022 (Calif., Wis.)
9. $590.5 million — May 18, 2013 (Fla.)
10. $587.5 million — Nov. 28, 2012 (Ariz., Mo.) | 2022-10-31T11:38:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | $1B Powerball jackpot speaks to new lottery system, lotto expert says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/01/powerball-lottery-billion-dollar-prize/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/01/powerball-lottery-billion-dollar-prize/ |
Hirshhorn museum plans major renovation once sculpture garden reopens
This modernization of the Hirshhorn’s interior and plaza will be the largest physical reimagining of the museum in its history
WASHINGTON, DC — AUGUST 30 The Hirshhorn Museum is planning a major renovation to start in a few years. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will undergo a major renovation of its interior and plaza, the largest physical reimagining of the museum in its history. The renovation, which is likely to begin in 2025, could keep the museum’s interior attractions closed for two years.
Selldorf Architects, which specializes in cultural spaces, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) — where Gordon Bunshaft, the original architect behind the museum’s building, was a partner — will lead the modernization efforts, Hirshhorn officials told The Washington Post.
Still in its planning stages and with a budget to be determined, the project aims to increase museum accessibility; update infrastructure including bathrooms and elevators; and create more space for art, programming and education. It comes at a time of significant changes to the Hirshhorn, which just finished replacing the building’s concrete exterior and roof. In November, the museum will break ground on the long-awaited and much-debated redesign of its sculpture garden, which is expected to take 18 to 24 months to complete. This third and final phase of revitalization will commence after the garden reopens.
“This is a transformational moment for the museum because we are nearly 50 years on and we haven’t done major work on our campus in decades,” Melissa Chiu, director of the Hirshhorn, told The Post. “It’s really about re-envisioning the museum for the 21st century.”
In doing so, they won’t stray too far from the past. The distinctive 1974 Brutalist-style building is “made with a certain philosophy that we still hold dear,” Chris Cooper, design partner at SOM, said. Given the firm’s close ties to Bunshaft and Selldorf’s expertise in museum design, “We didn’t feel that we would be afraid of the building, but we felt like we could come and work to project it into the future,” he said.
Conversations about what it means to be a 21st-century museum typically raise philosophical questions about ethical collecting, diverse representation and the stories museums tell. Physical matters — where bathrooms are located, how easy it is to enter the museum, the height limit on art — might not sound as interesting. Yet, they can have a profound influence over which visitors and what artworks end up inside.
As a free, modern and contemporary art museum on the National Mall, the Hirshhorn is a rare place where accessibility meets avant-garde, a museum that draws art aficionados and stray tourists alike. In some ways, it already reflects what a museum made for this era can look like. These physical updates follow record-breaking shows including 2017′s “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors” and 2019’s “Raphael Lozano Hammer: Pulse,” which reflected contemporary art’s potential for wide appeal. With the revamp, the Hirshhorn hopes to attract more young visitors by making the museum — occasionally likened to a fortress — warm and approachable.
“The most important thing is to connect to people and to do it in such a way that at every turn, you feel utterly welcome,” Annabelle Selldorf, an architect and founder of Selldorf Architects, says.
For Selldorf, this means lowering barriers to entry. She notes that, currently, the museum has revolving-door entrances, one small public elevator and narrow escalators — all of which could be difficult to negotiate for individuals with disabilities. “We want to think about this holistically,” she says, voicing her hope that “everybody gets to have the same experience as much as possible.”
Although years of work and decisions lie ahead, Chiu says right now they are thinking most about the Mall-facing entrance to the museum, which will welcome more visitors after the sculpture garden is complete. It’s critical, she says, because “it is that first encounter with the museum. For a majority of visitors, it is their first time to a modern and contemporary art museum.”
Chiu and the designers envision a seamless, art-filled journey from the National Mall, through the sculpture garden, onto the plaza beneath the building, and into the museum’s glass lobby and interior galleries. Inside, they hope to create a balance between experiencing the expansive, curving architecture and retreating to more-intimate spaces. Even as the circle-shape facilitates forward motion through the museum, they are working to increase what museum professionals call “dwell time” in places such as the Lerner Room, which looks out onto the Mall. “We need to be thinking about, how can we give over more of our building to the public?” Chiu said.
Designed in the 1960s to house the art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, an oil and mining tycoon, the Hirshhorn’s doughnut-shape concrete building was met with the kind of skepticism received by anything that is a little ahead of its time. Critics accused it of “pompous monumentality” and “environmental abuse.” They lambasted its rotund concrete exterior, likening it to a “bomb shelter” and a “maimed monument.”
Over the years, though, the museum’s idiosyncratic circular shape has proved a strength, inspiring installations suited to the round — such as “Andy Warhol: Shadows,” where paintings in the series stretched uninterrupted for 450 feet, and “Mark Bradford: Pickett’s Charge.” Its heavy concrete cylinder has become its signature. “I never fail to be amazed of how it sort of commands attention,” Selldorf says. “It’s magnetic.”
Informed by a love of sculpture shared by Bunshaft and Hirshhorn, who was known for his collection of Henry Moores and Auguste Rodins, the museum functions as a work of three-dimensional art. “It’s an important building in that it’s a sculpture itself. And so there’s great sensitivity toward maintaining the essence of the building,” Cooper said.
Cooper points to the crisscross escalators, the glass lobby and the contrast between the mostly windowless exterior and light-filled interior as elements that define the Hirshhorn. Above all, Cooper and Selldorf say, the Hirshhorn is a simple geometric idea: a cylinder floating above a square. “That’s pretty elemental and in a really fantastic way, because everybody gets that,” Selldorf says. “You see that from afar, and you immediately understand the spatial setup.”
As they decide on changes, Chiu says they will hold public meetings as they did with the sculpture garden.
Since its founding, the Hirshhorn has expanded its mission to include contemporary as well as modern art. Chiu looks forward to being able to cater to large-scale works and new, innovative artistic media. “There are all these assumptions that we once had about artworks — that paintings need a white cube, video art needs a black box, performance art needs an auditorium,” she says. “And in fact, that’s not the case at all. There is a much greater sense of cross-genre art presentation. And it requires greater flexibility.”
The renovation may also make room for visitors to see more of the permanent collection. Currently, the museum’s holdings are rotated in short- and long-term exhibitions. Chiu points to Sondra Perry’s “Graft and Ash” and Kusama’s Mirror Rooms as examples of works she’d like to put on display more regularly.
In Cooper’s words, the new project boils down to “more art, more art, more art” with the hopes of bringing more viewers to that art, too. “We want people to come into the museum,” says Selldorf. “And if they only come in to look around for a little while and never make it all the way to the top, they’re welcome still.” | 2022-10-31T11:51:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hirshhorn museum plans major renovation once sculpture garden reopens - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/31/hirshhorn-museum-renovation-sculpture-garden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/31/hirshhorn-museum-renovation-sculpture-garden/ |
Ken Jennings, above at a lake in Seattle, was named a permanent “Jeopardy!” host in July. (Peter Bohler for The Washington Post)
CULVER CITY, Calif. — On television, an episode of “Jeopardy!” moves with a satisfying swiftness, but during a taping, the game can abruptly screech to a halt. One incident in October saw a contestant offer a response that was initially deemed wrong, but it was an unexpected guess. So just to double-, triple- and quadruple-check that no one missed anything while constructing the clue, a panel of judges — sitting near the stage with laptops, piles of papers, books and Webster’s Dictionary — stopped the proceedings to do more research.
During these moments, host Ken Jennings emerges from the lectern and strolls across the stage like a low-key superhero in a fancy suit, arriving to rescue the audience from 10 minutes of boredom. “Does anyone have any questions?”
Hands shoot up across the rows in the chilly room at Sony Pictures Studios: How many people apply for the show? About 100,000 every year. Around 400 make it. What is behind the lectern? Jennings has a tablet, and fellow host Mayim Bialik uses a complicated highlighter system for Final Jeopardy. Is Jennings friends with other “Jeopardy!” champions? He is tight with James Holzhauer, the 2019 phenom who came this close to breaking the earnings record that Jennings held from 2004, but he has had to scale back, because hosts are not supposed to hang out with contestants.
“Which, if you have met James, is not the hugest loss,” Jennings says, as the audience cracks up at the unexpected burn from the mild-mannered trivia king. “Just kidding. He is lovely.” Eventually, producers give the go-ahead to restart. The contestant’s answer is confirmed incorrect. “You will watch that on TV,” Jennings tells the audience during another such break, “and it will all be like a wonderful dream.”
Jennings, 48, often thinks about life’s funny timing. If he had not gone on a road trip with a friend to try out for “Jeopardy!” right around when the show lifted its limit of five games, he never would have stunned the world by reeling off 74 wins in a row, never would have won about $2.5 million, never would have become a celebrity instead of living the alternate version of his life, in which he envisions himself as “a mildly unhappy Salt Lake City computer programmer.”
And he really never would have predicted that he would one day replace the legendary Alex Trebek. As proof, we direct you to Jennings’s Reddit username, which is WatsonsBitch. “See, that is the kind of thing you do when you are absolutely convinced you are not going to be host of ‘Jeopardy!,’ ” Jennings said, laughing, during an interview after the taping. (The name is a reference to IBM supercomputer Watson, the machine that crushed Jennings in a competition-slash-ratings stunt in 2011.)
He is sitting in his dressing room and has changed into jeans and a gray “Late Show With David Letterman” shirt, one he is pretty sure was in his gift bag in 2004 when he was invited to deliver “The Top 10 Ways to Irritate Alex Trebek.” (No. 9: “Instead of responding, get his attention by throwing nickels at his head.”) This was once Trebek’s dressing room, and one of the last places that Jennings saw Trebek before the host died of pancreatic cancer in November 2020. Jennings gave him a hug.
“I don’t know if he was a hugger, but I just wanted him to know how much he meant to people. And he did,” said Jennings, who estimated that Trebek received 100,000 cards after his diagnosis. “He was like, ‘For most people, the nice stuff is not said until they die, and I get to hear it while I’m still alive.’ ”
The death of the 80-year-old Trebek was an emotional blow to Jennings and the longtime crew, not to mention the millions of viewers who heard Trebek’s rich, authoritative baritone for 36 years. Replacing one of the most beloved television figures was never going to be easy, but few could have predicted the disaster that unfolded in the search to find Trebek’s successor.
Last summer, after a string of celebrity guest hosts, executive producer Mike Richards accepted the job himself, only to be forced to step down days later when an article published by the Ringer revealed that he made offensive remarks about women, Jewish people and Haiti on his former podcast, and reported that morale behind the scenes “deteriorated” under his reign. Richards soon left the show entirely.
Suddenly, America’s favorite quiz show was engulfed in controversy. So when Jennings was announced as one of the two permanent hosts in July after serving as guest host alongside Bialik for months, it was a relief to staff members and viewers alike who had fond memories of his history-making 2004 run.
Everyone was thrilled to have a familiar face back on-screen, someone who restored a sense of calm after the tumult made even worse by the pandemic. He and Bialik are splitting host duties. Her next episodes will air early next year, and she helms the prime-time specials. Jennings is hosting the first part of the current Season 39, and he will be at the lectern for the highly anticipated 2022 Tournament of Champions starting Monday.
“I think the reason he helped steady the show is because he belonged there,” said Maggie Speak, a “Jeopardy!” producer who worked with contestants for more than two decades before she retired in 2020. “He knows that stage better than anybody.”
Although Jennings will politely ignore a suggestion that he saved the show (“It took many people making good decisions to save ‘Jeopardy!’ ”) and raves about the gig with his fellow host (“I still have to pinch myself; I can’t believe I get to do this in conjunction with Mayim”), he is happy if his presence is helpful to anyone. He was disappointed to see the mess spill out into public view, adding that “Jeopardy!” serves better as comfort food rather than “click-baity headlines.”
“There was something that aesthetically didn’t feel very ‘Jeopardy!’ about people caring about the backstage drama. It just distracts from the beauty of the show,” he said. “And the drama kind of went against that, just the reliability that I think ‘Jeopardy!’ should symbolize. And I’m relieved to have that back.”
Rewind to the 2000s and Jennings vividly recalls the surreal nature of instant fame: the talk-show invitations, his toddler son referring to him as “Ken Jennings,” sports columnist Bill Simmons calling him a “smarmy know-it-all with the personality of a hall monitor,” writing that he both revered Jennings and “hoped Alex Trebek would punch him in the face.” (Jennings wound up calling his loan-out company Hall Monitor. Incidentally, Simmons would later be the founder of the Ringer, which published Claire McNear’s explosive story about Richards’s podcast.)
Another thing he remembers is the grandmas. When spotted in public, people would pull out their phones and start dialing their grandmas. “The thing that I learned as champion just from people coming up to me on the street or people wanting to put their grandma on the phone, is how much of a ritual purpose ‘Jeopardy!’ serves in people’s lives,” Jennings said. “Everybody has these fond multigenerational memories, and people just rely on it as part of their day. And I can’t think of another show like that anymore.”
As an American institution, “Jeopardy!” is like no other. Sure, you have “Wheel of Fortune” and “The Price Is Right,” but “Jeopardy!” is the rare program that celebrates intelligence and knowledge: highbrow, lowbrow and everything in between. Even more critically in the age of misinformation, it is a place where, as Jennings has said, “questions have answers, and correct answers, and facts matter,” where a team of people pore over books to ensure every detail is correct.
“I don’t want to overstate what it means in the culture, but I really do think there is something to that,” he said, noting that “Jeopardy!” viewers span the ideological spectrum. “Even as a kid, I liked that about game shows, that it was a version of life that always had a reassuring ping or a stern buzz,” he added. “We want to make the point that facts are facts, no matter how you vote.”
Its reliability — on every weekday, often in the cozy confines of dinnertime — is a major factor in the emotional chord it strikes in people and why it continues to average about 20 million viewers per week. It is another reason the Richards incident, not long after Trebek’s death, struck such a nerve, not only for viewers, but also for the normally steadfast show where employees have worked for many years. Richards had replaced longtime executive producer Harry Friedman, who retired in 2020. (Michael Davies, the current executive producer who replaced Richards, was not available for comment for this story.)
“It was certainly a tough time for us. … We’re a show that has been around for 39 seasons, and we’re very much used to things going a certain way,” said Sarah Whitcomb Foss, a producer and former Clue Crew member who has worked on the show since 2001. “Ken was a constant in that he was something that remained from the past and I would say carried us over. … He was the continuity and history, and Mayim had so much heart. … Those two people with the best of intentions really created the situation we have now.”
While most of the turmoil was happening, Jennings was home in Seattle, where he lives with his wife, Mindy, and their two teenagers. He hoped he was in the running for the full-time gig after being the first guest host but was in the dark about the decision-making process. But on-screen, he pointed out, you would have never been able to spot the workplace dysfunction.
“Even without Alex, even with the roiling backstage, the people here are so good at their jobs that the show on TV every day still felt like ‘Jeopardy!’ ” Jennings said. “That is a real tribute to how good they are. They lost the face of the franchise and a lot of goodwill. And the show was still so good.”
Speak, the longtime former producer, always took lots of notes during contestant tryouts. When Jennings auditioned in 2003, she scribbled down “plays!” next to his name, which was her notation when she was certain that they should cast someone. She also wrote down “could be funny.” “There was just something about Ken,” Speak said. “He was so likable.”
Jennings, then 29 and working at a health-care staffing company as a software engineer in Salt Lake City, auditioned somewhat on a whim with his former college roommate, Earl Cahill. Jennings loved “Jeopardy!” since he was young and relished seeing smart people on television, especially when he felt as if he was the only kid he knew who read the encyclopedia and the Road Atlas for fun. “That was, in a way, representation for me,” he said. “The show really made me who I am.”
Cahill, who was college quiz bowl teammates with Jennings at Brigham Young University, remembers him as a smart, funny, unassuming trivia whiz who was really into movies and pop culture. He was always reading multiple books at a time and could recite basically every piece of information he ever learned, yet he was not a know-it-all who would correct facts or grammar.
“Most of our friends didn’t realize he had a superpower,” Cahill said. “Unless you reflected later on the fact that Ken really knew a great deal about whatever you happened to be talking about, and actually seemed to know a great deal about whatever you talked about, he was just another guy.”
Jennings’s first episode aired June 2, 2004, and he won $37,201, landing the victory when Final Jeopardy was about a female track and field Olympian, and he responded “Jones.” Ultimately, it was accepted, even without first name “Marion.”
Then he refused to lose. His streak of 74 games stretched between seasons. He was accused of holding the show “hostage.” As is tradition, “Jeopardy!” contestants are honor-bound to keep results a secret until shows are broadcast. Speak will never forget the look on the faces of Jennings’s parents when they finally made it to a taping and learned that their son had won more than $1 million. She struggled recruiting players, because they saw the episodes and wanted no part of that situation.
“If you were to write the story of this saga,” said Friedman, then the executive producer, “of an obscure computer software engineer sitting in probably a cubicle in Salt Lake City going on a quiz show, becoming a phenomenon and ultimately becoming the host of the show, which is one of the most coveted jobs in all of television, you would think, ‘Well, this is improbable. Come on.’ ”
Even with his newfound fame and money, Jennings credits his upbringing as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in helping him stay grounded, as he recalled the scripture says “the glory of God is intelligence.” He appeared on more game shows and wrote books and was careful with his finances, driving the same Toyota Corolla for multiple years after winning millions because, well, it ran just fine. “I had this very kind of strong pioneer-era Western ethos of like, wealth is not just immoral, but it is a little bit unseemly,” Jennings said.
When Trebek’s health took a turn for the worse in late 2020, producers reached out to Jennings about guest-hosting. Trebek died shortly after, and the mood was somber when Jennings arrived to the set. Aside from an April Fools’ Day prank in 1997 when he switched places with Pat Sajak of “Wheel of Fortune,” it was the first time anyone other than Trebek had hosted the syndicated show in 36 years.
Foss, the producer, said Jennings addressed the staff: “Hey, no one wishes this day weren’t happening more than me.” She gave Jennings a password, so he could access an internal system to watch any previous episode, and he studied them intently. “He was feeling the same loss, so he was able to step into the role in the early weeks in a way no one else could have,” Foss said. “He didn’t try to be Alex, and he didn’t want to be.”
After about six weeks of Jennings in early 2021, a slew of other stars guest-hosted, including Richards, Bialik, Anderson Cooper, Robin Roberts, Aaron Rodgers, Dr. Oz and another fan favorite, LeVar Burton. In August 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that Jennings was originally the front-runner until some of his old tweets “gave Sony executives pause,” namely his much-criticized 2014 tweet, “Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair.”
Jennings previously apologized for his “unartful and insensitive” tweets. He is now extremely careful with what he posts (he said he doesn’t know about the discussions about his tweets within Sony) and acknowledged that he used to want to be known as more than just “the nerdy ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant,” and that some of his online commentary went too far.
“I made the mistake a lot of people do on social media: just posting the first thing that came into their head,” he said. “Now that I’m more closely associated with ‘Jeopardy!,’ it is just a great excuse to realize that the show should not have to answer for me being a ding-dong online.”
Following Richards’s implosion, Jennings and Bialik traded duties until their hosting status was made official this summer. Jennings is taking the job very seriously, including working on his breathing and vocal patterns. He is sensitive to the fact that he is not a broadcaster by trade, and admires Bialik’s natural charisma on camera after years of starring in television shows.
Amy Schneider, one of several recent super-champions on the upcoming Tournament of Champions, said having Jennings as host offers a certain amount of comfort. “It means so much to have somebody that understands the contestants’ point of view,” she said. “Alex certainly did from his years of experience. He made an effort to put himself in those shoes; he took the qualifying test and things like that. But Ken, obviously, he knows where our minds are going.”
In a clip that often circulates online from the episode on Oct. 8, 2004, Trebek reads the clue: “This term for a long-handled gardening tool can also mean an immoral pleasure seeker.” Jennings buzzes in first and tries to keep a straight face, yet cannot: “What’s a hoe?”
“No,” Trebek responds, about to move on as usual before the audience bursts out laughing and he realizes what just happened. “Whoa. Whoaaaa. Whoa. They teach you that in school in Utah, huh?” (Those without their mind in the gutter know the correct response was “rake.”)
Almost 20 years later, Jennings is now the host reacting to questionable contestant guesses. In one recent moment that lit up on social media, the category was “Plurals That Don’t End in S.” The clue was “moose,” and the answer offered was, “What are meese?” Jennings, normally composed, was startled and laughed almost in disbelief. “No,” he said. “No, Jack!”
In the early days of guest-hosting, Jennings might have been too panicked adjusting to his new gig to attempt any zingers. But now, as he goes to work and arrives on the Alex Trebek Stage, it is starting to feel like home once again. “I’m comfortable enough that I actually enjoy it,” he said. “I’m kind of having the time of my life out there.” | 2022-10-31T11:51:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ken Jennings was the host ‘Jeopardy!’ needed all along - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/31/ken-jennings-jeopardy-host-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/31/ken-jennings-jeopardy-host-interview/ |
John Banville is up to some fine mischief in ‘The Singularities’
The Booker Prize-winning author layers his elegantly written new novel with narrators who may not be reliable
Review by Troy Jollimore
John Banville’s “The Singularities” begins with a homecoming, a traveler’s return after a long absence. A man, allegedly named Felix Mordaunt, who has just been released from prison, wanders onto the property where he allegedly spent his boyhood.
It’s difficult to avoid the word allegedly in writing about this novel: There is a great deal of unreliable reportage and speculation. Even information that comes directly from the narrator — or rather one of the several narrators whose identities are themselves often uncertain — is frequently unreliable. This man’s name is not really Felix Mordaunt, and there is some doubt about whether this really is his ancestral home. It isn’t only the world that has changed while he was locked away, though it surely has; history itself seems to have somehow been altered.
The property he wanders (back?) onto is an English country estate, featuring one of those expansive houses where hidden libraries lurk behind secret sliding panels and upstairs rooms contain ancient relatives passing their final days in a twilit haze of dream and reminiscence. The house was formerly owned by Adam Godley, a brilliant mathematician and also (allegedly?) a difficult, if not despicable, human being. Now it has passed to his heirs: his son, also named Adam, and the younger Adam’s wife, Helen.
“Philosophers have only interpreted the world,” Marx famously wrote. “The point, however, is to change it.” But Godley’s interpretations, it seems, actually had the power to change the world — so potent a power, indeed, that further theorizing along these lines has been forbidden. Thousands of academics have been cut loose from their jobs, entire university departments closed. (“Rumor had it,” we are told, “that the brainier ones among them were to be forced into deep comas to quell their catastrophic musings.”)
It turns out that the anti-intellectuals were right all along: Thinking is dangerous. In the universe of “The Singularities,” every inquiry into the true nature of the universe only magnifies its already considerable disorder and instability.
So, the elder Adam has left to humanity an untidy and decaying world, just as he has left to his family a shambling, untidy, decaying house. Helen and the younger Adam seem unhappy there, yet incapable of leaving. They cannot have children. They seem unable to imagine any other possible direction, except for that of entropy — which, if Adam’s father’s theories are correct, is likely the only genuine direction anyway. Helen, a former actress of considerable beauty, drinks too much and knows that she does. Adam is less rebellious, more sedate, a dutiful companion to his beautiful wife; he seems to think himself less than fully worthy of being his wife’s husband — or, for that matter, his father’s son. (Others think this too.) His attempt to give his life some shape involves enticing a somewhat dubious academic, William Jaybey, to write a biography of his dad. Out of fear, perhaps, of being forced to spend too much time alone with Helen, Adam invites Jaybey to come live in the house.
John Banville: "What is it about the Irish that makes them so gifted as writers?"
Jaybey’s arrival takes place not long after Mordaunt’s, and others follow in Mordaunt’s wake. Indeed, psychically, at least — or metaphorically? — Mordaunt is dragging a fair bit behind him: memories, regrets, ex-lovers, ghosts, and of course, the crime for which he was locked away. He and Jaybey, it turns out, are connected, and both are connected to the senior Adam Godley. Actually, everyone in this world seems to be connected with everyone else, though they aren’t always aware of it. Perhaps that is the real message at the center of Godley’s theories: Everything is connected, for better or worse.
Banville, who won the Booker Prize in 2005 for “The Sea,” is up to some fine mischief here, drawing characters out of several of his previous books and throwing them together into a chaotic universe where nothing, including what we know of them from those prior novels, is necessarily fixed or secure. Felix Mordaunt’s true name, when it is revealed, will be familiar to Banville’s longtime readers, most of whom will no doubt already have guessed his real identity. Sometimes it feels like Banville is toying with his characters, or torturing them, as Luis Bunuel or the Coen brothers sometimes do with theirs. For their part, Banville’s characters seem highly self-aware, intuiting the existence of a higher power that is toying with them and wondering what he is up to. But unlike Banville’s readers — who are no doubt wondering too — they have no way of knowing how luscious and finely wrought are the exquisite sentences in which their sad lives and inscrutable fates are described and revealed. Such is the beauty of Banville’s prose that every page of “The Singularities” is a perplexing and enigmatic delight.
Troy Jollimore’s new collection of poetry is “Earthly Delights.”
Singularities
Knopf. 320 pp. $29.49 | 2022-10-31T11:51:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Review: The Singularities, by John Banville - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/31/john-banville-singularities/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/31/john-banville-singularities/ |
A personal portrait of a troublingly beautiful landscape
In ‘A Line in the World,’ Dorthe Nors captures a part of Denmark rarely seen by outsiders
Review by Courtney Tenz
At the very tip of the North Jutland peninsula, a windswept sandbar narrows into the shape of an arrow before fading into the sea. Known locally as Grenen, a Danish word meaning “the branch,” the beach there provides a perspective unlike any other in the world. It is the place where the North Sea meets the Baltic Sea in an extraordinary, often violent embrace.
In those waters, boats glide through one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Across the straits, to the east, the lights of Gothenburg, Sweden, twinkle; Oslo’s harbor lies to the north; to the west, the Norwegian fjords rise out of the horizon. The seas form a sort of Scandinavian triangulation, at once connecting and separating the countries.
The peninsula is not only Denmark’s terminus but also the ultimate stop on a reflective journey that writer and translator Dorthe Nors undertook while writing her first memoir, “A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast.” A finalist for the Man Booker International Prize for her works of fiction, Nors is one of Denmark’s best-known living writers. For this more personal endeavor, deftly translated by Caroline Waight, Nors turned to the landscape she grew up in, a place where she feels both connected and separate, where she can be as moody and expansive as the sea itself.
The resulting travelogue captures a side to Denmark that few will find familiar — the literal and figurative opposite of the country’s cosmopolitan capital, Copenhagen. In the Copenhagen captured by 18th-century painters, Nors writes, the “nation’s true nature” could be found: “a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, a Biedermeier idyll, bare of squalls, wilderness and drifting sands.” The city’s contemporary postcard-perfect image has become a more urbanized version of those paintings, the bicycle thoroughfares and rows of colorful harborfront houses a contrast to the western coast’s sand dunes and ocean views and acres of farmland filled with the sounds of gulls.
Yet it is in Copenhagen — a place where, she notes, time is laborious — that the story begins. Nors determines that the life she’d been drawn to in the city no longer held its charms; she trades in a fast-paced existence in an apartment above a hash dealer, with a view overlooking a hair salon, and returns to the quieter, more picturesque Jutland of her youth. As she explores seaside villages that appear both recognizable and foreign, long-forgotten memories from her childhood summers spent near the coast arise, as do the suspicions of some of the locals. “I don’t belong here,” she writes, her discomfort at the villagers’ reception of her (or lack thereof) palpable. “But I have roots here.”
Those roots are visible in the anecdotes Nors sprinkles throughout the memoir, with each of its 14 essays devoted to a different section of the unforgiving North Sea coast. Acknowledging that memory is a “tenacious ghost,” Nors relates snippets from her youth — the way she watched a man catch fire at a Midsummer festival; the time her mother disappeared for a week to learn art in a private studio; her father’s startled reaction to watching on television as the Skarre Cliff disappeared into the ocean during a storm in 1978.
She intertwines her stories with the history of the region, retelling the tales of the Vikings who once traversed the North Sea and whose shipwrecks are still being uncovered in the deep. Later, along the Iron Coast, she writes about boats run aground or tossed by tall waves into the shore. “Mass graves up and down the whole coast,” Nors writes with a whiff of foreboding. In a similar spirit, she studies the bunkers and fortifications that once made up the Nazis’ planned Atlantic Wall, contemplating the remnants of their doomed attempt to protect the entirety of the western European coastline from perceived military threats. Though the project succumbed to the elements and geopolitics, the Germans’ endeavor scarred the landscape and left the shoreline dotted with land mines for decades — buried traces of fascist hubris.
Though these memorable historical tidbits are among the most visceral details in her work, “A Line in the World” is as much an appraisal of this troublingly beautiful landscape as it is an exploration of Nors’s identity. In her attempt to understand the shapeshifting Danish peninsula, combing over the history, traditions and myths of the region, she is making sense of this world and her place within it. Returning home with a renewed desire to leave forces that confrontation between childhood dreams and adult realities for Nors, who ultimately describes herself as “a movement pinned in one place.”
In that sense, this is no tourist’s guide to Denmark’s relatively barren coastline. Instead of dwelling on overfamiliar marketing concepts like hygge or references to Nobu, as writers fresh to Denmark often do, Nors reflects on the vital specificity of a place not often frequented by visitors, as well as its impact on the psyche.
Capturing how the locals simply live, she details, for example, the legend behind the porcelain dogs she sees dotting the windows in one fishing village. After a woman went missing years ago, residents burst into her apartment to find she had left behind a robust collection of porcelain dogs. Thinking that she may have wandered into the waves and vanished, villagers now place a pair facing outward to signify when a fisherman is out to sea; turned inward, they are a symbol that he has returned safely home.
Such details provide rare insight into a region where daily life is often spent in monotonous solitude and where tourists and new residents alike can find it difficult to break through the tough facades; where the slower tempo of life is driven by the sea and its moods, the rhythms tethered to a predictable yet finicky tide. Indeed, it seems that here the tide determines not only when boats can sail but also everything else: Births peak when the water rolls in, deaths register as it recedes. Yet the “fierce forces at play,” Nors reminds us in story after story, can toss away centuries-old constructs, sinking entire cities or swallowing churches and homes in blowing sand.
Just as the sands literally shift and the coastline changes from “painfully flat” to “incomprehensibly epic,” so, too, does Nors’s response to the region. There are days, midwinter, when daylight never seems to break. Increasingly aware of the way her mood is affected by the landscape, Nors excavates the feeling of disquiet that arises within her through a consideration of her personal narrative. “You’ve got to be careful with the stories you tell other people,” she writes. “And you’ve got to be careful what stories you tell yourself.”
It is in these terms that the book can be read as a memoir, scarce as revelatory details about the author may be. But “A Line in the World” is, more pointedly, one of the first books to capture the unique region in English. In prose that is as sparse and quiet as the marshy Jutland peninsula itself, the book provides a snapshot of life in a location that is full of history and at the same time ever-shifting, its future uncertain.
Courtney Tenz, a lover of the Atlantic Ocean, writes about European travel and culture from her home in Germany.
A Line in the World
A Year on the North Sea Coast
By Dorthe Nors, trans. Caroline Waight
Graywolf. 240 pp. $16 | 2022-10-31T11:52:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of "A Line in the World" by Dorthe Nors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/31/line-world-dorthe-nors-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/31/line-world-dorthe-nors-review/ |
Steven Blesi, 30; Choi Boseong, 24, before he went missing after the Halloween festivities in the capital of Seoul. A friend recovered his green jacket that he was wearing over a white shirt. (Courtesy of Steve Blesi / Gabriela Pares)
Grace Rached, 23
Lee Ji-han, 24
SEOUL — The deadly crowd crush that killed 154 people in South Korea’s capital over Halloween weekend cut short many lives that were just getting started. Authorities said 132 victims were in their 20s and 30s, and 12 were teens.
Many chose to visit the lively Itaewon nightlife district to celebrate their first Halloween since authorities eased social distancing regulations. Their deaths have reverberated far and wide — at least 26 of the victims were foreign nationals — and South Korea’s collective trauma is just beginning. Here are some of their stories.
Since his freshman year of college, Steven Blesi had dreamed of spending a semester abroad. The coronavirus pandemic delayed it for two years. But this fall, the Marietta, Ga., native and Kennesaw State University junior finally got his chance. “He was an extrovert, he was full of adventure,” his father, Steve Blesi, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And this was his first big adventure.”
Blesi was partway through the semester when, his family said, he became one of more than 150 people killed as a Halloween celebration in Seoul became so tightly packed that many could not breathe. He was 20 years old. He loved basketball and his pets — a gecko, turtles and hermit crabs. He became an Eagle Scout like his brother, Joey, who is older by about a year, and went to college with hopes of working in international business.
Blesi’s father and his wife had just returned home from grocery shopping Saturday when his brother reached out: Had they seen what happened in Seoul? Was Steven okay? They were “constantly calling and calling and calling and calling with no answer,” his father said. The family is making arrangements for Blesi’s remains to be returned to the United States, where “he’ll be with us from here to the day we die.” — Brittany Shammas
American student killed in Seoul was on ‘first big adventure,’ father says
Choi Boseong last texted his girlfriend about 9 p.m. local time. It was supposed to be a celebratory night for his 24th birthday, spent with two best friends. When the crowd became uncontrollable, he got separated from them. His girlfriend, Gabriela Pares, who was in the United States watching the scene on a TikTok live stream, grew worried and tried calling and texting. No response.
When she called his sister, who lives about 40 minutes away from Itaewon, his family hadn’t yet realized the extent of the tragedy. His father, sister and friend searched hospitals throughout Seoul, Pares said. He was last seen wearing a green jacket, a white shirt and blue jeans. Someone had found his jacket and his cellphone on the ground and returned it to his friend.
After waiting for news from half a world away, Pares heard the worst: Her boyfriend had died. Now she’s headed to South Korea to be around his family, “to say goodbye to the love of my life … and on his birthday,” Pares wrote in a tweet. “Life is so unfair.”
In a text message, she said that he was the most caring and lovable person she’d met, and that he would “forever be the most extraordinary.” “He always lived for his friends, family and his dog Im-jja,” Pares said. “For me, he will always be the love of my life, in this one and the next one.” — Kelly Kasulis Cho
South Korea begins confronting the trauma of Halloween crowd crush
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Grace Rached, a 23-year-old from Australia, was the “life of the party” — someone who “lit up a room with her infectious smile” and “always made others feel important.”
Her family, in a statement shared with reporters, said that the production assistant was “passionate about making a difference.” After graduating in 2021 from the University of Technology Sydney with a bachelor’s degree in media arts and production, Rached began to work for the film production company Electriclime, according to her LinkedIn profile. “Producing quality and revolutionary stories is what it’s all about,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
Rached traveled frequently, posting on Instagram in recent weeks from Bali and Mexico. She was out with friends in Seoul on Saturday to celebrate Halloween when she and others were “crushed at Itaewon,” her friend, who goes by Nathan Taeveniti said in a widely viewed TikTok video. Earlier videos from the night showed Rached dancing with friends, dressed up as Audrey Hepburn’s character Holly Golightly from the film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
In her own TikTok video, Rached shared some advice she said she collected “in my almost 24 years of life.” The advice, posted in late August, centered around being positive and taking chances. “When you go, nothing goes with you,” she said. “so you may as well enjoy your time here.” — Annabelle Timsit
Lee Ji-han was set to make his first appearance in a major TV series later this year. The actor hadn’t finished filming his part in the series that would have marked his prime-time debut.
“Bright and genuine actor Lee Ji-han is still vivid in our minds, and it is hard to believe we cannot see him any more,” his management company said in a statement, saying his death “came too soon.” The series’s broadcaster, MBC, said that it has not decided whether his portion will be aired posthumously.
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The 24-year-old got his start in South Korea’s entertainment industry as part of a training program for a K-pop management company. In 2017, he competed in a high-profile K-pop talent show titled Produce 101. Singers who participated alongside Lee posted condolence messages on social media. “I am sorry and I love you,” said Park Hee-seok, another former contestant who is now a member of K-pop band Xenex. —Min Joo Kim | 2022-10-31T12:09:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seoul Halloween crowd crush young victims: What we know - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/seoul-halloween-crowd-crush-young-victims/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/seoul-halloween-crowd-crush-young-victims/ |
In Matthew Quick’s ‘We Are the Light,’ a grieving town finds hope
Review by Karin Tanabe
Timely. Relevant. Ripped from the headlines. Matthew Quick’s new novel, “We Are the Light,” is all the above, with characters reeling after a mass shooting in a historic movie theater. Seventeen lives were extinguished in an instant. It’s a horror that shakes the country but breaks the citizens of Majestic, Pa., who were there that night. They are the survivors.
In this epistolary novel, the author asks, and answers, how does a person who experienced such profound loss become whole again?
Quick emerged as a novelist in 2008 with “The Silver Linings Playbook,” showing he could deftly tackle mental illness with empathy and humor. He’s been candid about his own struggles with depression and anxiety. In “We Are the Light” he plunges deeper, not focusing on the tragedy itself, or what pushes one to commit such an act, but on the trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder after the shooting.
The man at the center is Lucas Goodgame, Majestic’s high school guidance counselor. As he attempts to piece himself back together, the novel takes the form of letters from Lucas to his Jungian psychoanalyst Karl. (There is a heavy dose of Jungian jargon in this book, which means that if you’re not well-versed in those theories, you could be flicking open Google between flicking through the pages.)
Both Karl and Lucas lost their wives in the shooting, and Lucas is desperate to restart their sessions, but letter after letter is met with silence. Cheered on by his deceased wife, Darcy, who visits in angel form, spreading white feathers and much-needed wisdom, Lucas keeps writing. These letters become a sort of diary, a glimmer of hope and a testament to the healing power of art, one of the novel’s major themes.
The challenge of an epistolary book is that the format can be confining, but for such a character-driven novel, it creates intimacy instead of limitations. Lucas proves to be a skilled storyteller, and as he assumes Karl hasn’t left his house since his wife’s funeral, expands the narrative by recounting how other survivors are healing — through group therapy, political action — thus bringing the town to life. As he pulls the outside in, he slowly reveals what happened the night of the tragedy, while giving hints — he’s been banned from going near Karl’s home, he walks circles around his own house at night and, oh, he sees his wife in angel form — that he’s an unreliable narrator.
But whatever direction the plot takes, the letters are the art form most healing to Lucas.
That changes when someone pitches an orange tent in his backyard.
It turns out to be Eli Hansen, the 18-year-old brother of the shooter. He has become a pariah in town while grappling with his own guilt about not reporting his brother’s changed behavior. By coming to his grieving guidance counselor, we see that Eli is desperate for healing. The question is, can Lucas step up when he’s broken himself?
Together, they decide that to help Eli graduate from high school, they’ll create a senior project — writing and filming a monster movie. The goal: to get all survivors involved and remind Majestic of “the unifying and soothing powers of the silver screen.”
The relationship between Lucas and Eli quickly becomes the bond of the novel. It happens through conversations about traumatic childhoods, through meals, and the support of the two people who have been devoted to propping Lucas up — Jill, his wife’s best friend who has tasked herself with Lucas’s care, and Isaiah, the high school principal who offers reminders that as good men go, Lucas is at the top.
The film and the task of caring for Eli help move Lucas away from himself. Instead, he worries about “a boy who feels like a monster” and an unforgiving town “embittered by a tragedy that really has nothing to do with the boy monster in question, but on whom they projected all of their hate and shame and frustration.”
The book is dominated by caring male characters: As Lucas and Eli create the movie, more good men get involved, including the owners of the Majestic Theater who previously worked in the film industry.
With such a heavy focus on male relationships, the question arises if there’s room for strong women. While Jill has grit, she’s mostly relegated to a caregiving role. The balance of power instead comes from a lawyer, also a survivor, who throws herself into political activism. Her mantra, “We will fight. We will petition politicians. We will make order out of this chaos,” unsettles Lucas but adds a powerful female presence — sans wings.
It’s been five years since Quick’s last book, but his skill at crafting an engaging narrative around trauma is as strong as ever. When you read Quick, you don’t feel guilty if your tears are mixed with laughter. “We Are the Light” is a reminder that grief is complex and that we shouldn’t be afraid to grasp the hands stretched out to help us. As the title points out, even in the dark, there can be light.
Karin Tanabe is the author of five books, including, most recently, “A Woman of Intelligence.”
We Are the Light
By Matthew Quick
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster. 256 pp. $27.99 | 2022-10-31T12:09:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | We Are the Light by Matthew Quick book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/31/matthew-quick-we-are-the-light-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/31/matthew-quick-we-are-the-light-review/ |
The first round of layoffs, led by his lawyer Alex Spiro, will target 25 percent of the workforce
Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter on Oct. 27. Layoffs are imminent according to people familiar with the company's thinking, possibly as early as this week. (Amy Osborne for The Washington Post)
SAN FRANCISCO — Members of billionaire Elon Musk’s inner circle huddled with Twitter’s remaining senior executives throughout the weekend, conducting detailed discussions regarding the site’s approach to content moderation, as well as plans to lay off 25 percent of the workforce to start.
Alex Spiro, a well-known celebrity lawyer who has represented Musk for several years, led those conversations. Spiro is taking an active role in managing several teams at Twitter, including legal, government relations, policy and marketing, according to four people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them, as well as tweets from some of the people involved.
Longtime Musk associates David Sacks and Jason Calacanis appeared in a company directory over the weekend, according to photos obtained by The Washington Post. Both had official company emails and their titles were “staff software engineer.” Musk’s title in the directory was CEO, although that position has not been publicly announced. He refers to himself as “Chief Twit.”
Meanwhile, the team was deciding on what is expected to be a first round of layoffs, which will target roughly a quarter of the staff totaling more than 7,000, according to one of the people. Layoffs will touch almost all departments, and are expected to specifically impact sales, product, engineering, legal, and trust and safety in the coming days, the person said. After engineers, some of Twitter’s highest paid employees work in sales, where several earn more than $300,000, according to documents viewed by The Post.
Twitter, Musk, Spiro, Sacks and Calacanis did not respond to requests for comment.
The billionaire Tesla owner bought Twitter for $44 billion last week after several strenuous months of negotiations and legal wrangling. Musk first made a bid for the company in the spring, then tried to back out months later. Twitter sued to force him to complete the deal, and eventually the entrepreneur acquiesced and offered to buy the company for his original offer price.
Musk has turned to several longtime allies as he begins his overhaul of Twitter.
Sacks, a conservative firebrand and donor, has worked with Musk from their days running PayPal together two decades ago. Sacks has posted strong ideas about content moderation online and has criticized censorship from Big Tech.
Calacanis is also a longtime Musk friend who texted him frequently to offer advice on the deal, including about job cuts, court records showed.
Calacanis tweeted that Saturday was “Day Zero” alongside a photo of a Twitter coffee mug, adding that he had discussed safety issues, along with bots and trolls, with Yoel Roth, a Twitter executive responsible for content moderation policy. Roth then posted details about those policies.
On Sunday, Musk posted apparent internal messages from Roth about Twitter metrics, arguing they show Twitter’s board and lawyers “deliberately hid ... evidence from the court.” The tweet showed Musk using his newly gained access to internal information to potentially settle scores.
I met Yoel from twitter safety today, and as a long-term twitter user, I was impressed with his dedication to & perspective on security issues.
I asked him to unpack the issue directly to users. This thread is well worth your time & amplification. https://t.co/ocoBjflOqM
The new leadership team is asking questions about every aspect of the business, including details of content moderation, spam and the risks of upcoming elections, the people said.
Another Musk associate who tweeted about his involvement, Sriram Krishnan, a partner focusing on cryptocurrency at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also tweeted he was helping out with the deal. The firm invested $400 million.
Less than three days into Musk’s ownership, Twitter employees remained in the dark about any new plans for the company as of Sunday evening, according to numerous employees contacted by The Post, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs. The company has yet to release a formal announcement of the acquisition. The communications department has gone silent. Rumors have swirled about layoffs, with some notices going out quietly.
Twitter layoffs are imminent
Layoffs are expected to begin ahead of Nov. 1, when Twitter employees are slated to receive additional compensation related to stock grants. On Sunday Musk tweeted that reporting about impending layoffs at Twitter next week was “false.”
Earlier this year, Musk told prospective partners in the deal that he planned to cut nearly 75 percent of Twitter’s total workforce, which would leave the company with about 2,000 employees, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Post. Musk last week told employees when he visited Twitter’s headquarters that he didn’t plan to cut three-fourths of the workforce.
Another person familiar with the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters last week said the total number of layoffs is likely to be closer to 50 percent.
Already, Musk has fired four senior executives, sent Tesla engineers to evaluate Twitter’s software code, and has tweeted that he plans to form a content moderation council of experts.
Meanwhile, illustrating the difficulties of his new task, Musk tweeted out content from a site that is known to publish misinformation this weekend.
On Saturday, Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, posted a tweet criticizing the GOP for spreading “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” that she said had emboldened the man who attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, inside the couple’s home in San Francisco early Friday.
Musk wrote, in a reply to the tweet, that “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” sharing a link to an article in the Santa Monica Observer, site described by fact-checkers as a low-credibility source favoring the extreme right. The article alleges, without evidence, that Paul Pelosi was drunk and in a fight with a male prostitute, referencing a conspiracy theory that had previously been spread on the right. Other right-wing influencers who Musk has interacted with online also amplified the conspiratorial narrative.
The actions by Musk, who has since removed the tweet, show that Twitter has a complicated path ahead, particularly in navigating Musk’s public actions and squaring that with what he says privately.
Rachel Lerman contributed to this report. | 2022-10-31T12:22:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elon Musk plans Twitter layoffs with new team - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/31/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/31/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs/ |
D.C. Defenders return as XFL unveils team names and logos
By Jake Russell
When the XFL kicks off again in February, so, too, will the D.C. Defenders. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
The XFL announced the home cities of its eight teams in July. Now each of those teams officially has an identity.
On Monday, the league unveiled the branding associated with its teams, including the return of the D.C. Defenders, who played at Audi Field in 2020 and will continue to call the venue home when the league kicks off again in February.
“We’re excited that the Defenders logo was kept,” D.C. Coach Reggie Barlow said in a phone interview. “Obviously, ownership, our great people that work in the XFL, knew that the fans wanted that. … We were really pulling for that. Everybody embraced the name and the shield from 2020.”
Along with the Defenders, the league will feature the Arlington Renegades, Houston Roughnecks, Orlando Guardians, San Antonio Brahmas, Seattle Sea Dragons, St. Louis BattleHawks and Vegas Vipers.
“Each team’s identity represents the fabric of their local community while also embodying the XFL’s vision and ethos: they are authentic, dynamic, modern, and unapologetically bold,” XFL chairwoman and co-owner Dany Garcia said in a statement.
“Every one of these logos has a unique energy, intensity, and electricity that each team and their fans will bring on game day. Now is the time for our fans to get behind a team — THEIR team — and wear these logos and represent their city with pride,” XFL co-owner Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson added.
Wrestling magnate Vince McMahon owned the original XFL, which kicked off in 2001 but folded after one season. McMahon then brought the league back for the spring of 2020, but the league was shut down after five games that March because of the coronavirus pandemic. The next month, the league filed for bankruptcy and sought a sale. That August, former WWE star Johnson bought the league for $15 million along with his business partner and ex-wife, Dany Garcia, and investment firm RedBird Capital Partners.
A player draft is slated to take place in November. Dates to unveil the uniforms of the eight teams have yet to be announced.
The league signed a three-year deal with Arlington, Tex., to operate a “hybrid hub” model in which all eight teams will practice there during the week and travel to play games in their home markets. The season kicks off Saturday, Feb. 18 with 40 regular season games, two semifinals and a championship game.
Here are the eight XFL team logos:
The Defenders return after averaging more than 16,000 fans in 20,000-seat Audi Field during XFL 2.0. The team is using an altered version of the secondary logo that was officially unveiled on the eve of the 2020 season opener, which features “D.C. red” and “Defender gray.” The new wordmark is simpler than the previous version. Perhaps most importantly, outside of the logo, the team is using periods in D.C. this time.
After the team played as the Dallas Renegades in 2020, the nickname returns but will directly represent the league’s hub city.
The only undefeated team in XFL 2.0 returns with the same name but a different spin on the previous logo, which was opposed by the NFL and the Tennessee Titans for too closely resembling the Houston Oilers’ oil derrick insignia.
The Guardians name makes the move south after residing in New York in 2020, replacing the red from the Gotham iteration to the more Floridian neon green that the Tampa Bay Vipers wore in 2020. The league returns to Orlando, which was home to the Rage in the XFL’s 2001 season.
Perhaps a not-so-subtle nod to Johnson’s signature “Brahma Bull” brand, which adorned his right arm for about two decades and transformed into the Under Armour “Project Rock Collection,” San Antonio’s first XFL team features a black-and-gold bull rendering with a B on its forehead.
Seattle gets a slight change from the 2020 squad, transitioning from Dragons to Sea Dragons, blending in with the Emerald City’s maritime themes of the Seahawks, Mariners and Kraken. The green, blue and orange color scheme returns with the new dragon logo forming an “S.”
The league’s most popular team in terms of average attendance keeps its 2020 identity in hopes the familiarity will continue to feed fan interest. The new logo is slightly tweaked from the 2020 version and is updated with a militarized wordmark.
The Vipers return with XFL 3.0 but not in Tampa. This time, the moniker shifts about 2,000 miles west as the league heads back to Las Vegas, which hosted the Outlaws in 2001.
D.C.’s staff is set
In September, the league announced full coaching staffs for its eight teams after initially naming head coaches and coordinators. D.C.’s staff already included Barlow, defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, offensive coordinator/running backs coach Fred Kaiss, director of player personnel Von Hutchins and director of team operations Stacie Johnson. Newly announced additions to the staff are highlighted by former Washington NFL cornerback Vernon Dean as defensive backs coach and former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Jamie Sharper as special teams/linebackers coach. Alvance Robinson (wide receivers), Cody Crills (tight ends), Shannon Harris (quarterbacks), Russ Ehrenfeld (offensive line), Jeremy Watkins (defensive line), Deion Harris (quality control), Chris Lacsamana (athletic trainer), VanDyke Jones (equipment manager) and Caleb Studivant (video manager) round out the staff. | 2022-10-31T12:26:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | XFL unveils teams and logos, including returning D.C. Defenders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/31/xfl-unveils-teams-logos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/31/xfl-unveils-teams-logos/ |
By Rachel Ramirez
Julianna Nemeth
(man_kukuku/Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Rachel Ramirez is director of health and disability programs at the Ohio Domestic Violence Network and founder of its Center on Partner-Inflicted Brain Injury. Luke Montgomery is a physician investigating the association between post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injury in domestic violence survivors through research at Ohio State University College of Public Health. Julianna Nemeth, an assistant professor of public health at Ohio State University, works on increasing access to health services for survivors of trauma.
Halfway through the National Football League season, it’s no surprise that player concussions have been generating headlines full of outrage and worry. But with every outburst of public attention toward injured athletes, we, as experts in brain injury, can’t help thinking of another group that experiences concussions at an alarmingly high rate and whose plight goes largely ignored: domestic violence survivors.
Research at Ohio’s domestic violence agencies has shown that over 80 percent of survivors accessing services have experienced some type of abuse that could lead to concussion or another type of brain injury. They’ve been punched in the head. Thrown against an object. Hit in the skull with something hard. And all without the protection of a football helmet.
Given that 1 in 3 women worldwide will experience intimate partner violence at some point in their lives, it is likely that millions of victims have experienced concussions or other head, neck and brain injuries from violence — including strangulation, chokeholds and suffocation. Not only that, but severe, repetitive head trauma is extremely common, with close to 50 percent of survivors having been hit in the head too many times to count.
This is a crisis. And it should garner at least as much attention as the stories of concussed football players.
Leana S. Wen: Concussions are a bigger problem for kids’ football than the NFL
We were reminded of this again last month after Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa experienced not one but two dangerous blows to the head just days apart. The footage was horrifying. In each case — rightly so — Tagovailoa was swiftly attended to on the field, then removed and given further medical attention. In the aftermath, there was heated discussion about whether proper concussion protocols had been followed.
Domestic violence survivors, by contrast, experience these injuries alone. For them, there is no “return to play” protocol. Rest is the foundation of concussion recovery. Yet nearly all survivors soldier on — working, parenting, carrying on activities — unaware of the damage to their brains. Without the proper time to heal, survivors can experience physical and psychological symptoms long after their initial injury. And their symptoms are often misdiagnosed or ignored.
Brain injury from concussions can cause memory and concentration difficulties, increased anxiety and depression, and problems with headaches, vision and balance. In domestic violence survivors, these symptoms are often misidentified by law enforcement and first responders as substance use, mental health issues, or purely erratic behavior — not as the signs of acute head trauma they are.
These misdiagnoses don’t only imperil survivors’ health. The symptoms above can also be used against victims. Abusers claim that survivors are lying, mentally ill or on drugs and that violence never occurred. Survivors, unaware of their injuries, are gaslighted into believing they’re “crazy.” Law enforcement, service providers and the judicial system fail victims when the effect of brain injury is ignored. Even worse, at the evidence of cognitive challenges, they question the validity of survivors’ experiences.
The Post's View: The stakes in domestic abuse cases are dire and often dangerous
Law enforcement officers at the scene of a domestic disturbance should be aware that victims could have sustained a brain injury, especially when visual injuries or attacks to the head, neck or face — or strangulation — are reported. Concussion symptoms can influence how a survivor behaves. Rather than attribute odd behavior to substance use or psychiatric concerns, law enforcement should consider the possibility of brain injury.
As survivors seek services from domestic violence agencies, the people interacting with them must make education about brain injury a priority. Organizations should consider implementing “Care,” an evidence-based approach to advocacy that gives providers the tools they need to address brain injuries and their effects on survivors.
Without prompt and appropriate medical care, survivors can go decades without making the connection between being hit in the head and their chronic headaches, memory loss and concentration issues. Seemingly unrelated struggles such as maintaining a job, experiencing nonspecific health problems and keeping custody of children can be long-term consequences of unidentified brain injury.
After each of Tagovailoa’s hits on the football field, people were right to be concerned. But he is one man. Imagine if this type of attention were focused on the millions of domestic violence survivors, most of them women, who will experience or have experienced terrible, untreated brain injuries. These survivors live with the consequences for years. It is high time we stop ignoring them. | 2022-10-31T12:57:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Domestic violence victims have a shocking concussion rate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/football-concussions-domestic-violence-victims-head-injury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/football-concussions-domestic-violence-victims-head-injury/ |
The weirdest thing about being in a self-driving car? How unremarkable it feels.
One day this month, I finished up some shopping in Chandler, Ariz., a few towns over from a hotel where I was attending a conference. I had a few free hours and I wanted to grab some tacos at a nearby place that had been recommended to me. So I pulled out my phone, opened an app and hailed a ride.
This seems rather a dull story, I hear you say, and, you’re right, except for one thing: The car had no driver.
Since October 2020, the Google spinoff Waymo has operated a driverless commercial taxi service south of Phoenix. Having written about the possibilities of a self-driving future, I wanted to try it out, so I headed over to Chandler and downloaded the Waymo One app. This was no curated demo for journalists, hovered over by anxious engineers and peppy PR folks; I got exactly the same service that you will, if you ever find yourself in Chandler and want to go for a ride in the future.
I warn you that if you do, you will find the future feels almost disappointingly normal.
Not at first, though. At first you experience awe tinged with a bit of fear. There is an undeniable horror-movie aspect to sitting in the back of a car and watching the steering wheel turn of its own accord, and for just a moment I thought, “God, what have I done?” But the car’s ultracautious driving style quickly overcame my reservations, for no Uber driver ever piloted a vehicle so conservatively.
My car waited patiently at the parking lot entrance for a clear break in traffic, rather than trying to force its way into the flow. It slowed when other vehicles behaved erratically and merged with the polite delicacy of a Victorian aunt. It was all so soothing that eventually I got caught up in texting with a colleague and absent-mindedly started to ask the driver how much longer it would be until we got to the restaurant.
Now, of course, most of the time I was aware of my strange situation. I peered over the empty front seat to try to determine whether the gas pedal was moving by itself, like the steering wheel. (Not as far as I could tell.) I laughed as drivers in adjacent lanes did a double take over the missing driver. I goggled at the display that showed me what the car “sees” — the lanes on the road, the other cars, even pedestrians.
But when all that was said and done, it was just a ride, and when people asked me what it was like, all I could say, apologetically, was that it was both supercool and oddly unthrilling.
The most exciting moment occurred when a truck driver in front of us decided he was in the wrong lane and just sat there for a good long time before eventually honking at us to back up so that he could reverse and slide into the lane to our left. Since the car was oblivious to social cues, the result was a standoff. Eventually, the car chirped that it was calling a human specialist to resolve the situation — right around the time that the truck driver apparently decided he had enough room to execute the merge without our help. After a pause to verify that the road was now clear, the car rolled silently on.
Columnist Megan McArdle rides in a self-driving car in Chandler, Ariz. (Video: The Washington Post)
As the truck incident suggests, some wrinkles still need to be worked out before the future becomes the present. For one thing, there is a reason that Waymo One is operating in Chandler, with its wide, straight roads, minimal pedestrian traffic and 330 days of sun a year: It reduces the complexities of harsh weather and unpredictable humans. The humans, in particular, are a problem, because for all their advantages (self-driving cars do not get impatient or distracted, intoxicated or exhausted), a 10-year-old human child is probably better at guessing what other people are likely to do when something unexpected happens. The 10-year-old would have understood, for example, that the truck wanted us to back up.
But with that disclaimer out of the way: We are still talking about a technology that could drive on the highway so flawlessly that I got bored enough to let my phone distract me. I feel pretty confident that we’ll slowly solve the remaining problems through some combination of machine learning and human ingenuity — well enough that eventually, the vehicles will become ubiquitous and jaded humans will forget how amazing they actually are.
As I motored around Chandler, I thought of all the problems a really good self-driving car could solve: the accidents it could prevent, the elderly or disabled people it could rescue from isolation. I also wondered what changes it might spark that I can’t imagine — who in 1900 predicted how the automobile would eventually entirely reshape our built environment.
But I was also reminded Waymo’s technology was not actually the only modern marvel I was witnessing. A self-driving car is not, after all, more wondrous than the horseless carriage itself, nor the slender aluminum tube that carried me through the sky so I could witness it. If riding around in the future turned out to be less thrilling than I anticipated, I suspect that’s because really, we already live in the future ... and subsist on so many daily miracles that it’s hard to be properly amazed at any of it. | 2022-10-31T12:57:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What it's like to ride in a Waymo self-driving car - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/waymo-self-driving-car-ride/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/waymo-self-driving-car-ride/ |
Once the Seahawks let go, they were free to take flight
Ryan Neal, Bruce Irvin and their Seahawks teammates have won three in a row. (Lindsey Wasson/Getty Images)
SEATTLE — The message on a cinder-block wall outside the Seattle Seahawks’ locker room anoints Lumen Field the “Home of the loudest fans in the NFL,” and in celebrating a victory Sunday afternoon, the players inside must have been determined to make their music match the noise of nearly 70,000 people. As the speakers quaked and made face-to-face conversations inaudible, it felt as though the energy of a rising, surprising team thumped along with the bass.
Before the preseason, the Seahawks seemed a logical candidate to be among the NFL’s worst teams. In March, they acquiesced to Russell Wilson’s trade preference and dealt him to the Denver Broncos. They released another longtime star, linebacker Bobby Wagner, the same day. After clinging to a championship era for too long, they cut the remaining ties to their past with one stunning chop. When Coach Pete Carroll and General Manager John Schneider declined to use the term “rebuilding,” they seemed to be in denial.
Now, eight weeks into this odd and lackluster NFL season, the Seahawks are providing reason to appreciate the sport. They don’t have Wilson, but they have a 5-3 record and first-place status in the NFC West. They have Geno Smith, Wilson’s backup for three seasons, displaying some of the toughest and most efficient quarterback play in the league. They have a charming ensemble of precocious youth and disregarded veterans combining to transform a franchise that had become stale.
Carroll, 71 going on 31, considered a question after his team’s 27-13 victory over the New York Giants on Sunday: Is coaching this team the most fun you’ve had? It was a big question for a man who could turn taking out the garbage into a joyful experience.
“I’ve had fun over the years,” he said. “This is really special. This is a very special opportunity right now. It’s been because of all of the hype and the circumstances and all that, and the challenge of it and the doubting and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I like this challenge. I like this whole thing. I’ve liked it from the start.”
After rambling for a bit, he allowed himself one moment to clap back at his detractors.
“You know, all the people that doubt,” Carroll began. “Like: ‘We run the ball too much. You don’t understand football. And he can’t stay up with the new game.’ And all that kind of stuff, that’s a bunch of crap, I’m telling you. Look, we’re doing fine. We’re all right. We’re improving day in and day out.”
The Seahawks have won three straight games. After ranking close to the bottom of the league on defense the first five games, they have put together strong defensive performances during this winning streak. On offense, Smith has completed 72.7 percent of his passes, thrown 13 touchdown passes and just three interceptions and posted an all-pro-caliber passer rating of 107.2. Rookie running back Kenneth Walker III is a star. The receiver tandem of DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett continues to be among the NFL’s best. Rookie tackles Charles Cross and Abraham Lucas started immediately and look like linchpins. Beyond that, the Seahawks have an array of offensive players who embrace their roles, including three quality tight ends who add a new dimension for offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.
“I think the biggest thing is that it is amazing what we can accomplish when nobody cares who gets the credit,” Lockett said.
Lockett wasn’t taking a shot at Wilson. He was repeating a cliche he learned from his high school basketball coach. Although it’s inevitable that every facet of this season in Seattle will be measured against the Seahawks’ decision to trade Wilson, they aren’t obsessed with him. They’re consumed with making their own mark. Tension defined the end of the Wilson era as the quarterback applied pressure to not just keep winning but to follow his differing vision for winning. Now the Seahawks are again playing that loose, competitive style Carroll inspires.
No matter the circumstances, it can feel much more burdensome to maintain success than to start anew. Upkeep is a chore. But the Seahawks are in a building phase now. And it’s not the rebuilding that they resisted. They have a chance to be the rare team that can bridge eras without prolonged suffering. And this initial success may not stunt their potential to grow through the draft because they’re still set to receive first- and second-round picks in the 2023 draft from Denver. Considering the work the front office did in putting together a stellar rookie class that includes Walker, the tackles and cornerbacks Tariq Woolen and Coby Bryant, the extra assets add even more hope.
Of course, the Seahawks are a two-game losing streak from being another meandering NFL team. They know that. But when celebrating, they don’t bask. They’re using it to fortify their confidence so they can keep growing.
When asked about the Seahawks’ current level of belief, safety Quandre Diggs interjected: “It’s crazy you say ‘the belief we have now.’ We’ve always believed.”
Said Lockett: “When you look at this team that we have, we have a bunch of guys that are willing to buy in. When you look at the rookie class, they probably haven’t said 500 words since they’ve been here. They just put their head down and work.”
Carroll has a way of making success contagious. More than any other NFL coach, he specializes in accentuating the individual and using positive coaching to fuel players in an extraordinary manner. When his teams believe, they often go to another level. The Seahawks may not be as good as they’ve shown the past three weeks, but chances are they aren’t going away.
This weird season has given them an opening to buck convention. They appear hellbent on capitalizing.
“I know that it’s kind of been an alert: ‘What’s going on here? What are these guys doing? How is this happening?’ ” Carroll said. “They’re hanging together, and they’re playing together, and they know that they can improve, and they know that there’s areas in their football that they can get better. There’s just nobody satisfied at all, and it’s a great feeling.”
It’s a new feeling. It’s a familiar one, too. | 2022-10-31T13:54:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Without Russell Wilson, the Seahawks have been reborn - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/31/seahawks-good-without-russell-wilson/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/31/seahawks-good-without-russell-wilson/ |
Terry McLaurin had plenty to celebrate Sunday in his hometown of Indianapolis. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
INDIANAPOLIS — Behind a metal fence in the underbelly of Lucas Oil Stadium, Terry McLaurin embraced his family and pulled a group of friends into a huddle. They had known one another for years, some since elementary school at Fishback Creek, and even though they had spread out across the country, they reunited to share this moment as a long-ago dream became reality.
In his city, against the team he grew up rooting for, in front of those he loved most, McLaurin had delivered a masterpiece, punctuating his best performance of the season by pulling in what was once a weakness in his game — a contested catch — against one of the NFL’s best cornerbacks to effectively win the game for his Washington Commanders.
In the huddle, McLaurin’s boys reminisced about how they had first played ball at recess. They shared some jokes that would always remain between them. They chided the Indianapolis Colts for not drafting him, compared his closing ability to Kobe Bryant’s and admired his monogrammed dress shirt and glittering watch.
“It means everything, man,” said Josh Riley, now an IT consultant in Orlando. “Seeing [him] after the game and just being able to talk to him, it’s just surreal really. [McLaurin] is just a regular guy to us.”
History 1️⃣7️⃣ pic.twitter.com/EZIa2Uqt1y
— Josh Riley (@Jriley_04) October 31, 2022
In the box score, what McLaurin did Sunday can be tabulated with numbers: eight targets, six catches, 113 yards. But for him, this game will be defined by where it took place and the friends and family he did it in front of, including all seven of his boys: Riley, Grant Prather, Terrill May, Kendall Rollins, Quentin Taylor, Dominic Prather and one who preferred just “Tana.”
“You just never know when you’re a kid,” McLaurin said. “You’re just dreaming, just dreaming and … then you get to come into the game, play in front of your family and friends and have a chance to make the play to win the game? I’m blessed.”
Throughout his whirlwind return to his hometown, McLaurin felt like a regular guy. Not the Commanders’ leading receiver who had signed a three-year, $71 million contract extension in the summer. Not an NFL star, like many of his idols growing up. Not the hero to many kids who were just like him years ago at Lucas Oil Stadium.
His unassuming nature has yet to — and may never — catch up to his stardom.
“He’s always been a guy that, no matter how much money you give him, he feels like he’s always got to prove something,” said wide receiver Curtis Samuel, one of McLaurin’s roommates at Ohio State. “He works each and every day. ... Him getting a contract, I knew nothing was going to change. That’s just who he is.”
On Saturday evening, just hours after the team plane arrived in Indianapolis, McLaurin sat in Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse with his agent and a close friend — a small group compared with the 70-plus family members and friends in the stadium the following day.
But it wasn’t long before their party expanded to four. A woman recognized McLaurin from across the restaurant and walked over to meet him.
“I just want to tell you you’re my favorite player in the NFL,” she told him. “I’ll be wearing your jersey tomorrow.”
McLaurin thanked the woman and told her how much it meant to him, then turned to his agent and friend with awe. McLaurin, one of the NFL’s top wideouts and one of Indianapolis’s homegrown stars, was in disbelief that a fan felt that way about him.
“Man, sometimes I just got to pinch myself that I’m even standing here,” McLaurin said Sunday. “… You never know where you’re going to be in life.”
On Sunday, he tried to pay it forward. Roughly two hours before kickoff, he jogged out of the stadium tunnel clutching a football. Thousands awaited, many wearing his jersey and chanting his name as he made his way across the end zone. But then he turned back, spotted a young fan in the first row and handed him the ball before joining his teammates on the field for stretches.
“I think that’s really part of just the reason why I’m in this position,” McLaurin said later. “I know it’s football, but I don’t think my true purpose on this Earth is just to play football. It’s to inspire. It’s to meet people and make their day. Anytime I can give my gloves or meet a kid or meet a family, I’m going to take the time to do that because one day it’s going to stop.”
Soon, a crowd of friends and family members filled the sideline adjacent to the Commanders’ bench. As warmups came to an end, McLaurin sauntered over as cameras followed and shared hugs and selfies. And at one point pregame, Hall of Fame wide receiver Marvin Harrison, McLaurin’s idol as a youth growing up as a Colts fan, requested a photo with him.
“And I’m like, ‘Me?’ ” McLaurin recalled with a laugh. “That was just an extremely full-circle moment.”
Before the game, McLaurin won the coin toss by calling tails. He started slow — his only touch in the first quarter was a screen that lost seven yards — but picked up in the second quarter by running a short crossing route away from man-to-man coverage for 42 yards. It was just the type of play he used to run in middle school, when quarterback Dominique Booth trusted McLaurin’s speed.
“He was born with it,” Booth said this past week.
Late in the fourth quarter, as the clock wound down, McLaurin ran a curl route, turned and stopped. He saw Taylor Heinicke in the backfield, patting the ball with seemingly nowhere to go. McLaurin turned and jetted upfield. McLaurin was a “decoy” on the play, Heinicke said, and normally the Commanders’ scramble rules dictate that receivers low on the field should fake high and then stay low.
But, Heinicke said, he has told McLaurin to go deep.
“When I saw that he was throwing it up, I was like, ‘Oh yeah — game over.’ I thought it was going to be a touchdown,” wide receivers coach Drew Terrell said. “He wants the ball in those moments, and he showed that he’s going to make the play in those moments. He’s just relentless at getting the ball in those situations.”
After McLaurin hauled in the pass and Heinicke scored on the next play, McLaurin ripped off his helmet and ran to the sideline, appearing to yell: “This is my city! This is my f---ing city!”
In the locker room after the game, the team gave McLaurin a game ball. He praised God and his teammates.
“I’m just happy to play with y’all, for real,” he said on a video posted to the team website. “I know I get the glory, but I do it all for y’all.”
Later, as the players showered and dressed, Terrell walked to a group of players and turned the screen of his iPhone. They could see the song, tinny from the speakers and hard to hear over the din, was “Put On” by rapper Jeezy.
“Terry’s song tonight,” Terrell said before Jeezy hit the chorus.
I put on for my city, on-on for my city. | 2022-10-31T13:54:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Terry McLaurin's Indianapolis homecoming was a dream come true - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/31/terry-mclaurin-homecoming-indianapolis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/31/terry-mclaurin-homecoming-indianapolis/ |
Día de los Muertos is not Mexican Halloween
In Mexico, Day of the Dead is a time to remember loved ones who have passed away
Perspective by Mariana Alfaro
(Eva Vázquez for The Washington Post)
The first Día de los Muertos I remember was in 2001.
My little brother had just passed away and I asked my abuelita why a picture of him sat on her fireplace mantle, surrounded by portraits of much older family members, some I had never met.
“Because he’s here with us, and we’re celebrating,” she said.
Around the collection of photos, she placed family members’ favorite snacks. Next to my brother, I remember clearly, sat a tube of colorful hard candies, shaped like fruits with a sour taste that made my mouth water.
I was five years old and used to gobbling up all of the candy I could get my hands on. This one, though, I knew was for my two-year-old little brother. Even if he wasn’t here to enjoy it, even if the rare genetic disease that had tormented him in life wouldn’t allow him to enjoy all the sweets the world had to offer.
For the rest of my life, whether at my abuelos’ home or at my own, my family would always build a Día de los Muertos ofrenda — an altar — a few days ahead of the holiday. At the center of our family altars, you could always find my little brother, with his cherubic face, thick curls and a smile that I still can see when I close my eyes.
In Mexico, on Nov. 1 we celebrate children who died at a young age — that was, specifically, Mauricito’s day. Nov. 2 we celebrate all of our dead.
Let me emphasize the word “celebration”: That’s what Día de los Muertos is. While mourning and joy are not two emotions that, inherently, fit together, on Día de los Muertos we party with our dead. We tell them how much we miss them while we play their favorite songs, while we prepare the meal they loved in life, while we remember all the bad jokes they made, and the great adventures they went on.
Día de los Muertos is such a fete that we even dress “Death” up and let her join us. She often comes in the shape of a Catrina — a well dressed skeleton, decked in bright, colorful skirts and a wide-brim hat. She reminds us that death is always with us, but isn’t always terrifying.
Throughout the years, more faces were added to the altars. My abuelita — who so lovingly shopped at the tianguis for calaveritas and flores de cempasuchil — joined the altar in 2008. Heartbroken, my mother silently placed her portrait next to my brother’s. As we lit the candles, we whispered a prayer and thanked them for being with us, in life and in the after.
When I moved to United States in 2014, I brought the tradition with me, even if it meant a small altar on a little corner of my college dorm room. Every year, I pour out a little tequila for my abuelos, I buy a tube of M&M’s for my brother. I place them next to a pan de muerto, say a little prayer, thank them for being with me, in life and in the after.
The bread — pillowy-soft on the inside, and coated in crunchy sugar and baked to look like bones — is one the essential elements of the holiday. Most panes de muerto are infused with orange zest and star anise. As the name suggests, this is the bread we offer our dead.
In the years since, I’ve introduced my American friends to this tradition. On one specifically cold evening in Chicago, I remember trekking to Pilsen — a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, where year-round you can find everything from piñatas, to paletas, to my favorite kind of chile chipotle — to find a sugary pan de muerto. It was worth it.
But it’s weird for me now, eight years into my life in the United States, to see how Day of the Dead is becoming another “Hallmark Holiday.” Catrinas and calaveras — the sugary skulls, decorated with bright colors — now sit next to pumpkins and ghosts at the party supply store.
I’ve walked through Targets and Walmarts and spotted products described as “sugar skull decorating kits.” I’ve seen Alebrijes — creatures Mexicans believe guide our dead to the afterlife — sold on Etsy. There’s a Day of the Dead Barbie.
The other day, I even found calavera-shaped Peeps.
The truth is, I fear that my favorite tradition — this celebration of life in death — could become another “Cinco de Mayo,” losing its homegrown significance. (Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico’s independence day. It’s a holiday primarily for those in Puebla, marking the day they defeated the French.)
Like me, Hector Carrillo is a Mexican immigrant living in the United States and grew up celebrating Día de los Muertos with his family. Carrillo, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University who specializes in migration and transnationalism, told me that, “with the commercialization of the practice,” some of the meaning behind the tradition is “at risk of getting lost.”
There are symbolic and spiritual aspects of Día de los Muertos that should be preserved, Carrillo says. But, he says, an American embrace of the holiday could increase awareness of the country’s racial and cultural diversity.
“The fact that more people celebrate Día de Muertos, that more people have access to the cultural iconography of Día de Muertos in the U.S. more generally, that could contribute to an increase in cultural sensitivity of Latinx culture,” he said. “So, in many ways, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.”
Carrillo compared it to how many Americans celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that is now core to U.S. identity but has lost some of its original meaning. Still, it has “remained very significant" to the community where it originated.
Besides, he says, some families in Mexico have long infused traditional Day of the Dead celebrations with America’s Halloween traditions. Back home, children dress up and go around their neighborhoods asking for a “calaverita,” a combination of the classic American trick-or-treating tradition, combined with the Día de los Muertos practice of gathering treats for our loved ones.
“I see this as part of a of a complicated cultural-sociological process, by which cultural practices travel across transnational borders,” Carrillo said.
I hope that, through education, by sharing our stories, even through movies like “Coco” — which helped introduce the concept of Día de los Muertos to a worldwide audience — the true meaning of this celebration will be preserved.
For us Mexicans, death is not the end. Death is a continuation of life. Death is something we mourn, yes, but it is also something we celebrate. We embrace it. Día de los Muertos not only makes it easier to cope with the reality that your loved one is physically not here anymore — to hold your hand or tug your hair or tell you that everything is going to be okay — this remembrance of death also makes it easier to see that they lived a life worth celebrating, a life of impact and worth remembering, no matter if that life lasted 96 years, or 68 — or 2.
As Carrillo explained it, Day of the Dead is a celebration of life.
It’s been a difficult almost-three-years of a pandemic. We’ve all lost so much. So I invite you to build an altar, an ofrenda, in your home this year, for those who have left us, those who inspired us and loved us and challenged us and believed in us. Those whose memories make this life worth living.
Get that special treat your loved one adored, sit it next to a calaverita, pour their favorite drink, catch them up on your life.
Feel their presence, even for a few minutes. They’re still here, with us.
That’s what Día de los Muertos is all about. | 2022-10-31T14:50:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why I’ll never trade Día de los Muertos for Halloween - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/31/day-dead-halloween-dia-de-muertos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/31/day-dead-halloween-dia-de-muertos/ |
In 2017, Becky Patty and her husband, Mike Patty, speak during a news conference for updates on the investigation of Liberty German's and Abigail Williams's deaths. The Pattys are grandparents of Libby German. (J. Kyle Keener/AP)
Police announced on Monday that a suspect has been arrested in the killings of two young teenagers that rocked a small town in Indiana more than five years ago.
Authorities said in a news conference that Richard M. Allen of Delphi, Ind., had been arrested and charged with two counts of murder in the killings of Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13, whose bodies were found in 2017.
Allen pleaded not guilty in a preliminary hearing, according to Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland. He is being held without bond and has hearing dates scheduled for January and March 2023. McLeland said he was bound by court order to not discuss many details of the investigation.
Monday’s update was long-awaited for Liberty’s and Abigail’s families, as well as the community of Delphi, which has kept a close eye on the investigation. The teens lived in the tiny town about 70 miles northwest of Indianapolis.
On Feb. 13, 2017, the two friends had gone for a hike on the Delphi Historic Trails and were reported missing by their families when they did not return home that afternoon. The next day, volunteers from the community in a search party found the girls’ bodies in a wooded area near the trail.
But police did not disclose their cause of death at the time, saying only that the case was a double homicide investigation — and the girls’ autopsies have remained under seal.
Police have released a new clue in the deaths of two girls — a chilling recording of three words
Days after the bodies were found, Indiana State Police released a photo of a man they suspected was involved in the killings. The photo, which was recovered from Liberty’s cellphone, showed a man who authorities said was walking on the Delphi Historic Trails and might have “participated in the murders,” according to a news release.
Another chilling detail recovered from Liberty’s phone emerged about a week after the girls were found — a recording of what might have been the killer’s voice. In the audio, police announced, a male voice appears to say “Down the hill.” Officials offered a download of the audio and asked anyone who recognized the voice to send in a tip.
“This young lady is a hero, there’s no doubt,” Indiana State Police Sgt. Tony Slocum said at the time, referring to Liberty. “To have enough presence of mind to activate that video system on her cellphone, to record what we believe is criminal behavior that’s about to occur.”
In an effort to help the public recognize whom they were looking for, Indiana State Police in July 2017 released a composite sketch of what they believed the killer looked like.
Nearly two years passed before authorities released a second composite sketch in April 2019, this one in stark contrast to the first, which they said “more accurately” depicted the killer, the Indianapolis Star reported.
For years, Becky Patty, Liberty’s grandmother, has posted a photo on Facebook every day in memory of the girls, usually with the words “Today is the day” in the image. Those four words have been used by family and community members to keep attention on the case as it remained unsolved.
“Now I sit here not needing to do it because at long last we have a face to go with our monster,” Patty wrote Saturday in a Facebook post.
The next day, she posted a photo of Liberty near a pool, a towel tied around her like a cape with the caption: “Fitting.”
This is a developing story that will be updated. Sarah Larimer contributed to this report. | 2022-10-31T14:50:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Indiana Police arrest man in Libby German and Abby Williams murder case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/31/delphi-abby-williams-libby-german-killings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/31/delphi-abby-williams-libby-german-killings/ |
Live updates Supreme Court hears arguments in Harvard, UNC affirmative action cases
The crowd outside the Supreme Court early Monday...
Sotomayor pushes back on assumption that students can be admitted on race alone
Justice Jackson sounds skeptical of harm when race is considered
Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked attorney Patrick Strawbridge...
‘Racial classifications are wrong,’ says attorney for challengers
Ruling could affect more than colleges, former Kavanaugh clerk says
Here we go again. The staying power of...
‘Defend diversity’: Students and activists rally outside Supreme Court
The affirmative action fight also revealed Harvard admissions secrets
Many public universities consider race in admissions. But many don’t.
Over 6 in 10 favor leaving race out of college admissions, Post-Schar School poll finds
Want to follow Monday’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court? Here’s what to know.
What the justices have said about race and affirmative action before
The Supreme Court hears oral arguments on Oct. 31 for two cases that will decide whether colleges can use race as a factor for admissions. (Video: The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court is again examining whether universities may consider race when trying to build diverse student bodies, reviewing admissions policies at the nation’s oldest private college and public university. Lower courts found that Harvard and the University of North Carolina complied with past Supreme Court rulings that allowed race as one factor in evaluating applicants.
But the slim majorities that issued those rulings in 2003 and 2016 have been replaced by a more conservative bloc of justices, including three nominated by President Donald Trump. On Monday morning, challengers began making oral arguments to the justices, hoping they will overturn those precedents and find that considerations of race — which aid underrepresented Black and Latino students — violate federal law and the Constitution.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is often a moderating force and hesitant to overturn court precedent, has long questioned race-conscious government policies and been skeptical of what he has called the “sordid business” of dividing Americans by race.
The three Trump nominees — along with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated by President Biden — do not have extensive records on cases involving racial preferences from their tenures as appeals court judges.
Recent public opinion polling shows most Americans support a ban on the consideration of race in college admissions, but an equally strong majority backs programs to boost racial diversity on campuses.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor pushed back on an argument by Patrick Strawbridge, an attorney for the group Students for Fair Admissions, that assumed that race was the only factor that gets someone into a school.
Sotomayor added that, under the framework established by Grutter v. Bollinger, race could not be used exclusively to admit a student and that there already exist a confluence of reasons to consider an application.
“Obviously, we have quarrels with the logic of that. In a zero-sum game like college admissions, if race is going to be encounted, that means some people are going to get in and some people are going to be excluded,” Strawbridge said.
By Ann Marimow
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first African American woman to serve on the court, sounded skeptical about the claims from the challengers that their members are harmed when race is considered as one factor in the university’s admissions process.
“No one is automatically getting in because race is being used,” Jackson said in an exchange with the lawyer for Students for Fair Admissions. “Why does having race as a factor harm your members?”
In response, the group’s attorney said the University of North Carolina creates an unfair system by giving preference to Black and Hispanic applicants and not to White or Asian American applicants.
Attorney Patrick Strawbridge, representing Students for Fair Admissions, told the court that “racial classifications are wrong” and urged the justices to overturn past precedent that has allowed for consideration of race as one factor in college admissions.
Justice Clarence Thomas asked the challengers, “if you don’t consider race,” how will universities be able to “consider the whole person in the admissions process?”
Strawbridge said universities could consider socioeconomics, for instance, to ensure a broader diversity of viewpoints. But, he said, considering race alone is not consistent with the Constitution.
Much of the media focus on the Harvard and University of North Carolina admissions cases has been on higher education, Rakim H.D. Brooks, president of Alliance for Justice, which advocates for a diverse, progressive judiciary, said shortly before speaking at a morning rally in support of affirmative action outside the Supreme Court. “But everything is at stake,” he said, including how we understand ourselves as a society.
At business schools, there are whole courses devoted to how diversity drives better decisions across the board, said Brooks, a public-interest appellate lawyer. “But now this is being called into question.”
Outside the Supreme Court on Monday morning, people wearing blue yelled, “Defend diversity!” and “Affirm opportunity!”
A speaker urged them, “They need to hear us! They need to feel us! They’re in there getting ready — the lawyers on both sides.”
The crowd yelled again, “Defend diversity!”
The rally included students and leaders from the NAACP, the Alliance for Justice, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and other groups.
David Lewis, a junior at Harvard University speaking for the Black Students Association, said that he had endured discrimination and bullying in his early school years, and that despite the signs and chants about defending diversity, he did not come there in defense.
Nearly everyone seeking to get into Harvard University craves to know what kind of test scores they need to be a serious contender. An internal Harvard document, disclosed during the trial phase of the case now at the Supreme Court, provides an answer: mid-to-high 700s, out of a possible 800 on each part of the SAT. Or at least 33 out of a maximum 36 on the ACT.
Those were benchmarks Harvard suggested in 2014 for admission officers to rate an applicant with superb grades as having “Magna” academic potential — a 2 on a scale of 1 to 4. The highest rating, reserved for special cases with near-perfect scores and grades, was 1 or “Summa.” Applicants rated a 3 or 4 have lower chances of admission.
Any Supreme Court reversal on affirmative action would send shock waves through higher education. But the effects of a potential ban on race-conscious admissions would vary widely from state to state and even within some states.
The Washington Post analyzed public information about the admissions process at 66 prominent public universities, including at least one in every state. It found that 60 percent ignore race and ethnicity. Some are based in the nine states that ban race-conscious admissions for public higher education. (Those are Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington state.)
More than 6 in 10 Americans support a ban on the consideration of race in college admissions, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll, but an equally robust majority endorses programs to boost racial diversity on campuses.
Unlike before the pandemic, members of the public may listen to live audio of Supreme Court arguments, including today’s arguments in two key cases involving the use of race as a factor in college admissions.
One defendant is Harvard University. The other is the University of North Carolina. Their admissions policies are being challenged by an organization called Students for Fair Admissions, which wants the high court to declare that it is unconstitutional to use race as a factor in building diverse student bodies.
Ann Marimow
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has said, among other things: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in 2012 that, “The long march for equality for African-Americans is not finished.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor have written and spoken in deeply personal terms about affirmative action and the role it played in their own lives.
Here is our full story on the nine justices and what each has said or written in the past about race and affirmative action. | 2022-10-31T14:50:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court hears affirmative action arguments: Live updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/31/supreme-court-affirmative-action-case-harvard-unc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/31/supreme-court-affirmative-action-case-harvard-unc/ |
Bolsonaro hasn’t conceded to Lula. Is he following the Trump playbook?
Supporters of Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva celebrate on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo as he delivers his victory speech Sunday evening. (Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images)
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil and its president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the winner of Sunday’s election, woke up Monday to a question familiar to Americans: Will the loser concede?
In the tightest presidential election in Brazilian history, following a bitterly fought campaign that depended divisions in Latin America’s largest nation, President Jair Bolsonaro has remained out of public view since 8 p.m. Sunday, when the Superior Electoral Court declared Lula the winner of the second and final round. Bolsonaro, a close ally of former president Donald Trump, known for his fiery rhetoric and hot missives on social media, has opted for a response that for him has been extremely uncommon: Silence.
To many here, it’s little surprise. Bolsonaro, his sons and supporters have for months laid the groundwork to contest a loss with unsupported allegations of electoral fraud. Bolsonaro summoned foreign diplomats in July to cast doubt on electronic voting.
Having followed much of the Trump playbook during his rise to power and in office, analysts say, he could do the same in defeat: Refuse to concede, declare Lula’s presidency illegitimate and use his hardcore base to play power broker while preparing for the next election.
“This is the Trump model,” said Marcos Nobre, a political analyst and author. “That’s to say, the one who won the election fair and square is illegitimate. Bolsonaro will seek to weaken Lula in every way.”
His loss comes as the specter of criminal investigations hangs over him and his family.
In scattered but growing incidents, Bolsonaro supporters on Sunday night began blocking highways and demanding that he refuse to concede. Brazilian police on Monday morning reported 70 blockades in 11 states and the Federal District of Brasilia. They included one of the country’s main highways, which connects São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the country’s largest metropolitan areas.
One congressman who represents truckers said the roadblocks were the work of “criminals who do not represent the category.” “The Parliamentary Group of Independent Truckers does not support any kind of demonstration against the outcome of the elections!” Nereu Crispim tweeted. After the result Sunday, the Rio Grande do Sul lawmaker said democracy had won and “hate has lost.”
Brazilian police accused of suppressing Lula vote
The company that manages highways in Mato Grosso state said at least four stretches of road were blocked. “Lula will not be our president,” a woman says in a video posted by the news outlet O Globo.
But some of Bolsonaro’s allies encouraged him to concede. “It is time to disarm the spirit, extend your hand to your opponents,” House Speaker Arthur Lira said. “We reaffirm the fairness, the stability and the confirmation of the popular will. We cannot accept revanchism and persecution from any side. Now it is time to look ahead.”
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the country’s top election official, told reporters late Sunday that he had called both candidates before the winner was announced to inform them of the election result. Bolsonaro, he said, had responded “with extreme politeness.”
Moraes described the elections as clean and secure, and insisted there was no “real risk” the results could be contested. “This is part of the rule of law,” he said.
“There has been major polarization and now it is more up to the winners to unite the country,” he said.
The president’s attorney general, a man who critics say has shielded Bolsonaro from corruption investigations, declared last night that Lula had won: “Three hours after voting ended, and with almost 99% of the ballots counted, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was mathematically elected president of Brazil, with more than 50% of the voters’ votes.”
Sergio Moro, the prosecuting judge who sent Lula to prison on charges that were later annulled, was appointed Bolsonaro’s justice minister and is now, after a falling-out, an elected senator, said “this is how Democracy is.”
“Let’s work for the unity of those who want the good of the country,” he tweeted. “I will always be on the side of what is right! I will be in the opposition in 2023.”
One of Bolsonaro’s strongest allies, the evangelical pastor Silas Malafaia, recognized “the sovereign people’s will.”
“My prayer, as the Bible says, is to intercede for the constituted authorities,” he tweeted. “God save Brazil from social, political and economic chaos,” he tweeted.
Others demanded Bolsonaro reject the results. Carla Zambelli, a pro-Bolsonaro lawmaker who pointed a gun at an unarmed Black man after a political argument in São Paulo on Saturday, congratulated the truckers for their blockades. She shared a video of protesters putting fire on tires to close a highway in Goiás state. “Stay, don’t fade,” she tweeted last night as the protests began.
Trump, in a video statement before the election, endorsed Bolsonaro as “one of the great people in all of politics and in all of leadership of countries.”
“There is no possibility that the result of the electronic ballot boxes is correct,” former Trump strategist and Bolsonaro supporter Stephen K. Bannon told the outlet Folha de Sao Paulo. “We need a ballot-by-ballot audit, even if it takes six months. In the meantime, the president should not agree to leave.” | 2022-10-31T15:12:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brazil election: Bolsonaro, Trump of Tropics, not conceding Lula win - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/bolsonaro-lula-brazil-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/31/bolsonaro-lula-brazil-election/ |
Traditional journalism gave birth to HBO. Then HBO crushed journalism.
A new book by two journalists shows how HBO swallowed up the national conversation
Review by Adriane Quinlan
Brian Cox, left, and J. Smith-Cameron in the first season of “Succession.” (Ursula Coyote/HBO)
When I was 27, I conned my way into a job as a reporter for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans. The hire was a stretch. I’d only been to Louisiana as a do-gooder volunteer and a sin-seeking tourist. Terrified, I started cramming: reading old articles, skimming John M. Barry’s “Rising Tide” and watching HBO’s “Treme.” The 2010-2013 series gave me what any carpetbagging reporter really needed: the attitude of the city, its texture, its walk and its talk. When John Goodman’s character started spewing facts from Barry’s book, I wondered why I’d bothered reading at all.
In 2013, when I started at the Times-Picayune, HBO shows were doing exactly what my editors told me they wanted my writing to do: They were starting conversations. Locals were fighting about their depiction on Treme, and, to my disgust, many of the cub reporters of my generation were sucked away from covering real people, to articles analyzing the feminism of “Girls,” the politics of “Entourage” or the bro-y cultural references of “True Detective.” But five years later, when I jumped to a job writing for a show on HBO: “VICE News Tonight,” I was ecstatic to be on the ground floor of HBO’s attempt to reinvent journalism, especially on a show that had, with its coverage of Charlottesville, proved it could start conversations like any HBO drama.
Throughout that era, there was a feedback loop as HBO eagerly plundered talent and storytelling tools from traditional newsrooms to create its shows — and not just the explicitly journalistic programming that my colleagues and I were creating. Those dynamics have a long history.
As veteran media reporters Felix Gillette and John Koblin explain in their new book, “It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO,” HBO was born from journalism, a byproduct of Time Inc.’s plan to diversify its holdings. Their gossipy, cameo-padded reporting breezes through the improbable story of how a print media company invested in a scheme to bring a clearer television picture to certain neighborhoods, embraced satellites, and discovered that original programming was a cheaper way to fill their slate than paying Hollywood studios. To pull in viewers, HBO’s early executives dreamed up a network that ended up reflecting contemporary culture — its policing and crime, politics and industry news — better than many newspaper sections devoted to those topics.
In an account as polished, risk-averse and page-turning as the prestige format that HBO gave rise to, Gillette and Koblin flip between the character arcs of writers and programmers who have been slyly guiding our national conversation, and the suits they work for. The two beat reporters have spent years covering media for Bloomberg News and the New York Times, and much of the reporting comes from their own incremental stories. Like an HBO show, the book attempts to shape a compelling, emotional yarn out of those headlines. And, also like an HBO show, it draws extensively from others, too, with endnotes often revealing that what appeared to be a quote from an original interview has been drawn from an HBO Oral History Project or even a podcast about “The Sopranos.”
The character whose work at HBO propels the first chapters of the book is its onetime chief executive Michael Fuchs, an entertainment lawyer-turned-development exec, whom Gillette and Koblin paint as a stylish, Robert Evans-esque daredevil, ordering his troops to “be more candid, more open, more fresh, more experimental, more daring.” Those troops included Sheila Nevins, a rescue from broadcast news, who found TV documentaries at the time “elitist” and “pedantic.” She dreamed up the long-running “Real Sex” (1990-2009) — a playful doc series that wandered into bedrooms, strip clubs and even masturbation classes — when she realized, she said, that “sex is a serious wound in this country.” Fuchs identified other wounds, too, greenlighting “And the Band Played On” (1993), an account of the country’s sputtering response to AIDS, which was itself based on a controversial book by journalist Randy Shilts. When the film drew raves, Fuchs said in a note to staff, “ ‘Let us be Dickens,’ let us look at contemporary society like no one else in the country.”
The imperative was apt, and not just as a call to tell sprawling, populist stories. Dickens began his career as a reporter and continued to publish journalism even as his fame grew. Such practice surely helped his fiction convince audiences of the evils of greed and the dangers of urban modernity. That’s a background he shares with David Simon, the Baltimore Sun alum and HBO showrunner whose credits include both “Treme” and “The Wire” (2002-2008). Gillette and Koblin show how Simon memorably got funding for the latter by telling the suits to think even more like Dickens, “You will not be stealing market share from the networks only by venturing into worlds where they can’t, you will be stealing it by taking their worlds and transforming them with honesty and wit and a darker, cynical, and more piercing viewpoint than they would undertake.”
Like the newspapers of Victorian London, HBO drew in audiences with taboo topics such as abortion access, as it did in “If These Walls Could Talk” (1996). Carolyn Strauss, who rose up the ladder in original programming, learned to sell “creative freedom” to big-name showrunners, getting lucky with veterans who were sick of network notes — like Darren Star, creator of “Sex and the City” (1998-2004), whom Gillette and Koblin describe coming to HBO disgusted that Fox had refused to let him to write a gay character on “Melrose Place.” In other words, even the imperative to tell bold stories was primarily a question of good business sense.
“Sex and the City” itself was based on a series of columns by a journalist, of course. And HBO loved to not just base shows on reportage, but to fill writers’ rooms with ex-journalists, a practice that’s fueled Hollywood since the first modern writer owed rent. But Gillette and Koblin show how HBO tightened the loop thanks to Richard Plepler, a public relations expert whose secret sauce was a true delight at schmoozing (and drinking) with reporters. When Plepler took over programming in 2007, he didn’t just hire journalists to write — he paid Tina Brown and Frank Rich to identify talent. Rich’s nose for the culture proved astute. He championed and executive-produced “Veep” (2012-2019). Then, in the slush pile, Rich found the writer who would go on to create “Succession,” a show that bounded like a hunting dog toward the two major interests of viewers in the Donald Trump era: an aspirational disgust with the increasingly hidden world of the one percent, and suspicions about the role of money in the helter-skelter news cycle.
That show, which follows a billionaire family whose fortune is in media and entertainment, premiered in June 2018, the same month that I started at “VICE News Tonight.” Had I been watching “Succession” then, I might have understood that it could not last long. In Episode 2 of the second season, the Roy family moves to shut down a blog called Vaulter, whose offices resembled the one I biked to daily, with its unlimited seltzer and branded beer. Not long after the episode ran in 2019, HBO canceled its series with VICE, forcing our show to reinvent itself, and putting us in the same position as my former colleagues at the Times-Picayune, who that year found themselves in professional peril as yet another owner took command of a money-losing newsroom.
Meanwhile, writers were cashing in on the tightening feedback loop between nonfiction and television. In 2018, Frank Rich’s son, Nathaniel, sold a magazine story to Apple TV for a reported $300,000 — probably more than ten times what he made from print — while the rights to a viral New York Magazine piece that was scavenged to become Netflix’s new hit series, “The Watcher,” were sold in a reported seven-figure deal. That kind of cash can affect what editors and journalists choose to take on, forgoing coverage of the unglamorous to pour scant resources into pieces that translate into compelling TV: character-driven stories about true crime, cops and robbers, and the ungodly rich. Other journalists are skipping the IP wars to jump into writers’ rooms.
Gillette and Koblin report on the pipeline from journalism to streaming, but don’t ask what the process has done to journalism itself. That question may be best answered by the fictional Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), who finds himself, in the same “Succession” episode that kills off Vaulter, at the helm of the family’s conservative news network. This is a role his goofball assistant tells him is “like, kind of against my principles.” Wambsgans offers a retort — one that, in Dickensian fashion, shows how power in the media might really work when no one is watching. It is not, he tells his assistant, “Charles Dickens World, OKAY? You don’t go around talking about principles.”
Adriane Quinlan is a journalist based in Brooklyn. She won three Emmys as the head writer of VICE News Tonight.
It’s Not TV
The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO
Viking. 416 pp. $28 | 2022-10-31T15:21:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Review of “It’s Not TV” by Felix Gillette and John Koblin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/31/hbo-book-review-gillette-koblin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/31/hbo-book-review-gillette-koblin/ |
Muhammad A. Aziz is shown at left on Feb. 26, 1965, after his arrest in the slaying of Malcolm X, and outside court after his conviction was vacated on Nov. 18, 2021. (AP)
New York City will pay Muhammad A. Aziz and the estate of Khalil Islam to compensate them for their wrongful murder convictions in 1966, according to the city’s legal office and an attorney for the men. The sum will be divided equally between Aziz and Islam’s estate, said the lawyer, David Shanies.
“These settlements acknowledge Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam’s innocence, and unconscionable violations of the law by police and prosecutors sworn to uphold it,” Shanies said in an email. “The damage caused by wrongful convictions can never be undone, but we owe it to history and to the people whose lives were destroyed to face the truth and try to make amends.”
Stefan Mooklal, deputy chief of staff for New York City’s law department, said his office agreed with former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.’s conclusion that Aziz and Islam had been wrongfully convicted.
“This settlement brings some measure of justice to individuals who spent decades in prison and bore the stigma of being falsely accused of murdering an iconic figure,” Mooklal said in a statement.
The payouts serve as another public mea culpa for the combined 42 years that Aziz, 84, and Islam, who died in 2009, served in prison before prosecutors admitted to making a tragic mistake. The pair was exonerated in November after a jury previously found them guilty of participating in Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination on the stage of Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom.
Malcolm X: Who was he, why was he assassinated, and who did it?
A Netflix documentary released in 2020 publicized new evidence casting doubt on Aziz and Islam’s involvement, prompting Vance to launch a two-year review of their first-degree murder convictions. He eventually concluded that there were deep flaws in the prosecution, including withheld documents, conflicting eyewitness testimony and apparently solid alibis exposed in the decades since the convictions.
“While I do not need a court, prosecutors, or a piece of paper to tell me I am innocent, I am glad that my family, my friends and the attorneys who have worked and supported me all these years are finally seeing the truth we have all known officially recognized,” he said.
Aziz and Islam’s estate had been discussing potential settlements with the city since August, court records from the federal cases in the Eastern District of New York show. Federal Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy recommended that the parties reach an agreement, according to docket entries posted Saturday.
They served decades in prison for killing Malcolm X. Now their names are cleared.
The killing prompted both factually grounded debate and conspiracy theories about the identity of the attackers. Shanies and the Innocence Project, a nonprofit pushing for criminal justice reform, have long sought to clear Aziz and Islam’s names.
New York Supreme Court Justice Ellen Biben apologized to Aziz and to Islam’s family as she overturned their convictions last year.
“I regret that this court cannot fully undo the serious miscarriages of justice in this case and give you back the many years that were lost,” she said.
Shayna Jacobs and Sydney Trent contributed to this report. | 2022-10-31T18:41:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Men wrongly convicted of killing Malcolm X to get $26 million settlement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/31/malcom-x-assassination-settlement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/31/malcom-x-assassination-settlement/ |
The U.S. still doesn’t have an ambassador in one of the world’s most important capitals
By Ronak D. Desai
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti speaks during a news conference near SoFi Stadium on Feb. 2 in Inglewood, Calif. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
Ronak D. Desai is an associate at the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University. He practices law in D.C. and leads the congressional investigations practice at Paul Hastings.
India is one of America’s most vital strategic partners. Several long-term U.S. objectives — from defense and trade to energy and health care — are advanced through our relationship with the world’s largest democracy. The United States is India’s largest trading partner and one of its top arms suppliers. Delhi is also crucial to Washington’s efforts to contain a rising China. Supported by a bipartisan consensus, strong foreign relations with India remain one of the rare areas of convergence between America’s two political parties.
And yet — nearly two years since President Biden’s election to the White House — the Senate still hasn’t confirmed the administration’s nominee for ambassador to India.
U.S.-India relations are suffering as a result. And yet the inability to fill this vital post is just one small part of a broader failure. Dozens of Biden’s executive branch nominees — for domestic posts as well as diplomatic ones — languish in the Senate, awaiting confirmation. According to the Biden Political Appointee Tracker maintained by the Partnership for Public Service and The Post, 124 of the president’s nominees have yet to be confirmed.
The reason is simple: The political dysfunction affecting so many areas of American political life is undermining the Senate confirmation process.
The result is a federal government forced to work with hundreds of critical posts unfilled, hindering its ability to operate effectively not just at home, but also abroad. American embassies in vital places such as Saudi Arabia, Brazil and the African Union remain without a chief of mission, undermining U.S. diplomacy.
The conspicuous absence of an American ambassador in India is perhaps the most egregious example.
In July 2021, Biden nominated Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to the post. The logic of the choice was apparent. A Rhodes scholar with almost a decade of experience presiding over one of the world’s largest and most diverse cities, Garcetti spent a year studying Hindi and Urdu in college. By all accounts, he enjoys a deep, long-standing relationship with Biden and would have direct access to the president as his ambassador, an invaluable asset for the post.
By nominating his close confidant to serve in India, Biden was signaling the value he placed on the decades-old strategic partnership with India and his efforts to personalize the relationship.
Fifteen months later, Garcetti’s nomination has stalled, mired in a controversy over whether he had knowledge of sexual harassment allegations against a senior adviser in his office. Two senators placed separate holds on his nomination — though Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) withdrew his in May.
The diplomatic post has been empty since the departure of Trump’s India envoy in January 2021. The 20-month vacancy constitutes the longest stretch Washington has been without an ambassador in Delhi in the history of U.S.-India diplomatic ties, a dubious milestone.
By failing to confirm Garcetti, politicians in the Senate have deprived the United States of an essential instrument for shaping our relationship with this indispensable partner. The cascade of international crises upending the international order underscores the importance of preserving and strengthening foreign relations with India.
Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, for example, has highlighted Delhi’s close ties with both Moscow and Washington, and the delicate balancing act Delhi maintains between them. American officials have spent the past several months exhorting their Indian counterparts to exercise influence over Russia to help end the war. But the efficacy and credibility of such entreaties have suffered from the lack of a U.S. ambassador in Delhi.
Similarly, the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan last year, while striking a $450 million deal with Pakistan to modernize its F-16 fleet this year, has created friction in the partnership. A permanent U.S. ambassador in Delhi would help explain such decisions and help manage tensions.
Even so, the Biden administration has done an effective job in ensuring that bilateral relations largely stay the course. Engagement has deepened in a number of different realms, and high-level engagement between leaders of both countries remains frequent and substantive.
But summit diplomacy cannot serve as a substitute for the focused, mission-driven engagement so crucial to sustaining such an important partnership. Like all relationships, U.S.-India ties need attention, care and focus to thrive.
The chronic absence of an ambassador risks resurrecting a largely discredited theory that U.S.-India relations fare better under Republican administrations than Democratic ones. Although that is unsupported by the historic record, critics of the administration will be quick to point to the vacancy as evidence of Democratic neglect of the relationship. This would be unfortunate, considering that Biden has been an early champion of U.S.-India ties since his time in the Senate.
The status quo is unsustainable. The Biden administration should either strike a deal with the Senate to confirm Garcetti, or put forward a new nominee that can secure approval. The U.S.-India relationship is far too important for the helm of our mission in Delhi to remain vacant any longer. | 2022-10-31T18:45:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The U.S. still doesn’t have an ambassador in India. It's unsustainable. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/biden-administration-senate-ambassador-india-garcetti/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/biden-administration-senate-ambassador-india-garcetti/ |
Fairfax County’s cash bail reform is open for public judgment
By Alan Davis
A bail bonds business. (Kathy Willens/Associated Press)
Alan Davis is a member of the Fairfax County Justice Advisory Council. He served in law enforcement, including 20 years as a senior adviser to the deputy commissioner of the New York Police Department. He has helped develop crime-reduction programs at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center.
A man alleged to have possessed a small amount of drugs was charged with trespassing before a Fairfax judge imposed a $2,000 cash bail he was required to pay to be released pretrial. Another man who was alleged to have shot into a crowded venue after an altercation with security was allowed to return home pretrial, conditional on his payment of a $5,000 cash bail.
I know my neighbors and former law enforcement colleagues would see little value in putting the accused trespasser and drug user behind bars and little reason that the alleged shooter should be welcomed back into our community. I also know that the two men’s respective ability to pay thousands of dollars to return home would play little role in informing my former colleagues’ or neighbors’ calculous.
But, unfortunately, this is how cash bail — an amount of money a court charges a defendant to return home before their next court date — makes communities less safe and more inequitable. The imposition of cash bail prevents actors in the legal system from making a simple binary determination as to whether an individual represents a danger to the community and should be detained or does not, in which case unnecessary pretrial detention will serve only to increase the likelihood the individual commits future crimes. Thankfully, as illustrated by Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano’s recently released bond and pretrial detention dashboard, his team’s work to reform our community’s legal system is rendering these unjust outcomes less frequent.
At the outset of his term, Descano directed his prosecutors to stop requesting cash bail and consider a range of factors to determine whether community members charged with crimes pose such an imminent danger that pretrial detention should be recommended. The community should be encouraged by the progress made possible by Descano’s decision to insist that his prosecutors simply recommend individuals charged with crimes be detained or released pretrial based on an assessment of their dangerousness, without regard to their wealth. His recent release of data illustrates this point.
Specifically, the dashboard reflects that in 76 percent of violent felony cases and 89 percent of felony sex offense cases, the county’s prosecutors recommended pretrial detention. Meanwhile, in 77 percent of nonviolent misdemeanor cases, the team recommended release. The judge ultimately decides whether an individual is held.
Take it from a former law enforcement leader: This is the kind of judgment that keeps our community safe. Those who represent a real danger to the community should remain behind bars, and those who do not should go home before their next court date. An overreliance on pretrial detention renders us less safe and our legal system less just.
In fact, research has demonstrated that those held pretrial are significantly more likely to commit future crimes and put the community at further risk of danger. A Kentucky study found that individuals who weren’t released pretrial were 1.3 times more likely to be arrested on new charges in the future — and as few as two days of pretrial detention affected individuals’ odds of committing future offenses. Researchers in Harris County, Tex., found that pretrial detention of 10,000 individuals charged with misdemeanors could be projected to result in 400 additional felonies and 600 further misdemeanors after detention.
These findings are no surprise for those of us who have worked in the criminal justice system and witnessed firsthand the collateral consequences of pretrial detention. When someone is behind bars awaiting a court date, these consequences mount quickly. That individual’s job, housing and even custody of children comes under threat. In effect, the entire life of someone charged with a crime can come unwound on the heels of just a few days of incarceration. Such a scenario might as well be designed to fuel the cycle of crime.
Descano and his team should be applauded for working to build a safer and more just Fairfax County through their pretrial detention reforms. But perhaps as significant as this reform itself is the data they are sharing regarding the progress. This new dashboard grants our community unprecedented and unparalleled access to the pretrial decision-making of Descano’s team — and it will allow the public to continue to monitor the pretrial judgment of the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney.
For instance, when rolling out this dashboard, Descano emphasized that he thinks a larger majority of those accused of nonviolent crimes can likely be sent home pretrial and indicated that this is a figure he hopes to see trend downward.
Thankfully, because of this newly released data, the public can now do something we previously haven’t been able to do: hold our prosecutor’s office to account on that score.
Opinion|I’m sorry I said nice things about Glenn Youngkin | 2022-10-31T18:46:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Fairfax County’s cash bail reform is open for public judgment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/fairfax-county-cash-bail-reform/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/fairfax-county-cash-bail-reform/ |
Why Bolsonaro’s stunning loss should give humans a glimmer of hope
Supporters of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gather after he defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil's presidential election. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
One of the ugliest pathologies in global politics at the moment is the bizarre connection between climate denialism and right-wing authoritarianism. With some exceptions, authoritarian politicians are the ones most prone to spinning conspiracy theories and lies about climate change while resisting the transition to a green energy future.
This is why Jair Bolsonaro’s stunning defeat in Brazil’s presidential race is a major global event. It should afford us a moment of hopefulness that, under the circumstances, might seem a touch naive or even daring.
It’s been widely observed that leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s razor-thin victory is good news for the battle against climate change. Lula has vowed to preserve the Amazon and reverse Bolsonaro’s deforestation policies, which could dramatically influence how much planet-warming carbon dioxide the world’s largest rainforest stores — or releases into the atmosphere.
But this moment should be seen in a larger context. It’s only the latest sign that democracies are mobilizing to beat back that virulent and destructive international nexus of right-wing authoritarianism and climate denialism.
Bolsonaro’s defeat comes after two other major global events. This year the U.S. Congress passed a historically large response to climate change. Democrats overcame lockstep opposition from the Republican Party, which is riddled with denial of the long-term threat that climate change poses to human civilization.
Meanwhile, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has sought to use his petro-dictatorship to impose energy challenges on Western democracies, to weaken their support for Ukraine’s resistance to Russian conquest. But this is mostly failing — and inspiring a stronger push toward a green-energy future.
Those three developments — Lula hopefully reorienting the Amazon’s trajectory, the United States passing a massive response on climate, and Putin’s energy blackmail failing — can be seen as part of one story. Jesse Jenkins, a climate and energy expert at Princeton University, says that taken together, their influence on our energy future could prove “really huge.”
“You’ve got the two largest, wealthiest blocs in the world — the U.S. and Europe — doubling down on the clean-energy transition,” Jenkins told us.
Add a new direction for the largest steward of the Amazon, and the collective potential of these trends is heartening, Jenkins said.
As president of Brazil, Bolsonaro appointed as foreign minister a climate denier who dismissed global warming concerns as a plot by “cultural Marxists” to bolster China’s advantage against the West. Bolsonaro dismissed data from his own government’s agencies on deforestation as lies, and he mocked climate worries as “environmental psychosis.”
Bolsonaro also cut funding for environmental enforcement, and deforestation soared on his watch. By contrast, Lula’s previous term in office saw a dramatic decline in deforestation.
During this campaign, Lula proposed an ambitious green agenda to work toward “net-zero deforestation,” along with promoting sustainable agriculture and reducing fossil-fuel use. Though Lula will face congressional hurdles, he can make real progress by vigorously enforcing Brazil’s existing environmental laws.
At the same time, Putin has used Russia’s supply of energy to Europe, particularly natural gas, as a carrot and a stick. He cut off supplies to individual countries, limited supplies to others, and then promised to resume shipments, all to fracture the alliance behind Ukraine.
But that has backfired. Europe scrambled to find short-run alternatives to Russian natural gas, with the European Union slashing what it got from Russia. And the E.U. has announced that it will accelerate its transition to clean energy, linking that to the need to remain united against Putin.
And in the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act will likely put us much closer to the goal of cutting global-warming emissions in half from their 2005 levels by 2030. As Robinson Meyer details in the Atlantic, the new law could transform our economy by spending big to fuel the growth of green-energy industries, turning them into the manufacturing of the future.
That last point is important. The clean-energy transition will require showing Western electorates that this shift doesn’t necessarily require zero-sum economic sacrifice and that it contains the seeds of long-term economic opportunity.
This is essential to defining the battle as one that is winnable. Right-wing politicians like to tout “economic development based on fossil extraction and deforestation” that promises a “very short-term” political hit, Jenkins says.
Arrayed against that argument are democratic actors pushing in the other direction, Jenkins notes, with a “strategy that we know will take investments up front” but will pay off as “tangible evidence of economic opportunity” becomes visible in the green transition.
That could make the transition look more viable, not just economically but also politically. We’re seeing this now, as this transition begins to command the support of democratic majorities.
In this sense, there are glimmers of hope in all these developments. As business writer James Murray observes in a Twitter thread, “There is a (heavily caveated) positive story to tell.”
Lula won a bare majority while promising a new direction for the Amazon that rejects right-wing short-termism. The United States bucked the climate-denying movement to invest massively in the transition to a green future. Europe is interpreting Putin’s imposition of energy hardships as evidence of the need to hasten that transition as well.
“Progressive movements across the West are responding to authoritarians and climate denialists by accelerating the push toward a green tech future,” Nils Gilman, who writes extensively about environmentalism and far-right politics, told us.
“The urgency is only increasing,” Gilman concluded. “But I’m cautiously optimistic that democracies are moving in the right direction.” | 2022-10-31T18:46:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why Bolsonaro’s stunning loss should give humans a glimmer of hope - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/jair-bolsonaro-lula-brazilian-election-amazon-putin-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/jair-bolsonaro-lula-brazilian-election-amazon-putin-ukraine/ |
Elections aren’t only about ‘the economy, stupid’ — and never were
President George H.W. Bush responds to a question as Ross Perot and Bill Clinton listen during a presidential debate in Richmond in 1992. (Frank Johnston/The Washington Post)
The economy is not the singular, overriding factor that decides American elections — and it really never was. It’s not just “the economy, stupid.”
That three-word mantra was written on a sign in the headquarters of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign. Thirty years later, it’s still invoked regularly. And the view that elections ride on the state of the economy and the parties’ stands on pocketbook issues remains dominant among both journalists and people who work in politics, particularly Democrats.
Even before most Americans have voted, there is already commentary that Democrats have lost this year’s elections because the party has focused too much on abortion and not enough on economics and inflation, particularly high gas prices.
I don’t buy it. There are five main reasons to be skeptical of this economic-centered perspective:
First, there is one constant in American elections — the president’s party loses House seats in midterms. That has happened in 18 of the last 20 midterm elections, dating back to 1942. (The president’s party has lost ground in the Senate in 14 of those elections.)
The economy isn’t bad every midterm election.
Election experts say there are two explanations for the president’s party almost always doing badly in the midterms — and neither is about the economy. One is that the people in the president’s party vote at lower rates than those in the opposition party — anger perhaps being a stronger motivator than approval. The other reason is that the small bloc of voters who aren’t aligned with the Democrats or the Republicans often swing against the president’s party, looking to balance power in Washington.
If this year’s midterms follow historical patterns, Democrats will lose about 40 House seats simply based on President Biden’s low approval ratings and the fact that the party controls the presidency, according to Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll. That’s leaving aside any economic factors.
“Congratulations to Republicans on their victory in the 2022 midterms!” FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich wrote on Twitter on Nov. 6, 2020, as it seemed clear Biden would win the presidency.
Second, a good economy doesn’t guarantee a party will win an election — nor does a so-so economy ensure defeat. Economic conditions were fairly good in 2000, 2006, 2014 and 2018, years where the party in control of the White House lost electorally. They weren’t good in 2012, when President Barack Obama won reelection.
Whether GDP growth, the unemployment rate, the consumer price index or another measure is the best indicator of Americans’ economic circumstances is debatable. But no economic factor alone predicts U.S. election results particularly well.
Inflation probably is hurting the Democrats this year. But it’s likely that Democrats would be poised to lose the House even if inflation weren’t high — because the party in the White House almost always loses the House.
Third, much of the intra-Democratic Party debate about the role of economic policy and rhetoric in electoral politics is really a coded conversation about gender, race and policy. Many Democratic-aligned strategists and officials (allies of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont tend to hold this view in particular) want the party to embrace more economic populism and in some ways de-emphasize issues such as abortion and race. This is a policy view, but knowing that the broader Democratic Party is more united around beating Republicans than any set of policies, this bloc uses election narratives to push its policy stances.
So anytime Democrats are struggling politically, this bloc says the party isn’t talking about economic policy enough. Post-election, if Democrats lose, they will argue Democrats lost because they didn’t talk about the economy enough. If Democrats win, they will claim it is because Democrats focused the right amount on the economy.
There is another bloc in the party, including many close to Biden, who are wary of Democrats focusing on issues such as abortion and race but for different reasons. Their argument, although rarely stated directly in public, is that Democrats are losing elections because the majority of White American voters, particularly White men, are backing Republicans. Therefore, the party must find issues that center White men (economics) or at least ones that don’t leave them feeling de-centered (abortion, race.). This argument can also basically be used anytime, since Democrats almost always lose the White vote. Even after Democrats won the House, Senate and presidency in 2020, many Biden-aligned people in the party argued Democrats would have carried more districts and states but for the emergence of the “defund the police” movement.
In reality, it’s not clear whether Democrats would win more White voters or White male voters if they talked about the economy in a certain way or if they downplayed issues such as abortion. A campaign is not a one-sided conversation. Even if Democrats don’t campaign on issues such as abortion, crime and policing in ways that annoy some voters (or avoid those issues completely), Republicans can still make them the center of the campaign, as they are doing right now in key races in New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
What’s annoying about these arguments (but also useful for those making them) is that the notion that a political party will do better in elections if it talks about the economy “more” or in a certain way is almost impossible to measure or prove. If some pundit or strategist had written in June that Democrats would keep their House majority if they ran 80 percent of their campaign commercials on economic issues and Biden gave a weekly speech on manufacturing, he could write, “Democrats didn’t talk about the economy enough,” with an actual, specific metric that the party didn’t hit. I suspect this person doesn’t exist.
Fourth, the polls and focus groups in which Americans say the economy or jobs is their most important issue are not capturing what’s really driving voting decisions. In virtually every poll, at least 30 percent of voters say the economy is the most important issue in this year’s elections. The economy is the most cited issue, as it was in many prior election cycles.
But it’s very unlikely that 30 percent of voters are actually choosing candidates based on economic conditions alone. The overwhelming majority of voters (80 to 90 percent) will likely support whatever party they usually align with. So while these voters might say the economy is their important policy issue, what is actually driving their votes is partisanship.
It’s easy to reconcile party-line voting with Americans saying the economy is their most important issue, because partisan voters assess the economy more favorably when their party is in the White House.
Even swing voters might be overemphasizing the economy’s role in their votes. Asking people why they are voting for a particular candidate, as researchers do in polling and focus groups, is fraught. Voters sometimes lie about their motivations — and sometimes are not fully conscious of them.
For example, if you are a Pennsylvania voter who is uncomfortable voting for Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman because his stroke has made it harder for him to speak in public, you could say that to a pollster or in a focus group. But you might not want to seem unsympathetic about Fetterman’s health. So you might just fib and say you are voting for Republican Mehmet Oz because inflation is too high.
Fifth, American elections are complicated because so many things, including the quality of the candidates, are at play. “Lots of factors shape the election, including the economy” is way more accurate than “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Clinton’s staffers back in 1992 seemed to know this, too. The sign in the campaign’s headquarters included two other mantras that have been somewhat forgotten in the three decades since: “Change vs. more of the same” and “Don’t forget health care.”
I don’t like to call anyone or anything stupid. But let’s say “the economy, stupid,” as a singular explanation for American elections is a misguided view that has persisted 30 years too long and should be retired. | 2022-10-31T18:46:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Elections are about more than the economy, stupid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/perry-bacon-elections-economy-stupid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/perry-bacon-elections-economy-stupid/ |
What to do about those who choose to forgo vaccinations?
President Biden receives his updated coronavirus vaccine booster at the White House on Oct. 25. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Regarding the Oct. 27 front-page article “Officials: Pandemic fatigue may mean a bad covid winter”:
I recommend the Biden administration and all government agencies give up trying to persuade Americans to protect themselves against the coronavirus, the flu and every other ailment. It’s a losing proposition.
Instead, it is time to treat citizens with respect, allowing them the dignity to make their own choices. The information on disease risks and options is widely available; the choice as to whether people will respond to this winter’s viruses or bacterial plagues as responsible individuals or as idiots has already been made by the vast majority. It’s a waste of time and money trying to reach the unreachable.
Instead, health-care officials should be preparing for the worst and focus on saving the best prepared, that is, triaging and treating in favor of those who took precautions — including vaccines — and are best able to survive. The military follows this protocol in battlefield medical decisions; all medical providers should do likewise.
C.E. Wray, Charlottesville | 2022-10-31T18:47:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What to do about those who choose to forgo vaccinations? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/what-do-about-those-who-choose-forgo-vaccinations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/what-do-about-those-who-choose-forgo-vaccinations/ |
Before he died, a young Takoma Park artist put his stamp on soccer art
Takoma Park illustrator Noah MacMillan died July 31 at the age of 33. On Oct. 24, the U.S. Postal Service announced that a stamp featuring his work will be released in 2023 to honor women's soccer. (Jeffrey MacMillan) (Jeffrey MacMillan)
At the memorial service last month for Noah MacMillan, his mother, Lucinda Leach, told a funny story. As a boy, her oldest son had struggled with learning to write legibly. Whenever he tried to form letters, his hand would cramp up. But ask him to draw and Noah could sketch all day long, his pencil arcing over the paper, transforming it into whatever his mind’s eye imagined.
Noah became a professional illustrator, his work appearing in magazines and on murals the world over.
“He was a lifelong devotee of art,” said Noah’s father, Jeffrey MacMillan. “He just took to it at a very young age.”
It probably didn’t hurt that both his parents are visually oriented: Lucinda an art teacher, Jeffrey a photographer.
On July 31, Noah died of colon cancer in the Takoma Park, Md., home he grew up in. He was 33. Last week, the U.S. Postal Service announced that a stamp featuring one of his illustrations will be released next year. It celebrates Noah’s other love: soccer.
“He had two great passions,” said Jeffrey. “One was soccer and one was art. And so he literally found a college that had a soccer summer camp, then an art program.”
That was Washington University in St. Louis. Between his junior and senior years at the Edmund Burke School in the District, Noah attended the soccer camp, then went to the camp for talented high school artists. As an undergrad at Washington University, he majored in communication design.
In the hopes of encouraging other young artists like Noah was, his family has created a scholarship in his honor to support students in the summer art program at Washington University. Proceeds from the sale of his prints will help fund the Noah Philip MacMillan Portfolio Plus Scholarship. (You can find his work here.)
Noah’s talent emerged early and kept growing. Through what Jeffrey calls a “weird serendipity,” someone at Smithsonian magazine saw Noah’s college thesis just as the publication was planning a story on creativity. The drawings seemed to embody the theme of the story and the magazine published them.
“I'm a professional photographer,” Jeffrey said. “Jesus, I've been trying to get into Smithsonian magazine for 50 years. This kid stumbles out of school and gets his whole portfolio in there.”
Noah’s illustrations appeared in such publications as the New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Sports Illustrated and Howler magazine. A devoted Arsenal fan, Noah also did work for the LA Galaxy soccer club when he lived in Los Angeles.
Art director Antonio Alcalá of Studio A in Alexandria, Va., approached Noah to create the artwork for the women’s soccer stamp, providing photos he’d taken of his then 21-year-old daughter, Maya, kicking a ball.
The finished stamp — a female figure striking the ball with her right foot, her ponytail flying — hums with energy.
Noah knew the stamp had been approved, but had to keep mum about it. The stamp’s official announcement was made Oct. 24. It will be released in 2023.
“It’s really a shame that Noah can’t be here to see what a warm reception the stamp has received so far,” Antonio said.
“I love the idea of millions of pieces of his art flying around the country,” Jeffrey said. “I just love that image, to keep him aloft, so to speak.”
In addition to his parents, Jeffrey and Lucinda, Noah’s survivors include his younger twin brothers, Seth and Julian, and his fiancee, Hitomi Inoue.
“He had a great, very Zen outlook till the very end, just very positive and always grateful and always thanking us for everything,” Jeffrey said. “Most normal people, including me, would be very angry and bitter. He was just very zenlike about the whole thing.”
And Noah never stopped doing what he loved and what he was so good at. On the day Noah died, Jeffrey asked if he could borrow his iPad, one of the tools his son used for drawing.
“He said, ‘Not today, Dad. I’m on deadline.’ ”
School memories
In the 1950s, Southwest Washington was almost urban renewed out of existence, but one element remains, even as it has undergone its own changes. That’s the Randall School at 65 I St. SW. Opened in 1906 as Cardozo Elementary, it was renamed in 1924 in honor of Eliza G. Randall, who came to the District to help set up schools for formerly enslaved people during and after the Civil War. Among the attendees of Randall Junior High: singer Marvin Gaye.
The renovated school building has become the Rubell Museum DC, a gallery of contemporary art. The DC History Center wants to collect and preserve memories of its time as a school. It’s inviting anyone with a connection to the school to gather for community meetings this Sunday from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. and again from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 16. The meetings will be at the Southwest Library, 900 Wesley Place SW. If you plan to attend, email Maggie Downing at mdowning@dchistory.org.
Organizers are looking for photos, yearbooks and other Randalliana. The stories DC History gathers will be incorporated into a display in the courtyard of the former school building. | 2022-10-31T19:25:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Before Noah MacMillan died, the Takoma Park artist put his stamp on soccer art - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/31/artist-noah-macmillan-stamp/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/31/artist-noah-macmillan-stamp/ |
D.C. council is re-writing the criminal code. Not everyone is happy.
Police and court officials say some proposals would strain a court system that is already stretched thin
The D.C. Council hosts its first in-person legislative meeting on March 1. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
The D.C. Council is expected to take the first of two votes Tuesday on a massive rewrite of its criminal code. If passed, the bill would eliminate most mandatory minimum sentences, allow for jury trials in almost all misdemeanor cases and reduce the maximum penalties for offenses such as burglaries, carjackings and robberies.
Not everyone is happy to see it on the verge of becoming law.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), Police Chief Robert J. Contee III, U.S. Attorney for the District Matthew M. Graves and other officials said that while they agree with the majority of the revisions, some proposals in the 450-page bill, dubbed the “Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022,” would have negative consequences — further burdening a court system that is already stretched thin, and reducing law enforcement’s ability to bring serious punishments for serious crimes.
“Does this enhance public safety and does it make communities safer?” Contee asked at a recent news conference. “The things that we disagree on, I think that communities should be informed about what those things are. Councilmembers should really understand what we’re signing off on here.”
After decades helping victims’ families, the system left her disillusioned
Council members supportive of the bill — including Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) and public safety committee chair Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) — say the overhaul is a necessary one, fixing antiquated language in the law and imposing change that will make the justice system more equitable, and less reliant on incarceration.
“It’s outdated, it’s contradictory, it’s a mess, and after a 16-year-long process, we now have a revised criminal code in front of us,” Allen said.
The first vote by the full council on the bill is scheduled to take place Tuesday, and a second vote would have to take place at least two weeks after. Should the bill pass and then be signed by the mayor, much of the reform would take place over a three-year period to give the courts, police and other groups time to ensure officials are up to date on the changes.
The bill received unanimous support in the five-member judiciary and public safety committee.
Some of the changes are uncontroversial. The overhaul would modify existing statutes that use outdated language, such as references to “common scolds,” which are individuals who disturb the peace by arguing with their neighbors.
The overhaul also seeks to add some clarity. For example, the current criminal code does not define “simple assault,” leaving judges to do so. The overhaul would define simple assault as recklessly causing bodily injury to another person, with the words “recklessly” and “bodily injury” also getting specific definitions in the code.
At a recent breakfast with the council and mayor, Allen said the long process included moments of compromise and collaboration between local agencies and advocates who frequently have differing views on criminal justice policy.
Allen said in an interview that the Council worked closely with police to tweak language in the bill having to do with public nuisances, such as public urination and carrying open containers of alcohol.
The revised criminal code would provide penalties for such conduct if it causes property damage or involves publicly exposing genitalia.
Mendelson addressed some of the criticisms of the bill at a news conference on Monday, saying some claims about it were “wild misunderstandings.”
“I’m comfortable that there is no one out there committing a crime today who could do the same thing tomorrow and not be arrested for it,” Mendelson said.
City Administrator Kevin Donahue said that although with “95 percent of the bill, there’s consensus for all parties,” there are still areas that he would prefer be changed before it is passed.
Bowser said at a news conference that some of the items should be addressed with separate legislation, rather than as a part of a broad overhaul of city code. The new code language includes the expansion of the Second Look Act, which allows people serving long prison sentences to ask a court to grant them a reduced sentence.
“We think that new policy proposals can and should be dealt with separately from the criminal code rewrite,” Bowser said.
Criminal justice reform advocates have long argued that the system is too punitive — and that those who have been rehabilitated after long sentences should get an opportunity to rejoin society. Naïké Savain, the director of policy at DC Justice Lab, praised the proposed rewrite, saying it would advance fairness and racial equity in the District.
“That’s important if we are actually committed to rehabilitation for every member of our community,” Savain said. “This bill is an exceptional improvement over what we have and will be a step in right direction for our community.”
Other advocates, though, note that releasing people convicted of felonies can be traumatizing to crime victims.
“It’s upending the apple cart for these victims,” said Denise Krepp, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ward 6. “That was a line for me and they just crossed it.”
Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a statement that he was concerned over the proposed reform lowering the statutory maximum penalties for offenses such as burglaries, carjackings and robberies.
“We are concerned that the significant reduction in certain maximum penalties for serious violent crimes prevents courts from imposing penalties that appropriately reflect the seriousness of the offense and the defendant’s criminal history,” Graves said.
He and Bowser also said they were troubled by a provision that would allow people charged with misdemeanor offenses to demand jury trials. Though Graves said he does not object in principle, he asserted the proposal “cannot be executed in this jurisdiction in a way that does not greatly increase the time between when a crime is charged and when a trial occurs.”
“The main hurdle we face is that the District lacks control over: the size of the Court, the funding for the court, and how quickly judges get placed on the Court,” Graves said. “Tripling or quadrupling the number of jury trials our already strapped Court must schedule will only negatively impact our Court.”
Doug Buchanan, a spokesperson for the D.C. Courts, said in a statement the Superior Court anticipates more than 20 judicial vacancies by the end of 2023, and that the Court is “stretched to the limit.” He added that “without swift and immediate action from Federal lawmakers to address the ongoing judicial vacancy crisis within the DC Courts, our ability to sustain an even greater workload than we are currently enduring is not feasible nor is it realistic.”
Allen said the reform on expansion of jury trials for misdemeanors would be phased in through 2030.
This, Allen said, would ensure judicial vacancies could be filled. Allen also said he had spoken with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to discuss the Senate moving forward on judicial nominations.
“We’ve got to make sure we have a full complement of judges, but it’s also important that people have a right to a jury,” Allen said. “D.C. is an extreme outlier. It’s us and only nine other states where people don’t even have a right to a jury.”
Michael Brice-Saddler, Julie Zauzmer Weil and Emily Davies contributed to this report.
D.C. stumbles leave fate of local control of parole to new Congress | 2022-10-31T19:33:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Where do D.C. officials land on rewriting the city's criminal code? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/31/dc-criminal-code-reform-controversy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/31/dc-criminal-code-reform-controversy/ |
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