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A voter delivers her ballot to a drop box in Maryland. (Julio Cortez/AP)
There’s nothing like a drive from Maryland, where I live, to Louisiana, where I was born, to refresh my appreciation for the right to vote.
Cutting through Mississippi on Interstate 20, there’s an exit sign for the James Chaney Jr. highway. You can take it north toward the town of Philadelphia. That’s where Chaney and two other civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan during Freedom Summer 1964.
They’d been volunteering to help Black people register to vote. Just the sight of that highway sign quickens my pulse.
Passing through Jackson, Miss., brings back memories too. It was June 1963. I was 8 years old, at home in Shreveport, watching my dad and a neighbor starring solemnly at a TV news broadcast. A man had just been killed while standing in his driveway in Jackson.
It would take several years for me to appreciate the significance of what had happened — that the man was Medgar Evers of the NAACP and that he had been assassinated by a white supremacist for helping Black people register to vote.
Mississippi civil rights museum honors Medgar Evers
There are memorial markers throughout the South indicating where people were lynched or shot or blown up with bombs for trying to vote or help someone else vote. In places such as Colfax and Opelousas, La., scores of Black people were massacred during the post-Reconstruction era to keep them away from the polls.
Some were beaten and harassed or lost their jobs for trying to vote. Some couldn’t afford the poll tax. Or couldn’t pass the literacy tests composed of counting bubbles on a bar of soap or reciting some arcane amendment to a state constitution. The tests were administered only to Black people.
Dad and I used to talk a lot about the bad old days. Neither his parents nor their siblings ever got a chance to vote. But we don’t talk about those times so much anymore. Mainly because it seems to him like the bad old days are coming back. The voting rights acts were supposed to have ended all that. But now those and other civil rights are being undone and Dad just doesn’t want to go through all that again.
Neither do I.
Heading back to my home in Prince George’s County, I cut through Alabama, where every highway sign resonates with historic heartbreak and hope — Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery. (Visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, where victims of lynchings are honored, and the meaning of your right to vote will be renewed.)
In Maryland, the process of voting is as it should be everywhere in this country. I can vote early. I can vote by mail, by drop box or in person. The state board of elections website shows you how to register to vote, how to get a ballot sent to your home, how to properly cast and track your ballot.
You can use the website to learn how to become a candidate and what some offices entail so you can match a candidate’s qualifications with the job requirements. There’s even a tutorial that helps you use social media to increase excitement about upcoming elections. So you can make sure your neighbors know when the next election is and what’s at stake.
Get more people involved in the political process, not fewer. That’s the American way.
It’s a pity that Black people in nearly 30 states are having to find a way around the myriad voter suppression and voter restriction efforts now being legislated for maximum deterrence during the midterm elections. But it’s nothing new. Anti-democratic white supremacists have long been a malignant minority determined to undermine American democracy by capturing and corrupting local and state government election apparatus.
A joint report by the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution and the States United Democracy Center sums up the threat this way: “[I]f democracy fails in America, it will not be because a majority of Americans is demanding a nondemocratic form of government. It will be because an organized, purposeful minority seizes strategic positions within the system and subverts the substance of democracy while retaining its shell — while the majority isn’t well organized, or doesn’t care enough, to resist.”
On the Maryland ballot, you don’t have to look long and hard to see what’s at stake and what would happen if a majority of decent, freedom-loving people didn’t care enough to resist.
At the top of the ballot, for governor, there’s the Democratic nominee — an African American Rhodes scholar, combat veteran and anti-poverty advocate who believes strongly that education is the key to the state’s democratic future.
His opponent is a Republican member of the House of Delegates who also happens to be a member of a group called Alliance Defending Freedom, which was described as an anti-LGBTQ organization in 2017 by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
I will have a say about which one of them leads my state, and there is no reason that casting my ballot should be anything but a pleasure. | 2022-11-01T22:08:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | You can't ever take for granted the right to vote - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/01/voting-is-a-hard-fought-right/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/01/voting-is-a-hard-fought-right/ |
Those who knew 14-year-old Antoine Manning described him as a jokester with a magnetic personality. His death reverberated in D.C.’s youth football community.
Antoine Junior Manning. (Family photo)
Antoine Junior Manning liked dancing to the latest TikTok trend, pranking his teammates and having sleepovers with his friends. He was also a 14-year-old ladies man, said his dad, with the sort of charisma that drew people in. He wanted to be a football player in the NFL when he grew up.
He survived a shooting last month, his dad said. But then he was shot again on Monday night. He died at a nearby hospital, his family and youth football teammates left to mourn over what in recent weeks has felt like a frighteningly frequent occurrence in the nation’s capital.
“He was a good person. He had a good heart,” said Antoine Brown, Antoine’s father, through tears. “And they took my son away from me. Oh God, I’m never going to see my son again.”
In the last two weeks alone, at least four teenagers or children have been shot in D.C. A 15-year-old was shot aboard a Metro train. A 4-year-old was wounded by a bullet not meant for him. Another 15-year-old was killed on a porch, with the popping of gunfire sending kids at a nearby bus stop sprinting away. Backpacks bounced on their backs as they screamed and cried.
Antoine, 14, was in ninth grade at Digital Pioneers Academy, according to the charter board. He was killed in the 2600 block of Birney Place SE, the same block where he was shot and wounded on Oct. 9. Brown said he did not know his son had been shot in the prior incident until after he was killed.
Police said the Monday night attack was likely targeted. By Tuesday, there was no information available on motive or suspects.
Brown said he and his son liked to play pranks on each other. One time, Brown put hot sauce on young Antoine’s mouth and toothpaste on his hands while he was asleep, so he would smear the paste all over his face when he tasted the sauce. As payback, Antoine gave his dad a cup of toilet water with ice cubes in it.
“I swear, it was the funniest thing,” Brown said. “It was so wrong but so funny.”
Most of the time, Antoine still seemed like a kid to his dad. But there were more and more signs that he was starting to grow up. The 14-year-old had a way with girls. “He was a ladies man, like his father,” Brown said. And the teen grew self-conscious when his dad tagged along on outings with his friends. “C’mon dad, you’re embarrassing me,” his dad recalled he would say.
Brown said he sensed that his son was starting to “gravitate toward the wrong things,” and often warned him not to make the same mistakes that he had as a teenager. Brown said the last time he saw his son was in May of 2021, when the two went to Crusty Crab for his birthday dinner. He said he moved to New York a day later.
“I loved my son,” Brown said. “I did not leave for my son to die.”
Antoine’s death drew outcry from city leaders, and has reverberated in particular through D.C.’s youth football community, where some young people have previously had to cope with gunfire and the death of their childhood friends, according to multiple parents and football coaches in D.C.
“14 years old and lost his life for absolutely nothing,” Ward 8 Council member Trayon White (D) wrote on Instagram. “Our children deserve to go outside and be kids.”
Antoine, known as “Twon,” played football for the Watkins Hornets Youth Association team called the “Clockboyz” for three years, according to team administrators and multiple parents of other players. Some of his teammates, who last played together in December before the team disbanded for high school, had previously played football or interacted at youth games with Peyton John “PJ” Evans and Davon McNeal — who were both killed by stray bullets in D.C.
Evans, who would have been 9 years old this year, was fatally shot while eating tacos at his cousin’s house last August. McNeal, who would have been 13, was killed on July 4, 2020 near an anti-violence cookout.
“When I talked to my son, he said he felt like it was PJ all over again,” said Clockboyz team administrator and parent Tony Barr. “How are they supposed to process this?”
A slain boy, his grieving teammates and a football coach’s rush to save them
Chauntyse Anderson, mother of a former Clockboyz player, said she had never seen her son as distraught as he was when he learned of Antoine’s death in a group chat last night.
“He was just slamming stuff,” Anderson said. “He didn't even have any words. Just tears. I couldn't do anything but hold him and sit here and cry with him.”
In 2021, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) declared Nov. 16 “Clockboyz Day” in honor of the team’s “amazing scholastic, talented, athletic, and civic-minded young Black men, boys, and coaches,” according to a certificate signed by the mayor.
The certificate mentioned that the team had won the American Youth Football Association’s annual tournament in Florida three years in a row.
One of those years, two team administrators said, Antoine scored the winning touchdown.
Lauren Lumpkin contributed to this report. | 2022-11-01T22:30:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Antoine Manning, 14, fatally shot Halloween night in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/01/antoine-manning-teen-fatally-shot/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/01/antoine-manning-teen-fatally-shot/ |
The special shame of elder abuse
Paul and Nancy Pelosi with their grandchildren in 2013. (Charles Dharapak/AP)
Of all the charges filed against the man who is accused of breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and fracturing her husband Paul’s skull with a hammer, the one that is the most jarring is elder abuse. It isn’t the most serious of the charges, which also include attempted murder and several federal crimes. But it reflects the continued chipping away at the country’s moral center. It underscores the degree to which society has lost its way. Someone broke into the home of an 82-year-old grandfather and bashed him in the head with a hammer. When you strip away the political bickering, the conspiracy theories and the disinformation campaigns, this is what the country is left with. One might be inclined to call what happened heartbreaking, but our hearts are already broken into a million tiny bits after the mass shootings, the antisemitism, the anti-Asian violence, the police malfeasance that sparked Black Lives Matter protests. Are there any pieces still big enough to crack?
The reactions to the Pelosi attack have mostly been assessed within the framework of politics. President Biden called the assault “despicable,” and added, “There’s too much violence — political violence, too much hatred, too much vitriol.” Some Republicans denounced the assault but then quickly noted that Democrats share responsibility for politically motivated trauma. Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, called the suspect David DePape, 42, a “deranged individual,” as if people who do terrible things can’t also be sane, methodical and thoughtful. DePape, law enforcement has said, arrived at the Pelosi home with a backpack containing a hammer, tape, gloves, zip ties and rope. That’s a fairly considered collection of tools and implements.
The current state of politics has made it easy to forget about the humans behind the rhetoric. The demonizing of members of the opposing party has been going on for a long time and in 2017, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot and seriously injured during practice for a congressional softball game. Political violence runs deep in this country’s history with assassinations and assassination attempts. And Jan. 6 was not only an assault on democracy but also a violent hunt for certain lawmakers, notably Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence.
But the attack on Paul Pelosi stands apart because he isn’t an elected official, someone running for office or even a denizen of the so-called swamp. He’s a wealthy guy who lives in San Francisco. He’s famous by marriage and so the public knows all about his DUI arrest in May. He’s been married for 59 years. He cuts a striking figure in a tuxedo when he accompanies his wife to the Kennedy Center or a state dinner. And he’s a senior citizen, which should count for some thing. At a minimum, it should mean that his violent assault doesn’t become the punchline of jokes by Republican politicians. It should mean that his being knocked unconscious during a home invasion isn’t glossed over on the way to a talking point about gun rights or urban crime rates or criminal justice reform.
The suspect in this attack seemed callously clear about his intent when he broke into the Pelosi home. According to law enforcement, he demanded to know the whereabouts of the speaker and then declared himself prepared to wait patiently for her return so he could break her kneecaps. He knew precisely what he was doing, but what are we doing as a society?
It’s important to consider the kind of security that’s afforded lawmakers who are regularly threatened and what those threats mean to members of their family. It’s necessary to try to mediate political differences instead of creating demons out of those who hold other views. But if it is possible to jettison the politics and simply consider the person — this gray-haired man awakened in the wee hours of morning by an attacker — it might do a world of good for our humanity. For our frayed, threadbare humanity.
It’s been clear that assaults on the youngest members of society have done little to motivate some officeholders and citizens to take action on gun control to make the culture less violent. People respond to the shooting of elementary schoolchildren as a kind of acceptable mayhem to ensure that the right to gun ownership remains inviolate. Thoughts and prayers go out to the parents and siblings and other family members. The tiniest bit of legislative progress on gun control took three decades and occurred after a long list of mass shootings including Sandy Hook, Parkland and Uvalde.
And now, the country’s vitriolic politics and hateful division has brought us to this 82-year-old man. No life is inherently more valuable than another, but certain people’s lives are more fragile. They are more vulnerable. They are not as strong as those in the prime of their lives. And so just as our stubborn unwillingness to do more to protect children from violence speaks to the kind of society that we have built, so does our response to this attack on a senior citizen by a suspect espousing hate. The political misdirection in the face of an elder who was sent to the hospital with a fractured skull isn’t just a reminder of how terrible the country’s politics have become. It’s also an indictment of how soulless so many of its people have decided to be. | 2022-11-01T22:30:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The special shame of elder abuse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/01/special-shame-elder-abuse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/01/special-shame-elder-abuse/ |
Takeoff wasn’t the most visible member of Migos. But he was its heart.
Analysis by Bethonie Butler
Migos rapper Takeoff, seen here at a New Jersey concert in 2019, died Tuesday at age 28. (Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images)
At the 2017 BET Awards, Quavo, Offset and Takeoff — members of Atlanta rap trio Migos — were reflecting on their success in a red-carpet interview with rapper Joe Budden and DJ Akademiks. But the exchange went sideways when Akademiks casually asked Takeoff about his lack of a feature on “Bad and Boujee,” the ubiquitous lead single from the group’s second studio album, “Culture.” Takeoff’s initial absence on the track, the first Migos song to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, had been a source of internet memes. “I feel like it’s just like a running joke with you left off of ‘Bad and Boujee,’ ” Akademiks prompted.
“I ain’t left off ‘Bad and Boujee,’ ” Takeoff responded in his confident Southern drawl. “You think I’m left off ‘Bad and Boujee.’ ” Akademiks awkwardly asked Takeoff to repeat what he had said, several times, before Takeoff — looking every bit the star in white shades and a silk floral button-down left open to expose his chain-draped chest — ultimately shut down the question once and for all: “Do it look like I’m left off ‘Bad and Boujee?’ ”
The point was underscored when Migos performed the chart-topping song as part of a medley, with Takeoff — the group’s youngest member — gamely providing backup vocals and hype in lieu of a featured verse.
Takeoff, who was fatally shot in Houston early Tuesday, was never as visible a presence as Quavo, the trio’s charismatic frontman, or Offset, one flashy half of a hip-hop power couple as the husband of Cardi B. But Takeoff was integral to Migos, which ushered in a new era of rap with their signature flow — full of crisply delivered triplets that begged to be on repeat — not least because he first tapped Quavo, his uncle, to rap on tracks with him.
Migos, which grew to include Quavo’s cousin Offset, was still confined to the basement when the group caught the attention of Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas, co-founders of Quality Control, the Atlanta-based hip-hop label and management company that signed Migos in 2013. In a 2017 episode of Tidal’s “Rap Radar” podcast, Coach K recalled being drawn to the unique “cadences” and the “sincerity and authenticity” inherent in the trio’s music: “I was like, ‘This s--- is special.’”
Thomas was particularly impressed by Takeoff’s flow, which he first heard after rapper Gucci Mane, a mentor to Migos, urged him to listen to one of the group’s songs. “I was like, ‘Yo, that dude there — it’s crazy the way he was spitting,’ ” Thomas told “Rap Radar.” “It reminded me of Bone Thugs, like how they used to be rapping back in the day.”
TakeOff 🏆 pic.twitter.com/py9zDnCpKh
— Elliott Wilson (@ElliottWilson) June 10, 2021
Takeoff could be selective about projects, Coach K said. “We’ve given him features and if he don’t like it, if he don’t feel like it, he won’t even do it.” His quiet demeanor, in the face of his immense talent, earned him the nickname Silent Killer.
“Takeoff has always been like that. One thing about him, his personality, his character — it never changed since the day I met him,” Thomas said.” He don’t even talk a lot. He’s just in his own zone. He do things the way he wants to do it and you just have to let him be who he is.”
“He’s the youngest of the group and he’s going to grow into his own,” Thomas added.
By all accounts, Takeoff, born Kirshnik Khari Ball, was doing just that before he was killed at 28. He made his solo debut with “The Last Rocket” in 2018, prompting Pitchfork to declare him the trio’s best rapper — a distinction Quavo co-signed in a GQ profile earlier this year. Migos released their fourth album, “Culture III,” in 2021, rounding out a series of albums from a once-in-a-generation act. In an interview with Billboard early last month, Takeoff called the series “legendary.”
“We’ve been here a long time,” he added. “People don’t even get to do it that long, and we’re blessed to keep doing it.”
Amid rumors the group had permanently disbanded, Takeoff and Quavo launched a new effort this year under the moniker Unc & Phew. The duo’s first album, “Only Built for Infinity Links,” was released in October to enthusiastic reviews. The video for their latest single “Messy,” which features Quavo and Takeoff trading verses about their meteoric comeup, dropped on Monday. | 2022-11-01T22:39:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Takeoff wasn’t the most visible member of Migos. But he was its heart. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/01/takeoff-migos-legacy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/01/takeoff-migos-legacy/ |
Gael Greene, restaurant critic who made food ‘seductive,’ dies at 88
Gael Greene in 1971. (Ray Stubblebine/AP)
Gael Greene, an influential New York magazine food writer who shook up restaurant reviews with a cutting wit, vibrant passions and descriptions of dining as a feast of the senses, died Nov. 1 at an assisted-living facility in Manhattan. She was 88.
Ms. Greene had been receiving treatment for cancer, said Mariah Hurst, spokeswoman for Citymeals on Wheels, a New York group Ms. Greene helped found in 1981 to provide food for the elderly and homebound.
Ms. Greene was part of a group of writers in the 1960s exploring New York’s food scene, raising the profile of the city’s growing culinary reach beyond the old standbys and turning some of the critics into celebrities in their own right.
Ms. Greene quickly found a place in the spotlight. She brought a punchy style that treated restaurants as a full sensory experience beyond what’s on the plate: from the decor to the people watching to the backstories of the chefs and her own whimsical takes on the evening or life in general. Her New York magazine tagline from 1968 to 2008 played up the image: Insatiable Critic.
She once described giving a talk on tasting a fig that turned into a lesson a sensuality. “Looking at it, smelling it, feeling the textures of it, tasting it, rubbing it all over your mouth. The audience went crazy,” she said in 2009. “A simple little exercise in tasting.”
A 1969 review of La Caravelle opened with four-paragraph meditation on New Yorkers’ psyche and the city’s irresistible pull. “New York is a mecca for masochists,” she wrote. “It is the Atlantis of our masochist fantasies. How could we live anywhere else? We thrive on discomfort, frustration and scorn.”
A 1977 review, “I Love Le Cirque But Can I Be Trusted?” begins with Ms. Greene working in a quote from playwright George Bernard Shaw before finding her way — with various humorous asides and insightful digressions — to chef Jean Louis Todeschini and his inconsistencies.
“Here, when the kitchen is good, it is very, very good, but when it is mediocre, you are not entirely surprised,” she wrote. “Still, when it is brilliant you are dazzled. Todeschini’s spaghetti primavera is as crisp and beautiful as a Matisse.”
Village Voice restaurant reviewer Robert Sietsema, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2010, described Ms. Greene’s stamp on food writing as an inflection point in the genre. “After Gael Greene,” he wrote, “the restaurant review would never be the same.”
Her 2006 memoir, “Insatiable: Tales From a Life of Delicious Excess,” was a dish unto itself. She detailed trysts with Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, a porn actor and several chefs, including some whose restaurants she reviewed. And then there was that time with Elvis.
She was working for United Press just out of college, assigned to cover an Elvis Presley show in her native Detroit, she wrote. She managed an invitation to his hotel room, where they ended up in a steamy embrace, she said. Afterward, “he twitched a shoulder toward the phone. ‘Would you mind calling and ordering me a fried egg sandwich?’” she wrote.
“Yes, the totemic fried egg sandwich,” she wrote, saying she remembered the room service order more than the sex. “At that moment, it might have been clear I was born to be a restaurant critic. I just didn’t know it yet.”
As Ms. Greene’s fame grew in New York in the 1970s, she took to wearing floppy hats to keep restaurants from spotting her during her outings for reviews. (At the same time, Mimi Sheraton, a longtime New York Times critic, opted for wigs.) Ironically, Ms. Greene’s identity-hiding guise became a personal trademark that had restaurateurs on the lookout for big hats.
“Every now and then I would see a woman in a restaurant wearing a hat like that, and she always had the best table,” she told the Boston Globe in 2006.
After Ms. Greene was laid off from New York magazine in 2008, she wrote restaurant reviews for Crain’s New York Business until 2012.
“I give hats, not stars in Crain’s,” she wrote. “Three hats: Can’t wait to go back. Two hats: I’ll go back. One hat: Let them simmer. No hats: Never again.”
Ruth Reichl, a food writer and memoirist who was the longtime editor of Gourmet magazine, said Ms. Greene was an innovator, not just by sexing up her restaurant reviews but by humanizing the genre.
“She made the medium her own in a way I don’t think anyone had done. She feminized it and made it seductive — restaurant reviews had been so dry,” Reichl said. “When you think about who was a restaurant critic back then, it was a fat White man — it was James Beard or Craig Claiborne — who more or less invented the form. They tried to make it impersonal, like the voice of God telling you whether something was good or not. Gael kept reminding you that she was a person.”
Food ‘impostor’
Gael Greene was born Dec. 22, 1933, in Detroit, where her father owned Nate Greene’s, a clothing store. At the University of Michigan, she got her first taste of journalism with the school paper before graduating in 1955. She later said a semester abroad in Paris at the Sorbonne as an undergraduate helped pique her interest in food.
She landed a reporting job at the New York Post in 1957, making her mark with investigative projects such as posing as pregnant for a story on a baby-trafficking ring and writing exposes on New York fortunetellers and spiritual healers. Her first book, “Don’t Come Back Without It” (1960), recounts her three-year stint at the paper as “playing guinea pig in a series of first-person exposes.”
Ms. Greene left to freelance and, in 1968, received a call from Clay Felker, editor of the newly independent New York magazine, which been a supplement to the New York Herald Tribune. Felker recalled a piece Ms. Greene had done on the restaurant La Côte Basque. He offered her the job as restaurant critic.
“I felt that I was an impostor, and how was I ever going to do this?” she told Restaurant Insider in 2008. “I definitely thought they were all going to figure me out very quickly. So that is why I said to myself, ‘Well, I’ll just go into this like a reporter: who, what, why, where, when.’”
It became her home for four decades. She stepped away from her full-time review gig in 2000 and continued as a columnist until 2008. Then the magazine let her go, saying it had three food writers and couldn’t afford her as another.
“I’ve just been downsized,” Ms. Green announced to a crowd in Manhattan’s Rainbow Room that included Martha Stewart and Nora Ephron, gathered to raise money for Ms. Greene’s Citymeals on Wheels.
Ms. Greene wrote in an autobiographical note for the reference work Contemporary Authors that she “dedicated myself to the wanton indulgence of my senses.” Her literary endeavors followed the same path: hedonistic guidebooks “Sex and the College Girl” (1964) and “Delicious Sex” (1986) and two sex-heavy novels, “Blue Skies, No Candy” (1976) about the wife’s affairs and fantasies, and “Doctor Love” (1982), a plot built around the fictional lover Don Juan.
The books, particularly “Blue Skies,” sold well but were sometimes savaged by critics. “What’s objectionable about her work is not that she writes so obsessively about sex, but that she does it so badly,” wrote Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post in 1982.
In 1961, Ms. Greene married a New York Post editor, Donald Forst, who would later edit the Boston Herald, New York Newsday and the Village Voice. They divorced 13 years later. Mr. Forst died in 2014. Ms. Greene is survived by a brother, James.
Among her awards was 1992 recognition as Humanitarian of the Year by the James Beard Foundation for her work with Citymeals on Wheels, which provides more than 2 million meals a year. She appeared as a judge on the Bravo series “Top Chef Masters” from 2009 to 2011.
Ms. Greene also is sometimes credited with a linguistic feat: possibly the first to use the term “foodie” in a published piece — a 1980 column in New York magazine.
In 2012, she noted to the culinary website Eater that the word was “on everybody’s list of toxic words in food writing.” | 2022-11-01T22:39:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gael Greene, New York critic who made food 'seductive,' dies at 88 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/01/gael-greene-food-critic-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/01/gael-greene-food-critic-dies/ |
Kentucky community grieves beloved student killed in Seoul: ‘Life’s not fair’
The photos of two U.S. victims of the Seoul Halloween crowd surge, Steven Blesi and Anne Gieske, displayed at the scene of the stampede in Seoul on Monday, Oct. 31, 2022. (Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Anne Gieske had been asking for years if the school band could play an arrangement from the “Lord of the Rings” film franchise.
Austin Bralley, the band director at Beechwood High School, would only give the clarinet player and later-drum major vague answers: “We might,” “Maybe,” “Someday.”
In reality, he’d been planning to do it all along. At the start of practice for Gieske’s last high school concert in 2021, Bralley could see the excitement on her face as he passed out sheet music for an arrangement from “Lord of the Rings,” the book series she was usually reading during breaks in rehearsal.
Over the weekend, Bralley got a call from Beechwood’s principal, who told him that Gieske, a 20-year-old nursing student at the University of Kentucky, was killed in Seoul’s Itaewon district, when a crowd that was so tightly packed during Halloween celebrations, it crushed hundreds of people.
A native of a Fort Mitchell, Ky., Gieske was the youngest of four siblings, remembered by those close to her as a kind, thoughtful and selfless person who had a deep faith and treated those she met like family. Her death shocked her hometown, a tightknit community where her family has lived for generations.
Bralley saw Gieske over the summer, weeks before she left for South Korea, when he said she came back to help him train the Beechwood marching band ahead of the new school year.
“There are certain kids that are just really special and that go above and beyond,” Bralley said. “The first thing I thought was, ‘Oh my gosh. Life’s not fair for someone that precious to be taken away.’”
At least two Americans died in Saturday’s crowd surge, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul said in a statement. The embassy has not named either victim, citing privacy considerations. Steven Blesi, a 20-year-old who was also studying abroad in South Korea, was the first American publicly identified when his family shared information about his death on social media and with news outlets.
At least 156 people were killed and 149 were injured in the Oct. 29 crowd crush, including more than 25 foreigners. Most of the victims were in their 20s.
University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto in a campus statement called Gieske’s death an “indescribable loss,” adding that the school would “be there for those in our community who knew and loved Anne.”
In addition to Gieske, two other students and one faculty member from the university were in South Korea, who Capilouto said were safe.
Daniela Torres, a sophomore at the University of Kentucky, said she first crossed paths with Gieske at a retreat for Catholic college students in February. There, Torres and Gieske were part of the same team — steadily becoming friends as they discussed matters of the heart and spirit.
"She was a Catholic on fire when it came to her faith,” Torres said.
Gieske’s parents, Dan and Madonna, said in a statement they were “devastated and heartbroken” over the loss of their daughter.
“She was a bright light loved by all,” they said. “We ask for your prayers but also the respect of our privacy.”
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), Gieske’s uncle, said in a statement that the entire family has been grieving.
“She was a gift from God to our family," he said. “We loved her so much.”
The Gieske family has lived in the tightknit community of Fort Mitchell for generations, Beechwood Principal Justin Kaiser said, and many of her family members came through the band program.
Geiske, more than most, was a caring person who put others “well before herself.”
“She just loves,” Kaiser said. “And so it’s shocking to not just her family, not just the school, but shocking to anybody who came in contact with her because she was that memorable.”
Gieske was one of the first students Bralley met after he became the band director at Beechwood in the summer of 2017.
She was so talented that she could have been a music major, he said. But he was proud when Gieske told him she’d chosen nursing.
“She had aspirations of making people happy and comfortable,” he said. “Just helping people, taking care of them.”
Kentucky nursing student Ava Alexander said when Gieske saw someone alone, she would be the first person to go sit with them. When she asked “How are you?” friends could tell she was really listening.
On Friday, the day before the crowd crush in Itaewon, Gieske posted photos from her birthday celebration near the Han River on her Instagram account. She turned 20 on Oct. 24.
Alexander, who has been friends with Gieske since the second grade, had messaged to wish her a happy birthday. Gieske responded that she missed her, that she would see her friend soon.
“And I said the same to her because she should have come home soon,” Alexander said.
Brittany Shammas contributed to this report. | 2022-11-01T23:31:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kentucky student Anne Gieske killed in Seoul Halloween crowd crush - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/01/anne-gieske-seoul-crush-victim/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/01/anne-gieske-seoul-crush-victim/ |
Tennessee earned the top spot in the season's first College Football Rankings. (Donald Page/Getty Images)
Breaking: Tennessee, Ohio State, Georgia and Clemson earned the top four spots in the season’s first College Football Playoff rankings released Tuesday.
Of the six unbeaten teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision, Michigan and TCU were the schools left outside the top four. Alabama (7-1) is the top-ranked one-loss team at No. 6. New rankings will be released every Tuesday up until the final selections are made Sunday, Dec. 4. The national semifinals will be played Dec. 31. | 2022-11-02T00:06:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College Football Playoff rankings: Top four teams are Tennessee, Ohio State, Georgia, Clemson - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/01/college-football-playoff-first-rankings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/01/college-football-playoff-first-rankings/ |
The U.S. women celebrate with their medals. (Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images)
A year after the United States’ gold medal streak in women’s gymnastics team competitions ended, the Americans have returned to the top of the podium. The U.S. women won the world championships team title by a comfortable margin with a group featuring Olympians and newcomers on this stage.
Tuesday’s team competition in Liverpool, England, was expected to be a tight race for the medal positions. The Americans entered as the favorites for gold, but their spot atop the podium was not the near-guarantee it has been at times through the past decade when Simone Biles lifted the team far above the rest.
This U.S. squad, led by Tokyo Olympians Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey, delivered 11 solid routines with only one major lapse. The Americans won the gold with a 166.564 total, well ahead of Britain (163.363) and Canada (160.563). But all the medal-winning teams had gymnasts in tears with the results: Britain, coming off a team bronze in Tokyo, secured its best finish at world championships, and Canada, the only squad to hit all 12 routines, won its first team medal on a global stage.
Russia, the gold-winning team in Tokyo and a perennial medal contender, is still barred from international competition because of the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Instead, Britain emerged as the Americans’ closest challenger. As the top two teams in the qualifying round, the United States and Britain rotated through the competition together, beginning on vault and ending on floor.
The United States held a lead throughout, including a 2.2-point edge with one apparatus to go. The Americans needed only to avoid major mistakes in the final three floor routines. World championships first-timer Shilese Jones, Carey and Chiles each had strong performances to clinch the gold, the sixth straight for the U.S. women at this event.
Chiles, the only American to contribute on each apparatus, performed like a steady veteran, highlighted by her excellent beam routine after struggling with multiple falls in qualifying three days ago. Jones, 20, was the second-place finisher at U.S. nationals this summer but had never before competed at worlds or the Olympics. In Liverpool, she had strong showings on vault, bars and floor. Performing with artistry and amplitude, Jones has had a standout season and will be a medal favorite in the all-around competition. National champion Konnor McClain withdrew from the U.S. selection process for world championships with an injury.
The United States handed Britain a brief opportunity to close the gap when 17-year-old Skye Blakely fell on a difficult skill on beam, a backflip with a full twist. The rest of her routine was superb, and she still earned the team’s second-best score on the apparatus (13.266) ahead of Carey, who didn’t have a major mistake but has a lower difficulty score and more minor execution deductions. Britain’s final competitor on beam fell moments later, allowing the Americans to reclaim their cushion.
Among the U.S. gymnasts, Carey had the top score on vault (14.800) and floor (14.100), while Jones paced the team on bars (14.333) and Chiles on beam (13.333).
Three gymnasts on this team — Chiles, Carey and Leanne Wong — competed in NCAA gymnastics last year before returning to the elite ranks for the summer and fall. Wong contributed only on bars; despite not competing on that apparatus during qualifying, she executed a strong routine in the final.
Sunisa Lee, the Olympic all-around champion in Tokyo and a sophomore in college, has yet to return to elite competition. Biles said she hasn’t retired, but she hasn’t shared firm plans that she’ll train for another Olympics. Before last summer’s Games, the Americans had won the team gold at every world championships and Olympics from 2011 to 2019, often by wide margins as Biles dominated. With this new-look team, the United States managed to return to the sport’s pinnacle after taking the silver in Tokyo.
With every score counting toward the total, any error can send a team tumbling out of medal contention. China began the competition on beam, and its first athlete, Tang Xijing, fell three times. Another Chinese gymnast fell off the apparatus, and China was in last after the first rotation, ultimately climbing to sixth place out of eight teams. Italy, which finished fifth, had similar trouble early in the competition with multiple athletes falling on release elements during their bars routines.
Brazil, headlined by Olympic all-around silver medalist Rebeca Andrade and two-time Olympian Flavia Saraiva, has turned into a global contender in team competitions. But Saraiva was limited by an injury and could only contribute on bars. The team landed in fourth.
While the United States and Britain seemed poised to finish as the top two teams, Japan and Canada battled for the bronze with their final routines. As the final competitor from Japan, Fukasawa Kokoro had a disastrous performance on bars, sending the team all the way to seventh. Longtime Canadian star Ellie Black capitalized with a solid beam routine and ended the evening sobbing before receiving her country’s first world championships team medal. | 2022-11-02T00:06:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. women gymnasts win sixth straight world championships team gold - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/11/01/womens-gymnatics-world-championships/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/11/01/womens-gymnatics-world-championships/ |
Husband and wife Tommy and Ines Hixon were among those who spoke in court Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Tommy Hixon's father was killed in the 2018 Parkland shooting. (Amy Beth Bennett/Pool/South Florida Sun Sentinel/AP)
Survivors and family members of those killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 angrily confronted the shooter in a South Florida courtroom Tuesday, decrying his defense team’s argument that he suffers from mental illness and denouncing the state law that spared his life after the jury did not reach a unanimous verdict.
Meghan Petty said she felt “betrayed by our justice system” after enduring a trial in which she publicly shared her private pain and had to hear the sound of the gunshots that killed her younger sister — only to see the jury deliver a sentence of life in prison instead of the death penalty. The jury foreman said that most jurors wanted Nikolas Cruz to face capital punishment but that three voted against it.
“He has escaped this punishment because a minority of the jury was given the power to overturn the majority decision made by people who were able to see him for what he is — a remorseless monster who deserves no mercy,” Petty said.
Unlike victim impact statements heard by the jury in the three-month sentencing trial, Tuesday’s remarks were not filtered through attorneys and were addressed not to the court but to Cruz, who sat just a few feet away, wearing thick-rimmed glasses and appearing largely expressionless behind a blue surgical mask. The gunman pleaded guilty in October 2021 to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.
Parkland school shooting jury spares gunman death penalty in 2018 massacre
Broward County Circuit Judge Elizabeth A. Scherer cannot change the jury’s verdict, but victims are being given an opportunity to share their thoughts before she officially sentences him. Relatives of those killed and survivors did not hold back. Several said they hope he dies soon. Others wished him an excruciating life behind bars. One said he hopes Cruz’s ashes are tossed in the trash.
“I hope your every breathing moment here on Earth is miserable and you repent for your sins, Nikolas, and burn in hell,” Theresa Robinovitz, grandmother of victim Alyssa Alhadeff, said as she looked at Cruz.
But they also expressed anguish at the justice system. Cruz’s case was the deadliest U.S. mass shooting case to go to trial — and from the start, there was concern about the trauma victims and loved ones would be forced to relive. The decision to let Cruz live the remainder of his life in prison has even become a campaign issue — with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, saying they think he should have been sentenced to death.
In a recent debate, DeSantis said he wants the legislature to amend state law.
“You had no right to ask this jury for mercy. He showed no mercy when he shot my forever-14 Gina in the chest,” said Tony Montalto, whose daughter was killed. “To be clear, the system, the schools, the mental health system, law enforcement and now the justice system failed my daughter Gina and her classmates and her teachers.”
A 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling forced Florida to rewrite its capital punishment statute to require that death sentences be unanimous.
Ed Brodsky, a state attorney in southwestern Florida and president of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said the legislature is likely to discuss changes in light of the Parkland case and criticism from Republicans and Democrats.
“I think in this particular case, folks in Florida and across the country thought this was an unjust sentence,” Brodsky said. “Jurors who have a complaint with the process, you only have the Florida legal structure to blame for it.”
He said one possible outcome is that the law is changed to require a supermajority of jurors — 10 — rather than a unanimous decision in death penalty cases.
Robert Dunham, director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said changing the law in Florida to allow non-unanimous death verdicts based on the Cruz case would be a mistake. Before the law changed to require a unanimous vote for the death penalty, he said, Florida had more death row exonerations than any other state.
“If you’re going to look at the Parkland outcome and decide you don’t like it so you’re going to change the system, you are making a disastrous decision,” he said.
His sister died in the Parkland massacre. He wants the gunman to live.
Many of the survivors and victim family members who spoke Tuesday told Cruz the pain he inflicted will trail them for the rest of their lives.
Stacey Lippel, a language arts teacher who narrowly escaped after closing and locking the door to her classroom, said her statement Tuesday brought “just a crumb of closure.”
“You don’t know me, but you tried to kill me,” she said, mentioning the bullet scar on her arm. “I see you in my nightmares and in my daydreams. … My hope is that you die, sooner rather than later.”
Most victims also directed their anger at Cruz’s defense team, which argued that the gunman’s troubled upbringing was a mitigating factor against the death penalty. They said Cruz was “broken” and suffered brain damage. The jury was directed to consider 41 mitigating circumstances, including factors such as mental illness that would spare Cruz from a death sentence even if he met all the other requirements.
“Mitigating factors did not exist,” said Patricia Oliver, whose 17-year-old son, Joaquin, died in the shooting. “You built that, the evil in this system.”
She said the defense attorneys’ behavior was “shameful, despicable.” At one point, she slapped the podium for emphasis and said “karma” will find them.
“This is what you all will face for the rest of your miserable lives,” she said. “Your sleepless nights, where you will hear your heart pounding, will be filled with regrets because the only real victims were the ones he massacred. And karma will eventually catch up to you all.”
Public defender Melisa McNeill asked the judge to instruct the speakers not to make personal comments about members of the defense team or their families. Scherer noted her argument but did not impose any restrictions on family statements.
Anne Ramsay, whose 17-year-old daughter died in the shooting, said the sense of injustice her family has experienced started with the massacre but did not end there. She said officials at the hospital her family hurried to after the shooting seemed to know her daughter’s fate but instead of consoling them sent them to a hotel near the school that police were using as a gathering area for families.
“So we went and sat for hours and hours, listening to the screamings and howlings of all the other families,” Ramsay said. “We were there until about 3 a.m., when we were the last family to be looked at. There was one family left, my family, the Black family, left until the end. What I have to say to the sheriff’s department, when people say Black lives matter, that’s how we are treated.”
She said her daughter, Helena, could have helped change that treatment for the better if she had lived.
“You took away an angel that day that could have made a difference in society,” she said.
Petty, whose sister Alaina was killed, said the jury’s verdict sent the wrong message.
“What we’ve been told here is that 17 lives are worth nothing if you can make enough excuses for your actions,” she said.
While Cruz will have a roof over his head, a bed and a plate of food for each meal, “my sister’s body is food for carrion,” Petty said. “Her roof is six feet of dirt, and her bed is a coffin.”
“She died scared,” she said. “She tried to hide behind a desk, and he shot her multiple times, they said, with one of the bullets hitting her heart. She died alone, on a dirty classroom floor. … The last time I saw her sweet face was when she was lifeless and cold, laying in a coffin. If I want to visit or talk to her, I have to drive to a cemetery and talk to a plaque with her name on it.
“Alaina will never grow up. He stopped her at 14.” | 2022-11-02T00:23:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Parkland families unleash anger at gunman and justice system after painful trial - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/01/parkland-nikolas-cruz-sentencing-trial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/01/parkland-nikolas-cruz-sentencing-trial/ |
Terms of the deal give large foreign investors access to confidential information about the social media platform
The U.S. government is exploring whether it has legal authority to review the terms of Elon Musk's deal to purchase Twitter. (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News)
Large foreign investors would have access to confidential information about Twitter’s finances — and potentially its users — under the terms of Elon Musk’s deal to acquire the social media site, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.
That revelation comes as Treasury Department officials begin looking into whether they have the legal authority to start an investigation into the purchase because of Musk’s ties to foreign governments and investors, people familiar with those discussions said.
It was not immediately clear whether Treasury officials were aware of the terms granting information rights to large investors. The exploration of whether a review was warranted is fairly routine, and such preliminary examinations often do not end in a full investigation.
White House officials also previously discussed the possibility of a national security review of the acquisition, according to another person. Additionally, officials at the FBI looked into the potential counterintelligence risks posed by the deal this past spring, according to two people familiar with the inquiry — though it is not clear whether the matter has been studied by senior officials at the bureau or if those discussions are still active. All the people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters they were not authorized to disclose publicly.
A Saudi prince’s holding company and a subsidiary of the Qatari sovereign wealth fund are among the investors backing Musk’s Twitter purchase, as is Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange that was founded in China but has since moved its operations elsewhere. Tesla, where Musk serves as chief executive, has extensive ties to China, as well.
The U.S. government’s preliminary attempts to scrutinize the Twitter deal comes as the billionaire introduces new changes to the structure of one the world’s most powerful communication platforms.
Treasury staff at the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) have not yet determined whether Musk’s purchase of the social media platform could trigger a national security review, according to one person familiar with the matter. Musk is a U.S. citizen, and CFIUS reviews are typically used to investigate investments by foreign nationals. So it is not clear whether they can initiate such a review, and policy experts are divided on whether one would be warranted. Treasury staff routinely examine whether purchases merit more in-depth investigations, often without proceeding to full-blown reviews.
A 2018 legislative update to the CFIUS rules says the body can investigate not only foreign ownership, but minority stakes in critical areas, including sensitive personal data held by businesses.
The early work on a potential inquiry has not yet reached the principals on the CFIUS committee — whose members include Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — and is in its preliminary days. The person familiar with the matter stressed that it is still possible that CFIUS concludes it does not have the authority even to begin an investigation and that the probe ends there.
Spokespeople for the FBI declined to comment. Spokespeople for the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The matter could be fraught for the Biden administration. Biden aides have tried to counter Chinese influence but do not want to be accused of weaponizing a national security process to attack Musk, who says he voted for Biden in 2020 but has lately become a political foe.
Musk has extensive ties to China through Tesla, the publicly traded electric vehicle company. Tesla’s “Gigafactory” in Shanghai has been its busiest production plant and serves as a vital export hub. Tesla is also reliant on China for production needs — the country controls the global supply of lithium, the key component in electric vehicle batteries — through its vast processing and refining apparatus.
Binance also has a stake in the new Twitter through a $500 million equity investment. While it moved out of its initial home in China, the company has partnered with a Chinese-government-owned firm on a blockchain initiative. A Binance spokesman previously told The Post that effort was defunct, that it had no presence in China and that it had never taken any investment from a Chinese government-controlled entity.
Another global power, Saudi Arabia, is among the biggest private investors in the new Twitter, after Musk. The country poured around $2 billion into the acquisition, rolling over a previous stake in Twitter stock into the newly privatized company. U.S. relations with the kingdom have fractured under Biden, with the Saudi-led group of oil-producing nations known as OPEC recently announcing a cut to output in a direct rebuke to the White House. A subsidiary of the Qatari sovereign wealth fund is also backing the purchase.
Large investors in the deal have struck confidential agreements that clearly spell out their potential roles and access to information, with priority given to those who invested at $250 million or higher, according to people familiar with the arrangement who spoke with The Post. That threshold would give Binance, as well as the Saudi and Qatari funds, access to information beyond what a lower-level investor would receive. That’s unless there are exceptions in their terms that expressly prohibit sharing information with them, something CFIUS would want to probe — and require if deemed necessary for national security.
The U.S. government has previously indicated that Saudi officials sought information about Twitter users, and a former manager for the platform was convicted in August of concealing payments from Saudi agents in exchange for accessing confidential user data.
A growing number of Biden allies have in recent days clamored for CFIUS to investigate how these nations could influence Musk. On Monday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on Twitter that the federal government should investigate national security concerns connected to Saudi Arabian entities’ investments in the social media platform. Last week, the American Economic Liberties Project, a left-leaning group, also said in a statement that both CFIUS and the Federal Communications Commission should investigate Trump’s takeover of Twitter given his “potential dependencies on the Chinese government.”
“We should be concerned that the Saudis, who have a clear interest in repressing political speech and impacting US politics, are now the second-largest owner of a major social media platform,” Murphy said on Twitter.
Bloomberg News first reported last month that Biden administration officials were weighing whether the United States can conduct national security reviews of Musk’s ventures at Twitter and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network.
Andrew Grotto, a former senior director for cybersecurity policy under the Obama and Trump administrations, who has focused on CFIUS, said access to information could prove a vital security concern.
“That is an area where I think CFIUS has some pretty robust authority to ensure that Americans’ personal data isn’t exploited nefariously by a foreign government,” he said. “That springs to my mind at least as one major vector for CFIUS to pursue an investigation.”
CFIUS remedies would not necessarily scuttle Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, Grotto said, but the government could impose restrictions on what sorts of information rights are given to foreign parties or seek to limit powers they may have over the new company.
“CFIUS would have authority to demand mitigations including possibly forcing the parties to rewrite that,” he said, adding that the committee “could force a modification.”
Additionally, “when a senator sends a letter to CFIUS requesting a review, the committee is going to poke around a little,” said Sarah Bauerle Danzman, associate professor at Indiana University and former CFIUS staffer through the State Department.
To trigger a review, the Saudi investment would have to have include special privileges — such as a board seat as an observer, or access to company information — beyond those given to an ordinary small investor in a public company. “If the Saudis are given some additional rights that go beyond what would be normally be expected, such as a board seat as an observer or access to nonpublic information,” that would give CFIUS jurisdiction, she said. The terms of the deal as described to The Post would do that. But even then, a review would be unlikely to lead to the takeover being reversed, Bauerle Danzman said.
Two former CFIUS advisers said Saudi Arabia’s investment was more likely to lay grounds for a review than any connections to China, even though China may have more leverage over Musk through his Tesla stake. “I would think they have a hook if they want to take this on,” one former adviser said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive issue. | 2022-11-02T00:28:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. exploring whether it has authority to review Musk’s Twitter deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/11/01/musk-twitter-treasury-department-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/11/01/musk-twitter-treasury-department-review/ |
The Lerner family announced in April that they were considering selling the Washington Nationals. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
A group led by Monumental Sports founder Ted Leonsis — which has financial backing of D.C. philanthropist David Rubenstein — has been in discussions with the investment bank overseeing the process, and several people familiar with the process believe Leonsis to be the leading candidate to purchase the Nationals.
But MLB is aware that any new owner would want to know how much money it would receive from MASN for the team’s regional media rights. A league official Tuesday said MLB is engaged in negotiating certainty about that revenue going forward — a step that could give Leonsis’s group confidence to move forward with its bid.
A spokesperson for Monumental Sports, which owns the NBA’s Wizards, WNBA’s Mystics and NHL’s Capitals, declined to comment.
The Baltimore Orioles control MASN, which owns the Nationals’ local media rights. That agreement, reached in 2005 as part of the deal that allowed MLB to relocate the Montreal Expos to Washington, has been acrimonious from the start and has led to a decade of litigation over rights fees owed to the Nationals. In 2020, a New York state court ruled the network owes the Nationals some $100 million in backpay, though the network has appealed.
Though the battle over the previous rights fees lingers between the Lerners and the family of Peter A. Angelos, which owns the Orioles, MLB’s current effort is to make sure a potential buyer knows what it would receive in what is an important revenue stream for any professional sports franchise. Since they bought the team from MLB in 2006, the Lerners haven’t had that certainty. Leonsis, people involved in the process said, would want that.
“It’s well-documented that MASN is an issue — a contentious issue,” a person who has knowledge of the situation but was not authorized to speak publicly said Monday. “MLB would like to find a resolution. The Nats would like to find a resolution. Hopefully, the Orioles would like to find a resolution.”
Though Mark Lerner, the Nationals’ managing principal partner, has told associates in recent months that he would like his club to fetch something in the range of the New York Mets’ sale price of $2.4 billion, some have cautioned Lerner that the MASN situation could affect a potential sale price, according to people familiar with the discussions. Steve Cohen, who bought the Mets in 2020, did not acquire the team’s television rights, and he is reportedly interested in buying SportsNet New York, which owns them. There is no easy path for any new owners of the Nationals to gain control of the team’s local TV rights.
The terms of the MASN accord have long frustrated both the Lerners and Nationals fans, who bemoan the presentation of games on MASN and the fights over the rights fees. But the agreement remains a key piece of any sale. According to the 2005 settlement agreement between the Orioles and MLB, “all relevant terms, conditions and obligations of this Agreement shall be made known to any purchaser(s) of the Nationals now, and in the future, and that the assumption of the Nationals’ obligations under this Agreement shall be made a binding condition of the purchase of the Nationals’ franchise.”
The agreement continues, “The Nationals and Major League Baseball represent and warrant that they shall take such other steps as reasonably may be necessary to bind any subsequent purchaser(s) of the Nationals to the terms and conditions set forth in this Agreement.”
Marc Ganis, president of Sportscorp, a consulting agency that advised the Chicago Tribune when it sold the Chicago Cubs in 2009, said in an interview that he was surprised that MASN would be a sticking point in any sale because the deal is “interminable and if that reduces the value it should be reflected in the sale price.”
In other words, the MASN deal is transferrable, so what is left to figure out is how much that impacts the value of the team. MLB has a high interest in having the Nationals sell for a premium price, and resolving the MASN rights fee issue would be a significant step toward solidifying the club’s value.
Regardless of how the MASN situation affects the eventual price, some people familiar with the sale process believe it is affecting the timeline. During the summer, there had been some hope a new owner could be selected by November. But barring a major shift in circumstances, the Nationals won’t begin their offseason with a new ownership group in place — or even, it seems, with one on the verge.
Though several people in and around the Lerners and the Nationals believe Leonsis is the leader, one person familiar with the process cautioned that several outcomes are still possible — that the Lerners could take on a minority investor, which some private equity firms have done with other professional sports franchises; that an individual could be brought in as a minority investor with the intent of becoming majority owner over time; or that the Lerners could hold on to the franchise altogether.
But MLB would not be working on determining revenue from MASN for a future owner if it didn’t have a serious candidate to purchase the franchise.
Meantime, the business of the offseason — both on the business and baseball side — awaits. While the Lerner family made the decision to keep President of Baseball Operations Mike Rizzo and Manager Dave Martinez under contract through next year, neither would seem to be guaranteed any longevity without clarity about who will own the team long-term.
Two members of the front office who asked to speak anonymously to speak more candidly on the subject have indicated a sense of a “lame-duck offseason” because of the uncertainty over who will own the team, how much the Lerners will be willing to spend if they still own the team, and when any of that could change.
Such uncertainty likely will limit the Nationals’ spending on payroll. They currently have just more than $94 million committed to their projected Opening Day roster next season, per Cot’s Baseball Contracts. Two-thirds of that is committed to two players, Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin, who are each owed $35 million in 2024. | 2022-11-02T01:07:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | MLB inserts itself into MASN issue to facilitate Nationals sale - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/01/washington-nationals-sale-leonsis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/01/washington-nationals-sale-leonsis/ |
Accused Pelosi attacker’s history shows blurry lines of radicalization
On Monday morning, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.) heard from a friend who pleaded, “Don’t give out Halloween candy tonight.” The attack on Paul Pelosi rattled lawmakers on the Hill who had survived Jan. 6 and who had seen an escalation of physical confrontation between Republicans and Democrats since. But it also had friends and family worried for lawmakers’ safety, even at home.
“It’s already a challenging job. It’s definitely a privilege and an honor, but there’s different considerations now to serve than ever before,” Escobar said. “I feel so much guilt that the work I do causes them to stress sometimes.”
Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), who is in the middle of a tough reelection fight in a swing district, said Friday’s attack added stress to an already draining campaign season. With such focus on their campaigns, Wild said, there has been “no time to deal with upgrading our security” at home, on the trail or legislatively.
Manger’s “urgent” plea Tuesday to soothe the political climate runs into the reality that his police force is staffed far below the recommended levels to provide the kind of protection needed for lawmakers, both in Washington and across the country.
Manger said the Capitol Police are on track to meet their goal of hiring 280 more officers by the end of the year and to continue that pace next year. The department now has just over 1,900 officers, slightly more than it had on Jan. 6, but that’s a fraction of what it needs, according to some estimates. An external review ordered by Pelosi shortly after the January 2021 attack found that there were more than 230 vacancies in the two months after the insurrection and recommended that the Capitol Police eventually increase the size of its force by roughly 850 officers. That would take years, given that about 100 officers leave or retire each year, and the force is now accepting only about 1 in every 16 candidates.
After the midterm elections, lawmakers may debate how much more money is needed after Congress passed emergency funding in the summer of 2021 to escalate security around the Capitol. Whether security is expanded to leadership’s family members at all times, or to their homes, is also likely to be debated, according to aides familiar with what could be discussed when members return.
Rep. Rodney Davis (Ill.), the top-ranking Republican on the House Administration Committee and a survivor of the 2017 shooting, when asked whether more funding is necessary, said it’s incumbent upon leaders, more than ever, to alert members to what is available to them.
“Democrats need to work with the sergeant-at-arms office to immediately expedite security upgrades at homes of interested members,” he said. “I’ve witnessed political violence first hand, and security needs to be a priority for all members back home.”
Ten members of House and Senate leadership receive full-time Capitol Police details when traveling, though Pelosi’s is the largest based on the comparatively high volume of continuous threats against her. Two more lawmakers currently have security details because of specific recent death threats.
Security was ratcheted up for months after her home was vandalized with spray paint, fake blood and a pig’s head in the days before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Along with Pelosi’s residence, vandals also defaced the home of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after Congress adjourned without passing a bill approving $2,000 stimulus checks.
Officials with the San Francisco Police Department repeatedly declined to comment on security measures around Pelosi’s house in the city’s posh Pacific Heights neighborhood, including whether there was an alarm system at the residence that would have triggered an alert with the department.
San Francisco police officials also are facing growing questions nationally and locally, including from Pelosi’s neighbors, about why there wasn’t a more consistent presence outside the speaker’s home, given the intensity of the threats that she and other lawmakers have faced as well as previous incidents at the residence. Since Friday, neighbors said, at least three San Francisco police squad cars have been positioned outside the residence, along with unmarked black SUVs and plain-clothed security officers — often signals that the speaker is at home.
Pelosi’s house is also protected by a private security system, two people said. When tripped, that alarm is supposed to notify San Francisco police and, secondarily, the Capitol Police, one of them added.
Holly Bailey, Tom Jackman and Jacqueline Alemany contributed to this report.
Biden makes a pitch for Florida Democrats
12:25 AM‘Rape is a crime, incest is a crime. Abortion is not,’ Demings reminds Rubio
12:06 AMFox News polls show tightening races in Ariz., Johnson with the lead in Wis.
12:04 AMMailers from Stephen Miller-led group target Asian Americans
11:55 PMShapiro, on bus tour, finds some GOP support | 2022-11-02T01:11:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Capitol Police cameras caught break-in at Pelosi home, but no one was watching - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/01/capitol-police-cameras-caught-break-in-pelosi-home-no-one-was-watching/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/01/capitol-police-cameras-caught-break-in-pelosi-home-no-one-was-watching/ |
A century-old shipwreck was unearthed. Then the thieving began.
A man walking along the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge stops to look at a shipwreck revealed by the low water level on Oct. 17. Archaeologists believe the ship is a ferry that was built around 1896 and sank in 1915. (Sara Cline/AP)
Charles McGimsey, Louisiana’s state archaeologist, felt unsurprised but disappointed when someone stole a piece of a shipwreck that recently emerged from the Mississippi River. The real shock came the next day, when McGimsey said he ran into the thief, who was walking away with another piece of the ship.
McGimsey was on his way to the shipwreck of the Brookhill Ferry for a news interview about its discovery when, he said, he saw an unidentified man walking away from the ferry, toward his pickup truck, with a piece of the artifact.
As water levels in the Mississippi River plummeted this year, the Brookhill Ferry, which sank during a storm in September 1915, emerged by the banks of the river in Baton Rouge. The ferry, which was built around 1896 and used to transport people between Baton Rouge and Port Allen, had surfaced once before, in 1992. Then, the shipwreck was muddy and not really visible, McGimsey said.
This time at least 80 percent of the Brookhill is visible, and the ship is clean because of the current, according to the state archaeologist. And it can easily be reached from downtown Baton Rouge.
“And it is such a tremendous educational opportunity to see and touch history,” McGimsey said.
These were all reasons that convinced Louisiana’s archaeology department to open the ship to the public.
McGimsey said there was a brief discussion with his colleagues about putting up a chain-link fence around the wreck, but the idea was dropped. “We wanted everyone to enjoy this local history, photograph it, touch it, walk on it” he said.
As droughts are occurring around the world, lower water levels are offering glimpses of historical artifacts: in Central Texas, dinosaur tracks were discovered on a dried-up riverbed; along the Serbia-Romania border, warships have emerged from the port; and in Chongqing, China, previously submerged Buddhist statues can now be seen.
In Baton Rouge, they didn’t consider that out of the thousands of people who came to enjoy the ship, some could steal parts of it. So far, four pieces of the ship have been stolen.
McGimsey recognized the man because he had been sent photographs of him the night before, piling pieces of the shipwreck into his vehicle. He stopped and tried to reason with him.
McGimsey said he explained to the would-be thief and vandal that the shipwreck belongs to the state of Louisiana, but the man argued that nobody owns the river or anything found in it, McGimsey said. “We had a really strong difference of opinion.”
“He wasn’t happy about it, but eventually he left behind the piece,” the archaeologist said.
According to a local paper, the man has since been contacted by Louisiana’s assistant attorney general, and he has agreed to return pieces he previously took. They include two hull planks; one is at least 10 feet long, and the other is 30 feet long. The archaeology department is still figuring out the best way to transport the stolen pieces back to the rest of the Brookhill.
The department has decided that if the returns can be made amicably, it does not want to press charges, McGimsey said.
Two stolen pieces remain at large, and there are no clues about who took them, McGimsey said. They include an 18-inch framing timber and a 5-inch sieve made of lead, according to a local paper.
McGimsey is not sure why people would steal from the shipwreck, but he thinks it could either be out of the wonder and curiosity of history, or for financial gain.
“Maybe if we go on eBay we will find a seller with one-inch pieces of a 100-year-old boat,” said McGimsey. “But I can’t imagine why anyone would buy that!”
The archaeology department will keep the shipwreck open to the public until the water level rises again and takes the ferry with it.
The department has had to put up signs to remind people to not take pieces from the ferry, and so far they seem to be working, McGimsey said. | 2022-11-02T01:46:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | People are stealing pieces of Brookhill Ferry shipwreck in Louisiana - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/01/louisiana-brookhill-ferry-shipwreck/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/01/louisiana-brookhill-ferry-shipwreck/ |
At this World Series, the national pastime doesn’t look like the nation
Dusty Baker leads the Houston Astros in the World Series, where neither team has a U.S.-born Black player. (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
“To say we’re challenged in our game with attracting many of the top athletes to play our great game is an understatement,” Tony Clark, the head of the MLB Players Association and himself a 15-year big leaguer, said earlier in the season.
Clark knows, because he didn’t choose baseball. Baseball chose him. He played basketball at the University of Arizona, but his hardwood career was slowed when he suffered a back injury as a freshman. Even after the Detroit Tigers took him with the second pick in the 1990 MLB draft, “I really looked at it, and even joked, that I was a basketball player in a baseball uniform,” Clark told me several years ago.
That’s not unique to Clark. When Tim Anderson was growing up in Tuscaloosa, Ala., he had a choice of what to watch and whom to idolize.
“I liked Ken Griffey Jr.,” the Chicago White Sox shortstop said at this summer’s All-Star Game. “Other than that, I didn’t really watch. I had some guys I watched, but I was more a basketball guy. I wasn’t really sold on baseball.”
There’s something to that. Black kids born in the United States can’t flip on this World Series and see a single face like theirs contributing on the field. That’s a first since 1950, and it’s why the issue is gaining new attention this fall.
But even if, say, the New York Yankees had beaten the Astros and the San Diego Padres had beaten the Phillies in the league championship series, the difference would be only nominal. Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton would have given the World Series some Black star power; both Yankees sluggers are of mixed race. Josh Bell is a prominent Black face in the Padres’ lineup.
That’s it, though. The playoffs featured some U.S.-born Black players — Mookie Betts of the Dodgers, Michael Harris II of Atlanta, Triston McKenzie of Cleveland. They were dots on the tapestry, not brushstrokes that colored it. There aren’t similar players who fill out a bench or a bullpen, a rotation or an infield. NBA and NFL teams have U.S.-born Black players up and down the roster. MLB teams don’t.
What’s lost is the opportunity for kids to see people who look like them and grew up like them working together for the betterment of a big league team. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport has been charting racial participation in baseball and other sports since 1991. Its annual report said that 7.2 percent of players on this year’s Opening Day rosters were Black — the lowest percentage in the report’s history.
So this isn’t a 2022 problem. It is a problem ingrained and exacerbated over decades. It is cultural. It is economic. It is logistical.
Major League Baseball has explored a variety of ways to make its rosters look more like the populations of the cities they represent. In 1989, the league established the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program, which includes in its mission statement the goal to “promote greater inclusion of youth with diverse backgrounds into the mainstream of the game.”
That’s great in intent. In reality, it hasn’t worked. So why keep plugging away with a well-intentioned strategy that has yielded no results? It’s time for MLB to have a comprehensive plan across not only its major league markets, but in minor league towns big and small.
In Washington, D.C., there is a living, breathing, still-developing attempt to do something different. It may be working. And if it is, it should be replicated. The Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy started its YBA Play program for would-be baseball players as young as 6 in 2016, two years after the facility east of the Anacostia River opened.
From 2021: Ken Griffey Jr. is still trying to make baseball cool
“By offering access to an opportunity for children to play baseball in a fun, engaging, fast-paced environment, we’ve found that previous access to the game, previous exposure to the game, is not necessary for kids to enjoy playing the game,” said Tal Alter, the CEO of Washington Nationals Philanthropies. “When you get kids who enjoy the experience — no matter who they are or where they’re from — they stick with it.”
The YBA Play program hasn’t produced big leaguers — which isn’t the point, anyway. But there is increasing evidence that it’s building a love of the game by teaching skills with drills that might not even feel like a baseball game — quick bursts rather than slow slogs. The academy’s more competitive, next-level program — Hustle — includes more than 100 players annually. They are provided with facilities, equipment and coaching, all free of charge — which removes the financial and logistical challenges that prevent so many kids from underserved communities from participating in travel baseball.
The first cohort of kids in the Hustle programs are near the end of their high school careers — many playing varsity baseball, with some on track to play in college.
“I think it’s fair to say that representation matters and that our kids absolutely pay attention to who is on big league rosters,” Alter said. “We hear them talking about it all the time.”
There are people working on these issues at all levels of the MLB offices — and Commissioner Rob Manfred on Monday addressed the failure of clubs to install diverse faces in front offices and in manager’s jobs. The league has a list of programs and events — a Hank Aaron Invitational, the Dream Series on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, diversity development camps, on and on — that are meant to provide more opportunities and identify more potential big leaguers. Indeed, baseball considered it something of a victory when four of the top five picks in the July draft were American-born Black players, and all four had participated in some of the league-sponsored development programs.
Still, Astros Manager Dusty Baker is the most prominent Black character — really, the only U.S.-born Black character — in this Series. And he absorbed the notion that there were no Black players by saying: “I don’t think that that’s something that baseball should really be proud of. It looks bad.”
It’s not just that it looks bad. It is bad. What was once the national pastime no longer looks like the nation. The World Series, back in Philadelphia, has a fresh feel to it. The hope would be that rosters such as those competing here become a thing of the past. Baseball needs to identify and develop ways to expose its sport to young athletes from all means and communities and to get them to choose baseball rather than the other way around. Without that, something is lost. | 2022-11-02T02:17:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | There are no U.S.-born Black players in the World Series. Why that matters. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/01/black-players-world-series/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/01/black-players-world-series/ |
Ex-Chiefs assistant Britt Reid sentenced to three years for DWI crash
Britt Reid is shown heading to a courtroom in September for a hearing. (Chris Ochsner/The Kansas City Star via AP, File)
Former Kansas City Chiefs assistant coach Britt Reid was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison, after he pleaded guilty in September to a felony count of driving while intoxicated, causing serious bodily injury.
The son of Chiefs Coach Andy Reid, Britt Reid had agreed to a plea deal in which prosecutors agreed not to seek more than four years in prison on a charge that can carry a maximum term of seven years. Lawyers for the 37-year-old Reid asked for probation.
The sentence was handed down in a circuit court in Kansas City. Reid had injured six people, including himself and a 5-year-old girl, in a February 2021 car crash near Arrowhead Stadium.
The mother of the girl, who was in a coma for over a week and has a number of mental and physical challenges resulting from a brain injury, had criticized the plea deal as a “slap on the wrist.” In a victim impact statement read Tuesday in court by the prosecuting team before sentencing, the mother, Felicia Miller, said that the other five injured parties in the crash did not accept his apologies and resented his request for probation. She also noted that Reid had already served a jail sentence for a previous drunk-driving charge.
“On what planet does this conduct deserve probation?” Miller asked in the statement. “Can people really get drunk and give a 5-year-old a brain injury and think they should get probation?”
Reid made another apology in court (via the Associated Press) before the sentencing and turned to face the injured girl, Ariel Young.
Her mother, Felicia Miller, blasted Britt Reid, 37, as entitled and out of touch. She noted his first apology came only last month and "at the same time he apologized to ‘Chiefs Kingdom.’ This is not a game. This is not a Chiefs' game. This is our life."
The crash occurred three days before the Chiefs participated in Super Bowl LV, where they lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Prosecutors said Reid was traveling nearly 84 mph up the entrance ramp to a highway at just after 9 p.m. when he struck a pair of cars that had pulled over to the side of the road after one of the vehicles ran out of gas and a family member arrived to help. Reid was accused of having a serum blood alcohol concentration of 0.113, above the legal limit of 0.08, approximately two hours after the crashes occurred.
Two days after that Super Bowl, the Chiefs placed Reid on administrative leave. His contract subsequently expired, ending his employment with the team.
At that time, Andy Reid said his “heart goes out to the young lady.”
“I’m also a dad,” he added then, “so I get that, so I have concerns obviously on both sides.”
The Chiefs reached an agreement with the girl’s family in November to provide her with “world-class medical care and long-term financial stability,” according to lawyers for the team and for the family. | 2022-11-02T03:09:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Britt Reid, son of Chiefs' Andy Reid, sentenced to three years for DWI crash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/01/britt-reid-dwi-sentencing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/01/britt-reid-dwi-sentencing/ |
The Kentucky Republican, a fierce critic of the pandemic response, is in line to chair Senate health panel if GOP wins control
If the GOP wins control of the Senate, Rand Paul promises to lead probes into the pandemic response as chairman of either the Senate Health Committee or its oversight panel. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
As the election nears, Biden administration officials are dreading three words: Chairman Rand Paul.
The Kentucky senator, who has clashed with Anthony S. Fauci and other health officials throughout the pandemic, is in line to lead a Senate committee should he win reelection and Republicans retake the chamber next week. (While Paul is heavily favored in his own race, control of the Senate is viewed as a toss-up by pollsters.) GOP control would give the libertarian doctor — an outspoken critic of the government’s coronavirus policies — the power to lead investigations and help set legislative priorities next year, either as chairman of the Senate’s sweeping health committee or its more targeted government oversight panel.
“If you help me win, I promise to subpoena every last document of Dr. Fauci’s unprecedented coverup,” said a Paul fundraising email sent Oct. 20, referring to Paul’s allegations that Fauci contributed to the virus’s creation by funding research in Wuhan, China — allegations Fauci has categorically denied.
An ophthalmologist by training, Paul is set to be the most senior Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, better known as HELP, which oversees the nation’s health and education agencies as part of its expansive portfolio. The possibility has rattled health-care leaders and trade groups, worried that Paul will follow through on his criticism of “Big Pharma, the medical establishment and public health officials” for their stances on covid. Paul has argued that those groups wrongly quashed disagreements about how to fight the pandemic. In 2021, for instance, he called for more research into treatments such as ivermectin, noting that it was already in clinical trials to test its effectiveness against a number of viruses, including SARS-CoV-2. The drug was subsequently shown to be ineffective against the coronavirus.
The American Public Health Association, a trade group representing public health professionals, recently gave Paul the lowest-possible grade on its congressional report card: zero percent.
“He has not been an exemplar of prevention or wellness,” said Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, referring to Paul’s reticence about whether he got a coronavirus vaccine and reports that he used the Senate gym while waiting for a coronavirus test result in March 2020 that showed he was infected. “That is a real problem when you’re a physician … you should know better.”
Experts at three other health organizations declined to go on the record with their own concerns, citing fears that criticizing Paul could backfire if he assumes the health committee’s leadership.
J. Stephen Morrison, who oversees global health policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, predicted that agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration will face considerable pressure if Paul and fellow Republicans take control of Congress and launch investigations into the government’s pandemic response.
“A certain group of Republicans feel that the actions by the public health leadership defied personal liberties, were reckless, were unaccountable. And they want to exact a price for that,” Morrison said. “They’re not thinking about what needs to be changed to protect Americans.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said earlier this year that he expects Paul to lead the health committee if Republicans take the Senate, given the pending retirement of Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the only GOP member with more seniority, the Associated Press reported.
But Paul and Senate leaders could opt that he take a different chairmanship: serving as the top Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the chamber’s chief panel charged with conducting oversight. That role is currently filled by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who is retiring. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is next in seniority but has already exhausted his six-year term limit as panel chair.
Paul, whose office did not respond to interview requests, has said he will wait until after the election to make a decision about which committee to lead. But he has repeatedly indicated that pandemic-related investigations would be his top priority: A “Fire Fauci” banner is emblazoned as the “featured issue” on his campaign website and has fueled an array of his fundraising emails, stump speeches and tweets.
Fauci, 81, who is set to retire from government this year after leading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, told The Washington Post that he would comply with any congressional requests next year.
“I’m always open and happy to cooperate with any committee,” Fauci said, noting that he had testified before Congress hundreds of times over the past four decades but declining questions about his relationship with Paul.
Inside the administration, senior officials are less sanguine about the prospects of Chairman Paul, who has peppered the health agencies with letters demanding information about myriad aspects of their covid guidance; sought to unwind masking requirements on public transportation; and over the summer organized a hearing — skipped by Democrats — into whether virus research sponsored by the U.S. government contributed to the pandemic.
There’s at least one critical piece of health-care legislation on the health committee’s docket next year: The panel will need to reauthorize key pandemic preparedness programs set to expire at the end of fiscal 2023, in what could be a relatively routine matter — or could become a fierce fight given Paul’s hostility to the government’s approach.
“Oh, dear God,” said one senior administration official who was not authorized to comment. Other officials added that Paul has shown little willingness to cooperate with the administration.
Beyond the coronavirus, Paul has argued for reducing government’s role in health care, opposed federal funding of abortion and criticized hormone therapy for minors — all positions that put him on the opposite side of many public health groups.
Several administration officials and congressional staff also questioned whether Paul could build consensus among his colleagues, a role that often falls to a chairman; the Kentucky Republican briefly shut down the federal government in 2018, while Donald Trump was president and the GOP controlled Congress, citing his concerns about deficit spending, and has cultivated a reputation for an independent streak, at times taking aim at fellow Kentucky senator McConnell.
But some Republicans say they are excited about the prospect of Paul as committee chairman, pointing to bipartisan deals he has worked on — such as recent legislation to end animal testing mandates for drug companies, which passed the Senate this fall and is awaiting a House vote. Those supporters argue he would unearth problems with the Biden administration’s covid response that the Democrat-controlled Congress has overlooked for nearly two years.
“Senator Paul is one of the brightest people on Capitol Hill,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), a frequent ally, said in a statement. “His experience as a physician and years in the Senate would make him an exceptionally qualified HELP Committee Chairman. As we continue to investigate the origins of COVID and the role Dr. Fauci played, Senator Paul is a fighter, has the courage, and will stand up to Washington insiders.”
“I’m not sure there is a single Senator who has more dogmatically pursued the truth regarding federal public health policy than Dr. Paul,” Josh Holmes, a co-host of the conservative “Ruthless” podcast and an outside adviser to McConnell, wrote in an email. “Undoubtedly, that rubs some people the wrong way but history has shown that he was onto many aspects of the failed logic used to execute our nation’s COVID policy long before it was publicly acceptable to discuss.”
The Biden administration has already begun positioning for additional Republican oversight following the election, tapping lawyer Richard Sauber, who had been serving as general counsel of the Department of Veterans Affairs, to lead a White House response team. That team also includes Ian Sams, who previously helped lead pandemic communications at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Pending next week’s election and Democrats’ own decisions, some congressional staff are also preparing for a new top Democrat on the health panel: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). That could set up an unusual pairing of two lawmakers who have often bucked their own party — and have occasionally found common cause with each other.
Should Paul become the leader of the health committee, he would represent a significant change from the outgoing top Republican, Burr, who sought to cultivate a reputation as a dealmaker. Burr worked alongside Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to craft a plan to tackle future pandemics and eventually found consensus on a deal to reauthorize critical fees funding a significant portion of the FDA’s budget.
Burr also has taken a conciliatory approach toward Fauci, praising him in September for his service, even as the GOP senator demanded more accountability from the federal government.
Kicking off Senate hearing on monkeypox, retiring GOP @SenatorBurr praises FAUCI — comments that weren’t in Burr’s prepared remarks.
BURR: Tony, I can’t thank you enough for your years of service. It’s been incredibly beneficial to the American people… I hate to see you go. pic.twitter.com/RifOUkDj5z
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) September 14, 2022
In contrast, Paul portrays himself as at war with Fauci and Democrats — and sometimes finds himself in fights with Republicans, too. The iconoclastic senator mocked the House GOP in March 2017 for its secrecy in crafting a plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, toting a copy machine around the Capitol building and drawing a crowd of reporters.
Paul later opposed legislation from Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to repeal and replace the ACA in the fall of 2017, helping deal a death blow to Donald Trump’s ambition of overturning Obamacare in his first year in office, even as GOP colleagues publicly petitioned him to support it. Paul had proposed his own repeal of the 2010 law, arguing to unwind many of its federal protections and replace them with measures such as health savings accounts, although his efforts failed.
More recently, Paul has staked out an increasingly skeptical posture on vaccines, fiercely opposing mandates requiring coronavirus shots and vowing in May 2021 that he wouldn’t get the shot because he’d already been infected. His office didn’t respond to a question on whether he’s received the coronavirus vaccine.
The Kentucky senator has previously come under fire for comments suggesting that he’s heard of cases where childhood vaccines have caused “mental disorders” — remarks he quickly walked back.
“I would worry about what might happen were he chair if the covid pandemic took a nastier turn, or something else appeared,” said Arthur L. Caplan, director of the medical ethics division at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “He’s shown himself willing to, in my opinion, bend the facts, particularly in matters like the power of passive immunity, allowing natural infection to be a substitute for vaccination.”
Democrats are poised for their own committee shake-up, regardless of the election’s outcome. Some lobbyists and Hill staff expect Murray to leave the panel to head up, or become ranking member, of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee if she is reelected next week. An aide to the senator said she is “focused on her reelection” and legislative work during the lame duck.
That could open up the health committee post for Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist — setting up a possible pairing with Paul that congressional staff described as unpredictable and potentially explosive.
“It goes from one of the most productive committees in the Senate to one of the least productive committees of the Senate,” one Senate GOP aide said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid.
In June, the two firebrands teamed up during a committee markup of legislation to reauthorize user fees that drug companies pay to the FDA. Sanders introduced a sweeping amendment to allow drug importation from Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries — a policy despised by the drug industry but favored by Paul, who has blasted America’s sky-high prescription drug prices.
“Well, I’ve always wanted to go to a Bernie rally — now I feel like I’ve been there,” Paul said after Sanders finished castigating pharmaceutical companies and introducing several amendments aimed at cracking down on the nation’s high drug prices. “I’m going to support Sanders’s first amendment on reimportation,” Paul continued.
The potential pairing could give drug importation its biggest congressional boost yet, though it would still be an uphill battle to pass in a divided Congress.
There may be some other areas where the two could set aside their differences.
“It’s probably a little mythology that they can’t work together,” said Chris Jennings, a longtime Democratic health policy consultant who worked in the White House during the Clinton and Obama years. He pointed to their work to combat the opioid scourge in their states, though conceded, “Will they disagree a lot? Of course.”
If Paul instead heads to the Senate Oversight Committee, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) would probably be next in line for the health panel’s chairmanship under GOP control. The gastroenterologist is known for being energetic and a policy wonk on health-care issues. Cassidy’s office declined to comment on his interest in the top slot, if Paul declined to take it. | 2022-11-02T03:39:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rand Paul, after vowing ‘Fire Fauci,’ could soon lead Senate covid probes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/02/rand-paul-senate-help-committee-chairman-covid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/02/rand-paul-senate-help-committee-chairman-covid/ |
Israelis voted in their fifth election in four years on Tuesday. Like its predecessors, this election was shaped by a tense contest between two motley camps — one opposed to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and another backing his bid to return to power. At the time of writing, exit polls showed that Netanyahu’s Likud party and his allies looked likely to muster 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, or Israeli parliament. That would be enough to oust a bloc led by centrist incumbent caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid. The actual vote count, though, is not over and Netanyahu’s projected winning margin could still get erased.
The most eye-catching projected result is the performance of far-right firebrand Itamar Ben-Gvir and his Jewish Power party, which, as part of a bloc of other right-wing parties, secured what may be the third biggest tranche of seats in the Knesset. No matter the steady rightward shift of Israeli politics over the last two decades, Ben-Gvir’s extremism was until not long ago seen as beyond the pale. As my colleagues detailed, he has his roots in the overtly racist Kach party, which was founded by radical American Rabbi Meir Kahane and banned by Israel for its racist and violent incitement. Ben-Gvir was once dubbed “the David Duke of Israel” and lionized Baruch Goldstein, the American Israeli terrorist who killed 29 Palestinian worshipers at Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994.
Following settler attack on Israeli activists and soldiers in West Bank, Labor party head is calling for Knesset member Itamar Ben Gvir and his Jewish Power party to be deemed terror supporters. https://t.co/ierrhDA0v6
— Mairav Zonszein מרב זונשיין (@MairavZ) October 20, 2022
But, in a future hypothetical Netanyahu government, a politician who openly embraces ethnic cleansing may be poised to become a power broker, even commanding key ministries and dictating national policy. Such an ascension was made possible by the controversial former prime minister’s search for allies as he seeks to reclaim power and evade the reach of an ongoing corruption trial. “Netanyahu opened the door for Ben-Gvir to participate in mainstream politics,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, to my colleagues. “Now he is becoming a force.”
At the same time, analysts pointed to somewhat low turnout among the roughly 2 million Palestinian Israelis who live within Israel’s 1967 borders and are able to vote. Their disenchantment is deep, tethered to both historic grievances over their marginalization within Israel but also new frustrations over the inefficacy of the Lapid-led government, which included a right-wing Arab party in its fragile coalition.
Then there is the deteriorating security situation nearby in northern areas of the West Bank, where the Israeli military has expanded counterterrorism operations in recent months. The past year has seen a spike in Jewish settler vigilante violence as well as Palestinian militancy.
“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,” wrote my colleague Claire Parker.
Final update from the aChord Center/Heb-U. After the polls closed and according to a statistical forecasting model combined with reports from polling stations sampled throughout the day, the aChord Center estimates that the voting rate in Arab society was about 54%.
For the 5.5 million Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, every Israeli election is a reminder of “their exclusion from the political system that controls much of their lives,” my colleagues wrote. That is more intensely the case now: Repeated cycles of Israeli electioneering featured no discussion of the status of millions of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation while steadily elevating the interests of sometimes extremist Jewish settlers living in their midst.
The much-ballyhooed Abraham Accords, normalization agreements forged between Israel and a handful of Arab monarchies, deepened feelings of Palestinian alienation and made the already faint prospect of a viable independent Palestinian state seem all the more remote. For many Israelis, that’s not an issue; for Palestinians, that’s their reality.
“The Israeli population is used to not remembering the conflict and the occupation because it’s a hidden subject,” Rula Hardal, a Palestinian Israeli political scientist at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, told The Post.
But the problem for the Palestinians lies even closer to home. The Palestinian National Authority (PA) — the political entity that holds sway over the West Bank with the support of Israel and Western powers, especially the United States — is in the midst of a prolonged crisis of legitimacy. Its 87-year-old leader, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, has maintained his grip on power for a generation and shows little interest in relinquishing it. Ordinary Palestinians and civil society activists say they are chafing under the PA’s mounting authoritarianism, defined by Abbas’s penchant to rule by decree.
The last set of Palestinian elections were held in 2006; any Palestinian born in 1987 or after has not been able to vote in a Palestinian election. In 2007, a violent split between Abbas’s Fatah party and the Islamist faction Hamas saw the latter seize power in Gaza and send Palestinian politics into paralysis. That stasis was deepened by an Israeli blockade of Gaza and the entrenchment of a broadly effective Israeli system of control over the West Bank.
Last year, Abbas postponed the first planned elections in 15 years; some analysts suggested the move was motivated by his fear of losing control to rivals within and outside his party. Last month, representatives from Fatah and Hamas met on the sidelines of an Arab League summit in Algeria and announced plans to hold elections within a year. But back home, there was little optimism about what this apparent new understanding may bring.
Netanyahu appears positioned to return to power, Israeli exit polls show
In Pictures| Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas arrived today in Algeria to participate in the 31st summit of the Arab League. pic.twitter.com/GuPy54X18p
For years, the PA has functioned as a security guarantor for Israel and the United States. It has been a helpless bystander as Israel has expanded settlements in parts of the West Bank and carried out what critics describe as “creeping annexation” of Palestinian lands. It coordinates with Israel on security operations and conducts raids and arrests on Israel’s behalf. If the ailing Abbas has any successor, it’s rumored to be Hussein al-Sheikh, one of the PA’s chief points of contact with Israeli security agencies and a well-known figure in Washington. He also is deeply unpopular among Palestinians.
“The PA keeps a lid on the joint,” Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told me. But the chaotic and sclerotic nature of the system over which Abbas presides means few Palestinians hold out much hope for real elections to reinvigorate their moribund political status quo. “It’s not even a question of who” will follow the ailing Abbas, Buttu added, but “a question of how” that transition can even happen.
“It’s not entirely Abbas’s fault: we live under a deliberately cruel occupation, and everything was done to make the PA fail and present them as subcontractors for Israeli security,” Hanan Ashrawi, a former top PLO leader who quit in 2020, told the Guardian.
Ashrawi warned that the prevailing conditions spell trouble ahead. “The weaker the system, the more it closes in on itself and the more oppressive it becomes,” she said. “I don’t know what shape the future will take. … It could be peaceful. But the longer it takes to see real change, violence becomes more probable. If you don’t allow for peaceful democratic ways of transferring power, people will find other means to express themselves.” | 2022-11-02T04:58:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After Israel’s election, Palestinians need to vote - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/palestinian-vote-election-israel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/palestinian-vote-election-israel/ |
Ask Amy: I’m annoyed my toddler nephew refused to give me a hug
One that is particularly irksome is letting said toddler choose whether they want to hug an immediate family member.
— J in N.Y.
J: If you had focused on other choices toddlers might make — such as deciding when their own bedtime is, or deciding to pull the cat’s tail — I’d be in complete agreement with you.
You’ve focused on one issue — physical contact — where in my opinion it is not only okay for toddlers to make their own choice, but it is vital that they make their own choice.
I’ve encouraged her to wear makeup a few times, and she’s gotten compliments about it. Is it okay for me to urge her to wear makeup and to spend more time on her appearance?
Unsure: No, it is not okay for you to urge your daughter to wear makeup.
In terms of telling her to spend more time on her appearance, you should encourage her only to take good care of herself. This includes good hygiene, eating well, getting enough sleep and exercise, and fostering good and healthy friendships.
Fan: I have the feeling a lot of family members are going to be volunteering to do the dishes this holiday season. | 2022-11-02T04:58:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I'm annoyed my toddler nephew refused to give me a hug - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/02/ask-amy-parenting-toddlers-decisions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/02/ask-amy-parenting-toddlers-decisions/ |
Miss Manners: I paid for my friend’s lunch but now I want my money back
After we were seated, he didn’t want to order any food, and kept his ear buds in to answer calls. He finally ordered something, took one bite and said he didn’t want it. He also kept looking around the restaurant to see if he knew anyone there whom he could talk to. He wanted to abruptly leave because he realized he had an appointment to talk to a neighbor.
The emotions Miss Manners is experiencing must be what the fire investigator feels when, moments after surveying the rubble, she is asked whether it was arson.
Your friend ought not to have reneged on his promise to return the money. But, working backward, these were also rude: your asking him to return the money, his inattention and attempts to escape during the meal, and your idea that in paying for the food, you purchased his attention.
Medical excuses have become too commonplace to retain any gracefulness — or, Miss Manners suspects, much power to convince, no matter how true they may be. | 2022-11-02T04:58:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: I paid for friend's lunch but now I want my money back - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/02/miss-manners-rude-lunch-friend/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/02/miss-manners-rude-lunch-friend/ |
Elon Musk’s Twitter is working on a ‘high’-risk paid video feature
The tool would let video creators charge users for access. It could come with some big pitfalls.
Elon Musk, shown here at a news conference in February, is pushing Twitter to come up with new ways of making money. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Elon Musk‘s Twitter is pushing ahead with plans to charge for content on the social media site, now with videos.
Twitter is working on a feature to allow people to post videos to the site and then charge users to view them, with the social media company taking a cut of the proceeds, according to an internal email obtained by The Washington Post. The company appears to be aiming to rush out the new feature, referred to as Paywalled Video, with a target of just one to two weeks before launch.
But the team has “identified the risk as high,” according to the email, which was sent by an employee on Twitter’s “Product Trust” team. The email cites “risks related to copyrighted content, creator/user trust issues, and legal compliance,” and says the feature will undergo a brief internal review around those issues before moving forward.
The timeline could signal Musk’s intent to move far more quickly in building and launching new features than Twitter has in the past — even if that means taking on greater risks of abuse or liability. While Twitter makes most of its money from advertising, Musk has already said he wants to charge users, including for the blue check mark of verification.
Elon Musk courts Twitter advertisers as he seeks new streams of revenue
It could also push Twitter, which is unusual among major social networks for allowing nudity and consensual pornography, into competition with sites that specialize in adult content.
According to the internal email describing the new video feature, which has not yet been announced, “When a creator composes a tweet with a video, the creator can enable the paywall once a video has been added to the tweet.” They can then choose from a preset list of prices, such as $1, $2, $5, or $10.
The email doesn’t specify what types of videos creators might post, though it does raise the concern that users might post copyrighted content or use the feature to scam others. One Twitter employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said it seemed like a feature that would likely be used at least partly for adult content.
Analysis: The problem behind all of Twitter’s other problems
Twitter estimates around 13 percent of its content is NSFW, or “not safe for work,” according to Reuters, which included the figure in a story last month about how Twitter was losing its most active users. NSFW content, along with cryptocurrency content, were the fastest-growing areas of English-speaking Twitter, according to an internal presentation viewed by The Post and first reported by Reuters.
Most big advertisers shun NSFW content and are hesitant to advertise on platforms that have a reputation for containing pornography. The issue has been one that the marketing industry has had conversations with Twitter with over the years, according to an executive at one of the largest advertising agency who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Rivals such as Facebook and TikTok do not allow pornographic content.
In August, The Verge reported that Twitter had developed and then shelved plans for a subscription service explicitly focused on adult content, reminiscent of the lucrative adult platform OnlyFans. But the project went through an intensive review by an internal “Red Team” tasked with evaluating all the possible risks, and was ultimately derailed by concern that Twitter would be unable to ensure that it wasn’t monetizing illegal child pornography or sexual abuse.
Musk has been in New York this week, partly to meet with advertisers. Last week he posted a note on his Twitter promising advertisers the site wouldn’t become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
Here’s what Elon Musk has said about his plans for Twitter | 2022-11-02T06:03:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elon Musk's Twitter is working on a ‘high’-risk paid video feature - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/01/elon-musk-twitter-paywalled-video/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/01/elon-musk-twitter-paywalled-video/ |
Ukraine live briefing: Kyiv, Moscow to halt grain ships Wednesday
U.S. officials still maintain that Moscow is unlikely to go nuclear in Ukraine. But Washington doesn’t have many good options to prevent Putin’s worst intentions.
At an Oct. 27 speech at the Valdai Discussion Club, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “The only country in the world which has used nuclear weapons against a nonnuclear state was the United States of America.” (Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool via Reuters)
As Russia punctuates its mounting losses in Ukraine with threats about nuclear weapons and “dirty bombs,” Western leaders are being forced to grapple with whether Moscow might be planning a dramatic escalation on the battlefield — a development that would leave the United States and NATO with a limited set of options to respond.
The president and his advisers have been closely tracking the Kremlin’s signaling, which Biden has opined is pitching the world closer to “Armageddon” than at any point since the Cuban missile crisis. Cabinet-level officials have been warning publicly that any move by Russia to make good on threats to go nuclear will be answered “decisively” with “catastrophic consequences.”
“The talk of the use of a weapon of that sort is dangerous and irresponsible,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters last week about Russia’s nuclear threats, adding, “If this happened ... you would see a very significant response from the international community.”
Administration officials have demurred when asked to specify what that response might look like, citing the need for strategic ambiguity — and the value of keeping their options open. They have been plenty specific, they say, with Russia via private channels, including direct engagements between Cabinet-level officials and their counterparts in Moscow that have been increasing in frequency as the Kremlin’s rhetoric grows more threatening. They also stress that the United States has a vast array of response options from which to choose.
Sanctions would be an obvious means of punishment — but some experts worry that punitive economic moves alone will not be sufficient to bring Putin to heel.
“Sanctions don’t have a proven track record of serving as a successful deterrent,” said Eddie Fishman, a former State Department employee who worked on the Russian sanctions portfolio during the Obama administration and now teaches at Columbia University. “Unfortunately the ship has sailed on that. … The United States has to be prepared to use military force.”
A military response would be a more forceful display of Western repudiation, but a retaliatory attack on Russian interests risks igniting a war between NATO and Russia, something the Biden administration has thus far studiously tried to avoid.
The idea of meeting a nuclear strike with a nuclear strike, according to experts, is expressly off the table.
“I do not think the United States would even contemplate a nuclear response. If Putin is bad by blowing up a nuke, then the U.S. is also bad by blowing up a nuke,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists. “You break the taboo, and you don’t get anything out of it — the only thing you get out of it is more nuclear escalation.”
That leaves the United States in strategically uncharted territory. For decades, the whole approach to maintaining, updating and growing the U.S. nuclear arsenal has been to deter attacks on the homeland, U.S. allies and other interests. It is far less clear what the playbook is for checking a rival nuclear power that carries out a radioactive attack against a third-party country in a manner that offends morally and upends decades of precedent — but doesn’t necessarily pose a direct, physical threat to U.S. or NATO soil.
“The political context, the intelligence, the intent and our overall context here would matter a lot,” said Thomas Karako, who runs the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, throwing out a few example considerations: “What was the nature of nuclear use, what was the altitude, what were the effects, how many people died?”
The heightened concern over a Russian radioactive attack has centered around two key scenarios: Moscow using a dirty bomb or a “tactical” nuclear weapon against Ukraine.
The dirty bomb speculation is tied to comments made by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, and repeated last week by Putin, suggesting Ukraine planned to detonate a device loaded with fissile material on its own territory. U.S. officials believe it is more likely that Russia’s warnings were in fact the opening steps of a false flag operation, signaling the Kremlin’s intentions to use such a weapon and blame Ukrainians for the fallout, literally.
Those comments added new urgency to worries that Moscow might draw from its copious arsenal of low-yield nuclear weapons to strike a devastating but geographically limited blow against Ukraine. Such a move would not only terrorize the local population, but throw down a gauntlet at the feet of the rest of the globe, which has not seen a nuclear weapon used in combat since the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — attacks carried out by the United States, as Putin has made a point of recalling.
“The only country in the world which has used nuclear weapons against a nonnuclear state was the United States of America; they used it twice against Japan,” he reminded attendees of the Valdai Discussion Club last week. “What was the goal? There was no military need for it at all. ... The U.S. is the only country that has done it because it believed it was in its interests.”
Yet despite the urgency that such potential developments have injected into government planning, Washington has mostly downplayed the idea that Putin will make good on his threats. Austin said last week there have been “no indications” Russia is actually planning to use a dirty bomb. Military leaders have similarly sought to defuse Biden’s recent declaration that Putin was “not joking” about a potential “Armageddon,” stressing it was far more likely that the Kremlin’s beleaguered strongman was letting off some steam, as Ukrainian fighters push the Russian military into a series of embarrassing retreats.
Biden walked back his own comments days later, saying that he didn’t think that Putin would actually use nuclear weapons.
In recent days, Putin also has been trying to backpedal. Last week, in his Valdai Discussion Club speech, he insisted that his government had “never said anything proactively about Russia potentially using nuclear weapons; all we did was hint in response to statements made by Western leaders.” Putin also insisted that Russia had “no need” to use either a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb, arguing “there is no sense in it for us, neither political nor military.”
Western powers warn Russia could use 'dirty bomb' claim to escalate Ukraine war
But U.S. officials are loath to let their guard down. According to administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their assessments of the battlefield, Russia is unlikely to be cowed into a complete retreat anytime soon, even as Ukraine’s recent battlefield victories put its forces on the backfoot. And as Russia exhausts its troops and its conventional arsenal, the danger is rising of Moscow turning to more insidious tactics and weapons to beat back Ukraine’s counteroffensives.
“The practical effect of their depletion of their conventional forces is unfortunately an even greater reliance on their nuclear forces,” a senior defense official told reporters last week, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. nuclear strategy.
Against that backdrop, U.S. officials have been acutely resistant to signaling any sort of limits on using the U.S. nuclear arsenal — the only one in the world of a size that can rival Russia’s — to constrain Putin’s intentions. They continued to stay mum even after French President Emmanuel Macron stated earlier this month that France would not meet a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine with a nuclear strike on Russia — a position which he later defended under fire, stating “we do not want a World War.”
Military analysts believe that in a head-to-head matchup of conventional forces, NATO far and away has the advantage.
“That’s why he’s been making these nuclear threats all along anyway; he’s been trying to deter NATO from getting involved conventionally,” said Heather Williams, director of the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Yet officials and experts increasingly think that what may bring Putin back from the brink of radioactive warfare is the threat not of mutually assured destruction from the West, but of losing his last remaining allies.
Russia has managed to keep its war machine and domestic economy afloat despite an array of punishing Western sanctions, thanks to oil and gas sales. Over the eight months since the Ukraine invasion, Russia has pumped fossil fuels not only into the energy grids of Europe, but the massive markets of China and India as well.
Beijing and New Delhi, which are both nuclear powers, have remained largely neutral on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, repeatedly abstaining from key United Nations votes condemning Moscow’s war and recent annexation of Ukrainian territory. They have thus far declined to embrace Western efforts to establish price caps on Russian oil that might limit energy profits flowing back to Moscow.
But experts doubt China and India would stand by Moscow should it employ a nuclear weapon.
“For Putin, any nuclear use is a huge risk, because he can’t know for certain, one way or another, how New Delhi and Beijing will respond to it,” Williams said, stressing that the Asian economic powerhouses might distance themselves from Russia if Putin crosses a line.
If Russia’s last remaining friends were to demonstrate their disdain over use of a radioactive weapon, it could pull the rug out from under Moscow’s entire war effort.
“Using nuclear weapons, it might win the battle,” Williams said, “but not the war.” | 2022-11-02T07:04:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia’s ‘dirty bomb’ threats challenge the nuclear calculus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/02/us-russia-ukraine-nuclear-weapons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/02/us-russia-ukraine-nuclear-weapons/ |
North Korean missile crosses maritime border for 1st time; South returns fire
A woman walks past a television screen at a railway station in Seoul on Wednesday. It shows a news broadcast with live footage of a South Korean island where residents were told to evacuate to bunkers after North Korea fired missiles. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images)
North Korea launched at least 10 missiles on Wednesday, Seoul said, with one of the projectiles falling near South Korean waters for the first time since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War and triggering a response from the South’s air force.
Three of the 10 or more missiles were launched from Wonsan, a port on North Korea’s east coast, toward the sea between Japan and Korea at around 8:51 a.m. local time, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said. One of them landed near South Korean waters, about 35 miles from Sokcho, a South Korean seaside city famous for its seafood and home to 80,000 people, it added.
On the nearby South Korean island of Ulleung, located 104 miles from where the North Korean missile landed, air raid sirens blared, according to the South’s Defense Ministry. No one was hurt after the island’s 9,000 residents were told to seek shelter, a spokesman for the island’s local government said.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said he had ordered the military to ensure that North Korea “pays a clear price for its provocation,” according to his office. South Korea’s military said it would respond “firmly” in a separate statement in the morning. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin denounced the act during a phone call, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said in a news release.
At around noon local time, South Korea’s armed forces said that an undisclosed number of fighters had fired three air-to-ground precision missiles near North Korean waters. “We remind the North that it bears responsibility for everything that happens from now on. It has continued provocations despite our repeated warnings,” the South’s military said.
The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, meaning the two Koreas are still technically at war.
North Korea says it tested nuclear-capable missiles aimed at South
North Korea’s missile launch adds to the two dozen or so missile events already conducted by the Kim Jong Un regime this year. In 2022, Pyongyang has fired the most missiles in any single year since it began testing missiles in the 1980s, according to figures compiled by the Center for Strategic International Studies, a Washington think tank.
North Korea also escalated tensions last month, firing a ballistic missile over Japan for the first time in five years.
The regime has sought to accelerate the development of its nuclear weapons program under Kim, who inherited power after his father died in 2011. The younger Kim, believed to be in his late 30s by U.S. and South Korean officials, has overseen four of the North’s six nuclear bomb tests, and the great majority of the regime’s missiles tests to date.
Yoon’s office said South Korean officials had expressed anger during a national security meeting after the missile launch, infuriated by the North’s decision to conduct a provocation while South Korea is undergoing a period of mourning.
A crowd crush in Seoul last week killed more than 150 people, most of them young adults. Yoon declared a period of national mourning until Nov. 5.
“This shows the North Korean regime is against humanity and humanitarianism,” Yoon’s office said. | 2022-11-02T07:04:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | North Korea, South Korea trade missiles across maritime border - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/north-korea-missile-launch-south-border/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/north-korea-missile-launch-south-border/ |
Lee Sang-eun and his sister Lee Eun-sook are second-generation owners of a framing store in Itaewon. The siblings have lived through many of South Korea’s modern peacetime tragedies. (Jean Chung/for The Washington Post)
SEOUL — As one of Seoul’s most diverse neighborhoods, Itaewon is a destination for a seemingly endless list of things. Bustling nightlife. Foreigner- and LGBT-friendly businesses. A dynamic food scene. Quirky shops lining its winding, hilly streets. And, notably, the annual Halloween weekend celebration, when tens of thousands of Koreans and foreigners alike converge on the neighborhood to show off costumes and mingle.
But Saturday night, the celebration turned deadly as at least 156 people died in a crowd crush, most of them young people. As questions swirl about whether the government failed to adequately protect people there, the tragedy has left residents, business owners and community members in Itaewon grappling with the enormity of loss on its streets, but also with how to move forward.
“It just becomes part of this national identity,” James Chung, a Korean American who lives in Itaewon, said of the tragedy, recalling other major incidents like the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014 off South Korea’s southern coast, which left 304 dead, or the collapse of a department store in Seoul in 1995, which killed more than 500.
“I hope it doesn’t — I mean, it will change [the neighborhood]. It already has,” said Chung, 30, who works at a law firm. “I just don’t know to what extent, or what it’ll look like.” He compared the significance of Halloween weekend in Itaewon to the New Year’s Eve ball drop in New York’s Times Square.
In recent days, the annual festivities have been characterized as just a drunken party, while for some, it’s actually “a very wholesome event,” said James Davisson, 26, who teaches English to defectors from North Korea and is a frequent visitor to Itaewon. He was in the neighborhood Saturday night with his parents, visiting from the United States, but left before the crowd crush happened. Most of his students are the same age as the people killed in the crush, he said, adding that because of the pandemic, this year was the first for many of his students to attend and celebrate. “For this to be their first experience” celebrating Halloween in Itaewon, Davisson said, “it really broke my heart.”
Chung said Saturday’s tragedy was “harder than just one outbreak, or a stabbing or something. It feels different.” One of the first coronavirus outbreaks in Seoul was in Itaewon, leading many in Korea — a largely homogenous, conservative society — to wrongly associate the neighborhood, foreigners and the gay community with the pandemic. There are fears that a similar stigma will cloud the neighborhood following Saturday’s tragedy.
During the pandemic, “there was this public persecution, like, ‘Avoid that area because nothing good comes of that area. Because of those dirty foreigners. Those dirty gays,’ ” said Linus Kim, a Korean American man who opened a barbecue restaurant in Itaewon in 2014. “We’re afraid of that persecution again.”
“I’m actually terrified to say this out loud,” Kim said, “but there’s a certain sentiment going around — the whispers are, ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ ”
Most businesses in Itaewon were closed the week after the crush, encouraged to do so as President Yoon Suk-yeol declared a national period of mourning. “Victims of the Itaewon incident, we mourn for you,” was written in Korean on banners hung from streetlights in the area. Electronic taxi displays read in English, “Pray for Itaewon.”
Still, some businesses remained open, with residents and workers still populating the area. Kim decided to open his restaurant, Linus’ BBQ, on Tuesday after closing for two days in the wake of the tragedy. “People still have to eat,” he said.
The kebab shop across from the alley where the crush happened remained open, feeding the community into the early hours Sunday even as body bags lined the street. On Tuesday afternoon, it was one of the only establishments open on the block, and a mix of Koreans and foreigners were eating there — looking on as mourners gathered across the street, and Buddhist monks led a chant, their wooden instruments audible from inside the quiet, somber restaurant. Two men working there declined to comment as they assembled a steady stream of orders.
Cakeshop, a popular nightclub at the west end of Itaewon’s main street, said in a statement posted on social media that it would be closed this week “out of respect” following the crush. “Our beautiful neighborhood has had a tragedy unfold that is truly indescribable … ” it said. “So many young lives gone, should never have been this way.”
Lee Bu-yong, 69, has lived in the area for more than 50 years. She said the streets of the neighborhood felt “dark” — both literally and figuratively.
In 1994, her then-teenage daughter barely survived a bridge collapse in Seoul. The bus she was on had just crossed the bridge before it collapsed, she said. That’s why Lee knows what went through the minds of every parent who had a child in Itaewon last week, she said.
“They were too young,” she said of the dead.
Kevin Kim, 28, runs a cafe that doubles as a bar a quarter-mile from the disaster site. He is haunted by the fact that dozens of young women were killed. “Many of my cafe’s customers are young women,” he said, including on Saturday. He mused that some of those customers may have died later that evening.
Now, Kim is bracing for a potential financial disaster. He expects the streets of Itaewon to be quiet for the remainder of the year. That might make it difficult to keep up with his shop’s rent, which costs a few thousand dollars every month, he said.
Lee Sang-eun and his sister Lee Eun-sook are second-generation owners of a framing store in Itaewon. The siblings — 54 and 51, respectively — have lived through many of South Korea’s modern peacetime tragedies, including the 1995 department store collapse.
But the disaster in Itaewon hits closer to home, Eun-sook said. The dead included many in their 20s, the same age group as her son, who is serving in South Korea’s military.
Despite expectations that the tragedy will depress incomes for small-store owners in the area, Itaewon has been through worse, Eun-sook said. The coronavirus pandemic, by far the worst financial disaster for merchants in the neighborhood, made them stronger, she said.
Itaewon is “incredibly resilient,” Linus Kim said. His restaurant “almost disappeared during covid,” he said. If it weren’t for the support of the community, “we wouldn’t have made it.”
Karleta Peterson, an American DJ living in Seoul, said that while it was “too soon to say how” the Itaewon will grapple with the tragedy, “I have absolute utter faith in this community that we will move forward from this.”
Liana Weeks, another American DJ who lives with Peterson in the Itaewon area, said that instead of being remembered as a place of danger and tragedy, Itaewon should be known for what it is — a community and a safe space for many, including for Koreans. “It’s a place that certain Koreans come to find themselves and find home and find community and find love, where they otherwise don’t have love and acceptance,” she said.
A Korean TV drama, “Itaewon Class,” embraced the diversity of the area. The neighborhood was hailed in the song “Itaewon Freedom,” which Peterson said “shows that Itaewon is a special place” where Koreans can come to “just exist without feeling they have to appease anybody except themselves.”
“People need to know that this is a thriving, vibrant, loving, wonderful community that has provided safety for so many people,” Peterson said. “And it will continue to be that way.” | 2022-11-02T09:06:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seoul's Itaewon community ponders future after crowd crush - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/seoul-itaewon-crowd-crush-aftermath/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/seoul-itaewon-crowd-crush-aftermath/ |
Hard-line Republican gains in Congress could elevate demands for impeachment, investigations and a debt ceiling showdown
Anna Paulina Luna, Republican candidate for Florida Congressional District 13, speaks during a Get Out To Vote rally Oct. 18 in Tampa. (Chris O'Meara/AP)
And in Oklahoma, the Freedom Caucus’s co-founder, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), cut an ad for Josh Brecheen, a state legislator who introduced bills against teaching evolution in schools and is now running for election in a solid red congressional district.
Luna, Collins and Brecheen are among the likely freshmen on the cusp of joining the House class of 2023 if Republicans have a strong night Nov. 8. They’re all running with the support of the campaign arm of the House Freedom Caucus, the hard-line bloc that has evolved from its early days as a secretive tea party brotherhood to become the de facto vehicle for most of the House Republicans closely aligned with Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mike Cloud of Texas and Mary Miller of Illinois.
“The Freedom Caucus is where the fight is,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said in an October podcast interview with caucus chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.). “We had a great crop of freshmen members, male and female, come into the Freedom Caucus in 2020 … and I’m seeing another good crop of people coming into the Freedom Caucus this time.”
“We need to hold investigations, people need to be held accountable and we need to be willing to take tough votes,” Perry said on the podcast with Biggs. “If we were in charge, this is what would be happening, and all we can do is try and force our leadership to have this discussion.”
If the Freedom Caucus increases their ranks significantly, it will be easier to gain leverage. Members have already discussed making stark demands of leadership in exchange for their votes, in particular a request to bring back a rule that gives members the ability to recall the speaker at any time — a direct threat to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) should he take the gavel.
McCarthy, after watching how the Freedom Caucus ended the speakerships of John A. Boehner and Paul D. Ryan, learned early on to keep them close. He is already signaling that he’ll take up some of the bloc’s demands, such as repealing the IRS expansion, blocking future aid to Ukraine as it fights Russia’s invasion and using the debt ceiling as leverage to win concessions from the Biden administration.
In the primaries, McCarthy’s allies worked quietly to weed out some of the most controversial candidates, aiming past a raw majority for what they termed a “governing majority,” with mixed success. Where they failed, far-right nominees are now making some races more competitive than they might have been. Joe Kent in Washington state and Sandy Smith in North Carolina both overcame resistance from McCarthy’s team with the backing of Trump and the House Freedom Fund.
Now Kent, who spoke at a 2021 rally for Jan. 6 defendants, faces a tight race against Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who has raised more than $2 million since the primary. In a recent debate, Kent said people should be able to have machine guns (federally banned since 1934), said the Jan. 6 riot looked “like an intelligence operation” and called people prosecuted for attacking the Capitol “political prisoners.”
Smith tweeted on the day of the attack that she “marched from the Monument to the Capitol” and has called for executing people who she falsely claims stole the 2020 election. She has also been accused of domestic violence, and is now on defense in a district that Trump carried. The Cook Political Report rates the race as likely Democratic.
Some Trump allies running in swing districts, such as John Gibbs in Michigan, are steering clear from saying whether they would join the Freedom Caucus. “I haven’t really gone that far,” Gibbs said in an interview last month. “I’m focused on getting there in the first place.”
Luna, the far-right Florida candidate, survived a $1.6 million barrage in the primary from Republican donors acting without McCarthy’s direct coordination. Now she’s facing a well-funded Democratic opponent in Eric Lynn, a former Pentagon adviser in the Obama administration. Lynn’s cousin, Illinois investor Justin Ishbia, supplied $5 million to a super PAC attacking Luna for her stances on abortion and the 2020 election. Cook rates the seat likely Republican.
Luna’s campaign received more than $377,000 from the House Freedom Fund — more than any non-incumbent — plus more than $126,000 in outside spending. She has campaigned with Greene and, on her podcast, praised Greene, Jordan, Boebert and other Freedom Caucus members as “incredible thought leaders.” Luna confirmed to The Washington Post that she would join the Freedom Caucus.
“We do not need another Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress, and we definitely do not want someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene representing our community,” Lynn said in an interview. “Her being out of the mainstream is what is gaining us momentum.”
The Luna campaign said she wasn’t available for an interview. In written responses to questions, Luna said she called herself a “pro-life extremist” to make fun of Lynn trying to “stereotype” her.
“Eric Lynn is lying about me and my positions to distract from the fact that he’s just another liberal rubber stamp for the reckless Biden/Pelosi agenda,” she said.
In Tennessee’s 5th district, Andy Ogles has presented himself as the state’s “most conservative mayor” — accusing the Biden administration of “weaponizing covid,” dismissing rape and incest exceptions to abortion bands as a “red herring used by left and radicals” and describing the election as a “spiritual war.” In a primary debate, Ogles said Biden should be impeached and, alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), tried for treason. He won the primary with a plurality of 37 percent, and is now favored to enter Congress in a predominantly Republican district.
After seeing Ogles speak in person at least nine times, Randy Stamps, a lifelong Republican from Hendersonville and former political director of the state party, said he was disappointed to hear divisive rhetoric about masks and no discussion of solutions to improve the economy or work across party lines. Stamps publicly announced his support for Ogles’s Democratic opponent, state senator Heidi Campbell.
“He’s going to do whatever Jim Jordan tells him to do,” Stamps said of Ogles. “Sending someone to Washington who’s beholden to people like Jim Jordan is not going to do anything to make this country move forward.”
“He’s one of these candidates who won the primary because he was furthest to the right, endorsed by Trump, believes in the ‘Big Lie,’ says he’s a white Christian nationalist,” Campbell said. “The more people that get elected who are on board with sort of this theocratic, extreme agenda, the more freedom we’re going to lose.”
Crane, the Arizona House candidate, is in a hard-fought race to unseat incumbent Democrat Tom O’Halleran. Crane and the National Republican Congressional Committee have spent more than $3 million on ads, against $4.7 million by O’Halleran and Democratic allies. Some Democratic ads attack Crane for promoting “conspiracy theories spread by white supremacists” over footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Cook rates the seat as leaning Republican.
Crane has said that he is being mentored by Freedom Caucus members and plans to work closely with them in Congress. “First, I’m going to beat Tom O’Halleran, then I’m going to join the Freedom Caucus,” Crane said to cheers and applause at a September campaign stop in Casa Grande, between Phoenix and Tuscon. “The Republican Party now has played defense for far too long.”
In the speech, Crane recounted his service as a Navy SEAL and his business selling bottle openers made out of bullets that appeared on the TV game show “Shark Tank.” Crane also encouraged people to watch a speech by a right-wing pastor about “Cultural Marxism,” which the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as an antisemitic conspiracy theory. In 2020, Crane posted to Facebook supporting a conspiracy theory that world leaders staged the covid pandemic, and comparing vaccination policies to Nazi Germany.
The Crane campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Several more new candidates endorsed by both Trump and the Freedom Caucus are all but assured to win in safe seats. In Ohio, former Trump aide Max Miller is on track to replace Anthony Gonzalez, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the insurrection. Miller has been accused of aggressive behavior toward women, including slapping his then-girlfriend, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, according to Politico. Miller’s lawyer denied the assault.
Harriet Hageman is a shoo-in for Wyoming’s sole congressional seat after her primary win over Rep. Liz Cheney (R), who supported impeachment and served as vice chair of the House Jan. 6 investigation. Hageman received almost $500,000 in direct support from the House Freedom Fund or affiliated outside spending. She has falsely called the 2020 election rigged and cited the discredited conspiracy theory movie “2,000 Mules.” A spokesperson confirmed Hageman will be joining the Freedom Caucus.
Eric Burlison — a Missouri state senator who sponsored a bill to ban state and local enforcement of federal gun regulations — received an endorsement from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and additional funding from the House Freedom Fund for his congressional bid. Keith Self, who became the nominee in a solidly Republican Texas district after incumbent GOP Rep. Van Taylor admitted to an affair and withdrew, ran a campaign emphasizing election fraud and has said he wants to serve on the House Administration Committee, which settles disputes in congressional races. His campaign received $5,000 from the House Freedom Fund.
Other incoming MAGA candidates have been less clear about aligning themselves with the Freedom Caucus. Ryan Zinke, Trump’s scandal-plagued former interior secretary, is favored to win a Republican-leaning seat in Montana. Zinke hasn’t said if he’d join and his campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment. Neither did the campaign of Russell Fry, the Trump-endorsed congressional candidate in South Carolina who unseated Rep. Tom Rice, another of the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment.
Derrick Van Orden, a Republican running for Congress in Wisconsin, was also outside the Capitol on Jan. 6. Unlike fellow attendees Smith and House candidate J.R. Majewski in Ohio, Van Orden is the only one favored to win by Cook, which rates his race as likely Republican. National Democrats haven’t invested heavily in the race. Van Orden hasn’t said if he plans to join the Freedom Caucus.
“We are taking nothing for granted and not measuring any curtains,” he said in a statement. “Ask me again November 9th.”
Biden says Democratic election wins will bring ‘fundamental shift’ on economy | 2022-11-02T09:11:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New class of combative MAGA candidates poised to roil House GOP - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/new-class-combative-maga-candidates-poised-roil-house-gop/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/new-class-combative-maga-candidates-poised-roil-house-gop/ |
The comedian James Corden attends a gala in New York in May. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
For years, social media sites have been decried as cesspools where trolls abound and users get mad about everything. That’s the point CBS late-night host James Corden was trying to make on Monday night when he took a crack at Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk and his penchant for describing the platform as a “town square.”
“But it isn’t, because if someone puts up a poster in a town square that says ‘guitar lessons available,’ you don’t get people in the town [who] go, ‘I don’t want to play the guitar! I want to play the piano!’ ” Corden said, arms flailing. “Well, then that sign wasn’t for you. It was for somebody else! You don’t have to get mad about all of it.”
Laughs broke out in the audience of “The Late Late Show.” But Twitter users realized that same joke had been made before — almost word-for-word, by another well-known comedian.
“They choose to read my tweet, and then take that personally,” Gervais said of angry Twitter users that year. “That’s like going into a town square, seeing a big notice board and there’s a notice — ‘guitar lessons’ — and you go, ‘But I don’t … want guitar lessons.’
“Fine! It’s not for you, then,” he added. “Just walk away, don’t worry about it.”
The nearly identical punchline and phrasing prompted Gervais on Tuesday to post — and then delete — a tweet reading, “The bit about the town square advert for guitar lessons is brilliant” alongside the clip of Corden.
When asked why he had excised the post, the five-time Golden Globes host said he “started to feel sorry” for Corden, with a laughing crying emoji included. Another user questioned whether Corden had asked to use the joke.
“No,” Gervais responded. “I reckon one of the writers ‘came up with it’ for him. I doubt he would knowingly just copy such a famous stand up routine word for word like that.”
That might well be the case, according to a message Corden wrote on the same platform both comedians took a swing at.
“Inadvertently told a brilliant Ricky Gervais joke on the show last night, obviously not knowing it came from him,” Corden tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “It’s brilliant, because it’s a Ricky Gervais joke. You can watch all Ricky’s excellent specials on Netflix.”
Repeating material is nothing new in the comedy world. According to research by Patrick Reilly, an organizational theorist and economic sociologist, comedians throughout the early 20th century would perform jokes that had been told for some time, often snagging them from colleagues. But everything changed — and joke theft became a big deal — in the 1960s and 1970s, when televised shows and comedy clubs made it easier to catch comedians in the act.
Joke theft isn’t new. Joke theft via Twitter? That’s just the latest wrinkle.
“Representatives from television and film attended comedy clubs to scout new talent,” Reilly wrote in a 2018 journal article on the topic. “Performing others’ jokes would signal a lack of ability or, more tellingly, could deprive the original author of deserved opportunities.”
But while using another comedian’s jokes is generally frowned upon — and could constitute a copyright infringement in some cases — there’s no shortage of stars who’ve been accused of … well, a lack of originality.
Carlos Mencia, the former star of Comedy Central’s “Mind of Mencia,” has been accused of joke theft by George Lopez and Joe Rogan, who dubbed him “Men-Steal-ia” in 2007. Mencia denied the claims on LATV Network in 2019.
That same year, Conan O’Brien settled a lawsuit alleging he stole material from comedy writer Robert Alexander Kaseberg. O’Brien maintains that he had never heard of Kaseberg — attributing the similarities in their jokes to “topical comedy” and the pattern it follows.
And, most recently, people pointed to Amy Schumer’s 2022 Oscars monologue, alleging she had stolen a jab at Leonardo DiCaprio from a viral tweet. (Schumer denied doing so.)
Corden’s joke sampling follows another social media-driven drama for the late-night host. Last month, the “Carpool Karaoke” funnyman was accused of being rude to a server at Balthazar, a restaurant in New York City owned by Keith McNally. The comedian was then banned from the eatery over a dispute about an all-yolk omelet.
James Corden reminds us how not to complain at a restaurant
Corden eventually apologized for making a “sarcastic, rude comment about cooking [the omelet] myself,” and the quarrel was put to an end, with McNally lifting Corden’s Balthazar ban. | 2022-11-02T09:19:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | James Corden credits Ricky Gervais after nearly identical Twitter joke - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/02/james-corden-ricky-gervais-joke/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/02/james-corden-ricky-gervais-joke/ |
Israel vote results showing soaring power of far right, Netanyahu comeback
A supporter of Likud party blows the shofar, following the announcement of exit polls in Israel's general election, at the party headquarters in Jerusalem, Tuesday. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
With 84 percent of ballots counted as of 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday, Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc looked poised to pick up 65 seats, well beyond the 61 needed to form a majority in Israel’s 120-member Knesset. But the results will likely change as more ballots are tallied. The final count for Tuesday’s contest is not expected to be published until Thursday afternoon or Friday morning.
Speaking to supporters at a campaign party overnight in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said he was “on the cusp of a huge victory,” the Times of Israel reported.
“If the actual results reflect the exit polls, I’ll set up a national government that will look after all the citizens of Israel,” he pledged, calling the projected results a “huge expression of faith.”
Overall turnout in the election, Israel’s fifth in less than four years, stood at 71.3 percent, according to Israel’s Central Election Committee. Despite widespread exasperation with seemingly endless election cycles, Israelis voted at a rate about 4 percent higher than last year’s turnout.
Netanyahu’s party, Likud, appears set to remain the largest party in the Knesset, with exit polls giving the party between 30 and 32 seats. At the Likud election party in Jerusalem in the early hours of Wednesday, supporters chanted “Bibi is back!” and “Bibi, king of Israel,” using a popular nickname for Netanyahu.
If the final vote tally aligns with projections, Israeli’s president will task Netanyahu with forming a government. The composition of that government is not set in stone, but it is expected to include Likud, the far-right Religious Zionism and ultra-orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism.
“Should the polls reflect the real results, it means that we have an extreme right-wing government in Israel,” Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said. “The extremist right is here to stay, and I think its becoming the third-largest party in the Israeli parliament is a sign of concern for all those in favor of democracy.”
Ben Gvir has roots in the overtly racist Kach party founded by a radical American rabbi, Meir Kahane, and banned by Israel. He built his career defending Jewish settlers accused of violence and has advocated expelling “disloyal” citizens, including leftists and Palestinians, from Israel. A photograph of Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslim worshipers in a 1994 mosque massacre in Hebron, used to hang in Ben Gvir’s living room, and Ben Gvir himself has been prosecuted for inciting violence multiple times.
The turnout in Tuesday’s election shows that the Religious Zionist coalition did “a very good job in terms of the turnout in the periphery” of the country and among voters in lower socioeconomic echelons, Talshir said.
“Demography also plays a role here, because 200,000 new voters voted in this election, and as we know, the ultra-Orthodox and the Religious Zionist communities have many more kids per family,” Talshir said.
The National Unity Party, led by Defense Minister Benny Gantz, said ahead of the election that as head of public security, Ben Gvir would “set fire to the country from the inside.”
Netanyahu’s apparent victory also puts him in position to undermine his ongoing corruption trial. His opponents have warned that he and his allies intend to hollow out Israel’s judiciary. Ahead of the election, Religious Zionism leader Smotrich presented a plan to overhaul the judicial system that would give the Knesset the power to override Supreme Court rulings and overturn a law against breach of trust that could lead to the cancellation of some charges against Netanyahu.
Lapid’s Yesh Atid has won about 18 percent of the vote so far, and exit polls projected the party would end up with between 22 and 24 seats. His campaign for the premiership relied on securing the support of smaller parties, and all eyes have been on whether the Jewish left-wing Meretz and Labor parties, as well as the three Arab parties, would pass the 3.25 percent threshold required to enter the Knesset.
According to the most recent official count, Labor has narrowly passed the threshold and was expected to secure at least four seats. Meretz remained below the threshold.
Turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel, who typically vote at lower rates than Jewish Israelis, was closely watched as a potentially decisive factor in the election. Tuesday’s election marked the first after an Arab party — the Islamist party Ra’am — had served in Israel’s governing coalition. Ahead of the election, Palestinian voters expressed disillusionment with Arab politicians and a Jewish-dominated political system they say marginalizes their communities.
Last-minute pushes by politicians and Palestinian Arab organizations to get out the vote appear to have paid off — the voting rate among Arab citizens was estimated to stand around 54 percent, according to an analysis by the aChord center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
That figure would represent a 10 percent increase from the last election. But with only two of three parties — Ra’am and the leftist Hadash-Ta’al coalition — currently passing the threshold, Arab parties may end up with one fewer seat than before.
The result is a consequence of the fragmentation of the Arab political scene, Talshir said. Another party, the nationalist Balad, broke away from a joint list and attracted voters unwilling to cooperate with Jewish parties.
Balad saw about a four fold increase in the number of votes it received compared to last election, Talshir said, a sign of its growing support among younger Arab voters. That support has not yet translated into enough votes to cross the threshold, however, according to the latest count, which put the party at 3 percent of the vote.
But the stronger-than-expected turnout in Palestinian Arab communities drew baseless allegations of fraud from Netanyahu. His party asserted shortly after exit polls were released that incidents of violence and voting irregularities had taken place at polling stations in predominantly Arab areas.
A spokesperson for the Central Election Committee issued quick denials of any irregularities to Israeli media overnight.
“Given that the counting has only begun at this time, there is certainly no basis for baseless rumors about so-called ‘fakes’ in this or that sector,” the spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post. | 2022-11-02T09:24:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Israel election results put Netanyahu’s right wing coalition back in power - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/israel-election-results-netanyahu-coalition/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/israel-election-results-netanyahu-coalition/ |
A history of American racism that helps explain present injustices
In ‘The Third Reconstruction,’ Peniel E. Joseph explores why virulent racial animosity persists
Review by Robin Walker Sterling
A photo of a gallows and noose is displayed as the House Jan. 6 committee holds a public hearing on Capitol Hill on June 16. In “The Third Reconstruction,” Peniel E. Joseph suggests that such scenes at the Capitol recalled older instances of White violence in opposition to multiracial democracy. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
When Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, saw that their home in Baltimore had been appraised at $472,000, they knew something was wrong. They had bought it four years earlier, in 2017, for $450,000. They had made $40,000 in renovations. Home prices had been rising throughout the pandemic. It just didn’t make sense. So a few months after that first appraisal, they applied to refinance again with another company and decided to try something different. This time, the African American family removed all the photographs of themselves and had a White colleague meet the appraiser. The second appraisal came back at $750,000. Same house. Same location. Three-hundred-thousand-dollar difference.
In “The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century,” historian and professor Peniel E. Joseph uses our country’s history on race and racism to help make sense of such injustices. Joseph argues that, until recently, America was living through a Third Reconstruction: It dated, he argues, from the election of Barack Obama in 2008 through the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. It was an era that echoed the periods following the Civil War and the civil rights movement, national moments of cultural ambition that centered and then upended the socially and legally enforced limits on Black inclusion in the American experiment. And in the wake of our Third Reconstruction, we face the same kind of retrenchment that followed those two previous periods.
Joseph’s consistent focus on racial inequities hidden in plain sight makes this book searingly relevant. Think, for example, of the water crises in predominantly Black cities, such as Flint, Mich. and Jackson, Miss. Or consider appraisal discrimination, which devalues Black-owned homes. Or recall the ever-growing, always heartbreaking list of unarmed Black men who have been killed by the police. Joseph aims to distill these strands into a single narrative that helps us understand why, decades after the end of chattel slavery and Jim Crow, the virulent racial animosity that helped produce the Jan. 6 Capitol breach persists. “For Black America,” he writes, “reconstruction remains a blues-inflected tone poem about the perils and possibilities of Black humanity.”
This pathbreaking Black journalist offers a model in uncertain times
He describes a national history in which two competing narratives collide. For Joseph, the First Reconstruction established the central tension between reconstructionism and redemptionism, a tension that encapsulates our national moment. Reconstructionism is based on a foundational belief in multiracial democracy and in the tools we have to enforce the federal government’s promise of equality: voting, protesting, boycotting and other types of civic action. Redemptionism, on the other hand, aims to concentrate power, access and opportunity in the hands of White people by any means, even and especially through physical violence. The clash between these two visions produced enduring political divisions and racial violence based on false narratives about Black dangerousness and criminality. Convict leasing, lynching and mass incarceration are all redemptionist tools. Impressively, Joseph weaves each of these schools of belief through the narrative of his own life growing up as a first-generation Haitian American. We see the ways reconstructionism has expanded what was possible for him, and the way redemptionism has constricted it.
After the First Reconstruction, Black Americans were no longer enslaved, but the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy and its attendant lies about Black inferiority and criminality would justify decades of Jim Crow and other oppressive ills. The Union had won the physical war, but the narrative war had been lost. By contrast, the reconstructionist narrative won after the Second Reconstruction. From 1968 until the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision gutting the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, Joseph argues, we had a national consensus on the importance of racial equality that led to major civil rights advances, including the election of Obama and the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Joseph’s Third Reconstruction resumes this struggle, with the most violent clash between reconstructionism and redemptionism in decades.
Joseph ably traces the through-lines that connect these three eras. This is especially pronounced in his account of the Jan. 6 insurrection. For many of us watching as the Capitol was overrun, the siege surely seemed like an unprecedented incident. But it was no mistake that the rioters strode through the Capitol waving Confederate flags. For Joseph, the noose and gallows erected in front of the Capitol by the insurrectionists and the violent mobs spilling into the building were old wine in new bottles.
Joseph also plays out the consequences of his analyses. When we recognize that mass incarceration is a tool of redemptionism, he shows, we can view the Black people whom the system sweeps up as political prisoners, not as a disposable population of criminals. In the process, we can recast them as the heroes in our national narrative instead of the villains, and our criminal legal system as the recent evolution of a race-based caste system instead of a model of fairness.
Like a therapist, Joseph is trying to reveal our past to help us explain our present national situation. He is trying to remake the story that we have internalized about ourselves — how we have behaved, how we have atoned, what we can learn and what steps we should take next. If we instead rely on true, nuanced stories that will allow us to confront harm with deeper understanding, we will take more thoughtful action and produce more just outcomes.
James Baldwin famously observed: “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frame of references and identities, and our aspirations.” In “The Third Reconstruction,” Joseph tries to narrate our history as we live it, the better to understand the choices we make even as we make them.
America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century
By Peniel E. Joseph | 2022-11-02T10:07:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Review of "The Third Reconstruction" by Peniel E. Joseph - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/02/third-reconstruction-peniel-joseph-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/02/third-reconstruction-peniel-joseph-review/ |
Brazil’s election, the projection of a peak in fossil-fuel use and U.S. climate action all seemed unimaginable just months ago
Scorched rainforest in Brazil's Amazonas state in September. On Oct. 31, Norway said it would resume sending Amazon-protection subsidies to Brazil after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's election victory over Jair Bolsonaro. (Michael Dantas/AFP/Getty Images)
Sunday’s victory by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s presidential election represents the latest in a year of unexpected developments that are leading to better international prospects to combat climate change, reducing the odds that global warming will exceed the worst forecasts of recent years.
Lula has promised to end the era of aggressive deforestation that has marked the tenure of Brazil’s current president, Jair Bolsonaro. The election follows Europe’s crisis-driven investment in renewable energy and landmark climate legislation in the United States.
The combined force of the three global developments could lead to an accelerated departure from fossil fuels, cheaper renewable energy and revived efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon is a major global defense against greenhouse gas emissions, but it has been further ravaged by deforestation in recent years.
The developments change the backdrop for United Nations climate talks that begin next week in Egypt, where nations are expected to struggle to make progress on their global climate commitments.
The new momentum would not necessarily be disrupted if Democrats lose control of Congress following the midterm elections next week and are replaced by Republicans who take a sharply different approach to climate issues. The Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed into law in August, was structured to create tax credits and incentives that have an impact no matter who controls Washington.
Global warming is still a major threat to humanity, with the window all but closed to limit average temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Even current levels of warming are having dire effects on people around the world. Nations are falling short on their pledges to reduce emissions. And Europe’s acceleration on renewable energy is driven by a tragedy, the war in Ukraine, that has cost thousands of lives and forced millions to flee their homes.
But as grim as the broader context remains, efforts to combat climate change have all taken a leap in recent months, as developments that were once thought unlikely are now reality.
“When you look at the underlying trends, you’ve got to be encouraged,” said Claire Healy, the director of the Washington office of E3G, a London-headquartered climate policy think tank. “The real economy underneath all of this is moving in the right direction, albeit at a slower pace than what the science says is needed.”
Lula made climate efforts a centerpiece of his effort to defeat Bolsonaro, the far-right politician who has led Brazil since 2019.
Speaking to supporters at a victory speech in São Paulo on Sunday, Lula spotlighted putting an end to deforestation as one of a handful of priorities as he returns to the presidency after a 12-year hiatus. When he was first in office, from 2003 until 2010, he was largely successful at curbing deforestation. In the years since, scientists estimate, the Amazon rainforest has become a net emitter of carbon dioxide, rather than an absorber of global carbon emissions, because it was being cleared by loggers and farmers at such a rapid pace.
“The planet needs the Amazon alive. A standing tree is worth more than tons of wood illegally harvested by those who think only of easy profit at the expense of the deterioration of life on Earth,” Lula told his supporters.
Brazilian climate advocates said they expected a major policy change.
“We all have great expectations because it was key to get rid of Bolsonaro to have any chance,” said Adriana Ramos, an adviser at the Instituto Socioambiental, a Brazilian civil society group that works on Indigenous rights and environmental issues. “All the scientists were saying that if we keep the same dynamic in the Amazon, we would be missing the opportunity of avoiding the tipping point” at which it becomes impossible to coax the rainforest into recovery.
Lula’s efforts to shift on climate issues won’t be easy or immediate: 49.1 percent of voters opted for his opponent, and the state governors in the Amazon are also split between loyalists to Lula and Bolsonaro, adding to the challenge of carrying out policies on the ground.
Under Lula, Brazil will also probably reengage in international climate negotiations as a global leader among industrialized developing nations such as China and India, a role it had largely abandoned during the Bolsonaro years, analysts said. The shift in Brazil’s domestic climate policies might be positive on its own, they said, but the change probably will be amplified because it will encourage other countries to move alongside Brasília.
“Just like last year, where we saw the U.S. start to reengage, I think we’ll start to see trust built up,” said John Verdieck, director of international climate policy at the Nature Conservancy, a global environmental organization.
In the United States and Europe, twin developments are forging some optimism among climate advocates. The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, this summer devotes $369 billion in investments, tax credits and other funding for climate efforts, an infusion of cash that backers say will reshape the American economy and bring down global prices for renewable energy.
“The IRA, it’s an incredibly powerful tool. Frankly speaking, in the U.S. political context, one couldn’t have imagined a better tool, more suited for the U.S. economy and transition than going straight at making technology the cornerstone for us,” said Jennifer Layke, global director of the energy program at the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based climate research center.
And in Europe, the war in Ukraine has come at a dreadful human cost amid the worst fighting in Europe since World War II. But the disruption to Europe’s energy dependence on the Kremlin has also forced an effort to accelerate renewable energy such as solar and wind power, even as Europe also burns more coal and constructs more natural gas infrastructure in the short term.
Some climate experts worry that the global jump in fossil fuel prices will lead to efforts to boost production that will outlast the current supply crunch, dealing a setback to efforts to reduce emissions.
“What we have seen over the last two decades is that even the rapid deployment of renewables hasn’t led to declines of emissions,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, based in Germany. “The question is, what are the instruments to reduce gas and oil imports.”
But with Europe also speeding its efforts to reduce long-term demand for fossil fuel, one influential international agency declared for the first time last week that a peak was in sight for fossil fuels.
The developments in the United States and Europe — along with an increase in renewable targets in China and India — led the International Energy Agency to predict that global demand for every kind of fossil fuel would peak by the middle of the next decade. Global coal use will start declining within the next few years, gas will plateau by 2030, and oil demand will level off by the mid-2030s, the agency forecast in its World Energy Outlook.
“Even with current policies, fossil fuels will peak. For first time since the industrial revolution,” the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, said in an interview. “This is not a climate scenario. It is policy context. Years and years, it has increased, those fossil fuels around the world. We see a peak.”
Not every expert is as confident: Some say that a peak depends on Europe following through with commitments it has made but not yet delivered, and that its current rush for fossil fuels is leading it in the opposite direction.
“What we see in terms of statements is all green and fine,” said Georg Zachmann, senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic research institute, who has been tracking European energy policy during the Ukraine crisis. “But we are entering a time of much tougher choices, and for Europe in particular, where money is going to get very scarce. High interest rates will not benefit renewable infrastructure,” whose high costs come upfront, unlike that of fossil fuels. “The tough choices are ahead,” he said.
As climate advocates and policymakers prepare for two weeks of negotiations in Egypt this month, some of them say that the changes are impressive — and that it is not enough.
“Even for renewables and electric vehicles, it’s not yet at the pace that we need it to go, at least to be within a 1.5 degree envelope,” said David Waskow, the international climate action director at the World Resources Institute. “So, a heck of a lot of progress. And, still, it has to go deeper and faster.”
Steven Mufson and Evan Halper contributed to this report. | 2022-11-02T10:20:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Changes in Brazil, Europe, U.S. boost world’s climate change prospects - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/01/brazil-europe-us-climate-positive/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/01/brazil-europe-us-climate-positive/ |
5 people to watch at the COP27 climate talks in Egypt
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Maxine is back today after Vanessa held down the fort yesterday. Below we have an update on President Biden’s calls to impose a new tax on big oil companies if they don’t ramp up production. But first:
Four diplomats and one activist to watch at the COP27 climate talks in Egypt
The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has said she will skip this month’s United Nations climate conference in Egypt, criticizing the summit as a forum for “greenwashing” by corporations and countries, our colleague Shannon Osaka reports.
But throngs of diplomats, world leaders, activists and journalists are expected to attend the summit, known as COP27, to be held in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh starting on Sunday.
Here are five people who could help determine the outcome of the negotiations — and whether they lead to meaningful progress or “blah, blah, blah,” as Thunberg memorably summarized last year’s summit in Scotland:
Pakistan’s climate minister, Sherry Rehman, is expected to play a key role in urging wealthy countries to compensate poor nations for the costs of climate-change-fueled disasters.
Record rainfall spurred catastrophic flooding in the South Asian nation this summer, killing about 1,500 people and causing more than $40 billion in damage, according to Pakistani officials. Scientists have found that the flooding was exacerbated by climate change, even though Pakistan is historically responsible for less than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
By coincidence, Pakistan chairs a group of 134 developing countries, known as the G77, that plans to press developed nations for finance for “loss and damage” — the unavoidable, irreversible harms caused by global warming — at the summit.
Rehman will be able to draw on her experience as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, which has historically emitted more carbon dioxide than any other country.
Germany’s climate envoy, Jennifer Morgan, ran Greenpeace International for six years before joining the same government that she had criticized as an activist.
While heading the environmental group, Morgan attended last year’s COP26 talks in Glasgow, Scotland, where she disrupted an event and held signs that slammed the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero as a “scam.”
Now as a government official, Morgan was selected to help facilitate the negotiations along with Chile’s environment minister Maisa Rojas. In a statement to The Climate 202, Morgan called on countries to accelerate their transitions to clean energy, despite the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“After COP27, solar and wind energy have to be the winners — coal and oil have to be the losers,” she said.
John F. Kerry
U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry, who served as secretary of state under President Barack Obama, will arrive at COP27 with a mixed U.S. record on climate policy. While President Biden recently signed the biggest climate bill in the nation’s history, the United States has failed to deliver billions of dollars to help poor nations adapt to climate disasters and green their economies.
Kerry last week insisted that the United States was open to compensating vulnerable nations for loss and damage, even though the United States and the European Union have historically blocked proposals for formal negotiations over the issue.
“We believe we have to step up, and we have a responsibility. We accept that,” Kerry told reporters after an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.
While many observers expect Kerry to step down after COP27, State Department spokeswoman Whitney Smith said in a statement that Kerry “has no plans to depart, and his sole focus is COP27, period.”
While Chinese President Xi Jinping will not attend COP27, Chinese climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua is expected to participate, despite the country’s “zero covid” campaign.
Many observers will be watching whether Xie interacts with Kerry after China suspended climate talks with the United States in retaliation for the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Taiwan.
While not a government official, Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate will be one of the most vocal advocates for delivering climate finance to Africa at COP27, which is being billed as the “African COP” because of its location on the continent.
Africa is responsible for less than 3 percent of the world’s cumulative emissions, but it is uniquely vulnerable to extreme heat, which could make parts of the continent uninhabitable by 2100. Meanwhile, East Africa has already been parched by its worst drought in four decades, fueling an unprecedented famine affecting more than 80 million people across Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda and Djibouti.
“I was 13 years old when President Obama talked about the $100 billion climate finance. But it has not yet been delivered,” Nakate said in an interview with The Climate 202 at COP26. “So it is hard for me to believe that the money that has been committed will be delivered, and yet the previous promise is just a broken promise.”
Biden suggests extra tax if oil companies don’t help reduce gas prices
President Biden on Monday floated the idea of imposing a new tax on the excess profits of the largest oil and gas companies if they do not invest in new production to lower gasoline prices, The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein, Evan Halper and Yasmeen Abutaleb report.
The remarks at the White House came days after ExxonMobil posted a record profit of $19.7 billion, while Chevron posted an $11.2 billion profit, its second highest on record. The short speech also came a week before midterm elections in which high gas prices and inflation have been top issues.
While Biden stopped short of specifically calling for a “windfall tax” on excess oil company profits, several congressional Democrats have introduced legislation to impose a windfall tax and give the proceeds to consumers as a rebate, including Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (Ore.).
None of the bills are likely to pass, given expected resistance from both Republicans and moderate Democrats. Republicans on Monday slammed Biden’s move as a political stunt that would not bring down energy costs.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was elected president of Brazil on Sunday after making the environment central to his campaign, now faces the challenge of safeguarding the Amazon rainforest after years of unprecedented deforestation under President Jair Bolsonaro, The Post’s Paulina Villegas and Sarah Kaplan report.
The significance of the Amazon in the fight against climate change is hard to overstate. When healthy, the rainforest annually absorbs around the same amount of carbon dioxide that Germany emits each year. But scientists warn that the rainforest is hurtling toward a crucial tipping point, when it could become a carbon source instead of a carbon sink.
Saving the world's largest rainforest from a point of no return is no simple task, and any substantial change will take time, experts said, especially after the ecosystem shrank by about 17 percent under Bolsonaro.
Still, some Brazilians said they felt a sense of relief after the election for both themselves and everyone.
“It feels like we can breathe again,” said Gustavo Conde, a 23-year-old cook in downtown Brasilia. “And so will the planet.”
Biden to campaign in California with Rep. Levin
President Biden will campaign with Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) in San Diego this week in an effort to help one of the most vulnerable House Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe the president’s schedule, The Post’s Michael Scherer and Tyler Pager report.
Since coming to Congress in 2019, Levin has championed a swift transition to electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies. He is running against Republican Brian Maryott, who supports an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy policy but opposes new drilling off the coast of California.
Major green groups, including the League of Conservation Voters and the Sunrise Movement, have thrown their support behind Levin, with LCV giving him a score of 100 percent in 2021 for the organization’s annual National Environmental Scorecard.
The White House and Levin’s campaign declined to comment.
Interior finalizes two wind energy areas in Gulf of Mexico
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Monday announced that it had finalized two wind energy areas in the Gulf of Mexico, bringing the Biden administration closer to its goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.
The first area is located off the coast of Galveston, Tex., and totals 508,265 acres, while the second area is off the coast of Lake Charles, La., and totals 174,275 acres.
Together, both areas have the potential to generate enough offshore wind energy to power nearly 3 million homes, the agency said, adding that it plans to propose lease sales in those waters later this year or early next year.
The world’s melting glaciers are yielding up their secrets too quickly — Rick Noack for The Post
This UFO-like structure could help Europe transform its energy — Michael Birnbaum for The Post
Europe is seeing its warmest weather on record so late in the year — Ian Livingston for The Post
Aging infrastructure may create higher flood risk in L.A., study finds — Raymond Zhong for the New York Times
OPEC forecasts fossil fuel surge through midcentury — Sharon Udasin for the Hill
Climate change is a hoax, according to cats, who you should definitely trust more than climate scientists. (Disclaimer: This caption was written by Maxine’s cat.) 😹 | 2022-11-02T10:21:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 5 people to watch at the COP27 climate talks in Egypt - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/01/5-people-watch-cop27-climate-talks-egypt/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/01/5-people-watch-cop27-climate-talks-egypt/ |
Republican lawmakers plan to conduct oversight of Wall Street’s efforts to promote sustainability, calling them ‘woke capitalism’
Capitol Hill on July 21. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)
McHenry was not immediately available for an interview. The SEC did not respond to a request for comment.
The SEC proposed a landmark climate disclosure rule. Here’s what to know.
‘Drifting toward wokeism’
If Republicans take the House in the midterms but Democrats keep the Senate, the chief executives of big financial firms could face climate whiplash. Conservative House lawmakers could criticize the firms for their “ESG political bias,” as former vice president Mike Pence recently described sustainable investing, while on the other side of the Capitol, liberal senators could bash the firms for not doing enough to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
“We’ve become the loud noise in their right ear after all the screaming in their left ear,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said of Wall Street firms.
In a statement, Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said he will continue to hold the CEOs of big banks accountable for how they serve their customers and treat their employees, and will bring them to Capitol Hill to answer for themselves.
“We know when Wall Street neglects communities of color and ignores long-term risks like climate change, it’s workers, small-time investors, and consumers who pay the price,” Brown said.
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An official in the banking industry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said it’s ironic that Republicans are trying to tell businesses not to embrace climate-conscious investing, even though the GOP typically extols the virtues of the free market.
“Historically, progressives were more comfortable pushing the private sector to support their initiatives, while many conservatives thought the private sector should be free to make the decisions they wanted to make,” the official said. “That has definitely flipped in the last few years. And I think it’s because some conservatives felt they were losing the battle and these companies were drifting toward wokeism.”
Fossil fuel companies have aggressively lobbied to water down the SEC’s climate disclosure rule, putting pressure on Republicans to stand up for the interests of an industry they have championed.
“Banks and investors should not use ESG as a premise to just discriminate categorically against an entire sector,” said Aaron Padilla, vice president of corporate policy at the American Petroleum Institute, a powerful trade group representing the oil and gas industry.
Cramer said he sees no inconsistency between championing free-market capitalism and scrutinizing sustainable investing. He added that conservatives have often sought to take a collaborative — not combative — approach to discussing sustainable investing with banking industry executives.
After he introduced a bill in spring of 2021 to bar banks from discriminating against the fossil fuel industry, Cramer said he had pleasant phone calls with five bank CEOs: Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Jane Fraser of Citigroup, Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, Charlie Scharf of Wells Fargo and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs. A few months later, Solomon flew to North Dakota to participate in a town hall with the senator.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who has introduced separate legislation to push back on climate risk considerations at BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — which manage more than $20 trillion in combined assets — has also discussed the bill with industry executives, his spokesman said. “I fully expect those conversations to continue going into next year,” Sullivan said in an emailed statement.
‘Road to hell’
BlackRock’s Larry Fink tells fellow CEOs that businesses are not ‘climate police’
At the same time, BlackRock has pushed back on allegations from conservative state officials that the firm is discriminating against fossil fuels. In Texas, for example, a new law bars the state’s retirement and investment funds from doing business with companies that the state comptroller says “boycott” the oil and gas sector.
“We DO NOT boycott the energy industry,” BlackRock says on its website in response. “Quite the opposite: BlackRock’s clients are some of the largest investors in the energy industry. In the U.S. alone, we have invested $170 billion on behalf of our clients in American energy companies, including pipelines and power generation facilities.”
Dimon has also defended JPMorgan’s continued investment in fossil fuels, even after the firm announced in 2020 that it would stop lending to new coal mines or coal-fired power plants.
At a House Oversight Committee hearing in September, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) pressed Dimon on whether he would commit to stop financing new oil, gas and coal projects with massive carbon footprints that threaten the world’s climate goals.
“Absolutely not, and that would be the road to hell for America,” Dimon shot back.
Contrary to the views of most Republicans, Democrats and climate activists argue that fossil fuel investments are becoming increasingly risky as the world transitions toward cleaner forms of energy. The International Energy Agency predicted last week that demand for coal, gas and oil will peak in the near future, despite the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Liberals and activists also point to the mounting economic toll that global warming is causing through stronger storms, rising seas and raging wildfires. The United States was battered by 20 weather and climate disasters last year that cost at least $1 billion each, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In California, massive wildfires have caused huge losses for insurance companies, prompting many insurers to pull back from fire-prone parts of the state. And in Florida, Hurricane Ian may have been the costliest storm in the state’s history, with insured losses projected to reach $67 billion, according to the modeling firm RMS.
“You have an insurance crisis that’s going on in Florida and California that’s directly tied to climate,” Frishberg of Amalgamated Bank said. “To deny climate risk in the financial context at this point is essentially to be a climate denier.:
Jon Hale, head of sustainability research at the financial services firm Morningstar, said businesses in Europe and other countries are already recognizing the risks that climate change could pose to their investments, making the issue virtually inescapable for U.S.-based firms.
Private sector scrutiny of climate risks, Hale said, “is not something that the American political right is really going to be able to stop.” | 2022-11-02T10:25:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Republicans to probe Wall Street's climate friendly investments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/02/esg-investing-republicans-midterms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/02/esg-investing-republicans-midterms/ |
College football best bets: Uncertainty points to under in Alabama-Tennesse...
‘Monday Night Football’ predictions: Raiders to air it out vs. Chiefs
James Smith-Williams and the Commanders have won three straight, but the level of competition hasn’t been elite. (Washington Post illustration/Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Minnesota Vikings (-3½) at Washington Commanders
Buffalo Bills (-12½) at New York Jets
Indianapolis Colts at New England Patriots (-5½)
Green Bay Packers (-3½) at Detroit Lions
Miami Dolphins (-4½) at Chicago Bears
Las Vegas Raiders (-1½) at Jacksonville Jaguars
Los Angeles Rams at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-2½)
Tennessee Titans at Kansas City Chiefs (-12½)
Baltimore Ravens (-2½) at New Orleans Saints
The NFL has to be looking at the San Francisco 49ers and thinking, “How are we going to defend this team now?” As expected, do-it-all running back Christian McCaffrey is already up to speed after arriving in a trade, and he was a giant headache for the Los Angeles Rams in Week 8 as the 49ers easily covered the spread in a 31-14 win. McCaffrey rushed for a one-yard touchdown, caught a nine-yard pass for a score and also threw a touchdown pass, a 34-yard strike to Brandon Aiyuk, becoming the first player since LaDainian Tomlinson in 2005 to throw for, run for and catch a touchdown in the same game. He was just the fourth player since the 1970 merger to complete that hat trick. The 49ers are off this week, but they set expectations high for when receivers Deebo Samuel and Jauan Jennings return from injuries, giving San Francisco even more options.
The Las Vegas Raiders, our second best bet, weren’t nearly as good, doing nothing to help us cash our Raiders -1½ tickets. Literally, they did nothing offensively, falling to the New Orleans Saints, 24-0. A single trip to the red zone was unfruitful, and the Raiders were outgained, 367 yards to 183. It wasn’t pretty, and we should never talk about it again, even if we are picking them again during this week’s trip to Jacksonville.
Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen, meanwhile, threw the ball sparingly and never threatened to ruin our under-275½-passing-yards prop in the Bills’ win over the Green Bay Packers. Allen competed 13 of 25 passes for 218 yards, and the Bills relied on their running game to do most of the heavy lifting, as predicted. That ran our record in weekly player props to 4-1, although those aren’t counted on the official best bets ledger.
Best bets record: 8-9
Pick: Minnesota Vikings -3½; consider -6½ at odds of +130 or better
The Commanders have been on a nice run, winning three in a row to get back to .500, yet I am not ready to back them at home against the Minnesota Vikings, even getting 3½ points. Why? Because their wins have come against mediocre offenses.
Washington beat the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 1, and the Jaguars’ offense was expected to be the 25th best in the NFL before the season started, according to the Football Outsiders defense-adjusted value over average, a metric that measures a team’s efficiency by comparing success on every play to a league average based on situation and opponent. In Week 6, the Commanders beat the Chicago Bears, who headed into the matchup with the league’s 29th-best offense, per DVOA. In Week 7, the opponent was the Green Bay Packers, and while the numbers said Green Bay had the league’s 10th-best offense, quarterback Aaron Rodgers appeared to be bothered by his thumb injury. Sunday’s win came against the Indianapolis Colts, who entered ranked last in offensive DVOA — plus the Colts gave quarterback Sam Ehlinger his first start since selecting him in the sixth round of the 2021 draft.
Other than Green Bay, Washington has faced four opponents who, at the time, ranked in the top half of the league in offensive DVOA: the Detroit Lions (eighth at the time of the game), Philadelphia Eagles (fifth), Dallas Cowboys (15th) and Tennessee Titans (14th). All were victorious against the Commanders.
Looked at another way, Washington is allowing an average of 15 points per game to offenses ranked in the bottom half of DVOA at the time of their game, winning by an average of four points, while allowing 25.4 points per game to those in the top half (including Green Bay), losing by an average of 8.4 points. So what to make of the Vikings? Minnesota ranks 11th in offensive DVOA, and quarterback Kirk Cousins, making his return to Washington, is the league’s ninth-highest rated passer, according to the game charters at Pro Football Focus.
Pick: Seattle Seahawks +2 or +110 on the money line; I played Seahawks -2½ +128 at FanDuel
Let me lay out the facts and have you decide which side is the better investment. Don’t worry, it won’t be complicated. One of the teams in this game is among the 10 best in the NFL by various metrics, both subjective and objective, and the other is one of the worst. Hint: The one that is better is, weirdly, the underdog.
Net yards per play
Offensive success rate
PFF rank
QB QBR
-0.9 (30th)
minus-6 percent (31st)
+0.3 (10th)
plus-3 percent (8th)
That’s without even mentioning that Seattle, then as a 2½-point underdog, beat Arizona, 19-9, in Week 6, despite going 1 for 5 in the red zone. Based on that, this game should be a pick 'em, in my opinion, not bordering on a key number in Arizona’s favor.
The plays above represent our best bets of the week because our analysis shows their value is the most lucrative compared with what we expect to happen on the field. Below, you will find against-the-spread picks for all of the games on this week’s schedule. However, trying to pick every game is something of a fool’s errand. The house wins so often partly because bettors try to make too many plays when the odds aren’t in their favor. Keep that in mind when evaluating the remaining games from the Week 9 slate.
Pick: Houston Texans +13
Pick: New York Jets +12½
Pick: Carolina Panthers +7
Pick: New England Patriots -5½
Pick: Green Bay Packers -3½
Pick: Miami Dolphins -4½
Pick: Atlanta Falcons +3
Pick: Los Angeles Rams +2½
Pick: Tennessee Titans +12½
Monday, 8:15 p.m. | ESPN, ESPN2
Pick: Baltimore Ravens -2½ | 2022-11-02T10:46:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Week 9 picks, odds and best bets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/02/nfl-picks-week-9-odds-best-bets/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/02/nfl-picks-week-9-odds-best-bets/ |
Coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Mac Jones consult during the Patriots’ win Sunday over the Jets in East Rutherford, N.J. (Noah Murray/AP)
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The New England Patriots remain far from resolving their quarterback quandary, but the issue seems at least a bit less pressing this week, with the Patriots coming off a victory.
Second-year quarterback Mac Jones made his second straight start Sunday as the Patriots beat the New York Jets, 22-17, at the Meadowlands to even their record at 4-4. But it was not exactly a feel-good performance for the former first-round draft choice. Jones threw an interception. Another would-be interception, this one returned for a touchdown by the Jets, was negated by a roughing-the-passer penalty. Jones was sacked six times and threw for just 194 yards while the Patriots settled for five field goals, winning mostly because of the three-interception sloppiness of Jets quarterback Zach Wilson.
Yet even that largely unsightly performance by Jones was a major improvement over what occurred six days earlier in Foxborough, Mass., when Jones made his return after missing two games because of a high ankle sprain. He threw an egregious interception early in that game against the Chicago Bears, and Coach Bill Belichick pulled him in favor of rookie Bailey Zappe after three offensive possessions. Belichick said afterward that he had planned all along to play both quarterbacks.
.@Bryce55H with the pressure, @mcarter2nd with the pick 🤝#NEvsNYJ on CBS pic.twitter.com/hUpOQYWPQz
Jones clearly remains the starter entering Sunday’s game at home against the Indianapolis Colts. But it remains unclear whether the Patriots, in their third season after Tom Brady’s departure, have their next franchise quarterback on their roster — and, if so, which one it is.
Last season as a rookie, Jones looked like found money. The Patriots were able to stay put at No. 15 in the NFL draft and get Jones — who had played for Belichick’s close coaching ally, Nick Saban, at Alabama — without having to trade up. Belichick installed the rookie as the opening-day starter, released veteran Cam Newton and guided the Patriots back into the AFC playoffs.
But the Patriots were careful not to rely too heavily on Jones as a rookie, as when they beat the Buffalo Bills in windy conditions in Orchard Park, N.Y., while attempting just three passes. Eventually, the excellent quarterbacks develop into something more than what Jones was last season. And so far, Jones is not doing that. The Patriots lost offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels in the offseason when he left to become the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, and Jones’s on-field growth perhaps has been affected.
Patriots fans seem to prefer Zappe, an unheralded fourth-round draft choice this year from Western Kentucky. The Patriots won the two games started by Zappe in Jones’s absence. The home crowd at Gillette Stadium began chanting Zappe’s name when Jones struggled early against the Bears. When Zappe took the field and quickly led the Patriots to two touchdowns, it appeared there might be more than a quarterback controversy brewing; it felt like a quarterback succession. Jones, it seemed, had been Zapped. (Or should that be: Zapp-ied?)
But things unraveled from there as Zappe threw a pair of interceptions and the Patriots lost, 33-14. Belichick stuck with Jones as the starter for the Jets game, and Zappe remained on the sideline Sunday at MetLife Stadium. Belichick seems to have made it clear that Jones will be given the benefit of the doubt. That is befitting his status as a first-round selection.
It is undeniable, however, that Zappe has provided a lift when he has been on the field. And this feels far from settled, as the Patriots enter a stretch that could determine whether they’ll be a factor in the AFC playoff race: After a bye week following the Colts game, they face the Jets, Vikings and Bills.
They moved to 7-0 with the routine victory over the Steelers and should have little trouble Thursday night with the Texans. A run at 17-0 does not look entirely out of the question, given the remaining schedule.
Facing the Bills on Sunday night in Orchard Park, N.Y., was not the best thing for the Packers, after all.
The Chiefs return from their bye week to face the Titans in an interesting game Sunday night. They have the league’s third-ranked run defense, which surely will be tested by Derrick Henry.
Kirk Cousins’s appearance Sunday at FedEx Field has become more interesting, with the recently improved play of the Commanders. The Vikings cannot afford a misstep, with the Bills and Cowboys next on the schedule.
Now, that was the version of the offense the Cowboys envisioned when Dak Prescott returned to the lineup. The 49-point outburst against the Bears was impressive.
The ’21 QB class
Last year’s draft class of quarterbacks was supposed to be memorably good, with five of them being chosen within the first 15 selections. Trevor Lawrence went first overall to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Wilson was taken second by the Jets and Trey Lance third by the 49ers. Justin Fields was picked 11th by the Bears, and Jones went 15th to the Patriots.
Already, there is room to wonder whether there is a perennial Pro Bowler in the group.
It’s difficult to make any judgments about Lance, given how little he has played. He was Jimmy Garoppolo’s backup last season as a rookie, then suffered a broken ankle two games into this season after the Niners had resolved to make him the starter.
Meanwhile, the other four have had their issues. Lawrence and Fields already are on their second NFL head coaches, with the Jaguars hiring Doug Pederson after last season’s Urban Meyer fiasco and the Bears switching from Matt Nagy to Matt Eberflus. Lawrence is making progress under Pederson but perhaps not as much as some might have expected. Fields has been inconsistent, and the new coaching staff in Chicago was slow to implement an offensive approach that emphasizes his strengths.
Jones is left to fend off the challenge of Zappe with the Patriots, and Jets Coach Robert Saleh is answering questions about whether Wilson will be benched. Wilson bristled following Sunday’s defeat to the Patriots when he was asked about his failure thus far to make a major leap in Year 2 in the NFL.
“I don’t care about stats … I don’t look at it like that,” Wilson said. “I go one game at a time, one play at a time.”
The struggles of the class underscore the fact that very few quarterbacks enter the league as can’t-miss prospects. For most, much depends on circumstances, resilience, development and a little bit of luck.
Saleh could have been speaking for the other coaches of the would-be prized second-year quarterbacks when he said Sunday of Wilson: “We’ll figure it out. We’ve got to help him out.”
The 24-0 loss in New Orleans was downright abysmal. The Raiders have the Jaguars, Colts and Broncos up next. Even so, there’s little reason to believe that a turnaround is at hand.
That was a creative way to lose Sunday in Atlanta, with the penalty during the celebration of the tying TD, the missed 48-yard extra point and the missed field goal attempt in OT. But even at 2-6, Carolina remains a contender in the NFC South.
Yes, Trevor Lawrence is improving with Doug Pederson as his coach in his second NFL season. But frankly, he’s not improving enough.
The Texans’ lone win has come against the Jaguars, and they don’t get to face Jacksonville again until Jan. 1. That’s a long wait for another winnable game.
Dan Campbell said after firing defensive backs coach Aubrey Pleasant that it’s a “production-based business.” Campbell might not want to be reminding his own bosses of that.
The Dolphins’ maneuvering
No team helped itself more at Tuesday’s trade deadline than the Miami Dolphins, who landed standout pass rusher Bradley Chubb in a significant deal with the Denver Broncos.
The Dolphins sent a first-round draft pick next year to the Broncos as part of the Chubb trade. It was the first-round choice of the 49ers, obtained by the Dolphins in the trade that enabled the Niners to move up to the No. 3 spot to get Lance.
Miami has put all three of the first-round selections that it received from the 49ers to excellent use.
The Dolphins immediately traded back up in the 2021 draft order for the No. 6 overall choice, which it used on wide receiver Jaylen Waddle. They traded another first-rounder to the Kansas City Chiefs in March as part of the package for wideout Tyreek Hill. | 2022-11-02T10:46:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Reset: Team rankings, Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe, 2021 QB class - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/02/nfl-reset-team-rankings-mac-jones-bailey-zappe-2021-qb-class/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/02/nfl-reset-team-rankings-mac-jones-bailey-zappe-2021-qb-class/ |
bettingpolitics
With control of Congress at stake in next week’s midterm elections, political observers and polling data both suggest Republicans have a strong chance of retaking the House, while the fight for the Senate is considered extremely competitive. The election betting markets, however, see less ambiguity, already essentially handing the House speaker’s gavel to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and giving Republicans about a two-thirds chance of controlling the Senate.
These are data points hungrily consumed not just by campaigns and political analysts but also by a growing population of gamblers who study the races and attempt to make a profit by picking winners, not unlike bettors at horse tracks or Las Vegas-style sports books, or even day traders watching the stock market rise and fall.
While betting on U.S. elections is a thriving business overseas, political gambling has long been banned on the federal level in the United States and no state has sought to regulate it. Instead, election wagering here functions more like the stock market than a sports book, as people buy and sell shares of candidates, whose prices fluctuate with the news. But even as the markets continue to move into the mainstream conversation as the midterms approach, that pursuit is now on shaky ground. Federal regulators are clamping down, weighing whether such markets are actually gaming and whether they serve a public interest, questions that could severely limit the legal options beginning with the next election cycle.
While the die-hards check the markets multiple times per day, federal regulation and renewed scrutiny pose a significant hurdle for gamblers, investors, campaigns and analysts who rely on the markets for research, action, real-time data and entertainment.
“When you tell someone, ‘Yeah, I bet on politics,’ their eyes kind of light up. Like: ‘Wait, is that a thing? Is that a joke? Is that even legal?’ ” said Alex Keeney, who co-hosts the “Star Spangled Gamblers” podcast.
While some players are casual hobbyists who like to put a few dollars down on their preferred candidates, many others operate as day traders who aggressively move money around, looking to invest when a candidate is selling low and cashing out when that candidate’s value might be peaking. There’s already been plenty of money wagered on the 2024 U.S. presidential election, where former president Donald Trump is the heavy favorite to win the next presidential election in the betting markets — but the adventurous also can wager on long shots such as Kanye West and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
“It’s fun,” said John Phillips, chief executive of PredictIt, which had been one of the leading election markets but now faces a government-mandated shutdown. “It’s a really engaging way to reward yourself — or, if you’re less fortunate, reward others — for accurately forecasting political events. We like to think it’s an antidote to fake news. You know, if you place your bets based on fake news, you’re going to lose your money. So it really sharpens the mind and allows you to somewhat divorce emotion from fact.”
Seasoned bettors cast aside their political leanings and obsessively follow headlines and news reports for insight. In the election markets, traders can typically buy a share of a candidate, priced between 1 and 99 cents. Like stocks, investors want to buy low and then unload when the value is much higher. Alternatively, they could hold onto the shares until after Election Day and get paid out $1 per share for a winning candidate. So if a trader bought 100 shares of Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for U.S. in Georgia, at 60 cents per share this week, that $60 investment would be worth 100 dollars if Walker ultimately wins the race over incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D).
Those with money in the market, of course, will bet on either party, and most will cash out many times before Election Day arrives. Unlike in sports betting, there is no oddsmaker or algorithm setting the odds. Buyers and sellers set the market price.
“This cycle I’ve made most of my money just by seeing like, ‘Oh, wow, people are upset about inflation; bet this is going to be good for the Republicans,’ ” Sweeney said, “and I’ll kind of ride that. And then at a certain point, you start to think, ‘Well, it can’t get worse for the Democrats, so let’s sell all those shares and start betting on the Democrats.' The best traders are flipping sides frequently.”
Political observers study the ever-changing markets to assess candidates’ chances of winning. While traditional polling data might gauge voter sentiment from a specific period in the recent past, researchers say the betting markets offer more of a real-time snapshot as bettors react to events, endorsements and gaffes. The markets are used by campaigns, political scientists and academics alike, and are increasingly cited in mainstream media political coverage, another valuable tool for analysts such as FiveThirtyEight′s Nate Silver.
“What I think they’re very valuable for is taking the uncertainty about a future event and expressing it in the present time: What does this mean for today?” said Harry Crane, a statistics professor at Rutgers who has written studies on the predictive nature of betting markets. “You can see this event happen, and then immediately the market moves.”
For example, in the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz (R) was trading at 53 cents on the PredictIt exchange before his debate last week with John Fetterman (D), who was trading at 50 cents. The day after the debate, Oz’s price shot up as high as 66 cents and Fetterman’s fell to 37.
“I didn’t even watch the debate,” Crane said, “but it would appear that Oz was better than expected or Fetterman was worse than expected or a combination of both to the point where the market moved so much in Oz’s direction.”
Democrats fear the midterm map is slipping away
Betting markets in the United States have seen a surge in activity and popularity in this election cycle, but government regulators have effectively upended the industry two years ahead of the next presidential election. PredictIt has operated since 2014 under a “no-action relief” letter from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The site had about 22,000 traders before the 2016 U.S. presidential election but now has more than 177,000. PredictIt is ostensibly an academic research project, owned by a New Zealand university and run by a for-profit company called Aristotle Inc. The CFTC rescinded its no-action letter in August, saying the university “has not operated its market in compliance with the terms of Letter.” It did not reveal how the terms were violated, and a CFTC spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
PredictIt was ordered to wind down its business by Feb. 15 and responded by filing a lawsuit against the CFTC and requesting a preliminary injunction in a case that’s pending in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. In legal filings, the CFTC has said the “the 2014 letter was not a license, never determined that PredictIt complied with U.S. law, and did not grant a legal right to do business.”
The CFTC has said in past rulings that commercial political markets “involve gaming” and “are contrary to the public interest.” The CFTC this year levied a $1.2 million fine on a similar exchange called Polymarket for offering political options, and last week staff recommended the commission reject an effort by a New York-based start-up called Kalshi to operate a regulated political exchange. That decision could doom the hopes of others looking to launch similar efforts — and send bettors and investors looking for other outlets.
The uncertainty has grabbed the interest of traders, academics and political observers who all rely on the markets for different reasons. Jason Furman, a Harvard economist who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Barack Obama, wrote a letter to the CFTC in support of Kalshi’s application, saying the White House “would regularly refer to prediction markets on electoral outcomes and specific events to help inform our understanding of how political and economic developments would affect economic policymaking.”
While PredictIt’s case sits before a federal judge, Phillips said he’s hopeful the exchange will continue to play a role in political discourse and its community of traders will be able to put their money behind candidates.
“We’re going to emerge from this no matter what. This isn’t going away,” he said. “That’s one of the ironies of this half-baked effort to shut PredictIt down. If PredictIt is not in existence, this is all just going to go offshore. And then there’s no research value, there’s no consumer protection, there’s no forecasting value.”
Traditional sportsbooks are also keeping an eye on regulatory matters. There’s potentially a lot of money to be had. The U.K. books have for years offered odds on U.S. elections, and an estimated $1 billion was wagered on the 2020 presidential election. Betfair, Europe’s largest betting operation, alone saw more than $630 million in political wagers during the cycle.
Much of the traditional political gambling in the United States is done through illegal bookies or offshore operators who aren’t subject to American regulators, such as BetUS and Bovada.
“The U.S. has what I would consider very archaic laws on gambling,” said Paul Krishnamurty, a U.K.-based political handicapper who co-hosts the “Get Out the Bet” podcast. “I find it really odd and hypocritical. Look, Americans are betting on this stuff. The offshore industry is massive, and Americans who come to Britain for holidays bring a large sum of money with them because they want to place a bet on the presidential race.”
As more states have legalized sports gambling, sites have tried to vary their betting options, hoping to expand and diversify their audiences. DraftKings, one of the biggest U.S. sportsbooks, is able to post odds on the Oscars in some states and even has had offerings on the Fourth of July hot dog eating contest. While politics is completely off the board at its U.S. sites, DraftKings does offer a variety of U.S. election odds through its Ontario operation.
Canadian bettors can put money on Mark Zuckerberg winning the Democrat nomination for president (50-1) or Ivanka Trump becoming the Republican nominee (40-1). George Clooney is listed at 100-1 to win the whole thing, slightly lower than Joe Rogan, Paul D. Ryan and Rand Paul (all 150-1) but not as good as Jeff Bezos and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (both 65-1).
At 3-1, Trump is DraftKings’ listed favorite for the 2024 election, followed by Ron DeSantis (+330), Joe Biden (+500), Kamala Harris (+1,200) and Mike Pence (+1,800). Among the names lower on the list: Michelle Obama (+3,500), Dwayne Johnson (+4,000), Mike Pompeo (+5,000), Hillary Clinton (+5,000) and Tucker Carlson (+6,500).
Will those kinds of odds ever be an option for American bettors, available on the mobile sports betting apps that have proliferated since the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that states were free to establish their own sports gambling laws? Johnny Avello, race and sports operations director for DraftKings, pointed out that sports betting was largely outlawed in this country until 2018; it’s now legal in 30 states plus the District of Columbia, and last year it was estimated as a $74.2 billion industry, according to Vantage Market Research.
“I think it’ll happen at some point,” Avello said. “I don’t know when, but we’re going to be certainly ready for it if we’re given the opportunity.” | 2022-11-02T10:47:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ahead of the midterms, Americans are embracing political betting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/02/political-betting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/02/political-betting/ |
Don’t Fear the UK’s Coming Zombie Apocalypse
A hard winter is coming in Britain, not only for the living but also the undead. The spike in borrowing costs generated by the short-lived Truss government could very well accelerate a wave of liquidations among the country’s expanded population of zombie companies. The shakeout, while painful for those who lose jobs and see investments fail, may ultimately prove an overdue tonic for a listless economy.
Zombies, a phenomenon first widely observed in the post-bubble era of 1990s Japan, are indebted companies with persistently low profitability and investment levels that earn just enough to stay in business. In normal times they can be expected to fail, though in depressed conditions can be kept afloat by a combination of low interest rates, government fiscal support and bank forbearance. In the decade-and-a-half of ultra-low rates that followed the global financial crisis, the Japanese experience has proliferated, with academic research showing an increase in zombies across the world. The proportion rose to 15% in 2017 from 4% in the late 1980s, according to one paper from the Bank for International Settlements that examined listed non-financial companies in 14 advanced economies.
The UK has been moreaffected than most, with the government’s emergency-loan programs during the pandemic injecting a final spurt of growth into their ranks. Onward, a Conservative think tank, estimates that an additional 1% to 4% of companies had become “zombified” since March 2020, raising the share to more than 20% of the total. When an entire economy is on life support, the undeserving and possibly unsalvageable get raised up along with healthy companies suffering only temporary distress.
A reckoning looks to be at hand, though. The picture was turning uglier even before the market turmoil of the past two months, as inflation prompted policy makers to normalize interest rates. A Bank of England measure of average bank finance costs for small and medium-sized companies (which account for the majority of zombies) rose to 4.2% at the end of August, from a low of 1% in May 2020.
For the past two quarters, corporate bankruptcies have been running at higher than their previous post-crisis peak reached in the first three months of 2012. Don’t be surprised if that number goes higher. The two-year sterling swap rate jumped to a peak of 5.87% in late September, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While it has come back to about 4.6%, that’s still higher than before the ill-conceived package of unfunded tax cuts put forward by the then-finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Sept. 23.
There are reasons to be sanguine about this process, though, at least to some degree. Zombie companies, it should go without saying, are a drag on the economy. They monopolize assets and workers that could be more productively employed elsewhere, driving up costs for healthier companies and causing a misallocation of capital. One sign of dysfunction: UK unemployment is at its lowest in almost half a century and a shortage of workers is driving up wages, despite an economy that’s teetering on the brink of recession.
The harm done by zombies is an idea intimately linked to that of “creative destruction,” the term coined by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. The engine of capitalist innovation requires death as well birth. This is a turbulent and painful process for those who lose their jobs, such as the horse-and-cart driver who is displaced by the development of the automobile. But the liquidation and redeployment of resources powers a ceaseless progression of efficiency and value creation. Most of the time.
Ultimately, the price of money is the arbiter of what works and what doesn’t in a capitalist economy. It’s axiomatic that a firm consistently earning less than its cost of capital is value-destructive, even if it’s capable of surviving in a low-growth, just-getting-by existence. This is the consequence of the prolonged depressed interest rates that tend to follow financial crises and imploding asset booms, as in Japan and in much of the developed world after 2008. When the bar is too low, everyone gets a pass.
The UK has been plagued by low productivity growth since the financial crisis, the subject of much hand-wringing by economists and policy makers. The growing prevalence of zombie companies may well have something to do with that. Returning interest rates to a more normal level that raises the bar for corporate survival has the potential to revive some of this lost economic dynamism.
Granted, the pace of the process matters. An increase in finance costs that is too steep and abrupt would imperil plenty of fundamentally sound companies and threaten to drive the economy into another extended slump, bringing the problem full circle. What constitutes a genuine zombie is also open to debate: Crude metrics can capture startup or temporarily distressed firms that have a good chance of going on to thrive. Researchers in Finland found that one-third of zombie companies as commonly defined are growing, and two-thirds recover to become healthy.
Don’t mourn for the loss of businesses stuck in a perpetual funk that can’t survive without assistance, though. Within reason, the return of market discipline is a development to be welcomed.
• UK Political Stability Won’t Stop Winter Biting: Marcus Ashworth
• Credit Markets Are Full of Alarms. No One Cares: Brian Chappatta | 2022-11-02T10:51:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Don’t Fear the UK’s Coming Zombie Apocalypse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dont-fear-the-uks-coming-zombie-apocalypse/2022/11/02/b545e74c-5a73-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dont-fear-the-uks-coming-zombie-apocalypse/2022/11/02/b545e74c-5a73-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
Keep it coming. (Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images North America)
The cure for high oil prices is high prices, or so says the commodity industry’s adage. Let the invisible hand of the free market work its magic. High prices will simultaneously reduce demand and increase supply, eventually making the good less expensive.
This has proven true for centuries: In commodities, a bust follows every boom. It happened after the Klondike Gold Rush in 1896, during the second oil crisis in 1979 and following the most recent US shale boom a decade ago. Generations of petroleum engineers, geologist and financiers have grown up swearing by it.
To be sure, the elevated cost of crude is suppressing appetite. But the other side of the equation — supply — isn’t working out. The industry simply hasn’t been reacting to high prices with more investment as it has before. This means demand will have to do all the work to rebalance the oil market. The result is likely to be a slower economy and more sustained energy costs than in the past.
Why isn’t the supply lever working? Money certainly isn’t the problem. Big Oil has reported its best-ever six-month period, earning more than $100 billion in profits from April to September. Exxon Mobil Corp. just enjoyed its best quarter in its 152-year history, which goes all the way back to John D. Rockefeller.
Neither Exxon nor its competitors Chevron Corp., Shell Plc, TotalEnergies SE and BP Plc have announced any major increases in spending beyond what they have already planned. Institutional investors, led by BlackRock Inc., have convinced virtually every oil executive to keep spending under control. Pierre Breber, the chief financial officer at Chevron, put it this way: “We’re not really paid for growth by the market.” Instead, they are channelling the profits into dividends and share buy backs.
Last year, the industry spent $305 billion on oil exploration and production, significantly below what’s required to meet oil demand until the end of the decade based on the most likely scenarios. According to the International Energy Agency, the world’s energy industry needs to spend nearly 50% more annually ($466 billion) from 2022 to 2030 to meet the world’s oil needs based on current climate change policies. Even if governments implement current strategies and other climate pledges they have made, including some net-zero targets, investment still needs to grow by 25% from current levels until at least 2030.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Oil companies are doing what we told them to do: Spend less on fossil fuel production. From green philanthropists to big Wall Street investors, the message has been nearly unanimous. One can hardly blame the executives for doing as they were told. The industry, of course, soon realized that spending less was rather good business, particularly when very few deviated. Only a handful of state-owned oil companies in the Middle East are today boosting their fossil fuel spending meaningfully.
The industry has been calibrating for a world of peak oil and rapidly declining petroleum demand. But that world simply does not exist today, nor will it tomorrow or in the near future. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made that all too clear.
Facing high oil prices, Western governments are now trying to force the industry to accelerate spending. But having witnessed how profitable it can be to ignore the industry’s old adage, oil executives are very reluctant to cooperate. They know more spending means lower prices.
On Monday, US President Joe Biden threatened the industry with higher taxes unless companies agree to boost not just oil production but also oil refining. White House officials portray the speech as an olive branch to the fossil fuel industry — a direct plea that represents a 180-degree policy change from Biden’s campaign, when he promised “no more drilling.”
Government officials are wise to arm themselves with a stick when negotiating with a powerful business sector. Windfall taxes could play a role in the talks — though they’re unlikely to be effective. Reducing the profitability of an industry via higher levies doesn’t encourage more spending. | 2022-11-02T10:51:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | We Told Big Oil Not to Invest. Don’t Complain Now - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/we-told-big-oil-not-to-invest-dont-complain-now/2022/11/02/668eb75e-5a74-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/we-told-big-oil-not-to-invest-dont-complain-now/2022/11/02/668eb75e-5a74-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
How a Mink Cull Sent Denmark Into Tuesday’s Election
Analysis by Christian Wienberg and Kati Pohjanpalo | Bloomberg
BORDING, DENMARK NOVEMBER 07: Minks at farmer Stig Sørensen’s estate where all minks must be culled due to a government order on November 7, 2020 in Bording, Denmark. Like many other owners of mink farms, Stig Sørensen has been forced to cull all his 34.000 minks due to a government decision made on Wednesday. Sørensen says that he is sad but also angry because he feels that the government has made an unjustified and unfair decision. His farm is situated so only part of it is within the 7.5 KM zone from an infected farm and none of his mink have tested positive for the coronavirus. Even so, they are regarded as infected and must all be culled. He also feels that he and his colleagues have been let down by the Danish Government, both in terms of handling the culling and slow information about how they will be compensated. He and most in the industry are demanding compensation according to the rules of expropriation, but Sørensen says that so far the government has talked about compensation per culled mink to a price per skin based on farmers’ average price in 2017 and 2018, which was an all-time low. Denmark, the world’s largest mink fur producer, is to mass cull some 16 -17 million minks after mutated forms of coronavirus spread to humans. Some 215 mink farms in Jutland region are infected with this type of coronavirus, and therefore a regional lockdown has been announced to curb the infection. (Photo by Ole Jensen/Getty Images) (Photographer: Ole Jensen/Getty Images Europe)
Denmark will hold early elections on Tuesday as voters struggle with soaring living costs. However, it isn’t sky-high power bills that threaten to push Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen from office, but the fallout from a decision she made two years ago. Her order to cull 17 million mink at the height of the coronavirus pandemic was condemned by political rivals and later found to be unlawful. Frederiksen’s minority government has tried unsuccessfully to shake off the scandal ever since.
Frederiksen, 44, made the controversial cull order in November 2020 after coronavirus was detected at some mink farms and experts warned it could potentially mutate into a deadlier strain and make future vaccines less effective. Denmark had the world’s largest population of the small animals, whose soft fur is used in clothes and furnishings. There was no legal basis for the cull when it began and, as it progressed, public outrage grew and the country’s food and veterinary affairs minister quit. Parliament eventually passed a bill giving legal cover to the cull but, by then, millions of healthy animals had been slaughtered. It later emerged that the decomposing bodies of buried mink were threatening to contaminate local water supplies, forcing the government to exhume them. Frederiksen avoided an impeachment trial, but a party that had backed the government in parliament withdrew its support and new elections were set for Nov. 1 -- seven months before the deadline.
2. Did the cull really cause this crisis?
It’s not the whole story. While Frederiksen received praise in some quarters for showing strong leadership during the pandemic, rivals have painted her as power-hungry and authoritarian. She was criticized for a lack of contrition over the cull, though she personally was cleared of any illegal behavior. Trust in her cabinet was further eroded after revelations during a parliamentary probe that she and several key government employees had deleted text messages from their phones. Frederiksen said that, as a woman in power, she was treated more harshly than a man would have been in the same situation.
3. Who is likely to form the next government?
Polls suggest that neither Frederiksen’s Social Democrats nor the center-right opposition will secure a majority in the assembly. If that’s the case, for one of the two blocs to take power, it would have to strike a deal with a newly emerged kingmaker -- the centrist Moderates party established in June by former Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen. Frederiksen has proposed to recruit several other parties into what would be Denmark’s first “grand coalition” government in more than four decades, and Lokke Rasmussen has signaled support. But the idea has been rebuffed by rival parties reluctant to be seen ruling with her after the mink scandal. The election campaign has highlighted discontent with parts of her government’s record, including an inability to fix labor shortages in health care.
4. What remains of the mink industry?
The government funded a support package estimated at about 19 billion kroner ($2.5 billion) to bail out the country’s 3,000 mink farmers. A temporary ban on mink farming in Denmark was due to expire at the end of 2022. However, there may be no way back for the industry, which was effectively wiped out by the cull and lacks the breeding animals needed to restock farms. Kopenhagen Fur, the world’s largest auction house for furs, announced it would close down and liquidate its assets after the cull. | 2022-11-02T10:52:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How a Mink Cull Sent Denmark Into Tuesday’s Election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-a-mink-cull-sent-denmark-into-tuesdays-election/2022/10/30/a0d1eae6-5829-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-a-mink-cull-sent-denmark-into-tuesdays-election/2022/10/30/a0d1eae6-5829-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
As parents worry over the cases of RSV filling up pediatric hospitals in the US, finally some good news: Vaccines that protect newborns from the virus could be ready in time for next year’s season. Pfizer Inc. today unveiled promising data on a maternal RSV shot that shows it lowered babies’ risk of severe infections in those vulnerable first months of life.
The early data has some caveats, but should be celebrated as a significant advance in a field that has suffered decades of setbacks. It is also an important next step in Pfizer’s goal of becoming a leader in addressing RSV — a global market that according to Bloomberg Intelligence could be worth $10 billion in 2030.
In Pfizer’s trial, pregnant women were given an RSV vaccine with the idea that any immunity generated would be passed onto their infants, a strategy already used for other respiratory viruses, like pertussis and the flu. The hope was that protection would last through the babies’ first six months of life, the period when they are most vulnerable to serious RSV infections.
The approach seems to be largely working. The maternal RSV vaccine lowered by nearly 82% the rate of severe cases of the respiratory infection in the first three months of an infant’s life, and by roughly 69% over the first six months. But the vaccine fell short of its goal of protecting against all infections. Pfizer now plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration to approve the shot, which could in theory be ready in time for next year’s RSV season.
Full details of the study have yet to be shared, but these early results are promising, says Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital. During his career, Hotez has taken care of a lot of infants with RSV. “It’s a devastating illness,” especially for babies who spent time in the neonatal unit or have underlying respiratory issues, he says. “We need an RSV vaccine.”
Getting to one has proven much more challenging than researchers had hoped. The field suffered a devastating setback in the 1960s, when infants who received an experimental RSV vaccine got much sicker from the virus than those who did not get the shot. It took decades to unravel the cause of that failure and design a vaccine that could overcome the flaws of the earlier shot.
And even with much more insight into how to tackle the virus, pharma companies have struggled to get a shot to market: Earlier this year, a worrisome safety signal caused GSK PLC, formerly GlaxoSmithKline, to halt enrollment in a study of its maternal RSV vaccine.
Given the daunting challenge, Pfizer’s success should be celebrated for making headway against a difficult virus. But it also leaves some room for other products in development. Because the vaccine didn’t hit the high bar of preventing infections, and some children continue to be vulnerable during and beyond that six-month window, a gap in protection still needs to be filled.
One possible solution is an antibody therapy being developed by Sanofi SA and AstraZeneca PLC. The one-time shot is meant to protect at-risk infants throughout an entire RSV season. By contrast, an existing antibody drug called Synagis, sold by the Swiss pharma firm Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB (known as SOBI), has to be given monthly.
A longer-term possibility could be to develop a booster that would help extend protection beyond infancy, Hotez says. That’s a similar strategy as the one taken with the pertussis vaccine — the baby first gets protection through a vaccine given to the mother during pregnancy, then through shots during infancy. Pfizer, however, is not currently pursuing such a strategy.
Even with questions over whether the parents and physicians will opt for a vaccine over an antibody, today’s data reinforces Pfizer’s aspirational leadership position in tackling the virus. The company is in a heated race with GSK to be the first to commercialize a vaccine for older adults — an equally important, and much more lucrative, market. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst John Murphy puts the adult RSV vaccine market at $7-$8 billion, or 70-80% of the overall RSV product market. Pfizer is also in the early stages of developing an antiviral for RSV that came through its April acquisition of ReViral.
No matter who wins, the competition is good news for worried parents and overburdened hospitals. | 2022-11-02T10:52:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pfizer’s RSV Vaccine Succeeds Where Others Failed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pfizersrsv-vaccine-succeeds-where-others-failed/2022/11/01/763c9206-5a25-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pfizersrsv-vaccine-succeeds-where-others-failed/2022/11/01/763c9206-5a25-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
Dame Karen Pierce, the first female envoy from the United Kingdom, makes a colorful splash on Embassy Row: ‘Diplomacy is a contact sport’
Karen Pierce, the British ambassador the U.S., makes remarks at the memorial service in September for Queen Elizabeth II at Washington National Cathedral in Washington. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Last month’s Meridian Ball was a playful, black-tie take on a county fair — if the fair were full of diplomats, politicians and power brokers. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin greeted well-wishers near the Ferris wheel, White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci posed for selfies by the carousel, and British Ambassador Karen Pierce spent much of the night next to the blue-ribbon pies, surrounded by people eager to meet arguably the most important ambassador in the nation’s capital.
The British envoy in Washington has always been a powerful and respected figure, sought after as a strategic partner and a VIP dinner guest. But Pierce stands out from her predecessors: colorful, extroverted and unpretentious — she once wore a feather boa to a United Nations Security Council meeting — not to mention the first female ambassador to represent her country in the United States.
“She disarms people,” says Stuart Holliday, president of Meridian International Center, the diplomatic nonprofit organization that hosted the event. “Everyone expects the British ambassador to be somewhat distant and formal. She’s this joyous, approachable person — which is unusual and new for British ambassadors. You listen to her and don’t think she’s speaking down to you. She’s just very good at what she does.”
Although Britain elected a female prime minister in 1979, it took four decades to send a woman to lead the embassy in Washington. (“The Americans were way ahead of all other countries on this,” she says.) Pierce arrived in 2020, just as the pandemic shut down the city, then spent most of the next two years stuck on Zoom and phone calls. She hosted or attended as many parties as time and lockdowns permitted; as she loves to say, “Diplomacy is a contact sport.”
Her job had some unexpected twists in the past two months: Pierce was all over the news after the queen’s death and the outpouring from Washington VIPs. But the change of prime minister from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak doesn’t affect her job, she says, as she’s here for at least the next two years regardless: “I am a career diplomat, an impartial civil servant, not a political appointee, so my job is to serve the current government of the day, whoever may hold office.”
Pierce’s office on Massachusetts Avenue is a bright, sleek space filled with books, art and an 8-by-4-foot wall of refrigerator magnets. “Any tacky magnet — the tackier, the better,” she says. The collection started as gifts from colleagues around the globe; now it travels with her to every posting.
That lifelong journey began when she was just 11 years old and discovered a newspaper photograph of an American diplomat boarding an aircraft carrier.
“The photograph itself was so striking,” she remembers. “She was striking. The colors were striking: the deep blue of the sea, the gray of the aircraft carrier, the white of the sailors, the blue of the sky, the black of her skin. She was wearing a white suit. It was just one of those arresting images, and I thought, ‘Oh, I can do that job. I’d like to do that job.’”
It wasn’t an obvious choice: Her parents worked as a school secretary and an architectural draftsman in Preston, the British cotton town that was the model for Coketown in Charles Dickens' “Hard Times.” She considered other options: Becoming a fighter pilot, but they wouldn’t let women do it in those days. Or maybe a nuclear scientist, but her physics grades weren’t strong enough. So she took the foreign service exam and began, at age 21, what would become a 42-year journey traveling the globe.
She first served in Washington in the early years of the Clinton administration, with a special emphasis on solving the crisis in Bosnia. Her posting in Japan later proved important for trade policy during Brexit. Her work on security policy made her an expert on military weapons in Europe. That led to appointments as ambassador to Afghanistan, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. “I always would rather be working on the issue of it time, just because that’s what excites me: Being in the center of something that’s critical globally, that means something in the real world, and is on the front page of the newspapers,” she says.
Pierce credits part of her success as a negotiator to being a good listener — not just to know what the other side is saying but especially “with the Russians, being able to differentiate between what they say and what they mean.” Her gender doesn’t make a difference to her methodology, but sure — some countries try to intimidate female diplomats with sexist comments; that’s par for the course.
Pierce joined the foreign office shortly after it allowed women to keep their jobs after getting married; she juggled marriage to Sir Charles Roxburgh (who earlier this year left a high-ranking job with Britain’s Treasury) and raising two now-grown sons. When her older son was little, he had to do an essay about his mother: “He wrote, ‘My mum has a job’ — which was very unusual for his school — ‘and her is job is to save Bosnia,’” says Pierce. “And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s okay, you know, he gets it.’ ”
Others got it as well: Three years ago, Pierce was named a Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, an honor presented for significant nonmilitary service to the United Kingdom.
In March 2020, newly appointed to the top job in Washington, Pierce was driving down from New York for the white-tie Gridiron dinner. Her ballgown was in the back seat, and she was “so looking forward to getting right back into the heart of Washington.” The dinner was abruptly canceled, and then everything was canceled — not ideal for a diplomat in the middle of a global crisis.
“I started here not able to go and see anybody and I had to do it all by cold-calling,” she says. “I joined every single Zoom call that I could find just to get known.” When it was safe to gather in person, she threw small garden and dinner parties and quickly established herself a social force — both as a hostess and as a guest.
“As well as being a formidable diplomat, she has a deep understanding of how culture can bring differing tribes together,” says Simon Godwin, artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in D.C. Pierce has hosted a screening of Godwin’s film adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet,” a one-man show of Shakespeare villains and dinners for the Washington National Opera and other institutions. “At all of these, rhetoric and argument have been celebrated,” he says. “The embassy has become somewhere where artists, as well as politicians, have felt welcomed and cherished.” (And, according to Godwin, the mini fish and chips are “to die for.”) It’s more fun than negotiating with the Russians.
Unlike her dark-suited predecessors, Pierce favors colorful, eye-catching clothing like the bright orange ensemble she wore when she presented her credentials to President Donald Trump or the baby pink satin evening gown she wore to this year’s White House correspondents’ dinner. (And shoes: “Too many to count; not enough, obviously.”) She claims she’s “not particularly good at fashion, but I like it.” Here, too, there’s a method to the madness: “When you’re an ambassador, it’s a bit different. You want people to remember what you said, and it’s easier if they have an image of you in a red dress rather than a black suit.”
Ambassador Rufus Gifford is the reality star who will try to fix America’s image abroad
Pierce was relatively unknown outside Washington until September when Queen Elizabeth II died and Pierce spent the next two weeks doing national interviews. President Biden made a condolence call to the embassy just hours after the death was announced; Pierce was a featured speaker at the memorial service at Washington National Cathedral attended by Vice President Harris, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Washington’s mayor had the Union Jack flying at half-staff on Pennsylvania Avenue. Pierce calls the outpouring “an incredibly gracious gesture by America to show their solidarity with the queen, both as a person but also because of what she represented: common kinship, common values.”
A few weeks later, Pierce attended Elton’s John’s White House concert and received a shout out from Biden — it happened to be her 63rd birthday, and was a memorable way to celebrate. “We were bopping in the aisles with members of the Cabinet. It was terrific.”
It was a fun break from the day job: Dealing with big challenges of the 21st century — climate, migration, technology — while working with the United States to battle old-fashioned threats from authoritarian states like Russia toward countries like Ukraine.
A few years ago, a British journalist tracked down the woman in the photo who inspired Pierce all those years ago: Eleanor Hicks, a groundbreaking Black diplomat who was the U.S. consul in Nice when Pierce saw that iconic photograph. “Isn’t that incredible?” she says. “We got in touch and she’s delightful.”
Somewhere, there’s a young girl — and future diplomat — who might say the same thing about Pierce. | 2022-11-02T10:52:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The British ambassador brings her unique style to Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/02/karen-pierce-british-ambassador/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/02/karen-pierce-british-ambassador/ |
‘A League of Their Own’ chronicles life for LGBTQ women in the 1940s
Even at a time of repression, these women found ways to create a culture and life for themselves
Perspective by Lauren Gutterman
Lauren Gutterman is the author of "Her Neighbor’s Wife: A History of Lesbian Desire Within Marriage" and associate professor of American studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Cosplayers dressed as All the way May and Greta Gill from “A League of Their Own” attend New York Comic-Con on Oct. 6. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
Amazon recently released a series that reboots the 1992 film “A League of Their Own,” about the Rockford Peaches, one of 15 teams in the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). The original film studiously avoided — and barely even hinted at — the ballplayers’ potential queerness, as well as the exclusion of Black women from the league, but the series seeks to fix those erasures. It centers queerness and the racism that structured the league and era.
The new series focuses on two queer women who cross paths at the AAGPBL tryouts. Carson Shaw, a White woman whose husband is away at war, is recruited to the Peaches. Max Chapman, a Black pitcher employed at her mother’s beauty salon, is barred from the team despite her clear talent. The series follows both women as they chase their baseball dreams, fall in and out of love and reconcile their own desires and identities with the pressures they face to conform.
The series’ portrait of queer life amid World War II might seem unrealistic to some, but history reveals that queer women and trans men — from butch to femme and married to unmarried — often found opportunities to act on their desires and build queer communities both during and after the war. As the series shows, the formation of these queer communities was indeed often racially segregated, too.
Many scholars have written about the ways World War II enabled the growth of queer communities, bringing together young men and women from across the nation to live and work in sex-segregated spaces. For many, that experience served as an awakening to the possibilities of same-sex relationships and provided an introduction to the very words “homosexual,” “gay” and “lesbian.” One member of the Women’s Army Corps, which began in 1942 as an auxiliary unit, recalled that even during basic training, lesbian relationships were ubiquitous: “Everybody was going with someone, or had a crush on somebody or was getting ready to go with somebody.”
Women on the home front also found new opportunities for same-sex relationships, including in the wartime industries that began taking on women as workers for the first time. Elizabeth “Deedy” Breed, a White woman from Connecticut, had her first lesbian love affair with another woman she met while working at United Aircraft. The relationship was ill-fated. After reading Radclyffe Hall’s classic 1928 tale of queer woe, “The Well of Loneliness,” Breed felt there was no way to build a happy gay life and, soon after, married a man. But her feelings for women never disappeared. Decades later, in the 1970s, after becoming involved with the feminist movement, she ended her marriage and came out as a lesbian.
As the series “A League of Their Own” demonstrates, underground bars were important meeting spaces for many White lesbians, but they also typically excluded Black patrons. Ruth Ellis, an unmarried African American lesbian who lived in Detroit during the war, remembered that she met lesbians — both married and single — at house parties rather than at bars. Ellis’s own home eventually became known as “a house where queers go,” which sometimes included married ladies from the Black church.
After the war ended, military leaders ramped up crackdowns on queer women in their ranks. Beverly Todd, a White woman from Michigan, had several relationships with women in the Air Force in the early 1950s. Despite the pains she took to hide them, the captain of Todd’s unit discovered one of her affairs. In the middle of the night, he and other officers came to her room, separated Todd and her lover and questioned Todd for more than nine hours. Todd’s lover was kicked out of the military, most likely given an “undesirable” discharge that would have prevented her from receiving veterans benefits. Meanwhile, Todd promised the military’s psychiatrist that she would change rather than be sent to a civilian mental institution. “I did what they wanted me to do,” Todd recalled. Eventually, she married a man.
Even after the sobering experience of being thrown out of the military, some women found ways to explore their desires for women, including by playing sports. After being discharged from the military in the 1950s because of her lesbianism, Beverly Dale, a White woman, moved to Detroit, where she joined softball and bowling teams. She remembered that games provided opportunities to inconspicuously meet and date women. In contrast with the surveillance she experienced in the military, sports provided a relatively safe space in which to socialize with other queer women, provided they publicly maintain romantic relationships with men.
After the war, queer women faced not only public discrimination but also familial homophobia and transphobia for defying gender and sexual norms. In 1953 in New Orleans, Doris “Blue” Lunden, another White woman, was still in her teens when she was caught up in a police raid of the Goldenrod Inn, a lesbian bar in the French Quarter. Lunden was arrested, and her name was published in the next morning’s newspaper. Initially, she lied and told her father she didn’t know what kind of bar the Goldenrod was, but she left home nonetheless, in part to escape the pressure to fit in. Months later, she returned to tell her father that she was a lesbian and was living with another woman. By that point, she had a crew cut and was wearing men’s clothes. “I’d rather see you dead,” he told her. It was the last time they spoke.
“A League of Their Own” reflects a long history of queer women across the country finding one another and, together, confronting oppression. It depicts a brutal police raid of a lesbian-owned bar and details the efforts some of the Peaches take to protect themselves by hiding their lesbian relationships. It hints at how queer women and others began organizing in the 1950s and 1960s — against police harassment, medical misunderstandings of lesbians and gay men as sick, and obscenity laws that limited the circulation of gay publications — long before the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The Daughters of Bilitis, founded by a racially diverse group of women in 1955 in San Francisco, was the first lesbian rights group in the nation’s history. Through its many local chapters and its nationally circulating newsletter, it helped to connect queer women across the country.
The series also reminds us of the many ways queer women and transmasculine people have claimed and created territory for themselves, their lovers and their communities in ordinary and unexpected places. This message — and the history behind it — is particularly resonant today as the United States continues to see the decline of explicitly lesbian spaces. In the early days of the pandemic, two Brooklyn filmmakers created the Lesbian Bar Project, a fundraising effort to help “celebrate, support, and amplify the remaining lesbian bars” in the United States. From a historical preservation standpoint, the project is a worthy endeavor that draws attention to the dramatic degree that lesbian bars have declined in numbers since their peak popularity in the 1980s.
While the Lesbian Bar Project seeks to spotlight the vitality and importance of lesbian bars, “A League of Their Own” also reminds us that queer and trans folks have long made and remade space for themselves and continue to do so. These spaces, whether in homes, workplaces, bars or on baseball fields, have been central to forging queer community for decades and cannot be easily contained or erased. | 2022-11-02T10:52:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘A League of Their Own’ chronicles life for LGBTQ women in the 1940s - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/11/02/a-league-of-their-own-lgbtq/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/11/02/a-league-of-their-own-lgbtq/ |
The rise and fall of ‘Blonde’ aligns with the history of film marketing
An NC-17 rating might create buzz, but such exploitation strategies can’t keep the buzz going once people see the movies
Perspective by Amanda Konkle
Amanda Konkle is associate professor of film studies and English at Georgia Southern University. She is the author of "Some Kind of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe."
Ana de Armas attends the Los Angeles Premiere of Netflix's “Blonde” at TCL Chinese Theatre on Sept. 13. (Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images)
As early as February 2022, articles about Andrew Dominik’s September-released Netflix adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s novel “Blonde,” starring Ana de Armas as a reimagined Marilyn Monroe, began appearing in industry journals. By June, publicity about “Blonde” was everywhere, and nearly all teasers enticed viewers with the film’s status as the first NC-17 film released on a streaming service.
In the week following its release, “Blonde” was panned widely by feminists, film critics, pop culture commentators and Marilyn Monroe fans. Interest peaked during its debut week but fizzled once viewers could evaluate the film’s promises to “offend” them for themselves.
Despite new outlets for hype in 2022, the rise and fall of “Blonde” aligns with the history of films promoted via controversy, scandal or marketing efforts that borrowed from the techniques used by exploitation films, which generated attention for their movies by hyping sex, violence or other topics that bucked censors and offended some Americans’ sensibilities. These films, which depicted topics forbidden by mainstream Hollywood, such as interracial relationships, abortion and drug use, were released in small numbers. But Hollywood studios eventually marketed their more “acceptable” fare by highlighting divisive content, exploiting an audience’s desire to see the forbidden on-screen.
Exploiting scandal to market films is one of the oldest tricks in the media promotion playbook. Thomas Edison built the first film studio, which he called the Black Maria, and filmed sensational topics such as boxing cats, the nearly nude bodybuilder Sandow the Strong Man and dancing women, including “Fatima’s Coochee Coochee Dance” (1896), which was banned by many states in the early 1900s and censored with grid lines in 1907.
Hollywood’s earliest narrative films frequently challenged moral standards to lure paying viewers. Notably, D.W. Griffith’s 1919 “Broken Blossoms” managed to incorporate child abuse, opium dens, murder and suicide in 90 minutes, and Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 version of “The Ten Commandments” reveled in the sins of the Israelites, featuring an orgy around the “Golden Calf” that was considered too scandalous to reappear in the beloved 1956 version.
To appease reform groups clamoring for censorship of Hollywood films, the industry recruited Joseph Hays to write the Production Code, commonly known as the Hays Code, in 1930. Aimed at censoring film content that might “lower the moral standards” of viewing audiences, the Production Code provided a set of guidelines for how crime and sex could be depicted and issued restrictions on costuming, profanity and dancing, among other things.
But filmmakers had grown used to crafting scenes of sex, violence and drug use to attract audiences. Their informal pledge to abide by the code had no mechanism to enforce it. The need to sell tickets during the Great Depression overcame any motivation to make “clean” films. Instead, films produced during the four years between the Hays Code appearing in 1930 and its eventual enforcement in 1934 exploited the sensational, creating opportunities to revel in nudity, violence and sexuality to attract viewers.
Gangster films, such as “The Public Enemy” (1931) and “Scarface” (1932), dramatized the message that crime paid, and their promotional materials emphasized crime and violence.
Similarly, promotional campaigns for some films starring women played up the sexual content — including nudity — delivered onscreen. For instance, the actors Barbara Stanwyck and Mae West built their careers on films in which their characters exchanged sex for success. “Baby Face” (1933) was advertised with the tag line “Baby Face and her 13 men.” And a trailer for the 1934 film “Tarzan and His Mate” included Tarzan and Jane kissing and riding an elephant in very little clothing, while the film featured a nude swimming scene, for which it is remembered today.
Many films made in this period managed to ride the line between just enough and too much scandal, a balancing act that created the star personae of Hollywood legends. Then in 1934, the code became more than guidelines. Films released without a “seal” from the Production Code Administration received fines and drew ire from groups like the Catholic Legion of Decency. Getting the seal of approval guaranteed that a film abided by the regulations within the Production Code, making it suitable for an audience of all ages.
It didn’t take long after the Production Code “cleaned up” Hollywood films, however, for producers, directors and promoters to return to their old strategy of using sex and violence to promote interest.
By the early 1940s, Howard Hughes was arguing with the Code Administration and trying to slip state censorship boards unedited cuts of “The Outlaw,” with Jane Russell’s heaving bosom in low-cut costumes as the primary source of controversy.
Otto Preminger’s “The Moon Is Blue” was released without a code seal in 1953, a move that drummed up business for an otherwise dull and talky film that had been denied a seal only because it used the word “virgin.” Promoters emphasized the fact that the film was released without a code seal, a move analogous to the emphasis this year on the NC-17 rating for “Blonde.”
Such early challenges to the Production Code emerged when producers refused to negotiate and acquire a code seal. In each of these cases, the films themselves offered little to attract viewers beyond the attention drummed up through their challenges to the Production Code.
Incidentally, Marilyn Monroe’s films, such as “The Seven Year Itch” and “Some Like It Hot,” were also instrumental in weakening the code, but even those that featured revealing costumes or blatant sexual innuendo received administration approval. The combination of comedy scripts filled with double entendre and Monroe’s signature gestures allowed these films to incorporate adult content through performances rather than through obvious depictions of sexuality. The films were promoted on Monroe’s star persona, rather than on the scandal of challenging the code.
In 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America replaced the Production Code with a ratings system, which acknowledged that different kinds of movies could be suitable for different kinds of audiences. Hollywood jumped at the opportunity to make risque films, resulting in the first (and only) X-rated Best Picture winner in 1969’s “Midnight Cowboy.”
But this achievement was, again, partly the result of exploitation strategies. Glenn Frankel’s book about the making of the film tells how “Midnight Cowboy” initially received an R rating, but studio executives applied an X rating to generate conversation and hype for a buddy film about the friendship between a cowboy gigolo and a hustler.
The success of “Midnight Cowboy” paved the way for the 1970s “blaxploitation” cycle, which also drew on exploitative promotional maneuvers to draw audiences into films. As Novotny Lawrence and Gerald R. Butters Jr. explain, Melvin van Peebles’s “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” (1971), which was distributed by the pornography company Cinemation as a result of the X rating it received, nevertheless became a box office success because of enthusiastic audiences.
Following the lead of “Sweetback,” other early blaxploitation films — including director Gordon Park’s 1971 action film “Shaft,” and “Foxy Brown,” a 1974 film starring Pam Grier as a fierce protagonist — drew crossover audiences with a mix of violence, nudity and sex. Such low-budget films, brought to the screen by both Black and White executives, used exploitation strategies to capitalize on the previously overlooked Black audience segment. Despite the debate generated by their racy or violent content, audiences remember these films today for their elevation of Black heroes who stood up to the establishment.
Exploitation marketing has always been part of the film industry’s playbook. The shift to streaming video on demand for new releases and festival contenders has caused much hand-wringing about irrevocable changes to the industry, but “Blonde” demonstrates that the old promotional strategies are following content to new distribution platforms.
In 2022, we can recognize the game: Exploitation marketing is used to hype low-budget films. The NC-17 rating for “Blonde” got people talking. But once audiences saw the film, they moved on. What they saw was a film that takes the easy way out by relying on the predictable storyline of Monroe’s suffering instead of her triumphs and by hyping sex and nudity instead of artistic merit. | 2022-11-02T10:53:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Blonde' generated buzz with an NC-17 rating. But it couldn't sustain it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/11/02/blonde-netflix-sex-ratings-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/11/02/blonde-netflix-sex-ratings-violence/ |
Rina Sawayama will perform at the Fillmore Silver Spring. (Charlotte Rutherford)
The eight-member group Superorganism is on its second album of fun and sometimes frenetic pop music. The London-based band’s self-titled debut in 2018 featured eclectic production choices and jubilant melodies. Lead singer Orono Noguchi’s voice doesn’t compete with the group’s maximalist sound; instead, her dreamlike delivery grounds the music and makes the band’s insightful lyrics more meaningful. “Reflections on the Screen” is a song about heartbreak online with lyrics like, “I’ve zoomed in 1080p / Your pseudo-smile is so unfree.” Mystical-sounding guitar riffs fading in and out and cartoony birds chirping in the distance make Noguchi sound like she’s singing in the middle of a lush garden. On the 2022 album “World Wide Pop,” Superorganism doubles down on its delightful chaos. The song “Teenager” is about feeling young as you age. The Auto-Tune-heavy chorus feels like glitter in your ears, and steady, animated drums make it a head banger. The first song, “Black Hole Baby,” is a good encapsulation of what the band is doing: “Welcome back to the black hole, honey / Hold my hand cause the end is coming,” Noguchi sings as alien-sounding bells ring, explosions sound and clips from radio personalities play. The band is doing that quintessential pop thing — providing a soundtrack for the end of the world. Nov. 4 at 10 p.m. (doors open) at 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW. 930.com. $25.
Japanese British singer Rina Sawayama’s song “XS,” from her 2020 album “Sawayama,” is dressed up like a classic, Britney-esque pop song about shopping. But, as she repeatedly yells in its dance-inducing chorus, it’s “more!” A vigilant critique of a festering culture of overconsumption, the title means excess. She sings, “Make me less, so I want more,” stinging listeners with an unwelcome truth. Most of the album fits the theme that “XS” so masterfully pulls off: a deep and meaningful message wrapped in sparkling skin. On the song “Bad Friend,” Sawayama sings honestly about causing a breakup of a friendship. The chorus starts with “I’m so good at crashing in,” with robotic sound effects making her voice seem larger, like it’s looming over you. On her latest project, “Hold the Girl,” Sawayama takes the earnestness we got a little of on “Bad Friend” and runs with it. She’s still heavily influenced by early aughts pop music, perhaps more so by the pop-rock Kelly Clarkson than Spears this time around. On “Catch Me in the Air,” she sings to her mom, “I was afraid, but you put the wings on me.” The chorus feels freeing as Sawayama extends “air” to many more syllables than one — like she’s singing it while really flying. Nov. 5 at 8 p.m. at the Fillmore Silver Spring, 8656 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring. fillmoresilverspring.com. Sold out.
Courtney Marie Andrews is eight albums in and continues to find a way to evolve. “Old Flowers,” released in 2020, was nominated for best Americana album at the 63rd Grammy Awards. Yet her 2022 project, “Loose Future,” wouldn’t necessarily fit that category. A new producer, Sam Evian, and a more optimistic lyrical style take her music to corners it hasn’t been before. Whereas on “Flowers,” Andrews muddles through darker emotional tunnels, her latest album is the metaphorical light at the end. In the aftermath of delving that deep, Andrews’s new songs feel free to be happy, a joy that’s been earned in some way. On “Satellite,” she sings, “But I, I, I like you all the time / A constellation I always find / And I, I, I like to see you shine / My favorite piece of the sky.” She is telling us about an all-consuming love alongside relaxed, acoustic strumming and echoing, spacelike synths. Although the song “Thinkin’ On You” finds Andrews in a place of yearning, the dynamic full band sound is anything but sad. It has a cheery country feel thanks to the steel guitar. Andrews sings, “The heart in you is the heart in me.” She’s sad, but it’s beautiful. Nov. 10 at 7 p.m. at Songbyrd, 540 Penn St. NE. songbyrddc.com. $20.
Echostage, D.C.’s premier EDM venue, celebrates its 10th anniversary this fall with a lineup of some of the world’s best DJs. This includes Zedd, Kaskade and, of course, the “Godfather of EDM” Tiesto. The Dutch DJ has been in the game for more than two decades, defining and pushing the boundaries of what electronic dance music can be, and helping to bring it to the main stage of popular music. Earlier in his career, Tiesto was best known for his trance music — a high-tempo, hypnotic sound made for club nights that end with a sunrise. His remix to the song “Silence” by Delerium featuring Sarah McLachlan was his big introduction. It could’ve been seen as an odd choice of song at the time, yet McLachlan’s ethereal voice and delivery were a perfect fit for the transcendental remix and a testament to Tiesto’s vision. By the end of the first decade of the 2000s, pop music and EDM were interacting in newer ways with both genres taking influences from each other. Tiesto moved with those shifts, leaning into pop music sensibilities. Twenty years in, he’s still making club music that meets the times. Nov. 10 at 9 p.m. at Echostage, 2135 Queens Chapel Rd. NE. echostage.com. $65. | 2022-11-02T10:53:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Concerts to catch in D.C. Nov. 4-10: Tiesto, Superorganism and more - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/11/02/concerts-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/11/02/concerts-dc/ |
A layer of particulate matter is made visible over a residential area and commercial warehouses from the foothills of the Jurupa Mountains in Fontana, Calif. (Sofia Valiente/for The Washington Post)
BLOOMINGTON, Calif. — The two-acre plot was overgrown and unruly, but they could see the potential. Mountains crowned the horizon and the soil was healthy. There was room to roam — for their children and their animals. For Cecilia and Macedonio González, this patch of land 50 miles east of Los Angeles was a portal to their past and a promise to their future.
The couple picked the place some 15 years ago because it reminded them of where they grew up, in the Mexican state of Jalisco, and they wanted their children to feel connected to those roots. But these days, the family property doesn’t feel the same. Instead of the chorus of birds and roosters, it’s the growl of trucks. Hulking tractor-trailers that sport the names of some of the country’s largest corporations, such as Amazon and FedEx, or none at all.
Lines of them — sometimes lurching, sometimes buzzing, zipping past children walking home from school on the partially paved sidewalks of this mostly Latino unincorporated city and leaving a trail of noxious emissions.
“They’re invading us,” Cecilia González said, standing in her yard as the family’s goats bleated in the background. “For us, our American Dream was this: to have some land and for our children to get a formal education. We feel like we accomplished it, and now it feels like it’s being taken away.”
A vast warehouse — a truck magnet — now sits a few hundred feet away. As the expansion of the goods movement industry brought more warehouses and heavy-duty trucks to cities in this Southern California region known as the Inland Empire in recent years, grass-roots organizers and state regulators have worked furiously to clean up the sector, which they say is poisoning vulnerable communities, many of them populated largely with people of color.
In what may be one of the most consequential developments yet, the California Air Resources Board, a niche but powerful agency, appears likely to adopt a rule that would ban most diesel big rigs and other large vehicles that run on fossil fuels within the next two decades. For some, the transition would begin as soon as 2024. The move, which the board considered at a meeting last week, would drastically reshape the trucking industry and set a standard for the nation, just months after the state banned the sale of new gasoline-powered cars.
“There is no government that is today doing what California is doing” with the trucking rule, said Ray Minjares the heavy-duty-vehicles program director for the International Council on Clean Transportation, a research group. “It’s unprecedented globally.”
The effort to phase out big rigs highlights a long-standing paradox: California, famous for its hundreds of miles of beaches and the take-your-pick beauty of its iconic national parks, is also home to the country’s dirtiest air. Smog has choked parts of the state since the 1940s, and California cities regularly rank as the most polluted in the nation. The environmental movement here has made immense progress in the past half-century, but places near ports, along trucking routes and around warehouses are stifled by toxic emissions.
This reality has posed challenges for the nation’s wealthiest and most populous state, which has styled itself as an ambitious leader in the battle against climate change, setting lofty goals for the near future. Yet critics say the boldest rules are exercises in magical thinking. Advocates, meanwhile, insist the dire state of Earth’s warming atmosphere has left no room for moderation.
The trucking rule, dubbed the Advanced Clean Fleets regulation, is especially divisive.
A marathon air resources board meeting on Thursday encapsulated the difficulties that come with adopting such a sweeping proposal. The agency heard from more than 150 people, some demanding the rule be significantly strengthened, others complaining it was already unrealistic, noting that the state doesn’t have the charging infrastructure required for such a large number of electric vehicles.
“We see the potential for the technology, and our members are moving into it in the areas that make sense,” said Chris Shimoda, senior vice president of government affairs for the California Trucking Association, which represents the industry. “But the regulation is really just the moonshot, going for it all at once and much too quickly.”
Warehouse growth is booming, and the resulting environmental impacts are being felt disproportionately.
Across the country, discriminatory zoning practices and local ordinances have placed heavy polluting industry and bustling highways near low-income communities of color, isolating areas and creating unequal health impacts. Those patterns are profound up and down California, from the ports in Oakland and Long Beach, to the freight routes in the Central Valley and the state’s south.
In the Inland Empire, a sprawling region east of Los Angeles that includes Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the spread of warehouses and the long lines of trucks they bring has exacerbated resident concerns. And the pandemic-fueled surge in online shopping has made the area even busier.
In the past seven years alone, warehouses have fanned out across the Inland Empire at a staggering pace. In 2015, they covered more than 590 million square feet in the two counties, according to a study by Pitzer College. By 2021, the number had ballooned to more than a billion square feet.
Once known for its abundant fields of citrus, the region has now been given the moniker “America’s shopping cart.” But public health experts have a different name for these high-traffic areas: diesel death zones — a reference to the chronic and sometimes fatal health impacts for those living nearby.
The big rig proposal remains relatively obscure outside of industry and activist circles, but it would have far-reaching consequences if adopted in or close to its current form. Transportation is responsible for 40 percent of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, and trucks are the dirtiest of the bunch. They account for 70 percent of smog-causing pollution and 80 percent of dangerous diesel particulate matter, despite making up just six percent of California’s registered vehicles, according to a state analysis.
The proposed regulation would require manufacturers by 2040 to sell only zero-emission medium and heavy-duty vehicles. It would also set gradual milestones for certain operators to convert their fleets to electric, with state and local government vehicles leading the way, followed by drayage trucks, which transport shipping containers from ports and rail yards and are some of the road’s worst polluters. By 2035, all drayage trucks would need to be emissions-free.
Perhaps the most far-reaching categories of trucks targeted are those owned by the federal government and private fleets that the state considers “high priority,” defined as companies with at least $50 million in annual revenue or 50 vehicles, including the U.S. Postal Service, Amazon and FedEx. Those fleets would need to begin phasing in electric trucks as early as 2024 and gradually increase their share of zero-emission vehicles. By about 2040, most of these vehicles would be electric.
The rule would impact about 70 percent of California’s heavy-duty trucks and the air resources board forecasts a head-spinning increase in the number of zero-emission trucks in the coming decades.
“This is probably the most substantial regulation to come out of California in a generation,” said Sean Cocca, the director of compliance at Gladstein, Neandross and Associates, a consulting firm that advises fleets on the transition to zero emissions. “This is akin to the conversion to catalytic converters back in the 70s.”
The Thursday meeting was a crucial chance for the board to hear public comments that could shape revisions to the rule, which it will then vote on early next year. Members signaled their support for the proposal, which builds on a 2020 rule meant to encourage more zero-emission truck sales. But they also called for changes to the text and voiced concern about the state’s energy infrastructure, which has appeared particularly precarious during recent heat waves, with officials asking residents not to charge their vehicles during peak hours.
“We know we can achieve significant health benefits for communities if we move with all possible speed to remove diesel trucks from our roadways tomorrow,” said Liane Randolph, the board’s chair. “We also know this is going to be a transition with many challenges.”
New rules require a simple majority vote, though Randolph is expected to try to attain a broad consensus on the changes among fellow board members. Randolph and most of her colleagues expressed a willingness to enact the regulation in a somewhat revised form, citing the high stakes of phasing out diesel trucks and the road’s other big emitters.
The consequences have been playing out in neighborhoods for decades.
In the American Lung Association’s most recent assessment of polluted cities, California metro areas dominated the list of riskiest places. Riverside and San Bernardino counties scored failing grades across the report’s three measurements. Breathing air there comes with increased risk of cancer, heart and respiratory illness, and preterm birth.
“We live in some of the worst air pollution in the entire nation, we live and breathe that every single day, and that translates to a lot of our communities being really sick,” said Andrea Vidaurre, a senior policy analyst at the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, a local advocacy organization. “If you live really close to these centers of pollution, it’s a reality you cannot escape — there’s a noise, a vibration, a smell you cannot escape, even if you go into your home.”
The air resources board, aiming to address health inequities, estimates the rule will save some 5,000 lives and lead to nearly $60 billion in health-care savings.
Many in the trucking industry also acknowledge the need for a transition to zero emissions — eventually.
But in the near term, drivers, fleet operators and industry lobbyists maintain that regulations like Advanced Clean Fleets are too radical and ignore concerns about the state’s energy grid and charging infrastructure. They also say it will further drive up costs for companies and consumers. Fleet operators who have asked local public utilities to supply power for large charging projects say they have been told it will take years to generate the capacity needed for that many megawatts.
“This infrastructure just does not exist today,” said Shimoda, with the California Trucking Association. “The utilities do not have a ton of spare power on their circuits.”
At its worst, Shimoda argued, the regulation could create “a major setback for trying to get zero emissions developed, because the experience of doing it is going to be so poor that you’re going to set back the cause.”
Since it released its draft proposal, the air resources board has said it would broaden the exemptions for fleets that cannot comply with the rule because of delays in infrastructure construction, responding to one of the industry’s major critiques.
Refueling his big rig at a Chevron station in south Fontana, a major logistics hub bordering Bloomington, Rigo Macias said he would welcome the death of diesel — after all, it just cost him $150 to fill a fraction of his tank. But buying a truck would put him out of business.
“Electric trucks — electric everything — it’s good for the atmosphere, it’s a good idea, but where’s the money?” said Macias, a 56-year-old who has been driving trucks for nearly half of his life. “We’re getting hurt every single day, real bad.”
Macias, who owns just one truck, would not be subject to the proposed regulation, but his anxiety about affordability speaks to larger concerns among drivers. The air board has been aggressively promoting the state’s subsidy programs, but some worry it won’t be enough.
Francisco Arellano lives just down the street from the Chevron, which is part of a cluster of gas stations and fast-food joints that cater to truckers. The neighborhood in south Fontana is one of the most polluted in the state.
The 28-year-old has spent his life in the city, and he has struggled with health problems for as long as he can remember, ones that he blames on the heavy truck traffic. One week in middle school, his nose bled so many times that this parents took him to the hospital to get the blood vessels cauterized, afraid he would choke in his sleep. Asthma and severe allergies have made everyday life difficult.
Driving through the city on a recent afternoon, Arellano pointed out warehouse after warehouse, some abutting schools and all attracting a string of semis. In nearby Rancho Cucamonga, where he works as a retail manager, there are far fewer signs of industry. The population is also much Whiter and wealthier on average.
“I can’t wait to leave Fontana,” Arellano said. “I would pay a million dollars to live in Rancho, where it’s just a few miles away and there’s no pollution.”
A couple miles northeast, Alondra Mateo lives near the intersection of a major truck thoroughfare and busy train tracks. The 22-year-old community organizer saw the impact of air pollution when traveling to San Bernardino for work, but when she relocated to Fontana a month ago, she didn’t know she was moving to an epicenter of the problem.
“Now I’m right in the middle of it — I have the warehouses, I have the train and all the big trucks that pass by,” said Mateo, who works with the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice.
In Bloomington, the González family and some neighbors have planted signs in their yards: The city is not for sale, they read. They are part of a small grass-roots group fighting to stop a warehouse project that would place another large facility in their backyard.
“Our small piece of open land here in Bloomington is being taken over by a sea of concrete all around us,” said Alejandra González, 34, one of Cecilia’s daughters.
She lives nearby and spends after-work evenings and weekend days at the house where she grew up, where she hopes her three-year-old niece, Ximena, can have a similar childhood. But Alejandra is afraid of what might happen if another warehouse is built and more trucks begin to rumble past.
On a recent day, the two played at the far edge of their property, running around the way Alejandra did when she was a girl.
“Ximena, we’re going to get lost we’re so far over here,” she said.
“No, no, tía,” her niece replied. “We’re not going to get lost here; this is our home.” | 2022-11-02T10:53:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Diesel big rigs have belched smog for years. California may soon ban them. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/02/california-big-rig-ban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/02/california-big-rig-ban/ |
The Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee acted in a drama that some critics say inappropriately uses the Holocaust to advance a conservative agenda
Republican Doug Mastriano is running for governor in Pennsylvania. He appeared in the 2019 film “Operation Resist” and promoted it on Facebook at the time, saying that “this exciting movie grapples with sacrifice and heroism during the horrors of the holocaust.” (Mark Makela/Getty Images)
“It is offensive to weaponize the Holocaust for political ends, yet that is what this film does and quite proudly,” said Neil Leifert, director of the Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies at Penn State.
The film’s lead actress, who is Jewish, said in retrospect that she is disturbed by how the film promotes Christianity at the expense of Jewish characters. These newly aired critiques of the movie come at a time when Jewish leaders have raised alarm about Mastriano’s expressions of Christian nationalism and ties to the far right.
As a gubernatorial candidate, he’s faced criticism for paying $5,000 for campaign consulting to the far-right social media website Gab, where the man charged with killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue four years ago posted antisemitic screeds, and for accepting a $500 donation from Gab chief executive Andrew Torba. Mastriano has also been accused of promoting antisemitic tropes in attacking his opponent, Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish.
“I reject antisemitism in any form,” Mastriano said in a July statement distancing himself from Torba, who has said he won’t talk to non-Christian reporters. When an Israeli reporter recently asked Mastriano about his ties to Gab and his comments about his opponent, the candidate’s wife interceded. “I’m going to say we probably love Israel more than a lot of Jews do,” said Rebbie Mastriano, who also appears in “Operation Resist.”
The 58-year-old former Army colonel was cast in part because of his military experience, one year before he was elected to the state Senate. It’s not clear why, amid trying to launch his political career, he took time to dabble in acting in the unpaid role.
The untold story of Mastriano’s strange foray into acting in a Holocaust drama illustrates how right-wing Christian politicians use the Jewish genocide to advance their own causes, experts said. Some far-right lawmakers, for example, have linked pandemic restrictions or vaccine requirements to the Nazi regime.
Mastriano’s campaign, his wife and his 25-year-old son did not respond to requests for comment about their participation in the film. In 2018, Mastriano posted a fundraising appeal for the film on Facebook and promoted it several times, saying that “this exciting movie grapples with sacrifice and heroism during the horrors of the holocaust,” and later adding that his family was “blessed” to be involved. He also helped arrange a screening of the film at the Dutch Embassy in 2019, according to the filmmaker, James F. Moran.
Moran, who wrote, directed and funded “Operation Resist,” which is streaming on Amazon, said he had not followed Mastriano’s political campaign and did not endorse extremist views. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
“All I saw from him during the movie was positivity toward the Jewish people,” Moran said of Mastriano. He accused critics of the movie of using it to attack the Republican candidate. “If people are going to tear apart my movie to get at Doug, then they have no credibility,” he said.
Daniel R. Berger, a New York pastor and counselor who played a Dutch resistance leader in the movie, said Mastriano’s involvement shows his lack of prejudice. “He did a movie that is against antisemitism and racism and for equality,” he said.
Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, a nonpartisan institution, has criticized Mastriano in the past for his ties to Gab, which is popular among white supremacists, but said it is difficult to assess his motives for appearing in the film. Segal said he wasn’t aware of the far right promoting the movie, but he said the film seems to “exploit the Holocaust for political purposes.”
Mastriano holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in history and military operations and strategy. His master’s thesis contains echoes of the closing scene of the film, warning that the United States is vulnerable to a left-wing “Hitlerian Putsch.” His 2013 doctoral thesis about a World War I hero includes 22 corrections that Mastriano added last year, the Associated Press reported. As a state senator, Mastriano spread false claims about the 2020 election and led efforts to try to overturn President Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania. He has said he attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, but did not enter the U.S. Capitol.
Moran said he did not know Mastriano before casting him in 2018 as an operative with the Office of Strategic Services, the U.S. intelligence agency during World War II. Moran said he was looking for people on Facebook with military experience and reached out to Mastriano, who at the time was competing in a Republican primary for Congress in which he ultimately placed fourth.
Mastriano submitted a video audition for the role, Moran said. “I am the kind of person who can cast extremely well,” Moran said. “He had a commanding voice and kind of a presence to him and could pull off the role.”
Moran said he was inspired to write the movie after a South Carolina newspaper reported in 2017 that a proposed revision to the state’s social studies standards did not include the word “Holocaust.” In the same article, the state schools chief vowed that the Holocaust would still be explicitly included.
The filmmaker received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Bob Jones University, an evangelical Christian institution in South Carolina. Moran said that he has distanced himself from the university and that his affiliation was not relevant to his films.
“You might want to know that I celebrate Passover and Hanukkah,” he said. “I have Jewish ancestry.”
“Operation Resist” begins with a modern-day school board meeting, where a proposal to remove the Holocaust from the curriculum is under discussion. A man tells the story of a Jewish teenager, Miriam, via flashback. Miriam’s home is raided by Nazis, and she is separated from her family. She is later spirited to safety by Dutch resistance leaders and a group of American spies that includes Mastriano.
“Looks like we’re going to have to kill some Nazis,” Mastriano’s character declares during the rescue, before fatally shooting several soldiers. Mastriano later puts a chokehold on the Nazi played by his son, wearing a swastika armband, and lowers him to the ground. “When you wake up Fritz, tell Hitler he’s next,” he says.
At the end of the movie, the man who told Miriam’s story at the school board meeting reveals that she is his sister. He then delivers an impassioned speech about resisting the evils of big government, gun control and abortion.
“How about the millions of babies today whose lives are snuffed out before they’re even born because they are inconvenient,” he tells the crowd, warning that the elderly and disabled will be the next targets.
He also rails against officials removing the Holocaust from textbooks and taking away civil rights. “When the fascists come to strip away your liberties, resist them!” he cries. “Refuse to be disarmed.”
Anne Berg, an assistant history professor at the University of Pennsylvania who teaches about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, called the film an “outrage” because, she said, it manipulates the Holocaust to advance a right-wing agenda. In one scene, the Nazis who invade Miriam’s home confiscate a gun that her father had been hiding. “Only predators want our guns,” her father says before he is fatally shot in the head.
“To use the history of Nazi occupation and the Nazi genocide of the Jews as a foil to project their own political agenda, to me, is just quite disturbing,” Berg said.
Berg also said the movie is rife with historical inaccuracies. For example, she said, Jews in the Netherlands were generally murdered at concentration camps and not through mass shootings, as depicted in the movie. And she said the movie, set on quiet streets and in the woods, seems to erase the backdrop of World War II.
An opening scene features an encounter between Miriam, Anne Frank and a young Audrey Hepburn. The actress did live in occupied Holland as a child, but there is no evidence that the two famous figures ever met. By 1943, when the scene is set, Frank had gone into hiding with her family.
Moran said he did the best he could with a limited budget, shooting in his home state of South Carolina. The movie’s references to guns and abortion were appropriate, he said, because the confiscation of weapons and disregard for human life were “two of the key drivers for the Nazi environment.”
“My main point in the movie was that the Holocaust has lessons for us regarding today’s environment politically,” Moran said. “Once you start down the trail of whose life matters, you have entered the mind-set of Nazism … and it’s what I saw happening today as people are seen as inconvenient lives and as the government seeks to remove the guns of innocent civilians.”
Miriam was played by Ashleigh Burnette, who was 17 when the movie was filmed. She was raised Jewish in an overwhelmingly Christian town in north Georgia and said she was excited to participate in a movie about the Holocaust. But she said that she was surprised most people involved in the movie were Christian and that she felt uncomfortable when Christian prayers were said before meals on set.
Burnette is now 21 years old. “It’s never been something that I’m extremely proud of,” she said, noting one scene in which a Christian woman discusses her faith while saving her character. “Maybe the movie was really about shedding light on Christianity? That a great Christian lady was helping me, so bless the Christians?”
Burnette’s mother, Lana Burnette, said she was bothered by the movie’s inaccurate depiction of certain Jewish practices. “It was a very Christian conservative environment on set,” she said, adding that she feared her daughter would be punished in the film industry if she pulled her off the set.
Moran said he was counting on Ashleigh and Lana Burnette to offer guidance on Jewish traditions. “If there was an authenticity problem, I would look at them,” he said, adding that he was consumed with the logistical challenges of moviemaking. “I had a lot of other stuff going on.”
Screens of text at the end of the film reveal that several of the non-Jewish characters in the movie represented real historical figures. Mastriano plays Peter Ortiz, a U.S. Marine Corps colonel decorated for heroism in World War II.
“I wanted the movie to be about the lives of all of those who helped save Jewish lives,” Moran said. “There were righteous Gentiles.”
The movie ends with a montage of extremely graphic photos of piles of dead Jewish bodies and title cards urging “Never Forget” and “Always Resist.” Ashleigh Burnette said she thought the photos seemed gratuitous. Some Holocaust experts said such images are shocking but remove the humanity of both the victims and the perpetrators.
Moran said his intent was to confront Holocaust deniers with the truth. “I wanted to make sure people know what actually happened,” he said. | 2022-11-02T10:53:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Doug Mastriano's role in Holocaust film criticized by scholars for advancing right-wing agenda - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/doug-mastriano-holocaust-film-agenda/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/doug-mastriano-holocaust-film-agenda/ |
In this photo provided by the Greek Coast Guard, some of the nine men who survived a shipwreck and were found on an uninhabited islet are covered with a thermal blankets as they sit aboard a Greek Coast guard vessel, in the Aegean Sea, Greece, on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022. A major search and rescue operation was underway Tuesday for dozens of people missing after the boat they were on capsized and sank in stormy weather overnight off the coast of an island near the Greek capital. The coast guard said nine survivors, all men, had been found on an uninhabited islet south of the island of Evia and had been picked up by a coast guard vessel. (Greek Coast Guard via AP) (Uncredited/Greek Coast Guard)
ATHENS, Greece — One more person from a migrant boat shipwreck has been found alive, Greece’s coast guard said Wednesday, bringing the total number of survivors to 11 from the sailboat that capsized and sank in rough seas east of Athens with reportedly about 68 people on board. | 2022-11-02T10:54:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Greece migrant boat sinking: 11 rescued, 1 dead, 56 missing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/greece-finds-another-survivor-from-migrant-boat-sinking/2022/11/02/1980ec98-5a83-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/greece-finds-another-survivor-from-migrant-boat-sinking/2022/11/02/1980ec98-5a83-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
Vancouver Canucks head coach Bruce Boudreau, back right, and assistant coach Mike Yeo stand on the bench behind players Nils Aman (88), of Sweden, and Andrei Kuzmenko (96), of Russia, during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Carolina Hurricanes in Vancouver, British Columbia, Monday, Oct. 24, 2022. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press) | 2022-11-02T10:56:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bruce Boudreau adapts on way to 600 wins as an NHL coach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nhl/bruce-boudreau-adapts-on-way-to-600-wins-as-an-nhl-coach/2022/11/02/43f1e7b4-5a76-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nhl/bruce-boudreau-adapts-on-way-to-600-wins-as-an-nhl-coach/2022/11/02/43f1e7b4-5a76-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
Wednesday briefing: Another expected interest rate hike; Brazil’s Bolsonaro speaks; Elon Musk’s Twitter; World Series; and more
The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates again today.
Why? The nation’s central bank is still trying to get inflation back to a normal level, and adjusting interest rates is the one major tool it has.
What this does: It makes borrowing money more expensive, affecting home-buying, car loans, business investments and more. In theory, that discourages people from making big purchases, which can cause prices to fall.
Capitol Police cameras caught the break-in at Nancy Pelosi’s home.
What happened? Officers weren’t watching the video feed when a man entered the House speaker’s San Francisco home Friday and attacked her husband.
Why it matters: It has sparked an urgent conversation about how to protect lawmakers as they face an unprecedented number of threats.
What else to know: The suspect in the attack allegedly told police he had a target list of other politicians.
Brazil’s president broke his silence yesterday after his election loss.
The background: Right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro stayed out of view for 45 hours after the race was called Sunday for former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, an icon of the left.
What he said: Bolsonaro didn’t concede defeat, but signaled that he would allow the presidential transition to begin.
The Supreme Court weighed in on two Trump-related issues.
First up: Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily halted former president Donald Trump’s tax records from being released to a House committee.
Second: The court rejected Sen. Lindsey Graham’s request to let him avoid testifying in an investigation in Georgia, where Trump and his allies are accused of trying to influence the 2020 election results.
Elon Musk said he won’t reinstate banned Twitter accounts for weeks.
The details: The Tesla CEO, who bought Twitter last week, pledged this morning that he won’t allow anyone back on the platform before there is a clear process to do so.
What this means: Trump and other banned users won’t be able to rejoin and spread misinformation on the social media site ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections.
The number of Black, Asian and Latino homeowners spiked last year.
What to know: It was the sharpest jump in the U.S. since the Great Recession, according to new data. Buyers were able to take advantage of pandemic-era stimulus and savings and cheaper mortgages.
Why this matters: It offers hope for narrowing America’s large racial homeownership gap. Minorities have long been shut out by widespread discrimination and structural racism.
The Phillies took a 2-1 lead in the World Series.
Last night: Philadelphia blasted five home runs as it beat the Houston Astros 7-0 in Game 3 of the best-of-seven series. Bryce Harper got things started with a two-out, two-run homer in the first inning.
Up next: Game 4 starts tonight at 8:03 p.m. Eastern time, and Game 5 is set for tomorrow, both in Philadelphia. All games are airing on Fox.
And now … what to read: 10 new books to enjoy this month. Plus, a dictionary has chosen a very fitting word of the year. | 2022-11-02T10:56:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Wednesday, November 2 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/11/02/what-to-know-for-november-2/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/11/02/what-to-know-for-november-2/ |
Many Biden aides say the president’s popularity is closely tied to a single economic number. They could be right.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain at a Cabinet meeting in the White House on July 20, 2021. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
President Biden’s top aide wakes up almost every morning at around 3:30 a.m. in his suburban Maryland home, rolls over in bed and pulls out his iPhone to check a number critical to the fate of the presidency.
The information sought by Biden’s chief of staff is not covert intelligence from a foreign government nor a top-secret national security assessment, but a publicly available tracker on AAA.com — the average national gas price, which updates in the early morning.
A key election metric for Democrats is on a sign in your neighborhood
“I know how important it is to bring down gas prices,” Klain said in an interview.
This focus has in part driven the White House to sacrifice other major objectives in the search for lower fuel costs — leading Biden to seek a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia despite its human rights record, for instance, and to relax some environmental rules. The White House has also released more than 165 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the largest in the history of the reserve, amid concerns from some analysts that its depletion could prove dangerous ahead of winter. And the president has repeatedly browbeaten oil companies for purportedly keeping prices artificially high, contrary to his usual instincts as a business-friendly Democrat.
With the midterms a week away, the months-long push is about to be put to the test. Polls suggest it has done little to chip away at the Republicans’ strong advantage on economic issues, and analysts from both parties say the GOP is likely to make big gains next week.
But Democrats see some reason for hope.
Biden’s approval rating cratered in June as gas prices soared, recovered in July and August when gas prices plummeted, and then fell again when gas prices ticked upward in late September. Now a fourth shift may be underway — again in Democrats’ favor, with prices again beginning to dip in the last two weeks of the campaign. Some in the administration are optimistic or at least hopeful that it will translate into one final polling bump at the right time.
Biden suggests tax on energy giants
Nobody in the White House has been more focused on lowering gas prices than Klain, according to interviews with half a dozen senior aides, Democratic lawmakers and others familiar with the chief of staff’s thinking. It’s a reflection of the president’s own attention to the issue.
Biden has tasked Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, and top White House aide Amos Hochstein with leading the administration’s day-to-day work on energy policy. This White House economic team holds multiple staff-level meetings every week and regularly updates senior officials on data from AAA and GasBuddy, which also tracks gas prices, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal deliberations.
“Ron Klain is the most aggressive of anyone in the administration in making sure we’re lowering gas prices and taking action against the Saudis and doing everything on the table to bring relief,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who introduced a bill last week temporarily banning the export of gasoline produced by the United States. “He understands that’s the priority for many Americans, and of all the voices in the administration, he’s been the most aggressive and assertive.”
Economists say there is something puzzling, if not irrational, in the political power of gas prices. Gas typically amounts to just 4 percent of the average family’s budget, with food and housing typically representing larger shares of how Americans spend their money.
Gas appears to have a disproportionate electoral impact in part because of its visual prominence and the frequency with which consumers must buy it. The cost of housing, medicine and even groceries can be relatively opaque, while the price of gasoline is emblazoned on large public signs in every part of the country.
Political scientists have found that gas prices have had a direct effect on presidential approval ratings for decades, independent of other inflationary trends, according to Matt Grossmann, a Michigan State political scientist. Presidential approval ratings are in turn connected to how voters decide which party to back in Congress.
“Every focus group you do, it’s the number one thing volunteered,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has worked for Biden. “People get reminded of the price of gas every two hours. They just really watch that price and feel that it’s an overall indicator of which way things are going.”
Gas prices have at points appeared to represent a major threat to Biden’s presidency. From their pandemic-depressed level of around $2.39 when Biden took office in January 2021, prices shot up as the economy recovered and demand surged from factories and commuters. In November 2021, before Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden announced the release of the first 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to offset the increases.
Inside the White House, gas prices were not initially seen as the most pressing political concern. Deese took the lead on the administration’s response, with White House aides Vivek Viswanathan and David Kamen tasked with playing key coordinate roles.
Klain became increasingly involved as the political importance of gas prices became evident.
“Ron was not as focused on it in the early going; in the beginning, it was really Brian’s,” one person familiar with the internal dynamics said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private dynamics. “But once it became obviously a meaningful political issue, then it became a much higher priority.” The person added: “When Ron is focused on something, that means it’s a focus for the president.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February introduced even more instability to the market, and the average gallon of gas even eclipsed $5 at one point in June. Biden’s popularity took a beating in the polls, often on a slight delay from changes in gas prices.
Then things began breaking the White House’s way. Pointing to the extraordinary circumstances posed by Russia’s invasion, Biden announced the largest-ever drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the spring: an additional 180 million barrels.
More important, Russia did not reduce oil exports as many analysts feared at the war’s outset. That kept global supply stable while the United States was pumping more from its reserves into world markets.
At the White House, Klain hosted Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, ahead of hurricane season to discuss how the company’s data could help limit the impact of fuel disruptions on Americans, De Haan confirmed to The Washington Post.
When BP had to shut units at an Ohio refinery in August, White House and Energy Department officials held multiple calls per day with the company to offer assistance and account for any damage, according to one person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics.
Average prices fell below $3.70 in September — or by roughly one-quarter from the summer — and Biden’s approval rating rose to 43 percent. Democrats also moved into the lead on the generic ballot for the midterm elections for the first time since October 2021, according to FiveThirtyEight.
On Twitter, Klain celebrated as the United States posted a record streak in falling gas prices for 97 consecutive days, after highlighting many of the days along the way.
Great news on freight rail, yes, but also... today is the 93rd day in a row of falling gas prices, per @AAAnews
- Every day in July
- Every day in August
- Every day in the first half of September
Most common pump price in the USA now at $3.39 / gallon, per @GasBuddyGuy
— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) September 15, 2022
Still, some political analysts say the focus on gas prices may be overstated, given that overall inflation has also closely tracked with Biden’s approval ratings.
Republicans say that despite the administration’s talk of lowering gas prices, it has not done enough to expand drilling in the United States because of environmental concerns. Other analysts have criticized the release of the petroleum reserve as politically motivated, arguing its depletion now could leave the United States vulnerable after the midterms should prices spike again in the winter, when Europe imposes it embargo on Russian oil exports.
Many analysts supported the Biden administration’s decision to release the reserves after the Ukraine invasion but said that action should have been suspended once it became clear Russian supply did not evaporate as feared.
“If it was me, I would have kept my powder dry because we’re going to lose Russia this winter,” said Bob McNally, who served as an energy official in the George W. Bush administration. “The responsible thing to do would have been to suspend sales and not drawn down emergency reserves.”
Overall, analysts say a president has limited influence over gas prices, and it is clear that Biden’s efforts have not kept costs consistently low. In September, gas prices rose as the OPEC Plus nations announced they would cut back oil production in a rebuke to the administration, and Biden’s approval ratings dipped yet again.
On Monday, Biden floated the possibility of a tax on energy giants’ profits if they refused to expand production, castigating firms for not doing enough to lower prices. It was only Biden’s latest recognition of gas prices’ political significance.
On Tuesday morning, Klain again tweeted about gas prices falling nationally and dropping below $3.55 in 20 states. He tweeted again about falling gas prices less than two hours later.
“White House officials will sometimes say, ‘Well, the only thing that matters in the entire American economy is gas prices,’ ” said one person in communication with senior White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations with Biden’s economic aides. “And they may not be wrong, which is wild.” | 2022-11-02T10:56:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inside the Biden team’s obsession with gas prices - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/11/02/biden-klain-gas-prices/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/11/02/biden-klain-gas-prices/ |
Can the Fed fight inflation without triggering a meltdown?
After the recent turmoil in Britain, anxiety about the stability of the financial system is rising alongside interest rates.
Perspective by Steven Pearlstein
Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, speaks during a news conference after a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting in Washington, D.C. (Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg)
The warning signs of financial distress are flashing all over Wall Street. The Federal Reserve’s long-term shift to higher interest rates has triggered a volatile re-pricing of stocks, bonds and real estate while forcing firms and households and governments that loaded up on cheap credit to rethink their plans.
The dilemma now facing the Fed is whether it can raise interest rates high enough to break the back of inflation without triggering a meltdown on financial markets.
Last month, we got a preview of what such a drama might look like. After Liz Truss, the hapless former prime minister of the United Kingdom, announced a tax cut that would have required significant new government borrowing, investors dumped government bonds, known as gilts. That had the effect of driving up interest rates and driving down the value of the British pound. Those higher rates, in turn, threatened the solvency of Britain’s private pension funds, which had all piled into a complicated derivatives trade that now required them to come up with trillions of pounds in additional collateral. Desperate for cash, the pension funds sold their gilts, turning what had been a bond market rout into a meltdown. To deal with the crisis, the Bank of England, which had been busy selling gilts to cool inflation, was forced to reverse course and announce it would buy as many gilts as necessary to stem the panic.
The turmoil in London sent stock and bond prices plummeting around the world, undermined the credibility of the Bank of England and forced Truss’s resignation. But on Wall Street and in Washington, where markets have been extraordinarily volatile and the appetite for buying bonds and other credit is waning, it was seen as a warning that something similar could happen here.
“What happened in the United Kingdom — some of that is a self-inflicted wound, but some of that is tremors of what’s happening in the global system,” former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told global financiers and finance ministers in Washington last month at the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. “When you have tremors, you don’t always have earthquakes. But you probably should be thinking about earthquake protection.”
With midterms looming, Democrats criticize Fed rate hikes
During a decade of artificially low interest rates, governments and businesses have taken on mountains of debt, there has been an orgy of overpriced and anti-competitive corporate mergers, and the financial system is rife with speculative excess.
Much of this speculation has taken place in what is broadly called the shadow banking system — opaque and unregulated markets that now provide the majority of credit to American businesses and households. The Trump administration was blithely dismissive about systemic risks piling up on its watch. The Biden crew has been noticeably more aggressive in demanding better and running “stress tests” to ensure that disruptions in the shadow system would not lead to a collapse of regulated banks.
But what regulators have not done is actually step in and force the financial wiseguys — the hedge funds, the high frequency traders, the private credit funds, along with their pals on the prime brokerage desks of the major investment banks — to unwind their riskiest positions or shore them up with more of their own money.
In Britain, for example, as far back as 2018, regulators flagged the potential systemic risks posed by the interest rate hedging schemes adopted by the pension funds. Yet lacking either backbone or imagination, they did nothing about it.
The reality is that the shadow banking system is now so big and so opaque, the trades and instruments so complex and intertwined, and the players so herd-like in their behavior that any dramatic move in the price of one security, one commodity, one currency — or the collapse of one player — can trigger a chain reaction that ultimately could crash the entire system.
That is what happened in 1997 during the Asian financial crisis. It happened a year later when the Fed was forced to rescue a highly-leveraged hedge fund named Long Term Capital Management. It happened again in 2007 with the collapse of mortgage investment funds run by Bear Stearns. And after the recent turmoil in Britain, there is heightened concern it could happen again here.
As today, all those earlier crises occurred as the Fed and other central banks were moving to raise rates following an extended period of easy money and rampant speculation that inflated the value of financial assets.
When a credit bubble bursts, the ride down can be quick and bumpy.
We see that in the wild ride on the stock market over the past six months, the steep decline in bond prices, the wipeout in the cryptocurrency market and the cooling of home prices. Many, like Summers and J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon, predict the bottom is not yet in sight.
We see it in the dramatic decline in investor demand for “leveraged loans” used to finance corporate takeovers and stock buybacks, forcing some of the biggest Wall Street banks to take hundreds of millions of dollars of losses on loans they made but could not resell.
In March 2021, Archegos Capital Management roiled stock markets and sent tremors through some of Wall Street’s biggest banks when it was unable to come up with the cash to cover losses on its highly speculative portfolio of derivative contracts known as “total return swaps.” In the end, officials at the hedge fund were charged with securities fraud and Credit Suisse was forced to take a $5.5 billion loss, Nomura Holdings $2.8 billion, Morgan Stanley nearly $1 billion and UBS Group $774 million.
Of particular concern to both the Fed and the Treasury has been waning interest in the Treasury bond market. Foreign central banks and insurance companies whose returns are reduced by the rising value of the dollar have gone missing. Commercial banks seem to have decided they would rather continue to loan money to businesses and consumers than lend it to the Treasury. And as always happens when rates are rising, pension funds and money managers are reluctant to buy treasuries yielding 4 percent interest when they are fairly certain they soon will be able to buy bonds yielding 5 percent interest.
In response, the Fed has tried to increase the amount of readily available cash sloshing around the financial system by encouraging banks to borrow against the bonds they already own without having to sell them. There is also speculation that the Fed might ease up on regulations requiring banks to set aside some of their own capital to cover the risk that Treasury bonds might decline in value. At the Treasury, meanwhile, officials are considering the unusual move of borrowing new money to buy back old bonds for which demand is particularly low.
All of this concern about a financial crisis is putting pressure on the Fed to ease up on its plan to continue raising rates into the first half of next year and — perhaps even more important — cancel plans to sell off $1 trillion worth of Treasury and mortgage bonds that it accumulated staving off financial crises in 2008 and again in 2020. That strategy, known as “quantitative easing,” wound up flooding the financial system with $8 trillion created out of thin air.
So far, Fed officials have signaled their determination to continue selling off bonds and removing that cash from the economy, at least until there are clear signs that inflation is abating.
“They’re going to push until something breaks,” said Scott Minerd, chief investment strategist at Guggenheim Partners.
If and when that breaking point is reached, have no doubt that the Fed — like the Bank of England — will step in as the lender of last resort and promise to do “whatever it takes” to restore orderly trading in financial markets. And with that, the Fed will have been forced to call a cease-fire in its war against inflation and put a floor under the price of financial assets.
What Chair Jerome H. Powell and his colleagues are now discovering is that it is a lot easier to inject trillions of dollars into the economy to stave off calamity than to sop that money back up after the crisis has passed. Once banks, businesses and investors come to rely on that money and build their financial arrangements around it, any effort to withdraw it can cause a “dash for cash” as people rush to sell their holdings before prices fall even further.
And as with any old-fashioned bank, if everyone shows up at the shadow banking system demanding their money back, they will discover that the money is not there — not because it has been lost, but because it has been lent to someone else. The essence of every financial crisis is some form of a run on the bank.
The challenge the Fed now faces is figuring out how to remove its cash from the financial system without spooking everyone else into removing theirs.
Steven Pearlstein is a former business and economics columnist at The Post. He is now Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University. | 2022-11-02T10:57:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fed rate hikes spur anxiety about a potential financial crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/11/02/federal-reserve-financial-crisis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/11/02/federal-reserve-financial-crisis/ |
Your doctor may have dropped you if you haven’t been seen in a few years
Some primary care physicians will drop seldom-seen patients. As open enrollment begins, people may want to check whether they are still patients of their physicians
When Claudia Siegel got a stomach bug this year, she contacted her primary care physician to get something to relieve her diarrhea. The Philadelphia resident was surprised when she received an online message informing her that because she hadn’t visited her physician in more than three years, she was no longer a patient.
“I think it’s unconscionable,” Siegel said, noting that many patients may have stayed away from the doctor’s office the past few years because of the pandemic. “There was no notification to patients that they’re on the verge of losing their doctor.”
As the open enrollment period — when people can sign up for health insurance — begins, people should check whether they are still patients of their physicians, experts say.
It is dismaying to learn you’ve been dropped from a physician’s practice because a few years have passed since your last visit, but the approach isn’t uncommon. Exactly how widespread the experience is, no one can say. But specialists also do this.
“Most primary care practices are incredibly busy, in part due to pent-up demand due to covid,” said Russell Phillips, the director of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Primary Care and a general internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
A difficult transition to a new physician
Patients often move away or find a different physician when their insurance changes, without notifying the practice, experts say. In addition, physicians may seek to classify people they haven’t seen in a long time as new patients since their medical, family, and social history may require a time-consuming update after a lengthy break. Patient status is one element that determines how much physicians are paid.
Siegel said she rarely went to the doctor, adhering to her physician father’s counsel that people shouldn’t go unless they’re sick. She hadn’t been to her doctor’s office in person recently, but Siegel said she had corresponded with the practice staff, including keeping them up to date on her coronavirus vaccination status.
After receiving the online dismissal through the patient portal for the Jefferson Health system, Siegel called the family medicine practice’s patient line directly. They told her that three years was the protocol and that they had to follow it.
“I asked, ‘What about the patient?’ ” Siegel said. “They didn’t have an answer for that.”
It was a month before Siegel, who has coverage under Medicare’s traditional fee-for-service program, could see a physician who was accepting new patients. By that time, her stomach virus symptoms had resolved.
Jefferson Health does not have a policy that patients lose their physician if they’re not seen regularly, according to a statement from spokesman Damien Woods.
He said, however, “Patients not seen by their provider for three years or more are classified in the electronic medical records as new patients (rather than established patients), per Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) guidance. Whenever possible, Jefferson works with these patients to keep them with their primary care provider and offers options for new providers in certain circumstances.”
American Medical Association ethics guidelines recommend that physicians notify patients in advance when they’re withdrawing from their cases so the patients have time to find other physicians.
Demand for services expected to increase
A primary care physician’s panel of patients typically includes those who have been seen in the past two years, said Phillips, of Harvard. Physicians may have 2,000 or more patients, studies show. Maintaining a workable number of patients is crucial, both for effective patient care and for the physicians.
Demand for physician services is expected to continue to outstrip supply in the coming decades, as people age and need more care at the same time the number of retiring physicians is on the upswing. According to projections from the Association of American Medical Colleges, by 2034, there will be a shortage of up to 48,000 primary care physicians.
Maintaining a regular relationship with a primary care provider can help people manage chronic conditions and promptly identify new issues. Regularly checking in also helps ensure people receive important routine services such as immunizations and blood pressure checks, said David Blumenthal, a former primary care physician who is the president of the Commonwealth Fund, a research and policy organization.
Health-care organizations increasingly focus on requiring physicians to meet certain quality metrics such as managing patients’ high blood pressure or providing comprehensive diabetes care. In this environment, “it could be problematic for physicians to be accountable for the health of patients who do not see them,” Blumenthal said.
Money also figures into it. Steady visits are good for a practice’s bottom line.
In general, doctors are not obligated to continue seeing particular patients. A doctor might dismiss patients because they aren’t following clinical recommendations or routinely cancel or miss appointments. Belligerent or abusive behavior is also grounds for dropping a patient.
“It’s really good customer service to explain the situation,” said Rick Gundling, a senior vice president at the Healthcare Financial Management Association, an organization for finance professionals. As for Siegel, he said, “This woman should not be left hanging. If you’re the patient, the physician should be proactive.”
This article was produced by Kaiser Health News, a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, an endowed nonprofit organization that provides information on health issues to the nation. | 2022-11-02T10:57:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Your doctor may have dropped you if you haven’t been seen in a few years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/02/doctors-dropping-patients/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/02/doctors-dropping-patients/ |
An animated story of what science says about changing our clocks in the fall and spring
How is it that one hour can have such a significant impact? Scroll through this animation to learn more about how your brain and health are affected by time changes.
Imagine this is you.
skip 1
Your brain has an internal clock.
It helps keep time each day, making sure the right things are happening at the right moments inside our bodies, such as cardiac functions, metabolic processes, hormone fluctuations and sleep.
Each morning, sunlight resets our internal clock by “pulling” us back into sync with a 24-hour day.
(skip 8)
Then, after the sun sets, the lack of sunlight allows our bodies to produce hormones such as melatonin, which promotes sleep.
skip 11
Similar to how sunlight in the morning can pull our internal clock earlier, light from any source too late into the evening can do the opposite and “push” our internal clock later.
This can interfere with our ability to sleep.
With the time change each spring to daylight saving time, we abruptly disrupt this important relationship between our brains and the sun. Here’s why.
Our internal clock evolved to align with the sunrise, sunset and a 24-hour day.
Likewise, the clocks we developed to schedule our days were conceived to align with the 24-hour solar day.
When we are observing standard time, noon is when the sun is generally at its highest point. Let’s call it solar noon.
For most of us, our watches and phone clocks dictate how we live large parts of our lives — when to wake up, be at work and go to bed.
Each March, when we switch to daylight saving time, our daily schedules shift by an hour.
Notice how now we wake up in the dark and leave work with more hours of sunlight left in the day.
But the sun doesn’t move. Solar noon, which is synced with your internal clock, is still at the same time as the previous day. Now your daily schedule and solar noon are misaligned.
Unfortunately, the internal clock in your brain can’t adjust as fast as your watch. It takes your internal clock at least one day to adjust to one hour in time change. And for some people, it can take longer than that.
One of the major problems with changing to daylight saving time is that it disrupts sleep. Your body isn’t yet ready to fall asleep at your usual bedtime, which is now an hour earlier.
And in the morning, your body wants its old wake time, too. But your alarm clock wakes you an hour earlier, so you can get to work on time. Now you’re cutting into your sleep at both ends.
This sudden one-hour shift each spring has been associated with more heart attacks and strokes. Automobile and other types of accidents also increase.
There is also a cumulative toll of circadian misalignment. Here’s what would happen if we stayed in daylight saving time all year long.
The summer solstice, around June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere, is the longest day of the year. In some locations, such as D.C., there may be nearly 15 hours of daylight.
Those extra hours of sunlight after work may feel nice, but having a later sunset close to bedtime can delay the onset of those sleep hormones, pushing your internal clock later.
Even though you may end up losing some sleep, during the summer you would still have early-morning sun to “pull” you back a little bit.
But let’s imagine if daylight saving time becomes permanent, as has been proposed. Six months later, during the shortest day of the year, on Dec. 21, you would have a different problem.
There would be a bit over nine hours of sunlight in D.C. during the day.
You would wake up in darkness, and the sun wouldn’t rise until you were well awake and already at work.
Because you already would have been awake for hours before the sun rose, it would be less capable of “pulling” your clock back into alignment.
If your internal clock doesn’t get “pulled” enough, it can’t reset itself.
So, your internal clock may remain slightly longer than 24 hours, causing you to drift out of sync with the solar day.
(Skip 43)
Living chronically out of sync with our internal clock puts us at an increased risk for sleep loss, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, mood disorders and even certain types of cancer.
Melatonin has oncostatic properties, meaning it can slow the spread of cancer, said Charles Czeisler, chief of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
But what would happen if we adopted standard time year round? Experts say we would eliminate the short-term health problems (and frustration) created by adjusting our clocks twice per year.
More importantly, our internal clock would stay in sync with the solar day.
With better circadian alignment, we may reduce the risk for many long-term health issues.
Lindsey Bever is a reporter for The Washington Post's Well+Being desk, covering chronic illness, mental health and navigating the medical system, among other issues. She was previously a reporter at the Dallas Morning News. Twitter Twitter | 2022-11-02T10:57:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why daylight saving time is worse for your body than standard time - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2022/permanent-standard-time-body-health-benefits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2022/permanent-standard-time-body-health-benefits/ |
Razor wire marks the boundary between Russian-controlled South Ossetia and the rest of Georgia. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz/MAPS/For The Washington Post)
TBILISI, Georgia — The messages are spray painted across the city, thousands of them, cursing Russian President Vladimir Putin and telling Russians to “go home.” Many restaurants and cafes, including the ones where Russians hang out, pointedly display signs declaring their support of Ukraine. A few even demand loyalty pledges, saying that Russians should enter only if they first condemn the invasion or denounce Putin as a dictator.
“We need to make sure that brainwashed Russian imperialists do not end up in our bar,” reads the declaration form at the Daedana bar.
For months now, hundreds of thousands of Russians have been spilling into nearby countries, seeking refuge from repression, to avoid the repercussions of broad Western sanctions, and, in the most recent waves, to escape the prospect of being called up to fight. Georgia is one of the most enticing destinations, known for its mild climate, its wine, its food, its nightlife-heavy capital and, crucial to the incoming Russians, its visa-free entry rules.
But Georgia is faced with an influx it did not seek and does not know how to handle.
How the E.U. has fallen short on promises to Ukrainian refugees
The former Soviet republic of 3.7 million people has spent much of its modern existence trying to disentangle itself from Moscow and draw closer to the West.
But wresting itself free has proved challenging. Russia launched an invasion here in 2008 — a “peace enforcement” operation that left lasting marks on Georgia and presaged the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. Georgia’s government, after years of being vehemently anti-Moscow, now tries to avoid provoking the Kremlin.
Many Georgians say the recent months have been deflating, as they try to square how Russians could wage war in their country and 14 years later use it as a haven.
“We are super-pissed they would choose us as an escape route,” said Keto Urushadze, 23, who has her own memories of the war, being shaken awake by her family in the middle of the night, told to pack her bag as helicopters whirred.
The European Union countries bordering Russia have banned entry by most Russian travelers. Central Asian nations such as Kazakhstan remain open and welcoming. Among Russia’s neighbors, then, Georgia stands as the tense middle ground — a place where Russians get an automatic year-long stay at the cost of coming face-to-face with resentments.
So many have come here that rents in Tbilisi have soared nearly 80 percent since last year.
Some of the newcomers say they’re uncomfortable speaking Russian and have downloaded Georgian language apps on their phones. Some say they seek out Russian-owned businesses, little enclaves where they can relax.
“It’s hard to be here,” said one Russian who had arrived three days earlier, sitting with his brother at a former Soviet factory remodeled into a co-working space with galleries, bars and a hostel. On the walls of a nearby courtyard with outdoor tables, one sign said, “Ukraine will prevail,” and another sought donations for Kyiv. The Russian brothers, who had fled in a rush after the mobilization drive was announced, said they left so much back home: a car, parents, a girlfriend for one of them, jobs for both.
“Our government made bloody hell,” one of them said, speaking quietly. “I understand how the Germans felt after World War II.”
While the first wave of Russians consisted heavily of intellectuals opposed to Putin, with some even joining anti-Kremlin protests in Tbilisi, Georgians suspect the newer wave is less ideological. Many Russians just don’t want to die in what they see as a bad war.
Data Lapauri, 34, who co-owns the Daedana bar, says Russians shouldn’t get the privilege to opt out of the discomfort. Since April, the bar has required Russian patrons to check the boxes of a digital form acknowledging a long list of their government’s misdeeds. Lapauri said that over six months, 2,500 Russians have accepted the conditions and come in for the electronic dance music and drinks including homemade grape vodka. But just as many others, he said, have turned around and left.
In August, the bar’s website was hit with a denial-of-service attack as well as thousands of one-star Google reviews and death threats on its Instagram account. A month later, the bar received a visit from Ksenia Sobchak, a Russian socialite and TV anchor with millions of social media followers who has alternated between Putin supporter and critic. She confronted Lapauri at the entrance, asking him to defend the choice of “singling out Russians.”
Lapauri noted the outcome of the 2008 war, in which Georgia fully lost control of two Kremlin-aligned breakaway regions. “Because 20 percent of Georgia is occupied by Russia,” he said. “It all goes together.”
“But what does Ukraine have to do with Georgia?” she asked.
“Don’t you see the connection?” he said.
So much about Georgia’s relationship with Russia relates to that 2008 war and its painful aftermath.
It was Europe’s first war of the 21st century. The conflict had been building for years, and tensions flared after an April 2008 NATO summit where members pledged one to day include Ukraine and Georgia in the alliance. Putin’s interest in sending a warning to Georgia and the West collided with the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s stated desire to retake two breakaway ethnic minority regions that are within Russia’s circle of influence. As Russia positioned itself to recognize and potentially annex those regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Saakashvili gave the order to launch strikes. Russia responded with force. Soon, Georgia was defending its capital.
Officially, the war ended after five days, with international mediation led by France. But the conflict continues, at a much lower volume.
Russia never took its troops out of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and, over the years, it has transformed them into sealed-off Kremlin protectorates that Russia designates as independent nations. In South Ossetia, Russia has built military bases and installed motion detectors, watchtowers and electronic phone jammers along the boundary line with the rest of Georgia. That border used to be porous, little more than open fields, with people from communities moving back and forth. Now there are 50 miles of razor wire marking a boundary that Russia has interpreted in its own favor, grabbing extra land here and there.
Where is South Ossetia, and why does it want to join Russia?
“Hybrid warfare,” said Marek Szczygiel, a Polish diplomat who leads an E.U. mission in Georgia that is designed to monitor the cease-fire agreement but is regularly denied access to South Ossetia.
He said Russia has been detaining Georgians who cross the boundary or get too close to it. Sometimes they are released quickly and sometimes they are locked up for years.
The Washington Post visited the boundary area in October, chauffeured by local police and volunteer patrolmen, one of whose pickup truck window carried the message “Russia is an occupier.” The convoy stopped at Bobnevi, a stone village that Georgia only partly controls; because one of its homes is cut off from the rest by the razor-wire border, a micro-sized Russian annexation.
“There’s an 89-year-old lady who lives on the other side,” said David Katsarava, 45, one of the volunteers, who called her when he arrived. “She’s incredible.”
Soon, an elderly Georgian with a wool hat appeared across the fence, waving her cane as a hello, then passing over a basket of apples and pears while accepting some potatoes in return. The woman, Valia Vanishvili said her home had been a part of Georgia until one week in 2011 when Russian troops started stringing razor wire across her property, cutting her life in two. On one side: her house of 62 years, her two cows, her chickens. On the other side, now inaccessible: a slice of her property, the rest of the village, her daughter.
“They even detained my son-in-law at one point” for one week, she said. “He was standing right where you are. I tell my daughter not to visit [at the fence] because I’m scared they’ll take her away, too.”
Vanishvili said that “even right now,” Russians were watching. One of their bases was visible on the horizon. A sign, in Cyrillic, noted the beginning of the “Republic of South Ossetia.”
“I don’t know what they want with our land,” said Darejan Narikashvili, 66, another villager, on the Georgian side. “Russia is huge. Don’t they have enough land as it is?”
For all that Russia has lost in the past eight months — clout, economic standing, military equipment and troops — it still has extraordinary leverage over Georgia. Olesya Vartanyan, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, called South Ossetia a “Damocles sword” hanging over the country.
Georgia has condemned the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine, but it has also broken from the West in its refusal to impose sanctions. And in a fiercely debated move, the Georgian government has maintained the country’s visa-free entrance policy but reportedly also refusing entry to several high-profile Putin critics.
In Tbilisi, Georgia, even Russian activists get a less friendly welcome
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili has said his government is protecting “national interests.” In addition to wanting to avoid another war, Georgia depends on remittances from its citizens working in Russia, and, its tourism industry, in normal times, has prospered from Russian visitors.
“I think we are pursuing a pragmatic and careful stance toward Russia,” said Eka Sepashvili, a member of parliament who recently left the governing Georgian Dream party but remains aligned with it on policy.
Those in the political opposition say the Georgian Dream party — founded by an oligarch who made his fortune in Russia — has turned the country away from the West while trying to keep peace with Putin. They say the open-border policy presents a security concern: Putin eventually could launch a conflict in Georgia under the pretext of defending Russian citizens. As with Ukraine, “Russia wants to destroy Georgia’s statehood,” said Giga Bokeria, leader of the political party European Georgia-Movement for Liberty.
For Levan Merabishvili, 29, what hurts the most is the realization that Georgia can’t stand up to Russia. He lives 45 minutes outside the capital, with thousands of others, in a grid of thin-walled, single-story homes built in haste after the war — a community for people displaced from South Ossetia, who fled the war or the aftermath, when Russia tightened its controls. The homes were designed to be temporary. But 14 years later, people are still there.
“Nobody ever gets used to living here,” Merabishvili said.
His mother stayed behind in South Ossetia, and he has been able to see her in periods when Russian troops have allowed crossings. But in some instances, he and his mother have gone up to a year apart. He is free to call Putin a “poison.” His mother cannot.
“Officially, she has no position,” Merabishvili said.
He said his life has turned out relatively well: He has a girlfriend, and he manages evening shifts at a plastic recycling company. But he still feels anger toward Russians. Other people in the displaced community, he said, “are even more radicalized than me.” The community has a school and a small main street with a grocery store. But unlike the capital, there are no Ukrainian flags, no signs telling Russians not to enter.
There’s no need for them, Merabishvili said.
Given the sentiments in the community, he said, this is one part of Georgia to which no Russian would want to come.
Vaso Matitaishvili in Tbilisi and Natasha Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report. | 2022-11-02T10:57:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. Now Russians are seeking refuge there. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/russians-in-georgia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/russians-in-georgia/ |
Hundreds of personal items were recovered from the Itaewon crowd crush. Survivors and victims’ families were invited to collect the belongings Nov. 1. (Video: The Washington Post)
SEOUL — A white jacket smeared in dirt. A purple mask from a Teletubbies costume. Two mismatched Japanese clogs. A pair of heels streaked with scuff marks.
Hundreds of items recovered from the Itaewon disaster were still left behind Wednesday in a gymnasium in Seoul, where dozens of bodies had been stored Saturday night after a massive crowd crush led to a disaster with a death toll that has risen to at least 156.
Survivors and victims’ family members are now tasked with rifling through what is left behind — each item meticulously labeled and organized in rows in a vast room that is entirely silent except for the quiet hum of cars passing by.
Carolina Cano, a 21-year-old exchange student from Mexico, sent her friend to recover one thing: a singular white Nike Fuse sneaker. It was pulled from her foot as a stranger yanked her out of the deadly crush Saturday night, just as she was about to lose consciousness, she said; a man also stuck in the crowd had his elbow jammed against her windpipe, intermittently cutting off her air, as she remained immobile for at least 30 minutes, she said.
“I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” she said. “It was horrible. It was all just a blur.”
“I really doubt I’ll wear those shoes again,” she added. “It’s painful enough to be reminded of the incident all over again.”
Inside the gymnasium, an older woman with purple hair and a young woman in a gray coat carried black plastic bags, their eyes scanning the floor as they repeatedly checked a reference photo on a cellphone. The younger woman checked a wallet she pulled from inside a black leather purse. Then a worker embraced the older woman as she identified a pair of black leather combat boots.
Wearing white rubber gloves, the worker placed the shoes in a white paper bag. The pair filled out paperwork and left the building, the younger one wiping tears from her eyes.
Objects in the gymnasium were laid out on pieces of cloth or tables that represented different sections. One section was almost entirely dedicated to black boots. Others were dedicated to white sneakers or different types of jackets. From a table covered in hats and glasses, a young woman who covered her face with a bucket hat pulled a black beret with two long ribbons hanging from it — a piece of a Halloween costume.
Some of the items revealed the struggle of that night as people’s bodies piled on top of each other, or as some were jammed against alley walls. The entire right side of a cream jacket was covered in dark gray dust. There was a suitcase covered in dozens of bar code stickers, suggesting many trips to the airport. Often, only one shoe was left behind.
“I was really scared to go into the building. I didn’t know what to expect,” said Mikita Shatau, a 21-year-old exchange student from Belgium. He went to the gymnasium on Tuesday to recover 10 items for two different classmates, including Cano.
“It was a bit creepy because it was so quiet,” he said. “I just saw all the stuff everywhere, and the only thing I was thinking was, ‘Oh my god, this could be stuff of people who died or who are still very injured.'”
Shatau lives in Itaewon and was about to leave his house Saturday night when he saw a text sent at 11:32 p.m. to a group chat for exchange students. A friend who had gone bar hopping in Itaewon with Cano warned everyone not to go to Itaewon, saying that she had just been rescued from a crowd crush. (The friend suffered serious injuries and was hospitalized with a life-threatening condition.)
Shatau did not know either of the women well but opened his home to them after they had escaped the crowds that night. He watched the scene unfold from his apartment rooftop.
“It was indescribable how loud it was. I just saw red and blue lights everywhere. I have never seen anything like that,” he said. “It’s so weird to say a sentence like this out loud, but I’m so glad that I’m alive.” | 2022-11-02T10:57:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After Seoul Halloween crowd crush, these are the items left behind - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/seoul-halloween-crowd-crush-lost-found/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/seoul-halloween-crowd-crush-lost-found/ |
Tax-cut guru still says he’s right about Trump, Truss and trickle-down
Critics have dismissed him as a charlatan and a showman. Arthur Laffer, the champion of trickle-down economics, says he doesn’t care.
By Paul Schwartzman
Arthur Laffer reviews notes and articles in his Nashville office. (Nathan Morgan/for The Washington Post)
NASHVILLE — The mess in England doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Arthur Laffer, the chief cheerleader for supply-side economics since the days of Ronald Reagan, wants to make that clear.
Laffer in early October publicly endorsed a dramatic tax-cutting plan proposed by Liz Truss, who was just getting settled in as Britain’s prime minister. “When I read about your new government’s fiscal plans,” Laffer wrote then in the Daily Mail, “I cheered them to the rafters.”
Most people were not cheering, however; the proposal, which called for the largest tax cuts in generations — and included the abolition of the top rate of income tax for high earners — upended financial markets, devalued the pound and set off a political crisis. Two weeks later, and only 45 days after taking office, Truss resigned.
Laffer has not backed down. He still thinks the cuts are what the country needs to revive its economy.
“How can you reflect on the quality of a football team if you don’t let them on the playing field?” he asked on a recent Tuesday. “It was never tried.” Truss’s unveiling of her plan “without any forewarning of any sort almost guaranteed this sort of extreme reaction,” he said. The upheaval “shows the political response to the ideas but doesn’t have any reflection on the economics at all.”
He was sitting in his “Laffer Center” headquarters near Music Row, a two-story building that feels, at least in his part of the office, frozen in a pre-internet age. While his eight employees peck away at their keyboards, Laffer does not use a computer, write emails or text. At 82, his one concession to modernity is a flip phone that his assistant wrangled for him. His contact with Twitter is mainly through the printouts his staff bring him. His walls are packed with a museum-style collection of framed photographs and letters from the powerful friends he has known and advised over the years. Over here is a letter from Ted Kennedy confiding that his advisers were afraid Laffer “would convert me to supply-side economics and a balanced budget amendment.” Over there is a handwritten holiday card from Dan Quayle in which beacon is misspelled as b-e-a-k-o-n.
Laffer has been something of an economic beacon for more than half a century — and, a flawed one at that, many of his colleagues have argued. His contention that tax cuts for the wealthy can stimulate the economy and increase government revenue has been echoed by generations of Republican leaders, including, most recently, President Donald Trump, whom Laffer advised on the tax cuts that became the administration’s signature legislative achievement. (Trump later awarded Laffer the Presidential Medal of Freedom.) He remains in high supply on certain cable news shows. In academic and policy circles, though, withering assessments of Laffer and his ideas are not hard to find.
Laffer “plays a kind of P.T. Barnum of economics,” said Robert Reich, President Bill Clinton’s labor secretary. “Washington loves big personalities with wild ideas that save rich people money.”
“A charlatan who claims to be an economist,” is how former Reagan budget adviser David Stockman described Laffer in a 2013 CSPAN interview.
A “preposterous theory,” Steven Rattner, a former Treasury official under President Barack Obama, wrote in a 2019 New York Times essay, referring to Laffer’s idea that cutting taxes increases revenue.
In his office, Laffer listened as a reporter recited these barbs.
“I could give you a quarter to call someone who gives a rat’s ass,” he said.
Amy Hanauer, the executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan group that advocates for progressive tax policy, said Laffer’s ideas have “hurt lots of people” by perpetuating inequality and keeping governments from investing “in things that the country really needs.”
Says Laffer: “Cutting tax rates on the rich and creating a prosperous economy is the best way to alleviate poverty and elevate the lowest echelons of the economic ladder.”
There is a market for what Laffer has to say. By his own account, he earns $750,000 to $1 million a year, a healthy portion of it from speaking engagements that pay $20,000 to $25,000 a pop. He said he has earned as much as $150,000 for overseas appearances. In that way, Laffer’s economic musings are causing a steady flow of money to trickle into his pockets.
Laffer is a tireless talker and raconteur who, in the course of an interview, can drop enough famous names to fill a social register. One moment he’s recalling a conversation he had with Dick Cheney nearly 50 years ago. At another, he’s recounting his friendship with former Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss and that time he was courtside with Jack Nicholson. He is an equally energetic promoter of his own ideas, happy to parry any question intended to coax him into confessing doubt or error. During a Q&A after a luncheon talk for business executives at a Nashville country club, a man asked Laffer to name his biggest success and biggest failure.
“Next question,” Laffer said. When the laughter subsided, he said his children and grandchildren were his biggest success and added: “To be very honest with you, I love my opponents on the liberal side. Without liberals I wouldn’t have a job.”
In case no one noticed, he pointed out, after talking a bit more, that he had managed to answer the question without citing a failure.
“I dodged,” Laffer said. “I’m proud of myself. I’m slippery that way.”
At the country club luncheon, each attendee received a copy of his new book, “Taxes Have Consequences,” with a handwritten inscription that included a recreation of the doodle — a symmetrical arc on a graph that emerges from the vertical axis like the cone of a submarine — that made Laffer famous.
Even if you can’t place the name Arthur Laffer, you may have heard of the “Laffer curve,” the diagram he is purported to have drawn on a cocktail napkin in 1974 to show the theoretical relationship between tax rates and government revenue. The idea, as depicted by the curve, is simple: tax rates of zero and 100 percent would produce the same amount of tax revenue (none). The lower the tax rate, the greater the potential for economic growth and revenue. The higher the rate, the less there is for consumer spending, investment and Uncle Sam.
The “Laffer curve” helped make its author that rare economist who migrated from policy discussions to popular culture. In a 1979 article, People magazine not only detailed Laffer’s theory, but delved into his years at Yale and Stanford and described his “menagerie of turtles and parrots and a pet weasel.” The “Laffer curve” even got a mention in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
The National Museum of American History in Washington has his diagram in its collection — although Laffer himself told the New York Times that the museum’s napkin was probably a replica that he’d drawn as a keepsake for Jude Wanniski, a Wall Street Journal editor who helped popularize the idea.
A replica of what? Laffer isn’t sure.
“I don’t know that there was an original,” he said now. “A napkin is just juicy.”
He compared the story to a good joke you keep telling because it gets laughs.
The story Laffer and his conservative allies tell about his career is a highlight reel of tax-cutting successes, starring leaders whose economic plans he helped conceive, including British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Reagan and Trump. Laffer points out that he has advised Democrats, too, including former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart when he ran for president in 1988, and California Gov. Jerry Brown’s 1992 presidential campaign. He says he twice voted for Clinton. He also blurbed his “dear friend” Al Gore’s 2013 book, “The Future,” writing that it is “amazingly rich in wisdom, practicality, and insight.”
Regardless of the politicians who have embraced Laffer and his ideas, stories about supply-side economics in action have not always been flattering. After instituting historic cuts to tax rates, Reagan implemented tax-raising initiatives for several years to offset mounting deficits. The deficit also grew after Trump cut taxes. And a decade ago in Kansas, after Republican Gov. Sam Brownback instituted tax reductions on the wealthy that Laffer hailed as a “revolution in a cornfield,” state leaders had to impose severe cuts to education and infrastructure as they scrambled to close a massive deficit. The state legislature then reversed the tax cuts.
“It turned out pretty badly,” said Bruce Bartlett, a former domestic policy adviser to Reagan and a Laffer critic. “It lost so much revenue that the same people who passed the tax cut had to pass an increase to keep the whole financial enterprise afloat. It shows the lack of seriousness that underlies all of Arthur’s analyses.”
Laffer blames the deficits that followed the Reagan and Trump tax cuts on government spending — a realm that he says is beyond his purview.
And Kansas?
The governor’s tax cut, Laffer said, was relatively insignificant when compared to the size of the state’s budget.
“When your biggest criticism of me is Kansas, I mean, come on,” he says, giggling. “What the hell is Kansas? There was no cataclysm. It was boring old Kansas before and after.”
In Laffer’s office, Randi Butler, his chief of staff, walks in with a new artifact suitable for framing.
“Trump sent this,” she says handing her boss a note.
“Art — My great honor, best wishes, Donald.” The former president’s words are scrawled in thick black marker on a copy of a note that Laffer had sent Trump thanking him for plugging his new book on Truth Social. (Trump wrote the foreword.)
Laffer, who worked in the Nixon administration’s budget office, says he thinks President Richard M. Nixon was a “crook” and that Nixon’s chief of staff H.R. Haldeman was “a bastard.” But the various investigations of alleged wrongdoing by Trump and his associates have not dimmed Laffer’s assessment of the 45th president.
“I love Donald,” Laffer says.
Trump has returned the love, awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019. A photo of Trump, his arm around Laffer during the Oval Office ceremony, hangs on the economist’s wall.
Asked if he would help Trump if he runs again, Laffer says, “I’m sure I would. I think he was great on economics.”
And what about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that occurred after Trump made false claims that voter fraud cost him the election?
“I really don’t have enough information to make any type of judgments on that,” Laffer said.
“Whether he stole the election, all this controversy, this brouhaha going on,” he said. “And I don’t really find it interesting enough for me to want to delve into it.”
Not his purview.
Laffer suspects that his Trump ties have made him less attractive to certain news channels where he previously preached his economics with more regularity. “I’m now a pariah because of that,” he said. For all the attention gets from the likes of Fox News and the Fox Business Channel, he still wants as broad an audience as possible.
Laffer’s TV appearances are frequent enough that several years ago he agreed to have a studio built in his office, which means he can do his broadcast hits without having to venture outside and navigate Nashville traffic. His upcoming schedule included an interview with the BBC, which wanted to ask about what’s going on in the post-Truss U.K. A Japanese journalist wanted to discuss the upcoming midterm elections and the looming possibility of a recession. His friend, Lawrence Kudlow, who also advised Trump on economics and now hosts a show on Fox Business, wanted to talk about Laffer’s new book and what Truss’s successor, Rishi Sunak, faces as he takes over as prime minister.
On this particular day, Newsmax, the Trump-friendly channel, asked him about what the host characterized as the irresponsible spending and the debt piling up in the country right now. In his response, Laffer said Americans survived the economic missteps of Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter, whom he described as “the four stooges” who comprised “the biggest assemblage of bipartisan ignorance probably put on planet Earth.” He suggested that politicians’ salaries should be based on the performance of the economy.
If it goes up, he said, so should their pay. Down? They should pay the people they represent.
After more than 50 years on the speaking circuit, Laffer has a theory about economists.
“If they create a hullabaloo, they get a lot of pay,” he said. “The attention granted to me enhances my income earning ability.”
Hard to argue with that one.
“But I will also say, let’s look at the data together and see if I’ve not been right,” he continued, referring to his broader work. “Let’s have a debate. I’ll do it for free.” | 2022-11-02T11:13:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Art Laffer says he was right on Trump, Truss trickle-down economics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/02/laffer-truss-trump-tax-cuts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/02/laffer-truss-trump-tax-cuts/ |
How do we stop whining that turns into crying that turns into a tantrum?
Q: Could you elaborate on the differences in handling crying, whining and tantruming (angry crying/screaming)? I am very sensitive to the fact that I don’t want to tell my son to stop crying or to “buck up,” but what about whining that turns into crying? “No, you cannot have X,” often spurs a long whining session begging for that thing. I will tell him that he can keep whining if he wants, but he has to do it in his room instead of at my feet or while trying to climb into my lap.
This obviously doesn’t work, and he often goes into full tantrum mode. Then I will take him away from the rest of the family, usually to his room, where I will sit in a chair looking at my phone until the tantrum turns into sad crying (when he starts asking for a hug), then I will hold him until he stops crying.
Is it okay to say that he needs to stop whining or screaming before he can leave his room and that it’s not okay to behave that way? Whining is a huge trigger for me (as it is, I assume, for most parents), so not screaming at him to stop after he has been going on for 10 minutes generally takes all my willpower.
I just can’t imagine being able to engage sweetly with him or in any way validating that behavior other than letting him get it out of his system and being extremely unemotional during the whole process until he’s ready for comfort. (He will not be distracted.) Is this an okay way to handle this?
A: Thank you for writing in; you are not the only parent triggered by whining, so let’s try to alleviate some of the suffering here. You don’t mention your son’s age, so I’m going to assume that your child is under 5, because you’re taking him to rooms.
The first thing to understand is that your parenting job is not necessarily to stop crying, whining or even tantruming. Although these acts are difficult to listen to, a young child cannot develop properly without moving their big emotions through and, when you’re little, all emotions are pretty big. You will notice that you don’t see much ambivalence in young children; they are living in the moment, and life is made up of small and big frustrations. These frustrations can lead to a little whining or full tantrums, and although this is “normal” behavior, we parents can make it better or worse with our own behavior.
My friend Sandi Lerman, who specializes in adoption and trauma, has a great tool for assessing the power struggles in your home: LIFT, which stands for length, intensity, frequency and triggers. You know you are triggered by whining, but I’m not interested in how to react to the problem; I’m interested in how to understand the issues and prevent them. LIFT will help you assess whether the situation is getting better or worse over time.
When using LIFT, you will quickly ascertain the patterns that are leading to greater upset. You say: “I will tell him that he can keep whining if he wants, but he has to do it in his room instead of at my feet or while trying to climb into my lap.” This is not the first problem, but even you admit that it leads to more upset. Giving a false choice — “you can whine, but not here” — will only lead to more frustration, and your child is not going to respond maturely. He’s little, remember? The other problem is that the deepest human need is to belong, so sending him away, even if you go with him but ignore him, as you say you do, will up the ante. (Hence the tantrum.)
I don’t think you’re doing everything wrong. Remember: Young children are emotional and often tired, and are therefore frequently tiring for us. I love that you are compassionately staying with him. (Don’t stop that.) Let’s refocus on the first no. Is there a way to say yes instead? This is not giving in to your young child; instead, this is getting in front of the power struggle. “Yes, you can have a snack before dinner. Here’s some cucumber.” Is there a pattern of something your child needs every night? Is there a routine that needs changing or an expectation that can be dropped?
When there’s nothing left to do but hold the boundary, please get on your knee, look your child in the eye, put a kind tone in your voice and say: “The answer is no. I know this is frustrating, and it’s okay to be upset about this.” Then keep your mouth shut and wait. Don’t keep justifying, don’t ask him to stop whining and don’t move him. Just stay nearby and stay loving. When he eventually cries, all you need to do is hug him.
I’m not going to lie to you: This is very hard work. If the whining grates on you, get some earplugs (seriously), plan to briefly remove yourself or arrange backup in the form of a partner, family member or friend. As you practice staying calm, your child is less likely to slip into the tantrums.
Go slowly, keep practicing and remember: You are both learning from each other. Good luck. | 2022-11-02T11:13:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How do we stop the whining, crying and tantruming? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/11/02/stop-whining-crying-tantruming/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/11/02/stop-whining-crying-tantruming/ |
Moore, heavily favored to become Maryland’s first Black governor, was transformed by Valley Forge Military Academy — a place he begged his mother not to send him
By Sydney Trent
A page from the 1998 Valley Forge Military Academy and College yearbook featuring a photograph of Wes Moore standing in front of five other cadets. (Caroline Gutman for The Washington Post)
At midnight, two hours after the mournful sound of “Taps” signaled the end of another grueling day at Valley Forge Military Academy, Wes Moore climbed out of his metal bunk bed, slung a packed bag over his shoulder and crept out of Wheeler Hall.
He passed the academy’s elegant old brick buildings and headed toward a thicket of woods — the threshold to freedom, he thought. Yet as he walked deeper into the buffer of trees that separated the campus from the affluent residential neighborhoods of Wayne, Pa., he realized the directions he held in his hand that night in 1991 were useless; he was lost.
He slumped down on a rock and began to cry. He was 12, and this had been his fifth attempt at running away in less than a week.
He wanted desperately to go home to the Bronx, where his mother had taken him and his two sisters to live with her parents after his father’s death a decade earlier.
“When I entered the school, I was very angry. … I felt very alone” recalled Moore, now 44 and seeking to become Maryland’s first Black governor.
The portrait of Moore’s adolescent despair will be familiar to readers of “The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates,” which shifts between the arc of Moore’s early life and that of a Black Baltimore teenager of the same name who winds up in prison for the murder of an off-duty police officer. The 2010 book, which was boosted to the bestseller lists by Oprah Winfrey, is a meditation on the power of personal choices, family circumstances and economic inequities that can separate those who falter from those who succeed.
For Moore, a political newcomer who has made his origin story a centerpiece of his campaign against Republican Dan Cox, perhaps no period of his life was more formative than his seven years at Valley Forge Military Academy and College.
Between 1991 and 1998, Moore — one of just a handful of Black students on the all-male campus — would rise from a miserable middle school plebe to a widely-admired first captain in command of the roughly 800 cadets at the academy and junior college. He would go on to become a Rhodes Scholar, White House fellow, investment banker, Army paratrooper and officer in Afghanistan, and chief executive for one of the nation’s largest poverty-fighting nonprofits before winning Maryland’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination earlier this year in his first bid for elective office.
Charisma fueled Wes Moore’s primary win. Now he sharpens his focus on policy.
In interviews with more than a dozen former classmates, friends, teachers and family members, it is clear that Moore’s leadership abilities — and his political ambitions — were greatly shaped at Valley Forge. Many of his classmates said they expected him to become the nation’s first Black president long before any of them had heard of Barack Obama.
“We already knew he was something special back then. You could just tell,” said Army Col. David Arnel, who said his interactions with Moore influenced his military career. “He was like Superman.”
Moore himself was already thinking about a future in politics when he gave a 1998 interview to The Palm Beach Post for a story about life at military schools.
“Every time I go back to New York,” Moore told the Florida newspaper, “I see my old neighborhood deteriorating, and I ask myself, ‘What can I do about it?’ Politics is where the power is to do something about it.”
‘Making excuses’
On an April evening in 1982, Moore’s father, William Westley Moore Jr. — also known as Wes — returned to the family home in Takoma Park, Md., after signing off as an evening news anchor for WMAL radio. He had been battling a sore throat all day.
Just after dawn, he awakened his wife, Joy, to go to the hospital. Unable to make sense of their patient’s symptoms, doctors discharged him late that afternoon with advice that he get some rest, his son writes in “The Other Wes Moore.” A few hours later, three-year-old Wes watched as his father crashed to the floor in the upstairs hallway outside his son’s bedroom.
By 9:30 that night, he was dead, a victim of epiglottitis, a treatable rare virus that causes the epiglottis —cartilage that protects the larynx and aids swallowing — to swell and shut down, covering the air passages to the lungs.
Joy Moore, who had met her husband as a news assistant at the radio station, no longer felt safe alone in the house with Wes and his sisters, Nikki and Shani, and decided to move in with her parents in the East Bronx. James Thomas, a retired Dutch Reform minister, and his wife Winell, a retired school teacher, were of Jamaican descent, part of a tight knit clan that reached to the island.
Moore’s grandparents were loving but strict, forbidding Moore to leave home with chores undone, Justin Brandon, a close childhood friend, recalled about the pair.
At the time the city was swept up in the crack epidemic. Addicts clustered on street corners and in abandoned houses, sometimes aggressive. Crime shot up. The high school in Moore’s neighborhood became one of the first in the city to employ metal detectors, Joy Moore recalled. She decided to send Wes to grade school at Riverdale Country School, a tony private school in the wealthy Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale, paying for it by working several jobs and relying on the school to accept delayed payments.
It was as a student at Riverdale, Moore writes, that he struggled for a sense of belonging as he moved back and forth between the mostly minority working class neighborhood where he lived, played basketball and “code-switched” to street slang; and the well-ordered, overwhelmingly White upper-class world of school.
From the outside, however, Moore appeared to belong as much as anyone at Riverdale, according to his mother and Brandon, who attended the school with him. In fact, Joy Moore, now 72, worried that his classwork was taking a back seat.
“I didn’t feel he was giving himself a chance to realize his potential because he was so social, and everybody wanted to be Wes’s friend,” said Joy, who lives in Pasadena, Md. Wes was content to get Cs, lacked motivation and was a prankster, once setting off a smoke bomb in the school.
His mother worried that school officials would be less likely to tolerate such behavior from him than from his rich, White classmates. Meanwhile, Wes said that he often felt his poor performance and antics were too well tolerated, partly because he was Black, fatherless and from a poorer neighborhood, even though both of his parents were college graduates.
“I didn’t have to make excuses for myself because I had people who were making excuses for me,” he said. “ … I think their interpretation of caring for me was lowering their expectations.”
Then he got picked up by a police officer in the Bronx for spraying graffiti on the outside wall of a bar with a delinquent pal. One evening in 1991, the dean of Riverdale called Joy to schedule a conference to discuss her son’s poor grades and behavior. At the time, Wes was upstairs picking on his younger sister, Shani, who wound up with a bloody lip.
Joy had had enough was fed up. She confronted Wes and, for the first time, he writes in his book, struck him across the face.
His mother learned about Valley Forge from a family friend who had raved about what the discipline had done for her son.
Joy decided to send her son to the military school, too. “I was determined that I would not lose him to the streets” she said, before pausing fleetingly.
“Or mediocrity.”
'You have to stay there’
As Moore wept in the woods, he heard the rustling of brush behind him and turned around to see older cadets emerge from the darkness, laughing raucously. His squad leader — who Moore now realized had faked sympathy as he wrote him “directions” to the train station — was among the amused.
Moore had been hazed.
Contact with family was forbidden during the roughly two months of the harsh training period known as the plebe system, but the tactical officer charged with Moore’s fate that night made an exception. Wes begged his mother on the phone to let him come home, promising model behavior.
“That was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made — to send him away, to say you have to stay there,” recalled Joy, whose parents had mortgaged their house to help her pay the tuition. “But I was also hoping that it would teach him about choices. You know, you can choose to do well, then you have a choice. … If you want to squander this opportunity, then you won’t have a choice.”
As Wes pleaded, he noticed a towering young Black man in a khaki uniform peering down at him through glasses. Ty Hill, a company commander at Valley Forge as a junior college freshman, had been asked by Joy during a campus tour to look out for her son. In that moment, he saw a small, sad and frustrated boy.
“I have never known an angry Wes,” said Hill, 53, who is now a senior manager for Vanguard Group in King of Prussia, Pa., after years of active duty service as an Army officer. “Whatever anger he may have come there with must have quickly dissipated.”
Despite whatever he was feeling inside, around campus Moore was exceedingly friendly, ready with a wide, toothy smile, Hill said. “He had an appeal that made him impossible not to like.”
The two would talk over burgers or slices of pizza at the Boodle Shop, the campus diner and store, he said. Although he was a decade older, Hill said he often felt like the mentoring role was reversed.
Moore pushed him to explain how he had become a cadet captain. “He knew even then that you need to think about stuff, that you need to have a plan to get where you’re going,” Hill said.
While Hill said he’d failed several times to pass the tests to get the “cap shield” — a metal badge on the uniform hat that signaled promotion to cadet — Moore aced the tests on the first try.
Plebes appeared before what they called “the murder board,” a panel consisting of senior leaders who barked questions that required lengthy recitations of the school’s history, honor code and much more.
By that point, the plebes had already been put under great pressure by the older cadets, who forced them to perform calisthenics at all hours. One of the most memorable exercises was called “the Nauseator,” which required the plebes to put their foreheads on their rifle barrels and spin around them in tight circles before climbing a hill, inevitably falling back with dizziness.
The cadets were young and male, Hill said, “and we were sadistic,” especially after most of the campus staff went home in the evening.
Aside from teaching the plebes how to handle their weapons and march flawlessly in parade formation, the military officials at the school required them to “square” their meals — eating with utensils and arms perpetually at 90 degree angles lest an officer knock on the table, requiring everyone to stop eating and go hungry.
Moore gradually took to the military academy’s rigid rules and high expectations. He described obtaining the coveted cap shield as a key pivot point.
“It was the first time I experienced that, where you had to go earn everything,” he said. “Nothing’s going to be given to you.”
To move up the ranks at Valley Forge, cadets were expected to show consistency in their habits, work ethic, attitude and behavior toward others. Moore excelled at steadiness.
He was captain of the basketball team, played football, ran track and wrestled, worked as editor-in chief of the campus newspaper, served three times as class president and was a regular presence on the dean’s list.
Mihir Patel, who was a freshman in the junior college when Moore was a sophomore and first captain, watched as Moore — accountable for his cadets as well as his schoolwork — put a cold washcloth on his face to stay awake during class.
“I remember thinking he was human, and he did get tired,” said Patel, who owns a logistics supply company in Gaithersburg, Md. “It was so rare to see a moment of weakness.”
Arnel recalled Moore’s unusual maturity when he intervened as first captain in a conflict between Arnel and the company he was commanding. Arnel’s underlings, egged on by their ousted former leader, had begun circulating a petition to get rid of him. Moore moved decisively to transfer Arnel’s nemesis.
“He could have just told me to work it out,” Arnel said. “Lots of leaders want to pass the buck.”
Moore was known on campus as a powerful speaker, tasked as first captain with addressing the student body during weekday vespers in the cavernous chapel with its stained glass windows depicting historical military scenes.
Retired Lt. Colonel Michael Murnane, Moore’s American history and social studies teacher toward the end of high school, coached Moore as he practiced his speech about the U.S. Constitution for an American Legion oratorical contest. Moore later delivered the speech, which won first place in the state, at the chapel pulpit.
“I am proud to be an American because I understand just what my ancestors had to go through in order for me to be called American,” he said in part. "It took initiative, it took courage, and it took knowledge…knowledge of the same document that originally ‘we’ were not included in, The Constitution.”
“Wes stood out not only as a leader or as someone who can speak, but he stood out as a Black man in a mainly White military environment,” Murnane said.
He remembers Moore talking excitedly about Colin Powell, a Black four-star general and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, after he read Powell’s “My American Journey,” published in 1995. Like Moore, Powell had Jamaican ancestry and spent his childhood years in the Bronx.
“Powell, in his pragmatic way, wanted what I wanted,” Moore later wrote. “A fair shot. … A code that would instill discipline, restrain passion and order his steps. A way to change the world without unleashing the whirlwind.”
From the viewpoint of many of his White classmates, Moore’s race was not an obstacle. In recent years, Valley Forge has been struggling like other military colleges with falling enrollment and revenue, as well as allegations of mismanagement and violent hazing incidents, which its leadership has strongly denied.
In the 1990s, the institution was forward-thinking on race, Hill said. He remembers the military staff gathering cadets to voice their feelings about the 1992 riots in Los Angeles after the acquittal of the officers who’d beaten Black motorist Rodney King.
Moore also had the support and admiration of the high-ranking White officials there, including the academy’s then-president, former U.S. Naval Academy superintendent Rear Admiral Virgil L. Hill Jr., who later dedicated a cadet officer’s lounge to Moore in the basement of the administration building.
“There was no Black or White. Everybody had the same opportunities,” said Alistair Crosbie, a Valley Forge graduate who has remained in contact with Moore. (Like several alumni interviewed, Crosbie is a White Republican who believes Moore will govern primarily as a centrist despite the expensive progressive proposals — such as baby bonds and a high school year of service — that are part of Moore’s agenda.)
But Moore said he recalls some cadets at Valley Forge using racial slurs, including one of his cadet commanders who singled out other cadets as “sand n------” during training.
“You know, what was really more hurtful about it was … the ones who would never stand up [to object],” he said.
Moore made such an impression on his peers, Murnane and others said, that they openly spoke about him becoming the first Black U.S. president. But only one of those interviewed said they recalled Moore talking about a career in politics while at Valley Forge.
Douglas Bennett, who was second captain when Moore was third captain at the junior college, said that over meals at the mess hall, he and Moore “would have discussions about how we both wanted to be president of the United States.”
At the time, the school was “almost like a laboratory for politics,” where teenage leaders held a great deal of power, accountable to the school command for underlings and largely determining the fate of their peers who violated the rules, said Bennett, who is active in Republican politics in Massachusetts.
As a cadet officer, Moore interacted with powerful visitors to the campus, including former presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, then-Sen. John McCain and Gen. Normal Schwarzkopf, a Valley Forge graduate and commander of the Persian Gulf War, said Joy Moore, who keeps portraits of the encounters on the walls of her den.
To manage their reports, the cadet officers would employ “retail politics,” visiting plebes and cadets in their dorms to check in on them, Bennett said.
“I learned a lot about how to move people,” Moore said. “I learned a lot about staying mission focused. I learned a lot about what it means to lead under challenging circumstances and what it means to lead both friends and foes.”
Justin Flood, who was in eighth grade when Moore was third captain, said Moore was the only cadet officer who paid regular visits to the middle school.
“He seemed genuinely interested in how I was doing,” said Flood, who works in real estate in Media, Pa. “The fact that he made a point just to come down, that tells you something … We were the low men on the totem pole.”
In early May 1998, Moore was at the peak — about to graduate from Valley Forge with an associate’s degree in liberal arts and continue his education at Johns Hopkins University.
About 2000 cadets, relatives and staff jammed the pews in the campus chapel for the commencement, as the 19-year-old first captain took the podium to deliver his final speech.
In the audience, seated with her parents and two daughters, Joy watched her son speak, ramrod straight in his blue uniform festooned with badges and metals.
She could barely contain her pride. Wes had begged to leave this place; Joy had made him stay.
“I made the right decision,” she thought. | 2022-11-02T11:26:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wes Moore was changed by Valley Forge Military Academy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/wes-moore-military-school-valley-forge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/wes-moore-military-school-valley-forge/ |
Elon Musk, as seen through a Twitter logo. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)
Elon Musk’s first week as CEO of Twitter has been predictable in its unpredictability: full of high-level firings, contradictory policy promises and even misinformation tweeted out by the billionaire owner himself. But Mr. Musk will soon have to chart a coherent course for his platform’s future — or the law might crack down on him and, indeed, the open internet.
Ahead of acquiring Twitter, Mr. Musk spoke about a “platform for free speech around the globe” that would allow almost all legal content, no matter how abhorrent. He has retreated from that stance since then — sort of. Mr. Musk said that advertisers won’t have to worry about putting their brands’ good name in jeopardy, vowing that the site won’t become a “free-for-all hellscape.” Yet he shared in a (subsequently deleted) reply to Hillary Clinton an article stuffed with baseless rumors about the assault of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband, and he decreed in a reply to another tweet that “anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.”
Add to all this Mr. Musk’s bevy of proposals for overhauling how Twitter decides what content to investigate, label or remove from the site: an oversight board to review takedown decisions; an open-sourced algorithm to sort through users’ posts; options for users to control how much they want Twitter to censor the content they see. These aren’t necessarily bad ideas, but they also appear to be disjointed and not fully thought-out. Mr. Musk seems to be discovering in real time the trade-offs among speech, safety and moneymaking inherent to social media — trade-offs that took industry veterans a decade to appreciate but that he is confronting only now.
Meanwhile, governments around the world that are dissatisfied with social media companies, such as in Canada, Britain and India, are instituting regulations on the types of speech that platforms can and can’t allow. In the United States, the Supreme Court is poised to hear multiple cases involving Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the so-called 26 words that created the internet, which granted sites immunity for most of the content users post on them. Twitter is a party in one of these cases, which asks whether platforms can be held accountable when terrorist propaganda appears on their sites. Another case asks the same question but with a focus on the algorithms that social media sites use to recommend content to users. Then there are legal challenges to laws in Texas and Florida that would prevent platforms from removing some posts.
The results of anything except the most carefully considered reforms will be massive unintended consequences, maybe causing litigation-wary sites to start moderating content even more aggressively than they already do, or maybe causing them to moderate not at all, because the act of moderation exposes them to liability. Many of the proposals abroad carry similar risks of substantial unwanted side effects.
In the face of these threats, Mr. Musk should fight for the open internet, continuing Twitter’s legal battle at the Supreme Court and dissuading regulators from cracking down. He should do less responding to random tweets or investigating individual grievances he finds personally compelling, and more devising of thoughtful rules.
Social media platforms will have a harder time persuading governments to adopt nuanced regulations that preserve their ability to manage their own properties responsibly if they aren’t trying to be responsible. Section 230 built an internet that allows platforms to experiment, to evolve and to learn — which is exactly what Mr. Musk should be doing right now, instead of playing games. | 2022-11-02T11:47:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Elon Musk's Twitter chaos is bad for the open internet - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/elon-musk-twitter-section-230/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/elon-musk-twitter-section-230/ |
How a forgotten American crisis led to democratic renewal
In ‘American Midnight,’ Adam Hochschild revisits an era almost a century ago when dangerous forces abounded
Review by Robert G. Kaiser
Army recruits fill a street in New York in April 1917, shortly after President Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany. (AP)
Too many Americans are indifferent to their own history and know too little about it. This ignorance makes the present more baffling than it needs to be. Adam Hochschild has written a fine book about a grim period a century ago that has largely disappeared from national memory but seems painfully relevant to America in the 2020s. “American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis” describes vividly a time when racism, white nationalism, and anti-foreign and anti-immigrant sentiment were rampant. Reading it is almost therapeutic. Realizing (thanks to this book) that American democracy survived that dark moment and a decade later began half a century of democratic renewal made this reader more hopeful than he has been in quite a while.
Hochschild’s account demonstrates the folly of believing that Donald Trump and the era he has given us are departures from normal trends in American history. What’s normal in our past is the American vulnerability to mythical enemies, demagogues and ignoramuses. These dangerous forces abounded in the years Hochschild describes, from 1917 to 1921.
Exploring family history through the objects that connect generations
Victory in the war came at a high price that we’ve chosen to forget. The war provided justification for a brutal period in America that featured “mass imprisonments, torture, vigilante violence, censorship, killings of Black Americans … [and] a war against democracy at home,” Hochschild writes. His powerful 12-page prologue grabs readers by their lapels and confronts them with an ugly America sharply at odds with rosy, patriotic versions.
The nation’s delayed entry to the war stimulated intrigue and violence in the United States that set Americans sympathetic to Germany and those sympathetic to our traditional allies in Britain and France at odds. Wilson at first sought to stand apart from the propagandizing on both sides, and he waged a 1916 reelection campaign on the ultimately misleading slogan “He Kept Us Out of War.” In 1917, when the Germans began indiscriminate submarine warfare in the Atlantic that sank American ships, Wilson went all in for war.
Wilson is at the center of Hochschild’s tale. He is one of the most complex, contradictory figures in American history. Raised in Augusta, Ga., by a family that supported the Confederacy, Wilson clung to a Southern segregationist’s ugly racial views all his life. The first and last holder of a PhD to occupy the White House, he was the president of Princeton University before becoming governor of New Jersey in 1911. As governor and then as president (elected in 1912), he was a progressive reformer on economic issues and an internationalist. But once he led America into war, he became a dedicated jingoist. Hochschild calls out his many shortcomings.
Wilson signed the Espionage Act in 1917 and the Sedition Act in 1918, two laws that allowed restrictions on freedom of speech that were draconian by today’s standards. Once America joined the war effort, Wilson had no apparent qualms about imprisoning dissident Americans, including the Socialist Party candidate who had run against him for president in 1912 and won 6 percent of the vote, Eugene V. Debs. Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for making a speech in 1918 that the Wilson administration interpreted as discouraging participation in the war. Debs’s sentence was commuted by Wilson’s Republican successor, Warren G. Harding, in 1921.
Wilson allowed his postmaster general, Albert S. Burleson, a former Texas congressman, to deny left-wing and pacifist magazines and newsletters use of the U.S. mail’s special low rates for printed matter, which forced several widely read publications out of business. He banned a publication called the Gaelic American because it favored Irish independence from America’s ally Britain. Burleson’s chief legal officer, William Lamar, explained wartime censorship to Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the New York Evening Post. “I know exactly what I am after,” Lamar said, “pro-Germanism, pacifism and ‘high-browism.’” Burleson also resegregated the post office’s workforce, with Wilson’s explicit approval. Wilson himself earlier resegregated the federal workforce in Washington.
How the right wing’s delusions went from ‘not normal’ to ‘dangerous’
A. Mitchell Palmer, a Quaker from Pennsylvania who had served three terms in the House, became Wilson’s attorney general in 1919. On June 2, 1919, three months after taking up his post, Palmer was the target of one of eight bombs set off almost simultaneously in cities of the Northeast. He and his family were inside their house on R Street NW in Washington when the bomb collapsed the front facade.
Surviving the bomb left Palmer “profoundly transformed,” writes Hochschild, and “marked the beginning … of a domestic war the likes of which the United States had never seen.” The infamous “Palmer raids” of November 1919 and January 1920 rounded up and imprisoned thousands of left-wing activists, Blacks and union activists. The perpetrators of the eight bombings were never identified.
Palmer’s raids assured him a place in American history, but another contribution he made to his country may have been more consequential. As he scrambled to respond to the bombings of June 2, Palmer decided he needed a new “Radical Division” in the Justice Department. As chief of the division, he chose a 24-year-old Washington native already working in the department. Thus began the career of J. Edgar Hoover, who would serve eight other administrations in various capacities, ultimately as director of the FBI, his tenure ending when he died in 1972.
Palmer appointed Hoover on Aug. 1, 1929. Two months later, Wilson suffered a massive, debilitating stroke and never really performed the duties of president again. The country wasn’t informed how seriously the stroke had disabled him, one of the great scandals of American history.
Wilson’s condition made it easy for Palmer to pursue the presidential ambitions he had long harbored. He and Hoover concocted an ambitious plan to round up thousands of new American immigrants and deport them, a ploy obviously intended to appeal to the anti-immigrant sentiments then flourishing in America.
With Wilson permanently sidelined after his stroke, Hoover and Palmer felt free to arrest and deport thousands of immigrants in the most aggressive plan since slavery for suppressing residents of the United States. But a legal “roadblock,” to use Hochschild’s word, disrupted their effort.
Palmer had pumped up fears of a possibly revolutionary uprising of socialists and trade unionists on May 1, 1920, but May Day passed quietly, without an American revolution — and without mass deportations, either. Like the Republican officeholders who blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to upend the results of the 2020 presidential election, Post rose to the occasion with firm dignity and determination. Harding, elected to succeed Wilson in 1920, abandoned the fierce anti-immigrant and anti-socialist crusade. Calm was restored. Soon, as is our custom in this unique country, we turned the page and found ourselves swept up in the Roaring Twenties, dancing the Charleston and drinking illegal gin.
American Midnight
The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis
By Adam Hochschild | 2022-11-02T12:53:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis by Adam Hochschild - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/02/american-midnight-hochschild-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/02/american-midnight-hochschild-review/ |
Musk can trash his sandbox. The rest of us don’t have to play there.
Elon Musk in Hawthorne, Calif., on March 14, 2019. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
For a time, many democracy defenders and civil rights groups thought the worst thing about Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter was the potential re-platforming of former president Donald Trump, disseminator of endless insults and right-wing conspiracies. It turns out Trump might not return, but Musk might be no better.
Musk got off to an inauspicious start. He took issue with Hillary Clinton’s observation that the suspect in the break-in at Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home was linked to right-wingers. “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to the story than meets the eye,” he tweeted, linking to a right-wing outlet that posted utter falsehoods about the attack. Musk deleted the post, then denied he had.
He wasn’t done. Word leaked out that Musk planned to charge $20 per month to widely known Twitter posters to keep their “blue check,” a tool to prevent copycat accounts. To that, the blue-check universe resoundingly responded: You must be joking.
Meanwhile, the incidence of hate speech went up dramatically after he took ownership. General Motors has “paused” advertising on the platform, and speculation is rampant that other major companies will follow suit, fearing their brands might be associated with a cesspool of hate speech, incitement and right-wing provocation.
None of this should be surprising. When the sale concluded, the Anti-Defamation League expressed concern that Musk would re-platform provocateurs, refuse to crack down on election disinformation and embolden people to post hateful content. And, lo and behold, much of that is already happening.
The New York Times reported: “A coordinated campaign to spread antisemitic memes and images on Twitter resulted in more than 1,200 tweets and retweets featuring the offensive content, according to an analysis by the Anti-Defamation League. The tweets identified by the A.D.L. added to a flurry of racist, transphobic and rule-breaking content that coursed through Twitter on Friday after Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, had officially taken control of the platform.”
What is Musk trying to accomplish here? Is he trying to chase away sane and respectful users, turning the platform into a giant Parler? Is he trying to become the next Trump, the darling of the MAGA mob?
The explanation might be far simpler: An electric car mogul might simply know little about what it takes to run a broad-based social network. In fact, the qualities that afflict many billionaires — utter lack of self-awareness and out-of-touchness — might make him uniquely unfit to turn his purchase into a moneymaking operation.
It is true that Musk can do whatever he pleases with Twitter. He can apply whatever rules and post any garbage he likes. But if he’s not careful, he risks setting the company on a death spiral.
Consider what might occur: More major advertisers might leave Twitter. The blue-check posters with the largest followings might decamp for other platforms. (Maybe he should pay them to stay.) Experiments such as Bluesky and subscription platforms such as Substack might pick up steam.
And while Musk remains a darling of the right wing in America, European regulators are watching closely. NPR reports that “The European Union’s competition czar has a message for Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk: We are watching you.” The report quotes Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s executive vice president overseeing digital policy, who warned: “There is a European rulebook, and you should live by it. Otherwise, we have the penalties. We have the fines. We have all the assessments and all the decisions that will come to haunt you.” She doesn’t sound like someone Musk wants to mess with.
MAGA Republicans in the United States might be celebrating Musk’s takeover as a triumph of “one of their own,” but Democrats might be in power in the years to come. They might be tempted to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the federal provision that protects social media platforms from liability for content published on their sites. (Even eliminating such protections for the owners of the platform could bring the curtain down on the Musk show.)
So while Twitter might become as horrible as you feared, the good news is that Musk is severely limited by the operation of the free market and government regulators. (And if he drives the company into the ground, think of the hours that heavy users will get back in their lives!) Musk can trash his sandbox, but the rest of us don’t have to play in it. | 2022-11-02T13:06:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | If Elon Musk trashes Twitter, he'll be the only one to blame - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/elon-musk-twitter-sandbox/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/elon-musk-twitter-sandbox/ |
The United Nations is failing the people of Myanmar
By Yanghee Lee
Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, head of the military council, inspects officers during a parade to commemorate Myanmar's 77th Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, on March 27. (Aung Shine Oo/AP)
Yanghee Lee is the former U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar and co-founder of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar.
The United Nations acted decisively in response to the crisis in Ukraine. The Security Council voted on a condemnation resolution within 24 hours of the Russian invasion. When Russia predictably used its veto to block the resolution, the General Assembly promptly established a process to subject future use of the veto to greater scrutiny. The secretary general visited Ukraine and brokered an agreement to prevent global food shortages due to the conflict. U.N. agencies mobilized under his leadership to see the agreement implemented.
Ukraine has shown that the United Nations can act in a crisis. Unfortunately, the same does not apply to a comparably dire situation in a country on the other side of the world: Myanmar.
In February 2021, the leader of Myanmar’s military, senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, staged a coup aimed at installing himself as head of a new military government. His actions — in blatant violation of the constitution — ignited a nationwide revolution that now aims to overthrow military rule once and for all and establish a peaceful federal democracy.
The alliance of democratic forces united by the uprising, and centered on the National Unity Government of Myanmar, now has the greater claim to effective control of the country, including more than half of its total territory and almost all land borders with India, China, Laos and Thailand. By contrast, Min Aung Hlaing can now claim control of merely 17 percent of the territory. But the forces under his command control far more powerful and more sophisticated weapons, which they have used to inflict a horrific campaign of terror on the population for the past 20 months.
His jet fighters and helicopter gunships have carried out brazen and indiscriminate attacks on resistance-held territory. They have repeatedly violated Thai and Bangladeshi airspace in recent weeks. In September, at least 11 children were killed when a helicopter equipped with cannons blasted their schoolroom to pieces; on Oct. 23, an air raid in Kachin state killed at least 80 people. On the ground, the military moves from village to village, massacring those who can’t escape and burning down homes, crops, food stores and livestock. One million people have been displaced and more than 10 million are facing hunger.
The Security Council has not voted on a single resolution on Myanmar, not even in response to the continuing abuses perpetrated against the Rohingya. Min Aung Hlaing’s genocidal attacks on Rohingya communities in 2017 forced three-quarters of a million people to cross the border into Bangladesh, where they now populate the world’s largest refugee camp, with no prospects of returning home as the crisis in Myanmar worsens.
It is true that any Security Council resolution demanding action to help end Min Aung Hlaing’s attack through targeted arms embargoes and targeted sanctions, and to hold him accountable for international crimes, may well be vetoed by Russia or China. But for other members of the Security Council to not even try is, quite simply, a gross dereliction of duty. Meanwhile, the secretary general and his office have failed to show the same leadership on Myanmar that they have on Ukraine. U.N. agencies appear to have no coherent strategy for responding to the changing political and security dynamics amid the growing emergency.
In 2017, the chief U.N. official in Myanmar suppressed alarm calls about the growing likelihood of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya in favor of a positive development narrative and cozy relations with the authorities. A 2019 independent inquiry found this to be the result of structural and systemic failures that rendered the U.N. in Myanmar incapable of addressing the decline in human rights and unable to convey to Myanmar authorities principled concerns regarding grave human rights violations.
This year, the secretary general issued a long-awaited progress report on its response to that inquiry. The results were underwhelming. Among other failings, the report said almost nothing about the U.N. agencies’ inadequate response to the current human rights catastrophe in Myanmar. Lessons have not been learned, and the U.N. is repeating its cycle of failure. The latest low point came when a group of U.N. representatives posed for smiling photos with Min Aung Hlaing and members of his murderous junta but failed to engage equally with the leaders of the democratic revolution. As a result, people in Myanmar don’t just feel let down. They feel betrayed.
We know that the U.N. is sometimes compelled to work with the world’s worst violators of human rights. Yet its business-as-usual approach in Myanmar is actively undermining the legitimate institutions that are accepted by the Myanmar people themselves and represent the democratic future they are fighting for. The U.N.’s current policies are also failing to bring help to those in need.
The vastly different responses to concurrent crises in Myanmar and Ukraine raise uncomfortable questions about where the U.N.’s priorities lie. There is no reason the people of Myanmar should be excluded from the protections enshrined in the U.N. Charter. The crisis in Myanmar, like the war in Ukraine, poses a serious and increasing threat to international peace and security. For the U.N., finally taking decisive action to work for the freedom of the Myanmar people is a global imperative. | 2022-11-02T13:06:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The United Nations is failing the people of Myanmar - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/un-failing-myanmar-burma-people-revolution/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/un-failing-myanmar-burma-people-revolution/ |
Lion 'Ato' looks on during the first birthday of his five cubs at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney on Aug. 12 2022. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)
Animal-lovers who signed up for a special overnight stay at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo ended up with a closer encounter than they bargained for after five African lions escaped.
After watching the sun set over Sydney’s historic harbor, the guests attending the “Roar and Snore” experience at Taronga Zoo lay down in their safari-style tents, lulled to sleep by the sounds of the nearby animals. Shortly after dawn Wednesday, however, they were woken up urgently by zoo staff, who rushed them away.
“They came running into the tent area saying: ‘This is a Code One, get out of your tent and run, come now and leave your belongings behind,’” one guest, Magnus Perri, told local media as he and his family left the zoo. “They opened the door, everyone got in, they counted us, and they locked the door.”
At first, the guests thought it may have been a drill, but they soon began realizing something more serious was amiss, Perri explained. “We realized, ‘OK, something’s outside — what is it?’ And they said ‘ah, it’s the lions’, so we were like, ‘ooh, scary!’”
Video footage showed Ato, an adult male, and four of his one-year-old cubs had escaped into an area next to the main exhibit.
While they had breached one fence, they remained separated from the rest of the zoo by a second fence that the zoo described as “a containment fence for people” and a “safe barrier.” That fence is six-feet tall — although some lions have been known to jump to a height of more than 11 feet.
Fortunately for the zoo’s staff and visitors, four of five the lions “calmly” made their way back to their dens, while the remaining cub was safely tranquilized and returned to the den, Taronga Zoo said in a statement.
“We have since reviewed video footage, and we have confirmed it was less than 10 minutes between the lions exiting the main exhibit, and the emergency response being enacted,” the zoo said, adding that it regularly conducts safety drills to prepare for such scenarios.
An initial investigation found that “an integrity issue” with a containment fence was to blame for the incident, and the animals were moved to a secure holding area pending a full review.
Police had also been called to the zoo, with commissioner Karen Webb telling local media: “It’s not very often we get called to lions on the loose.”
This is not the first time an animal has escaped at Sydney’s Toronga Zoo: in January 2021, a chimpanzee was briefly seen sitting outside its enclosure, before — like most of the lions — deciding to make its own way back inside. | 2022-11-02T13:06:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lions at Sydney's Taronga Zoo escape their enclosure, alarming guests - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/lions-escape-taronga-zoo-sydney-australia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/lions-escape-taronga-zoo-sydney-australia/ |
8 A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES (Bloomsbury, $18). By Sarah J. Maas. A threat is growing over a magical land where a huntress is being held captive.
3 ALL ABOUT LOVE (Morrow, $15.99). By bell hooks. The first volume in the feminist’s “Love Song to the Nation” trilogy considers compassion as a form of love.
5 EJACULATE RESPONSIBLY (Workman, $14.99). By Gabrielle Blair. Reframing the abortion debate to recognize the accountability of men in unplanned pregnancies.
10 OTTOLENGHI TEST KITCHEN (Clarkson Potter, $32). By Noor Murad, Yotam Ottolenghi. Middle Eastern-inspired flexible recipes that incorporate leftovers and pantry staples.
Rankings reflect sales for the week ended Oct. 30. The charts may not be reproduced without permission from the American Booksellers Association, the trade association for independent bookstores in the United States, and indiebound.org. Copyright 2022 American Booksellers Association. (The bestseller lists alternate between hardcover and paperback each week.) | 2022-11-02T13:41:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Post paperback bestsellers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/washington-post-paperback-bestsellers/2022/11/01/360e1dae-5a10-11ed-962e-8af46a125e54_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/washington-post-paperback-bestsellers/2022/11/01/360e1dae-5a10-11ed-962e-8af46a125e54_story.html |
Ask Jules: I’m young but not experienced with tech. Is that a problem?
Hi Jules: I feel a bit uncomfortable about being in my early 20s and not having as much experience with tech compared to others my age. Of course I utilize tech, but I had a very odd childhood where I didn’t get an iPhone until I was about 19, so I’m still learning things that my peers have known for a while. I didn’t think much of it until my crew mentioned it wasn’t normal. Should I be worried? If so, what should I do?
B: Just because your peers’ upbringing was different doesn’t mean it was necessarily “better.” While they may have a deeper understanding of the cultural nuances that came with using certain devices and platforms throughout their childhoods, this intimate relationship with tech is still very new. I don’t think you should be worried, but it’s important to recognize that tech is playing an increasingly prominent role in how we interact, learn and work — and having your finger on the pulse moving forward is necessary.
This doesn’t mean you have to spend hours on social media or playing video games or that you have to invest in a VR headset. What it does mean is you should be curious and willing to seek out reliable sources of information to keep you up-to-date. This will provide you with a base level of knowledge that’s beneficial to navigating the world today, whether tech personally interests you or not.
I believe you should follow what’s happening in social media, gaming, digital reality technologies and artificial intelligence. Social media and gaming will help you understand the culture that developed around technology during your peers’ childhoods. You’ll also be able to see how these spaces are shaping expression, dialogue and new ways of earning a living right now. For very similar reasons, keeping an eye on digital reality technologies like augmented, virtual and mixed reality, along with artificial intelligence, will position you to be on top of things in coming years.
Twitter and YouTube are amazing hubs of information that allow you to consume casual insights from industry leaders, as well as stay up-to-date on the latest breakthroughs and setbacks. As a starting point — I recommend following Matt Navarra for social media, subscribing to Lex Fridman for artificial intelligence, and subscribing to CNET for both gaming and digital reality technologies. I also like MKBHD for tech product reviews and Cleo Abram for a more holistic view of the tech landscape.
Checking in on these individuals and organizations will take minimal time out of your weeks but will provide a strong foundational understanding of tech. Otherwise, this field can easily get overwhelming, so don’t feel the need to overextend yourself.
Finally, it’s up to you if you’d like to actually utilize certain devices or platforms. For example: if you don’t want to become a gamer, you could tune into a Twitch stream of whatever is currently popular for a bit to get the gist. Acknowledging and understanding why these things are important doesn’t mean you have to fully participate yourself.
You have autonomy over deciding whether further immersing yourself in tech is worth it or if you prefer the tone your childhood set for you. Our generation is the first to have such an intimate relationship with tech from a young age, so who knows, your unique experience may end up being a superpower. | 2022-11-02T14:20:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Jules: I'm young but not experienced with tech. Is that a problem? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/02/ask-jules-technology-experience-friends/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/02/ask-jules-technology-experience-friends/ |
Canada wants 1.45 million more immigrants to fill labor gap
A “help wanted” sign is posted on the door of a bakery in Old Chelsea village, Quebec, Canada, on Oct. 3, 2022. (Julie Gordon/Reuters)
Canada is setting record immigration goals to bring in 1.45 million immigrants by 2025 to help plug labor shortages.
“Look, folks, it’s simple to me. Canada needs more people,” Sean Fraser, Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, told a news conference Tuesday. The government is looking to boost a labor market that left nearly a million job vacancies in the fallout from the pandemic, he said.
The rhetoric from Canada stands in contrast with many at the top of government in other Western countries, where officials have talked up curbing immigration and cast migrants as an economic burden.
British Home Secretary Suella Braverman, for example, faced criticism this week for describing migrants crossing the English Channel as “an invasion on our southern coast.” In an effort to stem an influx of asylum seekers traveling across the dangerous route into Britain, Braverman has supported a bid to deport people to Rwanda to press asylum claims there — a previous government plan that sparked outrage and hit a legal wall.
Europe rewrote its migrant playbook for Ukrainian refugees. Some fear it’s not enough.
Rising border crossings are also at the forefront of polarizing issues in the United States, where some politically ambitious Republican governors have shuttled migrants to cities led by Democrats in protest over Biden administration policies.
In Canada, often a destination for economic immigration, the country’s growth policy appeared to be less divisive. Immigrants made up 23 percent of the population this year, the largest proportion in the country in more than 150 years, the census agency announced last week.
Canada has long adopted an approach of attracting immigrants to offset the impact of low birthrates and an aging population, and reshaped some policies to overcome pandemic-related disruptions to movement and migration. “Canadians understand the need to continue to grow our population if we’re going to meet the needs of the labor force, if we’re going to rebalance a worrying demographic trend, and if we’re going to continue to reunite families,” Fraser said.
The country currently has about three workers for every retired citizen, Fraser said, describing the targets as unprecedented for economic migration. “We need more workers in every sector in every region of the country, regardless of whether it’s front line health care workers, truck drivers, home builders or software engineers,” he said.
Canada wants immigrants but the pandemic is in the way. So it’s looking to keep people already there.
The opposition Conservative party, while critical of the government’s Tuesday announcement, still expressed support for efforts to increase immigration.
While the new plan forecasts a drop in the number of refugees, the U.N. refugee agency said it welcomed “Canada’s continued leadership on refugee resettlement.” | 2022-11-02T14:37:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Canada wants 1.45 million more immigrants by 2025 to fill labor gap - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/canada-immigration-plan-2025/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/canada-immigration-plan-2025/ |
Natalia Horban and her daughter Alina spent two hours in an elevator in their building when the power went out. (Natalia Horban)
Ukrainians are now fighting a war against darkness and cold, too
Iuliia Mendel is a journalist, the author of “The Fight of Our Lives,” and a former press secretary for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Millions of ordinary Ukrainians are fighting a new war this month, far from the front lines. They’re fighting cold and darkness rather than enemy soldiers and bullets and artillery. But if the first results are any indication, they’ll be up to the task.
To see what this war looks like for many of us, you just have to step into an elevator. Natalia Horban, 36, and her 18-month-old daughter Alina returned to their apartment building after a late morning walk last week. They arrived 10 minutes before noon, when a scheduled blackout was supposed to start. But no sooner had they entered their elevator than the power gave out. The emergency button didn’t work, and neither did the phone. Natalia began to bang on the door, and the concierge downstairs heard her and called the emergency services. If things had gone differently, the mother and her child could have spent up to five hours in the elevator. As it happened, they only spent two.
It was no fun, to be sure. But at least they had a bit of support: a box left in the elevator containing some food and sedatives. They didn’t end up using any of the supplies, but just having the box in the elevator was a great comfort. “I didn’t use the box, but psychologically it made the whole thing a lot easier,” Natalia told me.
Earlier this month, Russia launched a bombing campaign specifically targeting civilian infrastructure all across Ukraine — including cities close to the western border. Since then, Ukrainians have been adapting to radically changed conditions. President Volodymyr Zelensky said that about 4 million people were subjected to electricity rationing only on Oct. 28. It might be worse as Russia has attacked even more electricity facilities since. Recently, as much as 80 percent of Kyiv residents have found themselves without running water.
Ukrainian roads, even national highways, have lost their lighting; there is little light on the city streets. Villages, towns and cities don't have electricity for hours almost every day.
So how do ordinary Ukrainians fight back? We are stocking up on warm clothes and candles and giving each other batteries and power banks as gifts. We are turning off appliances to economize on electricity. In our building, it was the local barber shop that started the emergency box in the elevator, filling it with cookies, water, garbage bags and medicine. On the first day, people in three entryways of the building got stuck in the elevators during power outages. The next day, residents filled the boxes with bottled water, chocolates, fruit and makeshift first-aid kits.
No one would claim that we’re enjoying this. Karyna Kadun is a doctor who lives in Irpin, which was destroyed by the Russians during the initial invasion. She told me that it’s still hard to remain connected with the world since the latest blackouts started: “When the power goes out, everyone switches to mobile internet, and then the connection is so bad that it’s impossible to even read the news. We don’t even know what’s happening around us. Yesterday, something exploded nearby — we didn’t even know what it was.”
For many Ukrainians, some of these hardships feel familiar. In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, electricity became a luxury. I remember doing school homework by candlelight. No one could watch TV or listen to the radio, and neighbors would get together to share what news there was. Our neighbor Halyna sometimes knitted sweaters in our kitchen; that’s how we entertained ourselves without light and saved candles.
In my hometown of Kherson, we couldn’t even imagine that the taps marked “hot” could ever have warm water. We had cold water twice a day — one hour in the morning and one in the evening. If we got more running water than that, it felt like a holiday. And this was happening in almost every region, except in Kyiv, where things were better.
But there is a fundamental difference between then and now. What happened then was because of the poverty that ensued from the collapse of the U.S.S.R. What’s happening now is the direct result of Russia’s war. Perhaps paradoxically, these new blackouts and the loss of heat and running water underscore just how much progress Ukraine has achieved since the Soviet days.
Ukrainians are not giving up. We believe that this crisis will end. We know that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the leader of a poor, extremely corrupt and unequal country, whose soldiers in Ukraine steal toilets and washing machines. Now, he is trying to bring the dysfunctional 1990s back to Ukraine — but we’re not going to let him. We refuse. We know that we can win the war, and we don’t want to go back to the past. We’ve been fighting for our independence for 31 years, and we know that it’s the most precious thing we’ve achieved.
“We just need to go through this,” Natalia told me after her elevator adventure. “It makes no sense to go to western Ukraine, because it’s the same everywhere in the country. And I don’t want to leave the country. I want to stay at home. I hope that everything will be over soon.”
Millions of Ukrainians share her wish. Perhaps the Western countries that are considering whether to send us more modern air-defense systems can take it into account.
Opinion|Don’t let Putin fool you — an aggressor can’t be a peacemaker
Opinion|Ukraine has always been ready to negotiate. The question is how.
Opinion|Ukrainians are rejoicing at victory — and awash in trauma and grief | 2022-11-02T15:17:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ukrainians are fighting cold and darkness, too - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/ukrainians-fight-cold-darkness-elevators/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/ukrainians-fight-cold-darkness-elevators/ |
The far right rails against another presidential election loss: Brazil’s
A man covers his face with a Brazilian flag during a protest over Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro's defeat in the presidential runoff election in Barueri, Brazil, Nov. 1, 2022. (Amanda Perobelli/Reuters)
Every aspect of the story should be familiar to U.S. observers save one: the language.
In the wake of incumbent Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s loss in Sunday’s runoff election, his supporters on the U.S. far-right have deployed the same playbook they followed in the wake of Donald Trump’s loss two years ago. Allege fraud. Insist that it’s the other side that’s deeply corrupt. Push for some extra-democratic process by which Bolsonaro might retain power.
Unlike Trump, Bolsonaro acknowledged the election results in a speech on Tuesday and allowed for the transition to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to move forward. But he didn’t concede.
Users of Truth Social, Trump’s social-media app, received a push alert on Tuesday with news about an election it is safe to assume that few of them were tracking closely: “Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro does not concede election in first public speech following results.” The alert went to a post from a podcast host summarizing a story from the Associated Press.
One of the better measures of what’s going on here comes not from Trump but from the New York Young Republican Club. A group based in New York City, the NYYRC has been unabashed in embracing far-right politics and actors. Its upcoming gala will feature Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) as a keynote speaker; she’ll be joined by right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec.
On Tuesday, the group shared two posts on social media about Brazil. One was a news article celebrating a series of protests against the election results by Bolsonaro supporters. Another called for followers to “fight for Brazil’s sovereignty and future!”
Suffice to say that there is little reason to think that the NYYRC has more insight into the legitimacy of the election results in Brazil than impartial observers, none of whom has articulated concerns about the vote. The fair assumption is, instead, that any election in which the right-wing candidate loses is one that is rejected by default by the U.S. right, using the same set of claims and responses over and over again.
Again, the NYYRC simply offers an extreme example of that impulse. Stephen K. Bannon, who has advised Bolsonaro in the past, was quick to allege fraud in both the initial balloting and after Sunday’s runoff.
His argument after the first round was, again, very familiar: The vote began to swing away from Bolsonaro as votes were counted, which he suggested implied possible fraud. And the explanation was also familiar: The shift derives not from fraud but from the order in which votes were counted. As The Washington Post explained earlier this week, the region of the country that was Lula’s base of support is more rural and its internet connections spottier. It’s typical that those votes take longer to be transmitted to the central counting office and that the country see the same sort of right-to-left shift as the U.S. saw in 2020.
Bannon is a prolific podcaster, and he dedicated part of his show on Tuesday to interviewing a reporter discussing the scene in Brazil. He asked if perhaps the protests were "a beginning of a Brazilian spring” — suggesting a popular uprising against the democratic election. The reporter insisted that Bolsonaro wasn’t endorsing any sort of uprising but, instead, declined to concede so that he had time to uncover this purported “fraud.” Bannon replied by disparaging the Biden administration’s rapid and pointed recognition of the election results as suspicious.
The message that the election was going to be stolen by fraud was not uncommon on the right here in the U.S. as the vote neared. Ali Alexander, one of the most enthusiastic voices arguing that the 2020 contest was stolen, wrote on Truth Social that Biden was somehow involved in “STEALING the Brazilian election for socialist Lula.” He suggested that the “[m]ilitary standby.” When Bolsonaro lost, the idea that his loss was illegitimate was already established — just as was the case domestically in 2020.
Unsurprisingly, Fox News host Tucker Carlson elevated similar unfounded claims about the Brazilian election. As he has other right-wing politicians and autocrats, Carlson dedicated a significant amount of time to promoting Bolsonaro. On his show Tuesday night, he railed against the outcome.
“The margin of victory is less than two percent,” he said. “There are a lot of questions about this election, whether all the ballots were counted, for example. And Bolsonaro has not conceded. But questioning the election results in Brazil is no longer allowed there or even here.”
This, too, fits with the pattern. Carlson doesn’t say fraud occurred he just asks questions — questions that allow him to elevate doubt exactly where he wants it but which also allows him to avoid any accountability for being wrong. It’s what he’s done with the elections here, with vaccines, with the attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The tactic also allows him to cast efforts to tamp down on baseless conspiracy theories as oppositional to free speech: Why are the authorities preventing me from simply asking questions?? The answer, of course, is that no one is fooled by Carlson’s facade of skepticism.
Carlson didn’t present any actual evidence, of course. He rarely does. There is no reason to think that his concern centers on the validity of the democratic process in Brazil; instead, it seems very clear that his interest is in preserving far-right power by any means necessary.
But in each case here the elevation of doubt about Brazil isn’t just about Brazil. It’s about elevating doubt about these election results universally. It’s a way to suggest that all elections are corrupt and dubious and that things like angry protests in the streets are a better measure of popular support.
It’s a way to prime right-wing Americans to view our own election results as dismissible.
In latest ad, Va.’s Luria highlights her efforts to defend democracy
2:34 PMRepublicans sue over poll watchers in Green Bay, Wis.
2:32 PMDemocrats spend heavily on abortion ads in key gubernatorial races
2:20 PMEchoes of Philadelphia speech expected in Biden’s address tonight
2:03 PMIn Arizona, Masters seizes on inflation to argue for Kelly’s ouster | 2022-11-02T15:21:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trumpworld's right flank rails against another presidential election loss: Brazil's - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/brazil-elections-far-right/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/brazil-elections-far-right/ |
The sun sets on the Arizona State Fair on Oct. 8. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Ah, the state fair. It’s as American as the deep-fried Oreo, as beloved as the butter sculpture.
For nearly two centuries, we’ve been flocking to fairs to show off livestock, compete in recipe contests and savor edible delicacies. Since the 1840s, the fair has served as a gathering place and public square, a place for people to come together and celebrate.
Though these fairs are not overtly political, politics plays a role. In some states, local parties and lawmakers host their own booths. At nearly all, candidates shake hands and kiss babies, hoping to win over voters.
This year was no exception. With competitive congressional and gubernatorial races across the country, candidates flocked to county fairs and urban festivals ahead of the midterms. They were met by voters who are worried about the economy, abortion access and poisonous partisanship.
We visited five swing states — including Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona — to talk to fairgoers about the midterms and the issues they care about most. Here’s what they had to say.
Seguin, Tex.: Guadalupe County Fair and Rodeo
Interviews by Eva Ruth Moravec, photos by Scott Stephen Ball
Every year, this fair outside San Antonio draws thousands of visitors to the rides and rodeo. In October, the voters we spoke to said the economy — particularly inflation — was the major issue shaping their thinking about the midterms.
Rebecca Jaroszewski, 38
At the fair’s petting zoo, Jaroszewski watched her children eagerly greet the goats, rooster and a few chatty geese.
The Jaroszewskis are no strangers to livestock — they have some cattle and a horse. Jaroszewski is a lawyer who works on estate planning in San Antonio. Politically, “most of the time, we’re leaning red,” she said, and that’s still the case. This year, the primary issue driving her to vote is the economy.
Inflation has affected everyone, she said, from the farmer who brings her livestock hay — and who is now grappling with higher gas and feed costs — to clients struggling to make ends meet after a death in the family.
“I’m concerned about the economy and the rising cost of everything. Real estate, gas, groceries, medical costs,” she said. “And I don’t really see how most people, especially those that are paycheck-to-paycheck, can actually sustain what’s going on.”
Jake King, 31
To King, the midterms seemed far away. “I’m gonna be honest, I’m not real big into politics,” said King, a professional bullfighter who travels with his pregnant wife and 1-year-old daughter from their home in New Waverly, Tex., to rodeos with him on weekends. “We’re here to save the cowboys.”
He means this quite literally: When riders are bucked off during the night’s main event — bull riding — King and others try to distract the feisty bull so the cowboy can flee. Bullfighting can be dangerous, but King takes a lighthearted approach to his job and hopes to soon become a “funnyman,” who entertains crowds between rodeo acts.
“I do vote, because, I mean, your vote does count,” he said. “But there needs to be some cowboy running for president. I’m just not ready.”
AJ Neal, 26
As a single man with no children and a fairly consistent paycheck as a bullfighter, Neal hasn’t felt the pinch of rising costs. But he worries that other cowboys, with families and other financial responsibilities, will.
“I think fuel has been the biggest hit,” Neal said. “You got guys who can’t afford to travel across the country, you know, because $4 a gallon is rough on a guy.”
At work, Neal loves to interact with children and families. Nationally, he said, “I don’t really check in the politics too much. I kind of just rely on my faith and do what I do.”
But when it comes to local government, Neal said he’ll take some time and research before the upcoming election and plans to vote for people who align with his values: “faith, family, you know, peace, love, harmony. I’m not really big into this division.”
Phoenix: Arizona State Fair
Interviews by Jimmy Magahern, photos by Joshua Lott
At this year’s Arizona State Fair, more than 80 food vendors serve up treats including fry bread, kettle corn, hot Cheetos-covered burgers and Cinnamon Toast Crunch churros. Here, voters highlighted a range of issues on their minds, including education, health care and the rising cost of college tuition.
Lazaro Campos, 45
Campos said he’s voting “blue all the way.” The reason?
“I work construction, and there’s a shortage on labor,” Campos said. “If it wasn’t for Trump cutting the H-1B visas, we’d have a surplus of labor right now.”
Campos hasn’t always voted up and down the ballot for Democrats. In 2020, he supported current Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) because of his promises to cut taxes and bring in new employers.
But he said there are critical concerns in the state that neither party is addressing. “There’s a water shortage. Underground wells are running out of water, our reservoirs are running out. But they don’t talk about it,” he said. “It’s all just us against them.”
Latanya Jones, 49
Jones, who moved to Phoenix from Wisconsin, spent her career focused on mental health. She feels that’s an issue that hasn’t received enough attention from Arizona’s political candidates. “Health care is important to me,” she said. “Mental health has been a prevalent issue, especially under covid, for going on three years now.”
Jones said she is planning to vote in the midterms, though she hadn’t settled on a candidate. “I’m looking at who’s gonna make the right decision, and make sure everybody’s good,” especially around education and student loans.
“It’s been a sad situation in the country,” Jones said, adding that she tries to stay hopeful but “with the state of things right now, I don’t see too much that’s encouraging.”
Jacob Lujan, 22, and Aylin Magallanes, 20
Lujan and his girlfriend, Magallanes, said their votes will be focused on the economy. “I feel like especially for the younger population, it’s getting harder for us to get by,” Lujan said. His family runs their own small business, and he worries about the effects of rising prices on them.
Magallanes agreed. “Everything is going up — the price of gas, the prices for groceries,” she said. “I come from a low-income neighborhood, so it’s kind of hard, you know? I go to ASU, and the tuition is now, like, $20,000. So I’m just worried about the direction the economy is headed.”
Philadelphia: South Street Fest
Interviews by Maura Ewing, photos by Caroline Gutman
At the first South Street Fest since the pandemic began, thousands of people gathered in one of the city’s most popular neighborhoods for Oktoberfest brews, skateboarding ramps and international food vendors. Women’s issues and abortion access were front-of-mind for many voters at the October festival.
Ashley Moore, 37
Moore is nervous about the midterms. “There is so much on the line, especially in a swing state like ours,” she said. “And especially as a woman.”
Moore, who came to the festival to sell her homemade jewelry, said she has registered people to vote (“I’ve done my part,” she said.) Her top issues are women’s rights and voting rights.
She is also concerned about safety — Philadelphia has seen jarring levels of gun violence in recent years. But she doesn’t buy the Republican ads blaming Democratic policies for crime. “I know that a lot of their words are scare tactics,” she said.
She is more concerned about keeping Republicans out of office than she is excited about any of the Democratic candidates. “[Doug] Mastriano, gosh, that seems like a scary dude,” she said of the Republican candidate for governor.
Tommy Lock, 45
For Lock, issues such as abortion are central to his midterm vote. “I was raised by women. I have two daughters,” he said, adding that no man “is going to tell women what they can do with their body.”
He plans to vote for Democrats to protect abortion access in the state but is unhappy about the state of politics generally.
“There is too much fearmongering,” he said. Lock, who owns a small business with his wife, is nostalgic for the days when politics weren’t so divisive. “It’s all negative campaigning,” he said. “Instead of coming together in the center, everyone is running to their corners.”
Scott Bounpraseuth, 32
Bounpraseuth is planning to vote for both Democratic candidates on the ballot in Pennsylvania: Josh Shapiro for governor and John Fetterman for Senate.
“Fetterman did so much for the little town he was mayor of, it will be interesting to see how he can translate that to a bigger stage,” he said. “He’s so beloved here.” If Shapiro wins, Bounpraseuth hopes that he’ll defend women’s reproductive rights. “I think he would stand up for my values,” he said.
Perry, Ga.: Georgia National Fair
Interviews by Mark Shavin, photos by Elijah Nouvelage
One of the bigger contests here isn’t the looming midterms but Robinson’s Racing Pigs — a staple of the fair. Not a food staple, mind you, though there are plenty of those: fried curds, dipped apples and barbecue turkey legs. Here in Middle Georgia, at a fair that draws 500,000 visitors to town, even the pigs compete for an Oreo cookie. Abortion and inflation were the top concerns among the voters we spoke with.
Katlyan Wakefield, 21, and Matthew Beck, 22
Wakefield and Beck attended the fair as a couple. Wakefield said she is a Democrat but hadn’t decided who to vote for. “I’m still making up my mind,” she said. She’s concerned about gas prices and believes people should be allowed to carry guns for their own protection.
Beck said he cannot vote because he is a felon, recently out of prison for motor vehicle theft. But he considers himself a Republican. He’s antiabortion and pro-gun, but his biggest concern, he said, is potential employers who stereotype people like him.
He wants those who have gotten out of prison to have “more opportunities. Even if they got tattoos or look crazy, be able to hire them, help people with jobs who are trying to restart their lives.”
Brice Nelms, 29
Nelms, an accountant at a nearby nuclear power plant, has three children. The Republican said she supports Herschel Walker (R) for Senate and Gov. Brian Kemp (R). “I’m very pro-life. Just everything that stands for biblical principles,” she said.
She is unhappy about the direction of the nation. “Where the country is going right now, it’s very far, far left. It’s way too radical. I want to see God back in the country.”
Nelms said rising food prices are hitting her young family especially hard. “Good gracious,” she added. “We can fund a war in Ukraine, but we can’t feed our own children right now.”
Diana Perez, 35
Though Perez considers herself a Democrat, she warned that the party shouldn’t take her support for granted.
Perez, a medical assistant originally from Mexico, supports Stacey Abrams (D) for governor. “She just has a lot of the values that I have,” she said. “She represents a lot family-wise… what I want for my kids as far as schools, as far as what she plans to do for the state.”
Perez said she is “not for abortion, but at the same time, I work in the medical field, and I do know there are unfortunate situations where abortion is called for.”
Perez’s family of six has been pinched by rising food costs, but she doesn’t blame one party. “I think it’s both parties — in the past and in the present,” she said. “Past decisions make the present. Present decisions will make the future.”
Circleville, Ohio: Circleville Pumpkin Show
Interviews by Randy Ludlow, photos by Maddie McGarvey
The 115-year-old pumpkin show attracts hundreds of thousands in celebration of all things orange orb, particularly food, such as pumpkin chili and pumpkin fudge. “The Greatest Free Show on Earth” is a must-stop for statewide candidates. Voters here cited education, inflation and abortion among their top concerns.
Gloria Reid, 78
Reid is a “full-fledged Democrat” who believes Congress desperately needs to bring in younger members. For 30 years, the retiree worked for the county to administer the food stamp program. Fittingly, she rates food insecurity as her top concern.
Abortion access is also on her mind. “People have a right to do what they want with their own bodies,” said the mother of three, grandmother of eight and great-grandmother of one.
Bruce Stepp, 47
Stepp, who owns a small construction company in southern Ohio, is a Donald Trump defender who plans to vote GOP.
Without Republicans in control of Congress, Stepp fears ongoing inflation will leave Americans circling a financial drain. “We’re heading for 2008, or worse, unless something changes,” he said, citing cutbacks in his family’s spending.
His top concern centers on what he calls the “entitlement mentality” among those reliant on government assistance to pay the bills. “We’re teaching young people the entitlement game,” he said. “Republicans will make a difference by not letting people get out of working.”
Heidi Arthur, 59
Arthur, a freelance camera operator from a Columbus suburb, describes herself as an independent. She voted twice for Trump but said she is still deciding who to support in the tight Senate race between Rep. Tim Ryan (D) and Republican J.D. Vance.
She worries about the economy and inflation under President Biden. “The economy was great with Trump in office,” she said.
Arthur expects Democrats to turn out heavily to vote due to abortion restrictions. “I’m pro-life, but there’s a lot of angry people who will go to the polls.”
Photo editing by Christine Nguyen and Natalia Jiménez. Copy editing by Emily Morman. Story editing by Amanda Erickson. Design and development by Stephanie Hays. Design editing by Madison Walls. | 2022-11-02T15:47:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At local fairs in swing states, we asked voters about the midterms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/state-fairs-voter-voices-swing-states/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/state-fairs-voter-voices-swing-states/ |
The pharmacy giants will pay close to $5 billion apiece to resolve litigation with states, cities and tribes tied to the painkiller.
CVS Health said it has agreed to pay about $5 billion to state, local and Native American tribal governments to settle lawsuits over the toll of opioids. CVS is not admitting wrongdoing and the company would make the payments over a decade. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)
CVS Health and Walgreens, two of the nation’s largest retail pharmacies, have agreed to pay about $10 billion to states, cities and Native American tribes to settle all opioid lawsuits against it.
The settlements announced Wednesday are agreements “in principle” and not yet finalized, the companies said, and do not represent an admission of wrongdoing.
CVS and Walgreens are among several pharmacies and drug manufacturers facing extensive lawsuits and backlash for allegedly worsening the opioid epidemic. Hundreds of thousands of people have died from drug overdoses in the past two decades, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many involving opioids.
Walmart has also reached a settlement and will pay $3 billion to resolve similar lawsuits, Bloomberg News reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. The retailer did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post
Walgreens, CVS and Walmart ordered to pay $650 million in opioid lawsuit
Earlier this year, CVS, Walgreens and Walmart were ordered to pay about $650 million to two Ohio counties after a federal jury concluded that the pharmacies played a big role in the opioid crisis faced by Lake and Trumbull counties.
Israeli drugmaker Teva Pharmaceuticals agreed to a proposed $4.25 billion deal earlier this year to resolve thousands of lawsuits related to the opioid epidemic.
If the CVS settlement is finalized, the company would pay about $4.9 billion to states and local governments, and $130 million to tribes over 10 years, beginning in 2023. Walgreens has tentatively agreed to pay $4.79 billion to states and $154.5 million to Native American tribes. | 2022-11-02T15:51:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | CVS agrees to $5 billion settlement to resolve opioid cases - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/02/cvs-opioid-settlement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/02/cvs-opioid-settlement/ |
Turkey says grain shipments in Black Sea will resume with Russia’s agreement
Zeynep Karatas
A crew member prepares grain analysis for a ship. (Yasin Akgul/AFP/Getty Images)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that he had secured Moscow’s commitment to resurrect a deal safeguarding Ukrainian grain shipments, which has been crucial to sustaining food supplies to developing nations amid the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.
The deal, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, was brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in July to guarantee the safe passage of cargo ships to and from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports after Russia’s invasion disrupted export operations, setting off widespread worries about global food security.
“Here now is a new piece of good news,” Erdogan said Wednesday during a speech to lawmakers in Ankara. “The grain shipment will continue as it was previously planned.”
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the resurrection of the deal on Wednesday, saying that the United Nations and Turkey had helped obtain Kyiv’s “written guarantees” not to use the grain corridor for military action against Russia.
“The Russian Federation believes that the guarantees received for the time being seem sufficient and resumes the implementation of the agreement,” the statement said. The statement referred to the bombing of ships in Sevastopol as a “terrorist attack.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin also confirmed the reversal Wednesday, saying the Russian Defense Ministry had been instructed to resume participation in the grain deal.
“Russia reserves the right to withdraw from this agreement if the guarantees made by Ukraine are violated. But in any case, even in the case of such a withdrawal, Russia is ready to transfer all Ukrainian grain to the poorest countries free of charge,” he told government ministers on a conference call.
Moscow said over the weekend it was abandoning the grain deal following an attack on its Black Sea naval fleet in Crimea, for which it blamed Ukraine.
Russia said Saturday that it had halted its participation in the deal for an “indefinite term” as it could not “guarantee the safety of civilian ships.” Kyiv had not taken responsibility for the attack on Russian naval vessels.
Amir Abdulla, the U.N. coordinator of the deal, wrote on Twitter that he welcomed Russia’s return to the initiative and thanked Turkey for its mediation.
“Looking forward to working with all parties,” Abdulla wrote.
During Wednesday’s speech, Erdogan appeared to also confirm that a recent Russian proposal to turn Turkey into a natural gas hub for Europe was well underway.
“Now, Turkey is a hub for natural gas and energy,” the Turkish president said. “Therefore, there will also be the exportation of energy from us.”
This followed comments from Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Tuesday saying that Turkish and Russian ministries were cooperating on the natural gas issue at a technical level.
European nations that long relied on Russian natural gas supplies have largely halted their purchases in response to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, and Putin had urgently sought Turkey’s help in sustaining some transmission of gas to customers in the West.
During a meeting in Kazakhstan in mid-October, Erdogan and Putin said that they had instructed their respective energy authorities to immediately begin the technical work on establishing the hub.
Turkey is a NATO member that depends heavily on Russia for its energy needs and tourism.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Turkey has criticized Moscow but refrained from joining Western sanctions against Russia, and Erdogan has frequently sought to play a role as mediator.
Turkey has maintained close links between both countries, notably supplying Ukraine with the Bayraktar TB2 drones famously deployed against Russian forces from the start of the war.
In addition to helping broker the Black Sea Grain Initiative, Turkey helped negotiate swaps of captured soldiers.
While Erdogan announced the resumption of the grain accord, the British government on Wednesday said that it had imposed sanctions on four more Russian oligarchs — all steel and petrochemical tycoons determined to be supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Among those newly under sanctions were Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov, who previously owned stakes in Russian steel manufacturer Evraz and control global fortunes estimated at $4.7 billion and $1.9 million respectively, as well as property in the U.K. worth an estimated $115 million.
U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, in a government statement, noted Putin’s continued reliance on “his cabal of selected elite” to maintain control of his industrial complex and fuel the war in Ukraine.
“By targeting these individuals, we are ramping up the economic pressure on Putin and will continue to do so until Ukraine prevails,” Cleverly said.
With the four additions on Wednesday, the U.K. has imposed sanctions on more than 1,200 individuals and 120 entities, including more than 120 oligarchs with a net worth of more than $160 billion, according to the statement.
In Ukraine, Russian occupation officials in the southern Kherson region said they had relocated some 70,000 residents of the regional capital city to the east bank of the Dnieper River in anticipation of further Ukrainian military advances and a potential offensive to retake Kherson city, which Russia seized shortly after its Feb. 24 invasion.
Kareem Fahim in Washington and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report. | 2022-11-02T16:18:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Turkey says grain shipments in Black Sea will resume with Russia’s agreement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/grain-deal-ukraine-turkey-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/grain-deal-ukraine-turkey-russia/ |
The comedian turned politician has never run for office before, but his long-shot candidacy has won over some residents
Rodney “Red” Grant, who is running as an independent candidate for D.C. mayor, seen campaigning on 17th Street NW on Oct. 25. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
As Rodney “Red” Grant strolled through DAR Constitution Hall last month, he was treated more like a celebrity than a long-shot candidate running to become the next mayor of D.C.
Grant, 52, waded into the city’s political fray as an independent mayoral candidate in May 2021 and claims to have knocked on some 90,000 doors across the District since then. His campaign signs are ubiquitous. His laugh is infectious. And like many hopefuls for public office, Grant believes he has persuaded enough of the District’s disgruntled and despondent residents to vote him in and oust the incumbent, Muriel E. Bowser.
His appeal was evident at Constitution Hall, the historic venue where Grant estimates he’s taken the stage at least two dozen times in his 33-year comedy career. That night, even though the hundreds of people who had lined up in the lobby were there to see his friend Katt Williams perform, Grant got the reception of a headliner as soon as he entered the room. While some requested selfies or autographs, even more people brought up the upcoming election.
“It’s the new mayor of D.C.!” one man shouted as Grant walked by. Moments later, a worker in the building proudly boasted that they’d already cast their ballot for him. Another show attendee goaded him: “You gonna win?”
“You gonna vote?” Grant fired back, smiling before he followed up: “No ballots left behind!”
Grant is not the first candidate to try to defeat Bowser, the two-term Democrat who is expected next week to cruise to a rare third term. But compare him to Bowser’s other opponents, Republican Stacia R. Hall, Libertarian Dennis Sobin and write-in candidate Rhonda Hamilton — as well as some of Bowser’s previous general-election challengers (a yoga teacher in 2018, for example) — and Grant’s celebrity and large social media presence set him apart.
The comedian turned politician typically refrains from flexing his connections, even though he’s been endorsed by household names including the rapper Snoop Dogg. Grant recited his campaign slogan, “purpose over popularity,” as he sat down before Williams began his opening monologue.
“D.C. is the worst-run city in America,” Williams exclaimed to the sold-out crowd. “You might as well elect the comedian and start fresh.”
The audience roared.
The Democratic primary usually decides the general election victors in liberal D.C.; in June, Bowser secured the nomination over three opponents, including two sitting members of the D.C. Council. Although election observers expect Bowser to win decisively, some voters have gravitated toward Grant, anyway, because they think he offers the best chance at something new.
“In every city where you have a longtime incumbent, you will have a rock-solid core of people who will say no to them under any circumstance, no matter how well they are doing,” said Michael K. Fauntroy, an associate professor of policy and government at George Mason University. “It could be true that Red Grant’s voice resonates with people in small groups. But in D.C., the real competition at the mayor’s level is in the primary.”
Grant views things differently.
He likens himself to an underdog akin to four-term “mayor for life” Marion Barry, who won the closely contested 1978 Democratic mayoral primary by beating then-D.C. Council Chair Sterling Tucker and incumbent Mayor Walter Washington.
“When Marion Barry beat Walter Washington, they said he could never do it, he galvanized the people to want to vote,” Grant said. “He gave them something to believe in.”
But unlike Grant, Barry won city elections before his mayoral run, including an at-large seat on D.C.’s first elected council in 1974.
Grant was born and raised in the District and was a standout athlete at Dunbar High School and played football for a few years at Savannah State University in Georgia before attending the University of the District of Columbia. He credits D.C. with his starts in comedy and philanthropy: Grant’s got first job through Barry’s summer youth employment program, and while attending UDC, he coached baseball and football for the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.
He left school and pursued a career in comedy after realizing he had a knack for telling jokes.
By age 19, Grant was performing stand-up routines at Mr. Henry’s, a local restaurant, and six months later, he caught the attention of executives at Def Comedy Jam, helping to springboard a career that has included specials on Comedy Central and movie appearances alongside Williams and the actor Ice Cube. He has also worked as an executive, producing television shows for Viacom and BET.
Grant says that in 2018, after living part-time in Los Angeles, he refocused his priorities and moved back to D.C. to help others find their own paths to success. He launched an initiative called “Don’t Shoot Guns, Shoot Cameras” that introduces youths to filmmaking in hopes of keeping them off the streets. He lives in Ward 3.
“He turned down a lot of money and headway he had made in our industry to go somewhere that he had never been before,” Williams said in a recent interview that the candidate shared Monday on Instagram. “As a man, there’s not a greater sacrifice you can make … trying to do good for a city because that’s the city they love.”
When outlining his platform, Grant without fail talks about uplifting the city’s youths; he has proposed additional vocational tracks and financial literacy courses in schools. On crime, among his ideas is to bring back the “Orange Hats” — citizen watch groups that were popular in the 1990s — while putting more funds toward nongovernmental community groups that have records of keeping children and their neighborhoods safer.
He has also promised more “checks and balances” on contracts awarded to developers to build affordable housing and has repeatedly lamented Bowser’s frosty relationships with outgoing Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) and D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D), asserting that it has stalled progress on key issues — although Bowser, in a recent interview, said any disagreements between her and the council or Racine have not prevented the government from working effectively.
“This city needs an executive that knows how to allocate funds properly, work with people and build great relationships,” Grant said at a candidate forum in September. “A lot of people know me from being on TV, but that was only 10 percent of my life. The other 90 percent, I’m a humanitarian, philanthropist and an executive.”
But when he’s out on the campaign trail, that 10 percent pays dividends.
During one recent outing, a D.C. Department of Transportation employee who had just ticketed Grant’s red Hummer H2 promised to void it immediately once she saw that he was the driver. A young woman in the car parked behind him, Jade Rich, witnessed the interaction, rolled down her window and called Grant over.
She stepped out and took a selfie as photo evidence for her father, who had walked into a nearby store.
“My dad is a huge fan of his,” Rich said, adding that she and her father plan to vote for Grant. “I really wanted him to meet Red, but this will have to do.”
Still, in comparison with his evening at Constitution Hall, Grant had a more difficult time winning over busy residents and commuters outside the Whole Foods on P Street in Northwest. Sporting a red hat and matching sweater, and helped by about a dozen volunteers, he handed out pamphlets while letting each passerby know he was the independent candidate running for mayor.
Over the course of 30 minutes, scores of people walked by, rarely giving Grant a second look. A few recognized him from his comedy career, others from his myriad campaign signs. Finally, one woman engaged him with a practical question: How would he be different from Bowser? Grant fired up his elevator pitch.
“D.C. is the worst-run city in America and that’s because our services are not coordinated together,” he said, in part. “Hopefully, we can break down these barriers that have been separating us.”
“Thank you for stopping,” he added.
Other residents were more excited to grab his campaign materials, citing their dislike of Bowser. Brittany Thomas, a Northwest resident of three years, said she plans to vote for Grant because “he isn’t going to just look out for certain communities.”
“Bowser really hasn’t done much,” she concluded.
On the fundraising side, Grant had raised about $93,000 through Oct. 10 and separately lent himself $30,000, according to campaign finance reports. All told, he has spent about $109,000, including about $25,000 on expenses related to printing, advertising and campaign materials. Hall, the Republican mayoral candidate, had raised just over $7,000 through early October.
Bowser has brought in more than $900,000, according to a report filed Monday, not counting the matching funds she has received from the city’s Fair Elections program, which boosts her total to more than $4 million (Grant and Hall opted out of public financing, which limits candidates to small-dollar donations but matches contributions from District residents with taxpayer funds).
He has tried to overcome his shortcomings in campaign cash and experience by knocking on doors, and, on occasion, serving as a foil to Bowser: In late September, when the mayor visited Ward 7 to celebrate the opening of a grocery store, Grant and his team showed up, too, holding up big posters of his face as the mayor cut the ribbon.
Grant employed a similar tactic last month at the 17th Street High Heel race, where he and candidates for other city races danced and mingled with the thousands who attended. When Bowser arrived and slowly began working her way through the packed crowd, Grant took notice.
“Hold the signs high,” he instructed his team.
As the mayor posed for photos, Grant’s face popped up right behind her. | 2022-11-02T16:52:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For Red Grant, D.C. mayoral run is about ‘purpose over popularity’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/dc-mayor-red-grant/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/dc-mayor-red-grant/ |
Military helicopters take off from the Capitol during a casualty-evacuation exercise by the U.S. Capitol Police on Wednesday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
If Blanton, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, does not resign, the decision would fall to President Biden on whether to fire him.
Investigators “identified a significant amount of administrative, ethical and policy violations as well as evidence of criminal violations throughout the investigation,” the report said. “Blanton misled and provided false information to investigators on multiple occasions. … Blanton’s actions have violated every pillar the OIG operates under including theft, fraud, waste and abuse.” | 2022-11-02T17:14:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats call for Architect of Capitol to resign over scathing ethics report - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/architect-capitol-ethics-violations-democrats-resign/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/architect-capitol-ethics-violations-democrats-resign/ |
FBI agents work outside the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), where her husband, Paul Pelosi, was violently assaulted after a break-in. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)
There are at least two reasons that baseless claims about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband spread so quickly.
One is that the confessed attacker had espoused conspiracy theories that have broadly infected the political right, from claims about the 2020 election results to QAnon. That the federal government has been warning for years about the path from things like QAnon to political violence was ignored; instead, there was a rush to blame the violence on something less closely attached to standard right-wing rhetoric.
The other reason these conspiracy theories spread is the same reason that QAnon itself did: There are reward mechanisms for sowing doubt that don’t exist for sharing the less-exciting truth. There are political rewards, certainly; various political actors got new surges in attention by spreading false claims about the attack. (There’s a reason Donald Trump himself eventually climbed onto that bandwagon.) Suggesting that authorities are lying has been an audience-builder since the days of UFO chatter on AM radio. But now it’s also a central component of the right’s worldview. If officials say it, it’s a lie, the thinking goes — particularly if those officials can be in any way tied to the political left.
What makes conspiracy theories so powerful, though, is information. They aren’t simply invented out of thin air. They’re cobbled together piecemeal from people looking for patterns that don’t exist. When movies show deranged people drawing colored string between points on a corkboard, they aren’t threading together empty spots. They’re connecting random things that have no actual connection, picking out faces in clouds.
An initial trigger is often early, unclear information about what occurred. We see this frequently, from the attack on Paul Pelosi to claims that the 2020 election was stolen to conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. In each case, things that seemed like they might be one way were shown to be something else, generally as new information is gathered. This is how learning works. But because early indicators are often wrong, they are later dismissed by authorities — and therefore become looped into conspiracies.
On Tuesday evening, The Washington Post reported that the Capitol Police had a live feed of the Pelosi couple’s San Francisco house during the attack but that no one was monitoring the feed. In short order, a new demand emerged: Release that video! Release the video of the responding police officers! What are you hiding?! Because this is how the conspiracy theory continues to ooze forward. There’s always some information out there being suspiciously hidden that will prove the conspiracy theory correct. If that information is suppressed, it reinforces the conspiracy theory. If it is released, it becomes evidence that contributes to the conspiracy theory — colored yarn is pinned to it — or attention just turns to some other just-out-of-sight information.
The lure of conspiracy is too strong to accept that, however, and the public understanding of how logic works is too weak. One of the common responses to Trump’s false claims about election fraud was that it was up to the media to prove rampant fraud didn’t happen, which is nothing more than shifting an impossible burden away from the conspiracy theory. If I were to argue that you, the reader, are nothing more than a sentient cat, it would not be up to you to prove me wrong; it is up to me to defend my claim. Fraud claims work the same way — or they should.
Don Bolduc, the Republican seeking to unseat Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), recently repeated a debunked claim that children were identifying as animals and demanding litter boxes in school. When challenged by an NBC News reporter, Bolduc insisted it wasn’t up to him to prove his assertion, but, instead, for the school to prove him wrong. The particular school he identified as accommodating the request did in fact deny it. But you can see how this progresses: He can simply claim it’s true at some other school. Barring every school showing photos of every corner of every room — and showing photos of every location for every moment of the past two years — the claim in the abstract is unfalsifiable, even if it is obviously false.
What those clamoring for the release of the footage will argue is that they are simply seeking to do their own validation of the conspiracy theory. That they’re doing what Bolduc won’t. But again, there’s no reason to think that the offered explanation is suspect and, again, releasing more information will simply throw more things at the base of the corkboard to be perused. How much traction did the conspiracy theorists get out of a photo of broken glass outside the Pelosis’ home, despite it not being evidence of anything dubious happening?
More transparency and more information are good when considered responsibly. The challenge is that one can no more control how that information is applied than the people who, say, write magazine articles scrutinized for patterns of numbers by the corkboard set can control getting looped into a delusion.
The requests for video footage of the Pelosi attack, like the request for footage from the Capitol riot, is not primarily about the footage. It is primarily about using the request for the footage as a way to imply that something is being hidden.
3:17 PMMcConnell-linked PAC spending $20 million in five key states
3:03 PMPolitical betting is surging. The forecast is about to get complicated. | 2022-11-02T17:14:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Release the video’ is just a way to extend the conspiracy theory about attack on Paul Pelosi - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/paul-pelosi-attack-conspiracy-theories/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/paul-pelosi-attack-conspiracy-theories/ |
Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left and his wife Virginia Thomas, right, leave the the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington after attending funeral services of the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, on Feb. 20, 2016. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
On June 21, the Jan. 6 committee outlined a scheme it said was supported by President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election. (Video: Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
Thomas is the justice who oversees emergency petitions from the circuit court that includes Georgia.
Days earlier, Chesebro on Christmas Eve morning sent an email to Eastman, Justin Clark, Bruce Marks, and others and put the odds of the court taking up the question and issuing a decision at no more than 5 percent — and of it doing so in Trump’s favor by Jan. 6 at “only 1 percent.”
Eastman has argued that the set of disputed emails were protected by attorney-client privilege — a bedrock principle of U.S. legal practice that says a lawyer must keep confidential what they are told by their clients, and work product related to their representation. Carter cited a “crime-fraud exception” — including instances in which communications were part of a crime — ruling that “the emails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
Eastman clerked for Thomas and has remained in touch with his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, according to email correspondence obtained by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. At least one of the emails showed Ginni Thomas inviting Eastman to speak on Dec. 8, 2020, to a group of conservative activists to provide an update about election litigation.
Ginni Thomas lobbied state legislators in Arizona and Wisconsin via email, urging them to help overturn Biden’s victory, The Washington Post has previously reported. Neither Ginni nor Clarence Thomas appear to be included on any of the newly released email correspondence and there is no indication in the emails that any of the lawyers directly appealed to Clarence Thomas regarding election litigation. | 2022-11-02T17:14:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump lawyers saw Clarence Thomas as key to stop Biden electoral count, emails show - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/trump-clarence-thomas-emails/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/trump-clarence-thomas-emails/ |
Rarely has the Reddit-ification of today’s conservative movement been in such stark relief as after the attack on Paul Pelosi. Various conspiracy theories have been lodged by prominent conservatives based on, at best, sheer innuendo and, at worst, falsehoods — and then (mostly) discarded when they proved just as baseless as they initially seemed.
As The Post’s Philip Bump notes, it’s a case in point when it comes to just how little compunction certain figures in the movement have about departing from facts and good taste, and how little the Republican Party as a whole cares to police its most extreme and conspiratorially minded voices.
Yet when it comes to not just utter baselessness and carelessness, but willingness to continue spouting already-debunked rumors, you’d struggle to do better than the broken glass narrative.
This one has been a slow build. There’s never been any real reason to doubt that David DePape broke into the Pelosis’ home, but certain people were very invested in casting it as some grand conspiracy that didn’t involve a man violently targeting a prominent Democrat. Their idea was that images showing broken glass on the outside of the Pelosis’ door suggests that perhaps it wasn’t a break-in at all.
The idea percolated on social media and certain blogs for a few days before it broke into the mainstream thanks to Fox News host Jesse Watters and a former president by the name of Donald Trump.
“How did this homeless drug addict even get inside the house?” Watters asked Monday night. “No one has been able to give us a straight answer about that. Now, there was glass broken at the rear door. We’ve seen those photos, but there looks like there’s glass on both sides, inside and out, and FBI sources are telling ‘Primetime’ that’s odd.”
Trump picked up the ball and ran with it during a radio interview Tuesday.
“It’s weird things going on in that household in the last couple of weeks,” Trump said, adding: “But the glass it seems was broken from the inside to the out. So it wasn’t a break-in; it was a breakout. I don’t know. You hear the same things I do.”
In fact, this had already been explained. And we have gotten straight answers — answers which are even clearer now.
Not only have the police been unequivocal that this was a break-in, but charging documents released Monday — before both Watters’s show and Trump’s comments — state that DePape himself confirmed as much.
“DEPAPE stated that he broke into the house through a glass door, which was a difficult task that required the use of a hammer,” the criminal complaint said.
The complaint went public midafternoon Monday. Watters’s show went on the air at 7 p.m. — yet Watters made no mention of DePape’s admission, and instead falsely claimed, “The only person on the record who’s been a witness to what happened before the break-in is a private security officer who was working nearby.”
But in case statements by law enforcement and the complaint weren’t enough, The Washington Post is now reporting that no less than video footage from the Capitol Police confirms that DePape broke into the house:
The rumor began to pick up steam Saturday when a former law enforcement official and CIA officer who blogs at the conservative website posted, “As a cop for 11 yrs in St. Louis I never once worked a burglary where the broken glass and debris at the entry point was OUTSIDE the residence.” Conservative provocateurs and media figures began asking suggestive questions.
By the next day, the tweet had been retweeted nearly 20,000 times and liked more than 70,000, according to the Wayback Machine. But it was soon deleted, with the author acknowledging Monday that “though I [and] others have not seen the type of glass debris that was present in this case, it apparently did indicate a break-in from outside.”
Indeed, it’s not difficult to find videos showing smashed glass falling both inward and outward — particularly when the glass has film on it and when it’s as much of a struggle as DePape said it was, according to the criminal complaint.
Even on Watters’s own show Monday night, he would soon welcome a guest who rather unhelpfully set about debunking the theory.
“You asked about the glass being on both sides,” former Las Vegas detective Randy Sutton said. “According to what I read there, not only was there panes of glass, but there was film on the glass, which is often used to make it more difficult to break in.”
Sutton added: “There’s glass on both sides. However — now, I’ve investigated a ton of burglaries and forcible entries using glass — that is not that unusual, quite honestly, Jesse, when you smash out something — especially when there’s film attached to it. It doesn’t just fall in one place. So, I’m not really concerned about that.”
After the show, Watters’s monologue was featured on both his Twitter feed and the Fox News website, where the broken glass portion was chosen as part of a brief excerpt of the show.
“The Pelosi’s [sic] have cameras all around their house,” read the tweet. “Why haven’t we seen any footage from that night?”
(Despite the growing evidence debunking the conspiracy theories, the theorizing hasn’t slowed down much. On his show Tuesday night, Watters continued to question the circumstances of the break-in without focusing on the positioning of the broken glass.)
We now know law enforcement has seen the footage. And it — along with everything else — reinforces that this was just as baseless as it seemed. And it should never stop being shocking that this rumor somehow found its way to the former president’s lips. | 2022-11-02T17:15:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump's Paul Pelosi conspiracy theory quickly goes up in flames - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/trump-watters-pelosi-glass/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/trump-watters-pelosi-glass/ |
Russia is fighting by the book. The problem is, it’s the wrong book.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with soldiers at a military training area in the Ryazan region in Russia on Oct. 20. (Mikhail Klimentyev/AP)
Civilians don’t talk much about military doctrine, but military professionals know how important it is. This is the intellectual concept that governs the training and equipping of military forces. Get the doctrine right and troops have a major edge in battle. Get it wrong and they have a major, possibly insuperable disadvantage.
The U.S. Army got it very much right before the 1991 Gulf War. Its AirLand Battle doctrine, adopted in 1982, anticipated fast-moving operations by ground forces supported by air forces using precision-guided munitions. The U.S. Army had been planning to fight such a conflict on the plains of Europe against the Red Army, but it proved ideally suited for fighting the Soviet-equipped Iraqi Army in the deserts of Arabia. The result was one of the most lopsided conflicts in modern military history.
The Russian military hasn’t been faring nearly as well fighting the Ukrainian army. In fact, the Russian war effort has been a study in ineptitude. There are many explanations for the Russians’ dismal combat performance, including low morale and lousy leadership, but part of their failure can be ascribed to the shortcomings of their military doctrine. Doctrine is even more important to the Russians than to Western militaries, because their military is so rigid in its operations and so dependent on orders from senior officers. The Russians fight “by the book.” Trouble is, they’re using the wrong book.
Ironically, the current Russian military doctrine is known as “active defense,” the same name as the U.S. Army doctrine before the adoption of AirLand Battle. A paper prepared in 2021 by a think tank, the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), for the U.S. European Command shows how this doctrine left the Russian military woefully unprepared for the invasion of Ukraine.
The premise of “active defense” is that the Russian military is going to fight a more technologically advanced adversary (read: NATO) that has attacked Russia first. In response, Russian troops are supposed to rely on “maneuver defense.” This concept, the CNA analysts write, is “premised on defeating and degrading an opponent while buying time and preserving forces, at the expense of territory. Fires and strike systems attrit the opponent’s forces as they advance, forcing them to concentrate and redeploy ahead of each attack, while conducting brief counterattacks.” In this strategy, the outcome of the war “is unlikely to be determined by seizing terrain” — instead, it is vital to sap “an opponent’s ability to sustain the fight or will to continue fighting.”
This is almost the inverse of the Ukraine war, where the Russian troops started off as the more advanced force, where they have been on the offensive and they have been trying to seize terrain. The Ukrainians are the ones who have used their own version of “maneuver defense” to stop the Russian onslaught.
How could the Russians have a military doctrine so disconnected from political reality? After all, it has long been obvious that Russian President Vladimir Putin is far more likely to use his military for offensive rather than defensive operations. The risk of NATO invading Russia is close to zero.
In a sense, the Russian doctrine can be seen as a response to the deeply ingrained Russian fear of foreign invasion from Napoleon to Hitler. But according to the CNA, the current Russian doctrine dates to the twilight years of the Cold War, when the Mikhail Gorbachev-era Soviet Union gave up any ambitions of territorial conquest and decided to focus on defensive operations. The world has totally changed in the past 40 years, but Russian military thinking remains stuck in the past. “They’re not configured for the war they took on at all,” Michael Kofman, the lead author of the CNA study, told me.
The futility of Russian military doctrine might come as a surprise to those who imagine that Russian thinking is governed by the Gerasimov Doctrine, named after Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces. The Gerasimov Doctrine has been described as a sophisticated form of “hybrid warfare” that “fuses hard and soft power across many domains and transcends boundaries between peace- and wartime.” It has been credited with everything from the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, using forces without any insignia on their uniforms known as “little green men,” to the successful Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
There’s only one small problem with the Gerasimov Doctrine: It doesn’t actually exist. The term was coined by the British analyst Mark Galeotti in response to a 2013 speech by Gerasimov in which the Russian general talked about the importance of propaganda and subversion in modern conflict. But Gerasimov wasn’t talking about what Russians planned to do. He was talking about what he thought the United States was doing by supposedly orchestrating the Arab Spring and “color revolutions” from Georgia to Ukraine.
Galeotti has since expressed remorse for coining this popular but misleading catchphrase. As he noted in Foreign Policy in 2018: “This wasn’t a ‘doctrine’ as the Russians understand it, for future adventures abroad: Gerasimov was trying to work out how to fight, not promote, such uprisings at home.” In other words, once again, the Russian military was thinking defensively — and that left it ill-prepared to operate offensively.
The aspect of Russian doctrine that is getting the most attention today, in the wake of Putin’s nuclear threats, concerns the use of nuclear weapons. (Most recently, the Kremlin propaganda machine has been claiming that Ukraine will set off a “dirty bomb,” a ploy that many fear could be used to justify Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, and the New York Times reports that senior Russian military leaders have discussed the use of tactical nukes.) Here, the CNA study has some bad news: “Russian military-analytical writings envision a series of steps in which nuclear weapons are first deployed and utilized for signaling, and are then potentially employed in a progressive fashion at the regional level of conflict and finally are used in a large-scale war until the conflict reaches … all-out nuclear war.”
But before you become too alarmed, it’s worth reading a separate analysis on the War on the Rocks website written by Kofman and another CNA analyst, Anya Loukianova Fink. They note that while “the Russian military has a visibly different comfort level with nuclear weapons than the United States … it does not write of nuclear escalation in recklessly optimistic terms, incognizant of the associated risks.” Rather, Russian military doctrine “makes heavy use of nuclear signaling, which serves to create the impression that the country is far looser with its thinking on nuclear use than is actually the case.”
In other words, the Russians rely on nuclear saber-rattling to bluff their enemies into submission. So far, Putin hasn’t given any indication that he is deploying nuclear weapons, despite his threats to do so; in a speech last week he even denied any intention of using nuclear weapons.
In addition to utilizing “nuclear signaling,” Putin is making use of another aspect of Russian military doctrine. Once the enemy’s advance has been blunted, the CNA notes, Russian forces are supposed to “inflict costs on their military and economic infrastructure such that they will seek war termination on acceptable terms.” That is what Putin is doing with his aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities, targeting, in particular, electrical infrastructure to increase the suffering of civilians during the winter.
But Russia is hobbled in fighting this conflict because its generals did not prepare for a protracted war of attrition. They expected that, if Russia was going to enter a lengthy conflict, the Kremlin would order a general mobilization from the start. In peacetime, Russian military units were manned at a level of only 70 percent to 90 percent, according to another War on the Rocks article by Kofman and Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. But the general mobilization never came, leaving the Russian military critically short of manpower during the initial months of the Ukraine war. The army was particularly short of infantrymen, forcing Russian tanks to blunder into battle unsupported by dismounted troops. As a result, the Ukrainians had a field day picking off Russian tanks with Javelin and NLAW handheld missiles.
Only seven months into the war did Putin finally order a partial mobilization, and so far it has resulted in more men fleeing the country than entering the army. Moreover, Russia has lost so many experienced officers and soldiers that it doesn’t have enough personnel to train the new conscripts.
It’s not fair to place all the blame on the Russian military for the way the Ukraine war has been going. The Ukrainians have exceeded all expectations with their inspired combat performance, and they have received far more Western weaponry than anyone expected. The Russian armed forces, for their part, have been hobbled by political interference from the top. The New York Times has reported that Putin rejected the advice of his generals to retreat from Kherson, and CNN reported he has been giving direct orders to generals in the field.
But the Russian military has also done far worse than most analysts expected in part because it was simply not prepared for the kind of war it is fighting. That’s not uncommon in military history. Even so, the best armies adapt on the fly. That’s what the U.S. Army and Marine Corps did during the Iraq War: They had not trained to fight insurgents, but they learned hard lessons and, in 2006, produced a counterinsurgency field manual that contributed to the success of “the surge” in 2007.
The Russian armed forces haven’t shown that kind of ability to improvise. They continue to stick with what isn’t working. The Russian conduct of this war is not only a moral failure but also an intellectual one. | 2022-11-02T17:36:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Russia is fighting the Ukraine war with the wrong doctrine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/max-boot-russia-military-doctrine-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/max-boot-russia-military-doctrine-ukraine/ |
In the midterms, GOP extremism is the ghoul in the room
Flowers outside the home of Paul Pelosi, who was severely beaten by an assailant last week. (Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP)
Donald Trump was at it again on Tuesday, spouting lies to feed conspiracy theories about the attack last Friday on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, at their home in San Francisco.
“Weird things going on in that household in the last couple of weeks,” Trump said on a talk show. “The glass, it seems, was broken from the inside to the out — so it wasn’t a break-in, it was a break-out.” This was repulsive, deceitful nonsense.
The assault on the Democratic leader’s husband that was intended as violence against her should have been an opportunity for cheap grace in a GOP whose advertising makes Pelosi a favored punching bag. A dose of empathy would have signaled that politics aren’t everything.
A fair number of old-line politicians in the party understood this, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who was unequivocal in his condemnation. But even Republicans who said the right things won’t go to the root of the party’s problem. They lack the courage to break with Trump, Trumpism and the fanatics who continue to lie about the outcome of the 2020 election and, in the case of the growing ranks of QAnon devotees, cast Democrats as Satanists and child molesters.
That’s because the Republicans’ strategy depends on heavy turnout among Trump’s most fervent supporters while getting moderate voters to ignore the ghoul in the room and cast their ballots to protest inflation. Never mind, as my Post colleague Catherine Rampell pointed out, that the GOP offers no solution to the problem and would, as former president Barack Obama has been arguing, make life more difficult for workers and retirees.
In fact, the accent on anger, resentment and wild falsehoods is closely linked to the party’s lack of a comprehensive program.
Solving public problems requires taking government’s role seriously: in making investments, lifting the incomes of the jobless and low-paid, and creating systems of social insurance that help those who fall on hard times. Some in the GOP admitted as much by supporting President Biden’s infrastructure bill and the Chips and Science Act.
But an open embrace of an active public sector within a market economy would fly in the face of the party’s long-standing claims that government is always the problem and never the solution. Republicans paper over their contradictions by walking away from policy talk. In this vacuum, conspiracy theorists roam free.
There was always a better way for the GOP, and few articulated it as well as President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he outlined “the need to maintain balance” in his remarkable 1961 farewell address.
Ike detailed what he had in mind: “balance between the private and the public economy; balance between cost and hoped-for advantage; balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future.”
“Good judgment seeks balance and progress,” he concluded. The alternative, he said, was “frustration.” A corollary: If you’re not seeking balance, you exploit the frustration you sow.
If you look at the campaigns actually happening on the ground, it’s Democrats who are hewing closer to the great Republican president’s vision. A prime example: Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) is running for the Senate by reaching out to the parts of the Trump electorate who backed the former president not to endorse lunacy but to protest their economic conditions. A Ryan victory would send a powerful signal that a different kind of politics is possible.
Appeals to balance are obvious in other Democratic campaigns. In New Hampshire, incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan has practically made the word “bipartisan” her middle name. In North Carolina’s Senate race, former state Supreme Court chief justice Cheri Beasley emphasizes controls on pharmaceutical prices in the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as the Chips and Science Act’s investments in manufacturing and high tech. In Pennsylvania, Reps. Matthew Cartwright and Susan Wild — contrary to claims that Democrats are playing down the economy — focus almost entirely on bread and butter.
“Balance,” unfortunately, is not much of a rallying cry — one reason Eisenhower’s speech is not as widely remembered as it should be. But balance looks awfully good when it’s put up against an extremism that can’t even commiserate with a politician whose husband has been grievously assaulted. | 2022-11-02T17:36:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | In the midterms, GOP extremism allows no sympathy for Pelosi's husband - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/midterms-gop-extremism-paul-pelosi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/midterms-gop-extremism-paul-pelosi/ |
James Gray’s deeply personal coming-of-age tale illuminates our own times with surreal prescience
Banks Repeta, left, and Jaylin Webb in “Armageddon Time.” (Anne Joyce/Focus Features)
“Watch out or you’ll catch your father’s temper,” Esther warns at one point, and from Paul’s terrified reaction we sense that it’s a real threat; later, we’ll see what happens when it comes to pass. But “Armageddon Time” isn’t a trauma narrative: Moments of warmth and contagious joy suffuse Gray’s memories, especially when it comes to Paul’s maternal grandfather Aaron, portrayed by Anthony Hopkins with avuncular directness. “Armageddon Time” dramatizes a pivotal year in Paul’s life, when he strikes up a friendship with a Black classmate named Johnny (Jaylin Webb) and begins to learn firsthand how racism operates on the most subtle and unspoken level. That he happens to be the beneficiary of a system that routinely gives him the benefit of the doubt begins to chafe against what he’s been told about his own Jewish heritage of survival against oppressive odds. Privilege, in Paul’s case, feels both hard-won and unearned. “Life is unfair,” his grandfather explains at one point. “You make the most of your break, and you do not look back.”
Gray explores his own budding awareness of injustice in “Armageddon Time,” which like “Jojo Rabbit” and “Belfast” navigates daunting moral calculations through the eyes of an intuitive but also uncomprehending child. That implicit naivete can be a dodge, and there are times when Gray slips into sentimentality and self-congratulation. But “Armageddon Time” also presents an alternately tender and candid glimpse of what it feels like to be told one thing while knowing the opposite is true deep in your bones. Paul and Johnny bond over a shared sense of humor and taste in music (“Rapper’s Delight” and “The Hustle” pop up in the soundtrack alongside the title cut and a song by Boz Scaggs), but their friendship indirectly leads to Paul getting transferred from his public school to the militarylike institution his brother attends. There, he has an encounter with larger-than-life figures who give “Armageddon Time” yet another layer of cognitive dissonance — Jessica Chastain appears in a cameo, delivering an aria of entitled resentment in which her character camouflages the realities of her inherited wealth with rhetoric about “good old-fashioned hard work” — as well as a frisson of surreal prescience.
Paul instinctively recoils from the hypocrisies around him, and late in “Armageddon Time,” his grandfather gives him an invaluable tutorial in how to be a mensch rather than a passive bystander. But Paul is not above profiting from his own place in the pecking order he’s beginning vaguely to understand: When his friendship with Johnny grows more complicated, at one point involving a misguided scheme involving some school computers, the stakes of his life lessons in how Whiteness works become exponentially higher. “Armageddon Time” is a pungent, disarmingly honest evocation of love and loyalty, striving and struggle, and how identity morphs from one generation to the next. In revisiting his own coming of age, Gray has managed to illuminate a much larger one that hasn’t stopped.
R. At area theaters. Contains strong language and some drug use involving minors. 114 minutes. | 2022-11-02T17:40:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Armageddon Time’: Privilege and punk rock in 1980s Queens - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/11/02/armageddon-time-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/11/02/armageddon-time-movie-review/ |
Two hurricanes roam Atlantic in November for only third time on record
Lisa is set to make landfall in Belize on Wednesday, while Martin has formed over the North Atlantic
Hurricane Lisa approaches landfall Wednesday in Belize. (RAMMB/CIRA)
The calendar may say November, but the tropical Atlantic is busier than it was at any point during August. Two hurricanes — Lisa and Martin — have developed and a third system is organizing, bringing an abrupt flurry of activity to a season that would ordinarily be almost over by now.
Statistically, a November hurricane should form in the Atlantic every two or three years. To have two at the same time is rare. A pair of hurricanes have simultaneously roamed the Atlantic in November only twice before, according to Phil Klotzbach, a tropical-weather researcher at Colorado State University.
With Lisa churning ever closer to Belize on Wednesday morning, a hurricane warning was in effect for the entire coast. The National Hurricane Center warned of hurricane-force winds and “life-threatening storm surge” near Lisa’s core, expected to make landfall Wednesday afternoon into the evening.
The southeast coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula was also under a hurricane warning, from Chetumal to Puerto Costa Maya. A tropical storm warning covered portions of the northern coasts of Guatemala and Honduras.
“Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,” the Hurricane Center wrote.
Another storm, Martin, became the seventh Atlantic hurricane of 2022 on Wednesday morning. It’s in the North Atlantic, hundreds of miles northeast of Bermuda, and is forecast to zip northeastward over open waters for the next several days.
About midway between Lisa and Martin, there is the potential for the gradual development of a third system near the Bahamas over the next several days.
This flurry of late-season activity in the Atlantic follows a somewhat quieter-than-average season, despite devastating storms such as Fiona and Ian, which wrought havoc in Puerto Rico, Atlantic Canada and southwestern Florida. Overall activity is about 25 percent below average at this point.
The Atlantic hurricane season officially ends Nov. 30. November is ordinarily a slow month, with activity waning and eventually flatlining. On average, only about 7 percent of a season’s storminess will occur after Halloween.
On Wednesday morning, Lisa was about 60 miles east of Roatán, an island of Honduras, and about 100 miles east of Belize City. It packed maximum winds of 80 mph while moving west at 15 mph. The roughly 30-mile-wide eyewall of Lisa, the ring of intense winds surrounding its calm center, was visible on radar churning westward. It appeared poised to make landfall sometime between 2 and 4 p.m. Eastern time.
Winds were becoming progressively more gusty at the coastline and were expected to ramp up markedly around or shortly after noon. Gusts at the coastline near Lisa’s center may approach 70 to 80 mph. Belize City looks to be in the crosshairs of the eyewall’s trajectory.
A dangerous storm surge is probable for areas just north of where Lisa’s center comes ashore. In this area, Lisa’s onshore winds will push up to 4 to 7 feet of ocean water into the coastline. The zone just north of Belize City may see the maximum surge, including vacation communities on Ambergris Caye.
Areas south of Belize City will see more offshore winds, which should limit the surge.
Across the entirety of the system’s direct path, heavy rainfall on the order of 4 to 6 inches is expected, with localized 10-inch totals possible.
“This rainfall could lead to flash flooding conditions, primarily across Belize into northern Guatemala, the far southeast portion of the Yucatán Peninsula, the eastern portion of the Mexican state of Chiapas, and the Mexican state of Tabasco,” the Hurricane Center wrote.
Martin developed rather unexpectedly Tuesday out of a mature mid-latitude cyclone. The overarching system didn’t come about via conventionally tropical processes, but a flare-up of showers and thunderstorms occurred near the system’s center. In other words, a compact tropical storm formed at the core of a nontropical system.
It has since strengthened into a hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph. The storm, roughly 800 miles northeast of Bermuda, was pushing northeast at a little more than 15 mph.
Martin is forecast to intensify into a Category 2 hurricane with 105-mph winds by Thursday but is then forecast to rapidly transition into a post-tropical cyclone, losing its tropical characteristics. It will probably swing north, remaining to Greenland’s south, through the end of the workweek before abruptly turning east and gradually weakening on approach to Britain.
Another system to watch
Weather models are beginning to hint that a large, broad, low-pressure system could develop near or east of the Bahamas in the coming days. The Hurricane Center estimates a 20 percent chance that it could become a tropical depression or storm in the next five days.
There is a chance that the system drifts toward Florida or the Gulf of Mexico in about a week, but how organized and intense it will be is almost impossible to predict this far out. If the system earns a name, it would be called Nicole. | 2022-11-02T17:58:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane Lisa nears landfall as Martin gains hurricane strength - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/02/hurricane-lisa-belize-martin-november/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/02/hurricane-lisa-belize-martin-november/ |
By Katharine Houreld
Redwan Hussien Rameto (left), Representative of the Ethiopian government, and Getachew Reda (right), Representative of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), sign a peace agreement in Pretoria on November 2, 2022. (Phill Magakoe/AFP/Getty Images)
NAIROBI — The Ethiopian government and Tigrayan forces formally signed a truce on Wednesday, the most significant breakthrough after two years of devastating war in Africa’s second most-populous country.
The full document has yet to be released, but it was signed on live television by representatives from Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls much of Tigray, in front of a crowd of diplomats.
It will be the second time the two sides cease hostilities. A five-month cease fire declared by the government in March allowed convoys of food aid to enter the region, but that agreement fell apart with renewed fighting at the end of August. Since then, the Ethiopian military has captured large swaths of Tigray with assistance from Eritrean soldiers.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, left many facing famine and destroyed health and education infrastructure across swaths of northern Ethiopia. | 2022-11-02T17:58:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ethiopian government, Tigrayan forces agree to truce in devastating civil war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/ethiopia-tigray-war-truce/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/02/ethiopia-tigray-war-truce/ |
Red autumn leaves frame the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
In the fall, a middle-aged man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of leaves. Raking them, mainly, but also wondering why his neighbor’s oak tree is shedding such freaking gigantic leaves.
My neighbor Marjo is finding her grass littered with leaves as big as place mats. I’m talking four times the size of a “normal” oak leaf. Is something weird going on?
No, said the U.S. National Arboretum’s Fred Gouker. An oak tree can produce differently sized leaves from year to year, depending on what that specific tree has experienced in the preceding seasons.
“It’s called phenotypic plasticity,” said Gouker, a research geneticist and woody ornamental plant breeder.
A tree can’t get up and walk somewhere else in search of better growing conditions. It has to alter itself, an ability that helps it withstand changes in its environment, including variations in weather or climate.
“Another big thing that can influence leaf size is the shading effect,” Gouker said, when new branches or other trees cast shade onto existing branches.
“It will tend to cause those shaded leaves or branches to become bigger,” he said. “It increases surface area and an increase in surface area, in theory, allows it to capture more sunlight.”
You will recall that a tree’s leaves capture sunlight. Chlorophyll in the leaves transforms sunlight into energy for growth. As summer ends, compounds in the leaf break down, changing the color and giving us our brilliant fall display.
The person at the Agricultural Research Service who put me in touch with Gouker just happens to be named … Autumn. Autumn Canaday. What a perfect name for this time of year! How’d she get it?
“My mom said I was very quiet in the womb,” Canaday told me. She was so quiet in utero that her mother was worried.
“The obstetrician ran tests and told her I was just a very still, quiet baby,” she said.
Autumn’s behavior reminded her parents of a quiet autumn morning, thus the name.
“I used to love the long hot days of summer,” Autumn said. “But now autumn is my favorite season. … There’s a forest across the street from my house. When the sun rises in the morning, the sunlight bounces off the yellow and red leaves and sends a golden glow into the rooms on the front of my house.”
Every Autumn has a story.
When the District’s Autumn Rain Towne was 35, she came out as transgender. Her life had been pretty difficult as a closeted trans girl and she wanted a new name.
“Choosing my own name was a thrill, but was difficult because the name had to find me,” she said. “At first I wanted the name of a martyr or a warrior, but none of those sounded like me when spoken out loud. So I looked to names that referenced nature, rather than religion or struggle.”
“Autumn,” she decided, was perfect, embodying as it does the fact that there is beauty in change.
Now, said Autumn, “when anyone talks about the best season, I whip my head around because I think they’re calling me!”
My colleague Autumn Brewington was born on the first day of summer. Her mother didn’t have a girl’s name picked out.
“My name came from her remembering a dream she had while pregnant, and in the dream she had a baby and it was a girl named Autumn,” Autumn said.
Dream baby!
Autumn Joy Parks of Pasadena, Md., was actually born in her namesake season, on Oct. 25th. Her mother didn’t have a name picked out, either.
“She said my face didn’t match any ordinary names,” Autumn said.
As her mother rested in her hospital bed, “Jeopardy” came on the TV. One of the contestants was named Autumn.
“She thought, ‘How fitting!’ ” said Autumn.
I consulted the Social Security Administration’s nifty online baby name database. In 2021, “Autumn” was the 66th most popular girl’s name, a couple notches down from its high of 64th in 2013. It’s a lot more popular than it was in 1969, when it was the 831st most popular name for American girls born that year.
Autumn is more popular than another seasonal name: According to the Social Security Administration, “Summer” was the 141st most popular baby girl name last year.
And because I know you’re curious, here are last year’s rankings for that 90-day stretch of month-inspired girl’s names: April (520th), May (964th) and June (175th).
I’m curious: Is there an interesting story behind how you got your first name? Send the details — with “My first name” in the subject line — to me at john.kelly@washpost.com. | 2022-11-02T17:58:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What's up with the massive leaves my neighbor's oak tree is dropping? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/leaves-of-autumn/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/leaves-of-autumn/ |
Environmental and “slow growth” activists attend a meeting of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors as its members vote on a proposal for a data center complex Nov. 1. (Valerie Plesch for The Washington Post)
Prince William County’s board Wednesday approved guidelines for a plan to convert 2,100 acres of rural land into a data center complex, triggering the county’s largest land use change in decades in an area that has seen the rapid growth of residential developments and tech centers.
After an often-contentious 14-hour meeting that began Tuesday evening, the county board voted 5-2 to amend the land use plan in a portion of Gainesville where two technology companies want to build a “Digital Gateway” complex on a site occupied by more than 200 homes and small farms near the Manassas National Battlefield Park.
Republican supervisors Jeanine Lawson (R-Brentsville) and Yesli Vega (R-Coles) opposed the plan, which was initiated by property owners in the increasingly traffic-congested stretch of western Prince William.
“We’ve got to move forward and take that shot, and this is a shot I see we can take to get us to where we need to be,” Supervisor Victor S. Angry (D-Neabsco), who introduced the motion to approve the guidelines, said before the vote.
“This represent a change in Prince William County that can secure our future,” board chair Ann B. Wheeler (D-At Large) said.
In an atrium outside the board’s meeting hall, a crowd of about 300 people listened attentively to every speaker, sometimes cheering or jeering.
Many wore stickers or T-shirts advertising where they stood on the issue, with burly union construction workers who support the Digital Gateway plan sitting next to retirees who oppose it.
“You can’t possibly be that irresponsible,” Bill Wright — a resident of the sprawling 55-plus Heritage Hunt community near the site who has been a central figure in the opposition — told the board during a public hearing portion of the meeting that featured 262 speakers, with an additional 41 chiming in remotely.
“Should you foolishly decide to approve this disaster, despite all advice to the contrary, it will forever stain your legacy,” Wright said.
The board’s five Democrats, all of whom voted to approve the Digital Gateway plan, took pains to address the major concerns raised by the plan’s critics.
Supervisor Margaret A. Franklin (D-Woodbridge) added provisions in the motion seeking to preserve any cultural artifacts found on the site, particularly related to African American and Native American history, where the project’s developers, QTS Realty Trust and Compass Datacenters, who have entered into multimillion-dollar contracts to purchase most of the affected homes, would conduct archaeological studies.
The plan 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. Supervisor Kenny A. Boddye (D-Occoquan) asked the county staff to work to install roundabouts and other speed-controlling measures on the expanded roadway to keep traffic below 45 miles per hour — a response to worries that the road expansion will trigger the revival of a “bicounty parkway” plan extending from Loudoun that was previously defeated. The county staff already included language in the plan that keeps traffic from entering that road from I-66.
Boddye also sought to encourage QTS and Compass to use clean energy at the site to reduce the potential for pollution and noise, and Angry added language requiring the companies to install wet ponds, landscaping and other features aimed at reducing storm water runoff and soil erosion.
Republican opponents called the extra safeguards meaningless, arguing that the data center companies can ignore them.
“At the end of the day, it’s really fluff,” said Vega, who is running for Congress in Virginia’s 7th District. “The comp plan is merely a guide, something that advises. But it’s not legally binding.”
Supervisor Pete Candland (R-Gainesville), whose home is part of the project and represents the affected area, did not attend the meeting after recusing himself from the vote.
The often-angry tone of the meeting reflected the nearly two years of debate over the Digital Gateway proposal. The fight has led to lawsuits and recall campaigns against Wheeler and Candland, a normally outspoken critic of data center development who surprised his supporters when he and his wife agreed to sell their home as part of the proposal.
County officials estimate the plan for 27 million square feet of data centers on the site would generate at least $400 million in additional tax revenue that could go toward crowded schools and other problems in the steadily growing county of nearly 485,000 residents.
QTS Realty Trust and Compass Datacenters still need to get their projects approved in a separate rezoning process before the data centers can be built.
The site sits in 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.
Under the Digital Gateway 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 also includes a provision to extend public water and sewer lines to the data centers. 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.
County officials embraced the plan as a way to take advantage of the $8.4 billion data center industry’s rapidly expanding footprint in Northern Virginia. Data centers, which require few local government services while generating massive amounts of tax revenue, are a targeted industry for several jurisdictions in the region.
Prince William is seeking to compete with if not surpass Loudoun County as the region’s chief hub for data centers. Loudoun collects about $500 million from its 25 million square feet of data centers, though the county board there has begun to further restrict where new structures can be built. Prince William collects $79 million per year in tax revenue from the 35 data centers operating in the county, covering 6 million square feet, with another 5.4 million square feet in development and more data centers in the pipeline for approval.
Last year, a Prince William County study found that an overlay district where most of its data centers are concentrated was running out of land considered to be marketable to data center developers who might prefer to build elsewhere — a finding bolstered by a separate study.
That launched an ongoing effort to expand the overlay district into other parts of the county that has run parallel to the Digital Gateway project.
Opponents to the plan mounted a fierce effort to kill both ideas, part of a history of fighting new development in the Rural Crescent that over the decades has included defeating plans for an auto racetrack, a mega mall and a Disney theme park.
Environmental groups warned 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.
Meanwhile, historical preservation groups — joined by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns — warned that installing data centers close to the site of two major Civil War battles and what are believed to be unmarked graves of formerly enslaved people would undermine Northern Virginia’s historical integrity.
Exhausted after a long night Wednesday morning, with tempers short, the supervisors bickered and argued up until the vote was cast.
Outside the meeting, Mary Ann Ghadban strolled through the crowd, waiting for her turn to speak to the board, which came at about 4:30 a.m.
She and her neighbors initiated the Digital Gateway plan out of frustration over the constant flow of cut-through traffic in the area and the rows of 12-story-high transmission lines the Dominion Energy utility installed through their property, in part to provide power to data centers in nearby Loudoun County.
The Digital Gateway plan will require more transmission lines to be installed in the area, though it’s unclear where, Dominion Energy has said.
But Ghadban, a real estate broker who owns a small farm off Pageland, said the time to save the neighborhood has passed.
“I thought I would live on my farm and die there,” she said cheerfully, less than an hour after the board voted. But the area “is not farming-friendly. This is the best plan and the biggest bang for the buck for Prince William County. It’s a win-win-win.”
Elena Schlossberg, head of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County slow-growth group, was also camped at the meeting most of the night.
She called the decision “on the wrong side of protecting the environment.”
But “the fight is not over,” Schlossberg added, suggesting more legal challenges to the plan. “No, the fight is not over.” | 2022-11-02T18:11:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prince William County board approves controversial data center project - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/prince-william-vote-data-center/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/prince-william-vote-data-center/ |
Washington Commanders running back Brian Robinson Jr. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Police have made an arrest in connection with the shooting of Washington Commanders running back Brian Robinson Jr. during an attempted robbery in August along the H Street commercial strip in Northeast Washington, according to several people familiar with the matter.
D.C. police were expected to release more details at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. Police had previously publicized photos captured by a nearby surveillance camera of two people they described as suspects in the case.
Two people familiar with the matter said the person arrested was a juvenile. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, and they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
Police have said two people approached Robinson after he left a storefront in the 1000 block of H Street NE shortly before 6 p.m. on August 28. Police said the player was able to “wrestle a firearm away” from one of the two male assailants before the other shot him.
Robinson, wounded in the lower extremities, was released from the hospital the day after the shooting and has since resumed playing for the team.
In a month of recovery, Brian Robinson Jr. did all he could to play again
D.C. police Chief Robert J. Contee III had said the assailants appeared to be between 15 to 17 years old. Police said one firearm was recovered about a block south of the shooting. Prince George’s County police said the stolen vehicle the two used to flee the scene was recovered about four miles from FedEx Field.
After the shooting, Commanders Coach Ron Rivera said he could “feel the anger swelling up” about Robinson’s situation and about gun violence in the United States. Sporting a “Wear Orange” T-shirt to support the gun violence prevention movement, he urged more discussion about gun safety.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said that “what we saw in this case and others is just a wanton use of a firearm that hurts somebody.”
The shooting of Robinson also brought new attention to problematic gun violence in D.C. and attempts by city leaders to disrupt crime at three nightlife areas, including the H Street corridor lined with popular restaurants and bars.
Peter Hermann, Lauren Lumpkin and Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report. | 2022-11-02T18:28:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arrest made in shooting of Commanders running back Brian Robinson Jr. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/arrest-commanders-brian-robinson-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/arrest-commanders-brian-robinson-shooting/ |
A recently discovered 1894 article offers clues to what two of Washington’s oldest Black cemeteries once looked like
Toys sit on the Georgetown-area grave of “Nannie,” a 7-year-old who died in 1856. (Karon Flage)
One newspaper headline described it as a “queer custom observed in Washington.”
Another called it a “quaint negro burial custom.”
What would now not seem to be a strange sight to anyone who passed by a cemetery — toys and mementos left on graves — apparently fascinated people enough in the late 19th century that it warranted widespread media coverage.
A recently discovered article from 1894 that focuses on a D.C. cemetery appears to have run in slightly different versions in publications across the nation and in at least one other country.
“A curious custom is still observed in an old negro burying-ground in Washington, D.C.—that of placing upon the graves of departed friends and relatives the articles that were most enjoyed or used by them while living and the bottles containing the residuum of the medicines that were administered during the last illness,” begins one version of the article.
The article goes on to describe the differences between Georgetown’s “Mount Zion graveyard,” where enslaved and free Black people were buried, and the nearby “beautiful Oak Hill Cemetery,” where prominent White residents were interred.
“Both are charmingly situated on rising ground overlooking Rock Creek at its most picturesque point,” a version of the article reads. “Separated only by a short stretch of land and a high board fence, the two ‘silent cities’ present the most vivid contrast imaginable. On one side are soft green lawns, flowering shrubs, gravelled walks, and magnificent monuments; on the other a rank growth of grass and weeds, worm-eaten and discoloured wooden headboards, and instead of flowers a miscellaneous jumble of toys, ornaments, tools.”
Halloween is now behind us, so it may seem the wrong time to talk about cemeteries and haunting traditions.
But that article has as much to do with the future as the past. Its discovery has stirred excitement among people who have been working toward an ambitious goal: telling the stories of those who are buried at two of the oldest Black cemeteries in Washington.
They were names on headstones until the pandemic. Then they became reminders that ‘Georgetown was Black.’
Portions of that article were posted in recent weeks on the Instagram page Black Georgetown (@blackgeorgetown), an account run by the foundation that is trying to restore and preserve the Mount Zion and Female Union Band Society cemeteries. The adjoining burial grounds, which, until recent years, were often described as one cemetery, served as the resting place for thousands of enslaved and free Black people. Exactly how many remains unknown. So, too, do the names of many of those people and the details about the lives they led.
A post shared by Black Georgetown (@blackgeorgetown)
Finding information about them has not been easy work for the volunteers who have taken on that task. Many of the headstones were displaced and damaged over time. Others contain minimal information. Then there is the challenge of finding records that have been preserved and made publicly available to fill in the many blanks.
That’s what makes the 1894 article so significant. It paints a picture of what the cemeteries once looked like. It also shows that the glass bottles and other objects that have been found on the grounds over the years may not be trash; they may be the remnants of gifts left for the dead.
“Proof the ancestors ain’t playing,” reads a post on the Black Georgetown Instagram page. “I rep the oldest Black cemeteries in Washington D.C and we knew of these burial customs and we often find mini bottles and 18th century pottery etc here but they (government types) tried to tell me it was trash or back fill. My spirit or rather the ancestors told me something else.”
Lisa Fager, who wrote the post, is the executive director of the Mount Zion-Female Union Band Society Historic Memorial Park foundation. She said the article doesn’t come up in a search of the cemetery’s name but was discovered by volunteer Erika Berg while she was researching historical African American cemeteries in Georgia. Versions of it were then found to have run in publications in places that include California, Kansas, Illinois, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Massachusetts. It also ran in Wales. That version of the article, which Fager shared with me, shows just a slightly altered description of the cemetery’s location: It swaps “Washington, D.C.” for “Washington, in America.”
The discovery of the article comes at a time when Fager and Mark Auslander, a professor and historian, have been working to find out more about “Nannie,” a 7-year-old girl who died in 1856, days before her birthday, and was buried in the cemetery.
I told you in a previous column about the mystery of her grave and how it has pulled strangers together. Toys cover the ground around her headstone, and every May, someone leaves her a card around her birthday.
Someone keeps leaving toys at a 7-year-old’s grave in a historic Black cemetery. No one knows who.
“Next year, Nannie will celebrate [her] 175th, and we hope to be a little closer to telling her story,” Fager said. And now that they also know that leaving toys is connected to the broader story of the cemetery, she said, “we must retell the story with the new information.”
Fager said she believes that leaving medicine and other items out could have also been connected with the Underground Railroad, because the cemetery served as a stop on it. “If you just thought Black folks were ‘peculiar’ leaving clothes, food, medicine outside for the dead, well that’s the game they would play with colonizers,” she said.
The article describes the significance of leaving objects on graves in this way: “The idea of the negroes in placing them in the cemetery is that they may be within easy reach of the spirits whom they confidently believe revisit the scenes of their earthly sufferings. If they find familiar objects on their graves they confine their manifestations to the cemetery—if not, they haunt the families who have neglected to provide them.”
On the grave of a young boy sat a highchair and a toy wheelbarrow, according to the article. And on the grave of a woman described as a “terror” rested a large palm-leaf fan. The purpose, a man quoted in the article explained, was to offer her a refreshing reprieve from the likely “hot place” she ended up.
“One grave has, instead of a monument, a large wooden hobby-horse, buried to its haunches in the ground,” reads the article. It explains that the grave belonged to a man who was the driver of an express wagon in life. “He was extremely fond of his horse, and his widow, who was obliged to sell it, used some of the proceeds to purchase a wooden one.”
Another grave is described as belonging to a “good woman” who had a penchant for bonnets. She was known to show up at church every week with a new one and would give her old one to someone in need. When she died, her sister placed the last bonnet she bought in a box with a mirror, so she could see herself, then left it on the grave.
Later, all but the box disappeared. That they were gone, the article said, only strengthened the belief that those were exactly the items she wanted.
How a knock on Neil Armstrong’s door in 1969 is still reverberating
D.C. has a problem with firing bad cops. So do many places. | 2022-11-02T18:28:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Leaving toys on graves was once seen as a strange D.C. cemetery custom - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/black-cemetery-toys-historic-article/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/black-cemetery-toys-historic-article/ |
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
Four days after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes tried to tell President Trump it was not too late to use paramilitary groups to stay in power by force, according to testimony Wednesday in federal court.
If he did not, protesters “should have brought rifles” to Washington, and “we could have fixed it right then and there,” Rhodes said during a Jan. 10 recorded meeting, boasting that he would have killed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Rhodes made the violent comments at a meeting in Texas with Jason Alpers, who described himself on the witness stand as a military veteran and co-founder of Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG). That organization played a key role in spreading false claims about the 2020 election through misleading and inaccurate reports about voting machine software.
On the stand, Alpers said he had an “indirect” line to Trump’s “inner circle,” without elaborating.
That apparent relationship is why Rhodes wanted to meet, Alpers testified. He said he recorded the meeting to accurately “provide information to President Trump.” What he got, he said, disturbed him enough to eventually go to the FBI.
Alpers took the stand in the sixth week of trial for Rhodes and four others accused of taking part in a seditious conspiracy against the U.S. government and planning to block the lawful transition of presidential power by force.
Kellye SoRelle, who is charged separately from Rhodes and has been described in court as both his girlfriend and an attorney for the Oath Keepers, was also at the meeting, Alpers testified.
As he had publicly before Jan. 6, Rhodes repeatedly said Trump should to invoke the Insurrection Act, which he believed would allow militia groups to block President Biden from taking office.
Rhodes told Alpers on the recording that if Trump gave up power “he and his family” would “wind up dead,” because Biden would “turn the Insurrection Act against us.” He compared the election to the overthrow of the czar of Russia in 1917, after which the entire royal family was slaughtered.
Rhodes has argued he was only advocating for what he believed would be a lawful order from the president. But on the recording, Rhodes indicated he and his followers would act violently whether or not Trump gave his approval.
“Here is the thing, we’re gonna fight,” Rhodes is recorded saying. “We’re not gonna let them come get our brothers. We’re going to fight, the fight’s going to be ours.”
And if he had known on Jan. 6 that Trump would never invoke the Insurrection Act, Rhodes said, he would have gone further that day — including assassinating a Democratic leader.
“If he’s not going to do the right thing, and he’s just gonna let himself be removed illegally, then we should have brought rifles,” Rhodes says on the recording. “We could have fixed it right then and there. I’d hang f------- Pelosi from the lamppost.”
Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, is currently hospitalized after being attacked by a man who officials say was looking to kill her.
Rhodes in the recording, also called the riot “a good thing in the end,” because it “showed the people that we have a spirit of resistance.”
But he said if Trump left office, “everyone that was at the Capitol” would be in danger of being charged with “felony murder … because someone died.” SoRelle is heard agreeing: “I know it’s gonna happen.”
Felony murder applies when a death results from the commission of another felony crime.
On the recording, Alpers told Rhodes he did not think Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act. He testified that while the law was being talked about in “election fraud circles,” his impression was based on the discussion in Trump’s “inner circle.”
Alpers said he did not deliver Rhodes’s words to Trump “because I didn’t agree with the message.” He also said he worried being associated with these “extremist ideologies” would hurt his “relationships and credibility.”
Alpers told The Washington Post last year that as far as he knew, ASOG began its “election fraud project” after he left the company.
On a podcast last year, a former ASOG employee named Josh Merritt said Alpers connected the group to Phil Waldron, who he served with Afghanistan. “Alpers was psychological operations. Waldron had involvement with psychological operations,” Merritt said.
Waldron, a retired colonel, went to the White House multiple times to share purported evidence of election fraud; worked directly with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani on legal challenges to the vote count and circulated a PowerPoint presentation before Jan. 6 arguing that Trump could use troops to seize ballots.
Waldron did not immediately return a request for comment.
One ASOG report on software used in Antrim County, Mich., claimed to have found evidence of a sweeping conspiracy to fix votes. The report’s central claims were immediately debunked by independent experts and Homeland Security officials, but Trump claimed it was “absolute proof” of fraud that would keep him in office for a second term, former attorney general William P. Barr later told congressional investigators.
Alpers said he initially did nothing with the recording because he “didn’t want to get involved,” but that sometime in the spring of 2021 he met with federal law enforcement.
“Asking for civil war to be on American ground and understanding, being a person who’s gone to war, right, that means blood is gonna get shed on the streets where your family are,” he said. “It was at that point that I kind of step back and I’m really kind of questioning whether pushing this to President Trump is in the best interest.”
Prosecutors expect to finish presenting evidence against Rhodes on Wednesday, after which he and the other defendants will make their case to the jury.
Emma Brown contributed to this report. | 2022-11-02T19:03:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oath Keepers trial witness: Stewart Rhodes urged Trump to stay in power by force - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/rhodes-trump-oathkeepers-trial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/rhodes-trump-oathkeepers-trial/ |
Paul Morantz, crusading lawyer once attacked with rattlesnake, dies at 77
He spent much of his legal career litigating against cults. One left a rattlesnake in his mailbox.
Paul Morantz lies in a hospital bed in Los Angeles in 1978 answering questions from the media about a rattlesnake attack that left him seriously wounded. (Nick Ut/AP)
Paul Morantz, a California lawyer who crusaded against brainwashing self-help gurus, crooked psychotherapists and menacing cults, including one that nearly killed him with a rattlesnake, died Oct. 23 at a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 77.
Mr. Morantz’s death was confirmed by his son, Chaz Morantz, who declined to provide a cause.
In taking on Synanon, the Church of Scientology, the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones and a self-help group whose therapists beat their clients, Mr. Morantz fashioned himself as a modern-day Davy Crockett, defending righteous ideals even if his efforts put him in peril.
Mr. Morantz, his son said, would often cite a maxim attributed to the folk-hero frontiersman: “Be always sure you are right, then go ahead.”
Just out of law school in the early 1970s, Mr. Morantz said he felt directionless and was living in a $90-a-month Southern California apartment so barren that he was embarrassed to have guests. But one day in 1974, he received a phone call that spun his life, he later wrote, in “a direction I never would have suspected.”
The call was from his brother’s high school friend, a liquor store owner who said he knew an alcoholic being held captive at a nursing home in a government check scheme. Mr. Morantz decided to investigate, talking to nurses and others at multiple Los Angeles-area nursing homes.
Mr. Morantz discovered that elderly alcoholics were being sold for $125 to nursing homes by a man posing as a volunteer outreach counselor at the county’s drunk court. The nursing homes sedated the “captives,” as the Los Angeles Times called them, with Thorazine and collected government checks for their stays.
Mr. Morantz filed a class-action suit and won a $300,000 judgment. At least two of the people involved in the scheme served jail time for improperly referring patients to a health-care facility for profit.
The “captives” case, Chaz Morantz said, launched his father’s legal reputation. “My dad just hated bullies,” he said. “He wanted to stand up for people and help them fight back. He really had it out for sociopaths and other malicious leaders that took advantage of their followers.”
Mr. Morantz was praised in the media for his meticulous investigation and relentless legal maneuvering. Soon, clients were seeking him out.
In 1977, he was approached by a man whose life had been destroyed by Synanon, a California drug rehabilitation organization that evolved into a religious movement. Its founder, Charles E. Dederich Sr., viewed himself as a prophet and ordered his followers to undergo vasectomies and abortions and to physically attack enemies.
Mr. Morantz sued Synanon on behalf of several members who managed to escape. Three weeks after winning a $300,000 judgment, he reached into his mailbox at his Pacific Palisades home and a 4½-foot rattlesnake sunk its fangs into his left wrist.
“It felt like having my hand in a vice and it kept tightening,” Mr. Morantz told the Times from his hospital bed.
He managed to run for help and screamed to a neighbor about what had happened. The neighbor wrapped Mr. Morantz’s arm in a tourniquet while waiting for first responders.
As paramedics treated him, four firefighters beat the rattlesnake with shovels and chopped off its head. They discovered the snake’s rattles had been removed, meaning there was no warning sound to alert Mr. Morantz of the reptile in his mailbox.
The doctor treating Mr. Morantz, then 32 years old, said he was “extraordinarily lucky” to survive.
Dederich and two members of the group’s “Imperial Marines” hit squad were arrested a few days later on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. They all pleaded no contest, with the followers receiving a year in jail and Dederich, then in poor health, receiving probation. Dederich died in 1997.
A year after the attack, in a Times profile, Mr. Morantz said he wished he “didn’t know anything about cults.”
“I have no desire to spend my life worrying about cults, groups or movements,” he added. “On the other hand, just because you don't want to be involved anymore doesn't mean you can turn your back when someone asks for help.”
Paul Robert Morantz was born in Los Angeles on Aug. 16, 1945. His father worked in the meatpacking industry; his mother was a homemaker. There were signs during his boyhood of his future outrage at injustice, particularly when it came to religion.
“When I was 12, I listened intently during Passover services as the rabbi explained that wine and matzo should be left outside as a gift for the Angel of Death,” he wrote in his memoir, “Escape: My Lifelong War Against Cults” “Apparently, when the Pharaoh refused to free Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt, God put out a contract on the first-born son of every Egyptian family and sent the Angel of Death to carry out the hit. The angel ‘passed over’ Jewish homes, sparing those children.”
That night, Mr. Morantz got his baseball bat and tried to sneak out to defend the children. His parents caught him.
“I can’t believe you are all celebrating this,” he told them. “I can’t accept the idea that God would murder innocent children. I’m going outside to hide and when the Angel of Death comes for his wine and matzo I’m going to bash him so he won’t ever harm a child again.”
Mr. Morantz settled down and led an otherwise contented boyhood filled with sports and an obsession with the University of Southern California football team. After high school, he joined the Army Reserve and eventually enrolled at USC.
Mr. Morantz wanted to become a sportswriter, and he got a job working at the Daily Trojan, the campus newspaper. After he graduated in 1968, the Times offered him a job, but his girlfriend talked him into going to law school, which he did at USC, graduating in 1971.
His first job was as a public defender. It wasn’t for him.
“I left,” he later wrote, “… not liking getting off guys I would rather put away in jail for a long time.”
Mr. Morantz worked part time in his brother’s office while pursuing freelance writing projects, including a Rolling Stone story about surf music duo Jan and Dean that he later helped adapt into a TV movie called “Deadman’s Curve.” Then he got the nursing home call that changed his life.
Following the Synanon case, Mr. Morantz became a highly sought-after litigator for victims of cults and pseudo-religious groups.
He represented a father who tried to get his son back from Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple, only to see those hopes end with the group’s mass suicide in 1978. In the early 1980s, he helped successfully sue the Los Angeles-based Center for Feeling Therapy, whose “therapists” beat their patients in a procedure called “sluggo.”
Mr. Morantz was also involved in helping ex-members of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church in a case in which the California Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that religious organizations could be sued for fraud. His clients alleged they had been tricked by church recruiters into attending a camp where they were subjected to mind-control techniques, including fasting and all-night lectures.
Mr. Morantz had many run-ins with the Church of Scientology, in court and in public.
In 1995, at a health fair in Pacific Palisades, Mr. Morantz was approached by a man who asked to speak with him about psychology. “He showed me a list of questions clearly displaying an anti-psychotherapy bias,” Mr. Morantz wrote. “Boy, did he pick the wrong guy.”
Mr. Morantz challenged him: “You’re Scientology.” The man denied it, saying he was just part of a group spreading word about psychotherapy abuses. The host of the health fair tried to kick the group out, but Mr. Morantz told her the Scientologists would probably bankrupt her in litigation.
“Let me handle this,” he said. “This is what I do.”
As the group put on a skit about electroshock treatments, Mr. Morantz addressed the crowd.
“The people speaking here have the right to do so,” he said. “They also have an interest in denouncing mental health professionals. They have that right. You have the right to know who is speaking. So I am telling you this is from Scientology. You can walk away or continue to listen, but at least now you will be clear as to the source.”
The crowd dispersed.
Mr. Morantz’s marriage to Maren Elwood ended in divorce. Survivors include his son and two grandchildren.
Despite his lifelong tangles with pseudo-religious groups and their prophets, Mr. Morantz never wavered from his belief that religion could be a force for good.
“Whether we worship single or multiple deities, Mother Nature or the Church of the Divine Meatloaf, our populace seems hard-wired to believe in some greater force,” he wrote in his memoir. “When groups use the power of peer pressure and brainwashing to control people and make them surrender their autonomy, their money or their moral compass, I feel compelled to step in.” | 2022-11-02T19:03:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paul Morantz, crusading lawyer once attacked with rattlesnake, dies at 77 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/02/paul-morantz-attorney-who-crusaded-against-cults-dies-at-77/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/02/paul-morantz-attorney-who-crusaded-against-cults-dies-at-77/ |
Rory McIlroy described TGL as a “great opportunity for PGA Tour players to show a different side of themselves,” when the league's launch was announced in August. (Stephen B. Morton/AP)
A company backed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, which plans to launch a “new tech-infused golf league” in 2024, has drawn some high-profile investors.
TMRW Sports on Wednesday announced its slate of investors, which includes 23-time tennis Grand Slam championSerena Williams, former Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton and Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
“From the very beginning our plan has been to partner with the best-in-class in every way imaginable and Tiger, Rory, and I value the support of this unrivaled team of investors, advisors, and ambassadors who believe in our vision to harness technology to create progressive approaches to sports,” TMRW Sports founder and CEO Mike McCarley said in a statement. “Their combined broad reach and cultural relevance will expand potential opportunities and fanbases for TMRW projects.”
TMRW Sports announced the new golf league, called TGL, in August. TGL competition will feature six teams of three PGA Tour players competing in 15 regular season matches held on Monday nights, with semifinal and final matches to follow. TGL events will more closely resemble golf simulator competitions than traditional golf, with a promise of 18 holes completed in two hours.
Also included in the investor group are basketball stars Stephen Curry and Diana Taurasi, soccer stars Alex Morgan and Jozy Altidore, baseball star Shohei Ohtani and music artist Justin Timberlake.
“As a big sports fan myself, I’m excited about blending golf with technology and team elements common in other sports,” Woods said in the August announcement. “We all know what it’s like to be in a football stadium or a basketball arena where you can watch every play, every minute of action unfold right in front of you. It’s something that inherently isn’t possible in traditional golf — and an aspect of TGL that will set it apart and appeal to a new generation of fans.”
The investor group announcement comes as the inaugural LIV Golf season ends.
For much of 2022, the rebel golf series has been the focus of intense scrutiny, much of it focused on the staggering bonuses and prize money offered to golfers to defect from the PGA Tour and the fact that the source of that cash is the Saudi Arabian government’s Public Investment Fund.
TGL’s August announcement came as the PGA Tour announced several measures aimed at making tour events more compelling for its fans and more financially rewarding for its golfers. McIlroy at the time hailed the league as an opportunity to better showcase tour talent.
“It’s a great opportunity for PGA Tour players to show a different side of themselves,” McIlroy said then. “Prime time on Monday nights, I think, it’s great for brand exposure to try to engage a different audience.” | 2022-11-02T19:38:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy investors include Serena Williams, Lewis Hamilton - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/02/tiger-woods-rory-mcilroy-golf-investors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/02/tiger-woods-rory-mcilroy-golf-investors/ |
Charles Grassley is the whistleblower’s best friend
Iowa's Republican senators, Joni Ernst and Charles E. Grassley, at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines on Oct. 22. (Bryon Houlgrave/The Des Moines Register/AP)
Regarding Art Cullen’s Oct. 26 op-ed, “Has Grassley finally met his match?”:
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) has done important work protecting whistleblowers and advancing the most effective accountability laws on the books. He has fought for government and corporate whistleblowers and continuously fights special-interest groups and Wall Street.
Mr. Grassley was the only member of Congress who stood behind me while I battled the FBI over gross misconduct and malfeasance at the World Trade Center-9/11 crime scene under a Republican president. I prevailed in that case.
After I retired from the FBI after 25 years as a special agent, the National Whistleblower Center asked me to join its board of directors, where I now serve as a co-chair. I have firsthand knowledge that Mr. Grassley remains the most important advocate for whistleblowers in Congress. He is sponsoring key legislation to protect whistleblowers who expose money laundering and violations of sanctions. His money laundering bill is co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Raphael G. Warnock (Ga.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.). Mr. Grassley is no puppet. He is the whistleblower’s strongest friend.
Jane Turner, South Bloomington, Minn. | 2022-11-02T19:38:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Charles Grassley is the whistleblower’s best friend - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/charles-grassley-is-whistleblowers-best-friend/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/charles-grassley-is-whistleblowers-best-friend/ |
Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi in Paris on Dec. 7, 2020. (Michel Euler/AP Photo)
When attendees at the United Nations' 27th climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh look out at the glittering Red Sea starting Sunday, they will surely find the sight an inspiration to save the Earth. But they should also look the other direction toward Cairo, seat of a ruthless police state under President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. They should not be blind to — or silent on — their host country’s contempt for basic human dignity.
They should pause a moment and recall Alaa Abdel Fattah, the British Egyptian activist who was a leader of the pro-democracy movement that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in the Arab Spring of 2011. He has been behind bars for most of the past eight years, and is now serving a five-year sentence on a spurious charge of “broadcasting false news.” He has been on a hunger strike barely keeping himself alive, but recently announced a complete stop to food and water, leading family and friends to fear that he will die.
The conference-goers should ask why some of those most equipped to help Egypt grapple with climate change are behind bars. Among them is Seif Fateen, an MIT-educated environmental engineer, who was working on solutions to complex energy sustainability problems. He has been in pretrial detention since 2019, with no charges ever brought against him — like thousands of others in Egypt. And Ahmed Amasha, a veterinarian and an advocate for environmental justice, who was forcibly disappeared in June 2020 for six months and remains in prison. And Safwan and Seif Thabet, the father and son leaders of Juhayna Food Industries, who have established a farm-to-consumer model and stressed sustainability, but have been held in pretrial detention for refusing to surrender the company to a state-owned business.
When a group of Egyptians began planning a protest for Nov. 11, they were arrested and accused of “joining and financing a terrorist group, misusing social media, publishing false news, and incitement to commit a terrorist crime,” the Egyptian Front for Human Rights reports. The Sissi regime is a systemic and merciless human rights abuser. Mr. Sissi periodically frees a fraction of political prisoners to mollify critics. But his true side was exposed on a television program the other day when he phoned in after being criticized by the leader of a political party. “I used to be in charge of the security apparatus during the Mubarak era as the head of military intelligence,” he said, ominously. “I am privy to everything. I know everyone’s past.”
In picking a host city, the annual United Nations conference on climate change ought not neglect the underdeveloped corners of the globe, which are more vulnerable to food insecurity, disease and deprivation. But everyone who is concerned about saving the planet should care as much about the cause of liberty and the imperative to stand up to dictators. The plight of political prisoners in Egypt, and the stain of despotism spreading around the globe, cannot be ignored as conference attendees gather on the shimmering beachfront of Sharm el-Sheikh and ponder how to assure a better future. | 2022-11-02T19:38:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | COP27 attendees must denounce Egyptian President Abdul Fatah al-Sissi - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/cop27-egypt-abdul-fatah-al-sissi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/cop27-egypt-abdul-fatah-al-sissi/ |
Whistleblowers’ sidelining is unacceptable
The Social Security Administration office in Mount Prospect, Ill., on Oct. 12. (Nam Y. Huh/AP)
As a retired federal employee with more than 30 years of combined experience at the Government Accountability Office and three offices of inspector general, I was outraged at the shameful treatment of the Social Security Administration’s inspector general toward dedicated whistleblowers who had the courage to call out inappropriate fines levied against the poor [“Social Security whistleblowers say they’ve been sidelined,” Politics & the Nation, Oct. 26]. And I am saddened for the two employees involved, who are forced to deal with unending retaliation.
Both the GAO and IG are supposed to be the good guys who root out waste, fraud and abuse. In this case, however, the Social Security Administration IG, Gail Ennis, is the one who should be investigated — as is being done.
Whether because of political affiliation or some other rationale, sidelining two accomplished employees for months, if not years, while investigations languish, is unacceptable. There must be some way to expedite accountability for their ill treatment. As a member of the public, I thank them for their work.
Michael P. Fruitman, Ashburn | 2022-11-02T19:39:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Whistleblowers’ sidelining is unacceptable - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/whistleblowers-sidelining-is-unacceptable/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/whistleblowers-sidelining-is-unacceptable/ |
Amid a nationwide surge in respiratory illness in children, demand for the antibiotic amoxicillin is spiking. (iStock)
“This is a sudden demand for amoxicillin that the suppliers were just not prepared for,” said Erin Fox, a senior pharmacy director at University of Utah Health who tracks drug shortages. “Logically, it makes sense. … Colds are going to come back with a vengeance, and people are going to get sick.”
The shortage isn’t at a crisis level and may be short-term, lasting as long as the season of illness does, based on data from manufacturers, said Michael Ganio, senior director for pharmacy practice and quality at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
Here's what to know about RSV this year
Though amoxicillin does not treat respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV — nor does it work for flu or covid — it is frequently prescribed for bacterial infections. Kids with RSV or the flu can develop symptoms that are hard to distinguish from bacterial infections or can contract a bacterial illness secondarily, experts said, sometimes leading doctors to prescribe amoxicillin just in case.
“That’s why we really are having a run on amoxicillin,” said Tina Tan, a pediatrics professor at Northwestern University’s medical school and a doctor at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “Because the viral illness can cause other conditions that look like they might be bacterial, people are putting kids on amoxicillin.”
The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, for which Fox’s team tracks shortages, first heard reports of potential issues about two weeks ago, Ganio said. The FDA confirmed the shortage Friday, reporting manufacturers citing higher demand.
“There is some variability among which products they can get,” she said. Anecdotally, pharmacists have reported that patients are “still able to get it, it’s just potentially a little bit more challenging to find.”
Drugmakers have said they can fulfill their preplanned orders for the medicine but are struggling to meet the increased demand. Some said they were looking at whether they could increase production, though that can’t happen instantaneously.
“We are facing challenges to meet this sudden spike in demand now that the flu season is here,” a Sandoz spokesperson said in a statement, saying the issue is affecting some of its products in the U.S., Canada, and parts of Europe, and that supply-chain issues also make it harder to ramp up manufacturing quickly.
The manufacturer Hikma has enough supply to deliver amoxicillin orders as planned to its U.S. customers, said spokesperson Steven Weiss. “We understand the importance of this medication and are looking at ways to increase production,” he said.
“It’s kind of a shortage of inconvenience,” Fox said. “It’s frustrating when you have an infection and you need to get that antibiotic or get one started for your child; it’s a hassle to have to call around or maybe have to get your prescription switched. But the good news is that there is still product [available].”
It’s unknown how long the RSV surge will last. At Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, where Tan sees patients, the emergency room wait times have gotten significantly longer, the hospital is much more full, and doctors are seeing more RSV, she said.
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Tan said. “It’s hard to say when the surge is going to stop, because the normal respiratory viral season, the pattern that we’re used to, is not there any longer.” | 2022-11-02T19:51:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | There's an amoxicillin shortage amid the RSV surge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/02/amoxicillin-shortage-rsv-child-flu/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/02/amoxicillin-shortage-rsv-child-flu/ |
J. Brett Blanton used government SUVs for personal affairs and misrepresented himself as law enforcement official, inspector general alleges
Architect of the Capitol Brett Blanton speaks during a Capitol Police Board press conference to discuss security improvements to secure in January. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Architect of the Capitol J. Brett Blanton, who oversees operation of some of the nation’s most historic buildings, has been accused by his office’s inspector general of using government vehicles for family getaways and misrepresenting himself as a law enforcement officer.
Blanton, a Trump appointee who was earning more than $172,000 a year in 2020, committed "administrative, ethical and policy violations as well as evidence of criminal violations throughout the investigation,” the Oct. 26 report by the Office of Inspector General found.
″Blanton misled and provided false information to investigators on multiple occasions. Blanton used taxpayer dollars to fund an additional personal vehicle for his family...Blanton’s actions have violated every pillar the Office of the Inspector General operates under including theft, fraud, waste and abuse against not only the Architect of the Capitol but also the taxpayer."
Messages left on Wednesday morning for Blanton and his wife were not returned. A spokesperson for the Architect of the Capitol also did not return messages.
Some Democrats are calling for Blanton’s resignation, The Post’s Joe Davidson reported Wednesday.
“Based on the overwhelming evidence of misconduct outlined in this report, Mr. Blanton must resign. He should be held accountable and reimburse the government,” said a statement issued by six top Democrats who chair committees that oversee the agency.
Blanton and his family repeatedly used his office’s SUVs for weekend trips to a Loudoun County craft brewery, destinations in Florida and South Carolina, and “general family use,” according to the inspector general’s investigation. The vehicles were often driven by his spouse Michelle and their adult daughter without him in the vehicle. In total, the report determined that, from January 2020 to February 2022, Blanton and his family logged nearly 30,000 miles using his government SUVs, though only about 10,400 miles should have been driven, based on his commute from his residence to the U.S. Capitol.
His daughter “advised the Office of the Inspector General that her father had given her permission" to use the government cars, the report said. “She had transported both her friends and boyfriend in the vehicle and referred to using the Architect of the Capitol’s fuel as ‘free gas.’”
In one instance, the report said Blanton used his government Jeep Cherokee in June 2020 to chase a car that struck his daughter’s boyfriend’s vehicle near their home. The suspect’s lawyer said that Blanton made “an affirmative action” when asked if he was “law enforcement” while the hit-and-run was under investigation, according to the report. The Fairfax County police report identified Blanton as an “off-duty D.C. police officer” and that he’d “activated the emergency equipment” of his government SUV when pursuing the suspect that hit his daughter’s boyfriend’s car.
“Interviews confirmed that, based on Blanton’s statements, affirmative movements, use of a law-enforcement-equipped vehicle and credentials, the Fairfax County Police Officers, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney and defense counsel for the suspect all believed Blanton was an off-duty law enforcement officer throughout the entire court proceedings,” the inspector general’s report said. “When the Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney and defense counsel were advised by the Office of the Inspector General in May 2021 that Blanton was not law enforcement, immediate steps were taken by the defense attorney to advise his client of the potential implications of an untruthful witness...He misrepresented himself as law enforcement and did not object or correct the Fairfax County Police Department, the Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney or the suspect’s defense counsel.”
Blanton, according to the report, denied that he’d pretended to be a law enforcement officer. “He stated that it was their mistake and stated his credentials are marked to say ‘Capitol Police Board Member,'" the report said.
Each vehicle that Blanton received was equipped with law enforcement lights and sirens, a satellite phone and a U.S. Capitol Police radio, according to the report. His status as a Capitol Police Board member gives him access to police information and secured areas. But the report notes that these credentials do not endow him with “law enforcement authority.”
Shortly before the hit-and-run, the report said, Blanton’s Jeep Cherokee was accidentally bumped into at Vanish Farmwoods Brewery in Leesburg, Va. The other motorist had backed out of a parking spot and hit Blanton’s SUV, which was parked along the roadway. When the other driver asked about Blanton’s insurance information, the report said, “Blanton told him that it was a government vehicle, he was an ‘agent’ and he did not have insurance information because the government would handle the insurance claim.” Blanton told his staff about the incident, but didn’t get a police report or witness statements as required by his office, the report said.
During interviews, the report said, Blanton gave the Office of the Inspector General “misleading and false information on multiple occasions." He claimed that he’d been told that his car “was to be ‘tethered’ to him” and that he used his office’s vehicle for errands to transport his children.
Blanton is the nation’s 12th Architect of the Capitol. He was sworn in on January 16, 2020 by Supreme Court Justice John Roberts Jr. His biography notes that he is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and civil engineer who served as a naval officer for more than 20 years. He was awarded a bronze star with Combat "V" for heroism in Baghdad. Before he became Architect of the Capitol, he was the deputy vice president at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
The Architect of the Capitol employs 2,000 workers, who maintain all the buildings in the Capitol complex, including the Capitol itself, the House and Senate office buildings, the Library of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.
In June 2021, CQ Roll Call reported that Blanton was under investigation for allegedly misusing his government car. In May 2022, the news organization reported that a “potential criminal matter involving Blanton" had been referred by the agency’s inspector general to the Justice Department.
The inspector general’s report said its office took its findings to the U.S. Attorney’s office, which then brought in the FBI, the report said. But after five months of “discussion and collaboration,” the bureau declined to investigate. The U.S. Attorney’s office then assigned “an internal criminal investigator," and after ten months, opted to forgo a federal prosecution. | 2022-11-02T20:22:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Architect of Capitol J. Brett Blanton abused power, inspector general report says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/architect-capitol-blanton-cars-investigation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/02/architect-capitol-blanton-cars-investigation/ |
Mehmet Oz to campaign at venue that does not permit same-sex weddings
Mehmet Oz, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, speaks in Bensalem, Pa., on Tuesday. (Ryan Collerd/AP)
Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, and a supporter of codifying the right to same-sex marriage into law, is scheduled to campaign Wednesday afternoon at an event venue that does not permit same-sex weddings, according to its website.
The website for the Stone Gables Estate, which says it is “a biblical faith-based ministry/business,” includes a section labeled “Our Core Values” that states that it hosts wedding services “as ordained by God’s Word, the Holy Bible, that are consistent with the written truth that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.”
A person who answered the phone at the venue on Wednesday said it does not book same-sex weddings. The individual, who decline to share their name and said they worked in event support, referred a reporter to the general manager, Cameron Norris. In a brief phone conversation, Norris did not provide further clarity on the venue’s policies.
As a candidate for the U.S. Senate, Oz has has been supportive of same-sex marriage. After Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested the court reconsider its landmark 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, Oz indicated he would support a federal law to codify same-sex marriage.
“I’m proud to join this effort with fellow Republicans. I believe that same-sex couples should have the same freedom to get married as straight couples,” Oz tweeted in September.
Oz campaign spokeswoman Brittany Yanick did not immediately return a request for comment about the campaign’s decision to host an event at the venue.
Oz is running against Democrat John Fetterman in a competitive race seen as central to determining which party controls the Senate.
Stone Gables Estate received public attention in 2019 when its policy on same-sex marriages created an uproar. A local tourism organization, Discover Lancaster, was scheduled to have a luncheon there and canceled, according to website PennLive.
The owner of the property, David Abel, at the time defended his policy, telling PennLive, “No persons will be discriminated against; however ... we cannot participate in any event that would be in contradiction" to core tenets, “one of them being marriage, which has been biblically based for thousands of years as being between a man and a woman.”
Abel is also a supporter of Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Tierney, have donated about $30,000 to Mastriano’s campaign this year, according to campaign finance records.
Oz, who is trying to appeal to the more moderate swing voter in Pennsylvania, has distanced himself from Mastriano, a far-right candidate who has espoused a Christian nationalist viewpoint. Oz and Mastriano have not campaigned together, aside from appearing at a rally with former president Donald Trump in September. They are both scheduled to be at a Trump rally in Pittsburgh on Saturday.
Oz has worked to consolidate support from the Republican establishment, while many GOP leaders in the state have shunned Mastriano. | 2022-11-02T20:48:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oz to campaign at venue that does not permit same-sex weddings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/02/oz-campaign-pennsylvania/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/02/oz-campaign-pennsylvania/ |
How false claims about fraud power voter intimidation
This handout photo provided by the Maricopa County Elections Department on October 25, 2022, shows two armed individuals dressed in tactical gear at the site of a ballot drop box in Mesa, Arizona, on October 21, 2022. (Maricopa County Elections Department/AFP via Getty Images)
There is no reason to stand near drop boxes in Arizona and monitor who is casting ballots. After all, there is no evidence at all that drop boxes are a vehicle for casting fraudulent votes. The Associated Press contacted election administrators across the country and found no significant examples of fraud being committed using drop boxes. Yet there has been a movement to do precisely that.
Much of the concern about drop boxes, of course, derives from the film “2000 Mules,” which showed no actual examples of people casting multiple ballots illegally. (One man accused of voting illegally in the film is now suing for defamation.) The standard of behavior deemed suspicious in the film is … low, meaning that those choosing to “monitor” drop boxes have no benchmark against which to evaluate voters. Meaning that anything at all might be considered “suspicious.” One drop-box monitor, for example, publicly posted a photo of a man casting a vote whose car had no license plate, as reported by NBC News — though it is not really clear why that’s worth elevating as a concern.
This is vigilantism. People have appointed themselves as monitors after being convinced that something nefarious is happening, after believing the dishonest claims of films like “2000 Mules” or people like former president Donald Trump. It is a group that thinks the indifference and inaction of officials isn’t a function of those officials correctly understanding that the alleged threat is fake but, instead, sees the inaction as part of a conspiracy. They are taking things into their own hands and into the online enforcement community, such as it is.
By itself, this can have a chilling effect. People approaching a drop box to vote who are accosted by people filming them, who might declare their activity to be “suspicious” in posts shared with thousands of people, might understandably decide to come back and cast their ballot at another time. (Arizonans can also return their ballots by mail, pretty severely undercutting the idea that people were stuffing drop boxes, but I digress.) The defamation lawsuit against the team behind “2000 Mules” focused on the context in which footage of his voting (captured in official surveillance footage) was presented in the film and in promotional appearances.
A federal judge this week agreed that this monitoring counted as intimidation. U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi imposed limits on what the group Clean Elections USA (a member of which posted the no-license-plate photo) was allowed to do near drop box locations. This was the most significant development since reports of drop-box monitoring first emerged last month, but not the only one. Last week, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (himself someone who has raised questions about the 2020 election) released a statement about voter intimidation. The sheriff of Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county, issued a similar request.
At times, the intimidation has been more direct. Brnovich’s statement made reference to that, noting “initial reports that groups of people, some of them armed and dressed in tactical-type gear, were encountered by voters delivering their early ballots.” The statement ended with the recommendation that anyone feeling as though they were in immediate danger should call 911.
There were signs early on that members of extremist groups planned to “monitor” drop boxes. The Arizona Mirror reported in mid-October that members of the Oath Keepers intended to do so. (One group linked to the Oath Keepers ended its monitoring program last week.) This injection of extremist actors into observing elections, though, is not limited to Arizona.
In Michigan, a woman who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and who has ties to the Proud Boys has been hired to work with poll workers. In Florida, three people who were at one time associated with a splinter chapter of the extremist group Proud Boys signed up to serve as poll workers. One of them was explicitly rejected, given that he is under federal indictment related to the Capitol riot. The other two men are members of the Miami-Dade County Republican Executive Committee. Axios reported last month that the groups were making a concerted effort to be present as people vote.
Again, the ostensible motive for such observation is voter fraud — something that is vanishingly rare. It’s clear that this isn’t the only motive, of course; if the Proud Boys or others manage to affect whether someone actually casts a vote, it’s unlikely that they’d subsequently experience many qualms. We often talk about allegations of voter fraud as a conduit for challenging elections that have already occurred. What we’re seeing in 2022 is that those allegations are being used to potentially shape elections on the front end.
If you’d like to monitor drop boxes in Arizona, Maricopa County offers a livestream. It is intensely boring. If you see something you think is suspicious, though, there’s an online community that would love to hear from you.
Analysis: GOP’s biggest election-denier secretary of state candidates lag in polls | 2022-11-02T20:48:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How false claims about fraud power voter intimidation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/voting-drop-boxes-false-fraud-claims/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/voting-drop-boxes-false-fraud-claims/ |
Amid scandals, Herschel Walker hopes voters ‘believe in redemption’
The Republican candidate is concentrating on White evangelical Christians as he tries to unseat Sen. Raphael G. Warnock in Georgia
Gail Barraza, left, Martha Amos and Ryan Houtz worship during a Bible study held by Relentless Church on Oct. 24 in Pooler, Ga. The church’s pastor, Kyle Garrison, and those at the small gathering voiced support for Herschel Walker despite the controversies surrounding him. (Sean Rayford for The Washington Post)
POOLER, Ga. — After they had said prayers and sung the final “Hallelujah!” on a recent Monday evening, the Relentless Church Bible study group turned to the Georgia Senate race.
Republican nominee Herschel Walker has faced a number of scandals, including an allegation by his ex-wife that he put a gun to her head in 2005 and threatened to kill her, and more recent claims by two former girlfriends that he pressured them to have abortions. And yet, Walker still has such strong support that his race against Democratic Sen. Raphael G. Warnock is considered a toss-up. The contest is one of a handful that could determine which party controls the Senate after Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Walker has said he is a new man, “redeemed by the grace of God.” It’s a message that resonates with Gail Barraza and other members of her church, who say they are not focused on Walker’s past, but on his current pledge that he will be a Republican senator who would support a national abortion ban.
“We all have done wrong,” Barraza, 64, said when asked about some of Walker’s false statements, including that he was his high school’s valedictorian. “Who are we to judge?”
“If you waited for the perfect candidate, you would never vote again,” agreed Leah Houz, 29, who hosted the Bible study in her home in this small, mostly White suburb of Savannah, the majority-Black city where Warnock grew up.
Many Walker supporters interviewed here over three days last month are willing to forget — or at least not think too much — about the allegations against him because he supports a Republican agenda that aligns with their beliefs.
Walker, a Georgia football legend who was urged by former president Donald Trump to run for Senate, has made faith a central part of his pitch to evangelical voters, a group whose support would be key to his candidacy. He has focused on the notion of redemption, especially when confronted about his past behavior, including accusations of domestic violence and failing to publicly acknowledge and support his out-of-wedlock children.
The members of the Relentless Church Bible study group said there have been so many news reports about Walker’s past that they didn’t know what to believe, and so decided not to weigh the candidate’s moral character as they once would have. They said they have tuned out what they called the “chatter” and “noise.” And yes, many said they know Walker is “a flawed candidate,” but they are willing to forgive his past to focus on their future. What mattered most was that he was a Republican who could deliver a ban on abortions and an end to Democratic control in the Senate
“Especially in these times, we all have to learn to muzzle our ears because there is so much ying-yang goin’ on,” said Larry Ward, 49, a roofer who also joined the Bible discussion. He was tuning out the “negative,” he said, and basing his vote on the “non-negotiables.” Asked what those were, he began by saying, “Are we looking for handouts or a work ethic?”
The pastor of Relentless, Kyle Garrison, 36, who also attended the Bible session, made it clear he will vote for Walker because the Republican agenda is “more aligned with God’s values.” Garrison said that God sometimes uses flawed people to do good things and that Walker could help Republicans regain control of the Senate — a fact blaring on Georgia airwaves in the final days of the campaign.
According to many Republican voters, especially those who call themselves conservatives, Democrats have not done enough to address crime, inflation, gasoline prices and immigration. Garrison added that he also believes there is an “over-acceptance” of homosexual lifestyles and that the country “needs a new direction.”
It wasn’t just the moms juggling jobs and kids, or the busy shop owners, or the many active-duty and retired military members living here, who said they didn’t really know much about Walker’s troubled past. Mainly they knew he was No. 34, a Heisman Trophy winner and one of the greatest running backs in University of Georgia history.
“I am not sure what the facts are,” said Rebecca Benton, the mayor of Pooler, when asked about one of the former girlfriends who said Walker had paid for her abortion.
What people say they do know is that gas costs too much and there is “runaway crime” — there has been a blitz of GOP ads for Walker showing vicious assaults and laying blame on President Biden.
Trump urged Walker, a longtime friend, to run against Warnock and capitalize on his huge name recognition in this football-obsessed state. Trump narrowly lost Georgia in 2020, winning 49.3 percent of the vote to Biden’s 49.5 percent. But one group that came through for Trump was evangelical Christians — 89 percent voted for him, according to AP VoteCast. And Walker is focusing heavily on them, appearing at many evangelical churches and constantly talking about his Christian faith and redemption.
On the stump, Walker often responds to criticisms from Warnock by arguing that he is a “a pastor who doesn’t even believe in redemption.” In an ad released shortly after the first woman accused Walker of paying for her to have an abortion, the candidate says, “I’m Herschel Walker, saved by grace.”
That messaging works for many of the voters he is trying to win over.
According to Pew Research, 63 percent of Americans identify as Christian and 40 percent as Protestant. Pew further found that 24 percent of adults consider themselves born-again or evangelical Protestants. Georgia has one of the highest numbers of those Protestants in the country; various surveys estimate that they make up 33 to 39 percent of the state’s voters.
Many Christians support Warnock — a pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached — and say the Democratic Party cares more about the virtues Jesus preached, including taking care of the needy and justice for all.
There is a huge divide among Christians over abortion and other political issues. Warnock is a Baptist preacher who supports abortion rights. During a debate last month, he said: “A patient’s room is too narrow and small and cramped for a woman, her doctor and the U.S. government. ... I trust women more than I trust politicians.” For much of the race, he has focused on the issues, especially lowering prescription drug prices and helping veterans, but as Walker has gained in the polls, he has hit back at him.
“This is a man who lies about the most basic facts of his life,” Warnock said last weekend about his opponent. “If we can’t trust him to tell the truth about his life, how can we trust him to protect our lives and our families and our children and our jobs and our future?”
Walker said he graduated from the University of Georgia in the “top 1 percent,” when in fact he never graduated, leaving in his junior year for the NFL. Walker has also said he worked in law enforcement, a claim that has been debunked. Still, at a debate last month, he flashed a sheriff’s badge and later released a video in which he posed with a sheriff and insisted that the gold-colored star was real.
In 2017, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) resigned from Congress after it became public that he urged his mistress to have an abortion despite his antiabortion stance. GOP leaders urged him to quit. But now, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is pouring tens of millions of dollars into Walker’s campaign to keep it alive, and leading figures in the Republican Party, including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), have come to Georgia to campaign with Walker, because his victory could tip the balance of power in the Senate.
Democrats are pouring money into the race, too. Former president Barack Obama flew to Atlanta last Friday, praising Warnock at a rally that drew thousands. He also took a shot at Walker, saying voting for a candidate “who carries around a phony badge and says he’s in law enforcement like he’s a kid playing cops and robbers” isn’t the way to address concerns over crime.
Obama also raised the GOP nominee’s “issues of character” and called Walker a “celebrity who wants to be a politician.”
Walker’s response was to stay on his religious messaging. “I’m not a celebrity,” he said. “I’m a warrior for God.”
Even as Walker keeps repeating “God forgave me,” he is vague on why he needed forgiveness. Sometimes he refers to his 2008 book — in which he talks about his “dissociative identity,” or multiple personality, disorder — and says God helped him overcome his mental illness. He denied knowing the first woman who said he paid for her to have an abortion, but later acknowledged that she was the mother of one of his children. He also admitted that he’d written her a check for $700, but said he didn’t know that it was to pay for an abortion.
News of that allegation brought criticism from Walker’s adult son, who posted on Twitter that his father was absent and not a Christian family man. The son tweeted: “He left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.” The two ex-girlfriends said he pressured them into having abortions years ago, and call him hypocritical for supporting a strict abortion ban nationwide now.
Not all of those who say they will vote for him find it easy.
“It’s a difficult choice,” said Colleen Suddath, 61, a member of Relentless and its Bible study.
One Republican noted that there are barely any Walker yard signs. Even along U.S. Route 80, the main road through Pooler, there were clusters of signs for Republican candidates — including many for Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter, the city’s former mayor who is running for reelection to Congress — but only one small sign for Walker.
But Suddath is not happy with Biden and thinks Warnock just follows the Democratic agenda. She said Walker better represents what her state wants. She blamed Biden for soaring gas prices. She also worries that Democrats will try to expand the Supreme Court to take control of it — a scenario frequently raised by Republican ads and one that Warnock has not declaratively spoken out against.
As a mother who home-schooled her two children, she also believes that Republicans would give parents more control of what children are taught in public schools. So she plans to vote for Walker.
“He has overcome a lot of issues,” she said.
Scott Clement, Sabrina Rodriguez and Dylan Wells contributed to this report.
Judge gives GOP broader access to observe voting in Green Bay, Wis.
6:54 PMRepublicans ‘want you to be very miserable,’ Bill Clinton says | 2022-11-02T20:48:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Herschel Walker cites his 'redemption' story in race against Raphael Warnock - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/walker-warnock-redemption-evangelicals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/02/walker-warnock-redemption-evangelicals/ |
One hotel is contemplating legal action. Another map resembling the Getty museum vanished from the game.
(Washington Post illustration; Activision)
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II,” the latest tentpole release in the popular video game franchise, uses real world locales as inspiration for some of its multiplayer battlegrounds. Infinity Ward, the game’s developer, created maps featuring settings resembling Los Angeles’ Getty Museum, Singapore’s Marina Bay Street Circuit racetrack and Amsterdam’s Conservatorium Hotel. Now, the Conservatorium is considering legal action against Activision Blizzard for unwanted exposure. The map based on the Getty has vanished from the game.
Valderas Museum, a map that closely resembles the J. Paul Getty Museum, was playable during “Modern Warfare II’s” beta but did not appear in the game’s official release. Some fans have speculated that Activision cut the map due to negative feedback; beta players criticized it for being too large for most multiplayer modes, leaving little cover for players to hide behind from snipers and campers. Activision Blizzard, the game’s publisher, has not given a reason for its removal. Activision did not reply go a request for comment in time for publication.
Other fans speculated that Valderas Museum was removed from the game due to its similarity to the Getty. In response to an inquiry from The Washington Post, Lisa Lapin, vice president of communications at the J. Paul Getty Trust, wrote: “Unfortunately, we are unable to comment at this time.”
While it’s not known whether the Getty took issue with its portrayal in “Modern Warfare II,” the Conservatorium Hotel, a five-star hotel in Amsterdam’s prestigious Museum Quarter, has taken a public stance against its appearance in the game. One of the game’s multiplayer maps is Breenbergh Hotel, which seems to be based off the Conservatorium. According to the Dutch newspaper de Volksrant, the Conservatorium has been considering legal action against Activision Blizzard since it never consented to being put in the game.
“We have taken note of the fact that the Conservatorium Hotel is undesirably the scene of the new ‘Call of Duty,’ ” said Conservatorium manager Roy Tomassen to de Volksrant. “More generally, we don’t support games that seem to encourage the use of violence. The game in no way reflects our core values and we regret our apparent and unwanted involvement.”
Breenbergh Hotel is still in the game’s active map rotation.
Back in August, Activision revealed a first look at a map called Marina Bay Grand Prix during the 2022 Call of Duty League Championship. It was seemingly modeled after the Marina Bay Street Circuit, a racetrack in Singapore that hosts Formula One’s Singapore Grand Prix. In a now-deleted tweet, Activision said that the map would be playable in the “Modern Warfare II” beta. But as the beta date drew closer, Activision retroactively removed all mentions of the map from its official channels without comment.
The map returned in “Modern Warfare II’s” official release but was renamed Crown Raceway, with the signage and other assets in the map reflecting the change. The map’s location was also changed from Singapore to the broader “Southeast Asia.” Neither Activision nor Formula One released statements about the change, but fans have suspected that it was due to a conflict around associating Singapore’s famed racetrack with gun violence.
Copyright laws surrounding the use of buildings in art are complicated. Many (but not all) famous structures, such as the White House, are safe to use; Generally speaking, private buildings made before 1990 are not protected by copyright. But litigation against game companies using real buildings and places as inspiration is not unprecedented. In 2008, Rockstar Games was sued by ESS Entertainment for its depiction of a gentleman’s club in “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.” ESS, the operator of the real Los Angeles establishment Play Pen Gentlemen’s Club, alleged that Rockstar infringed upon its trademark with its virtual club, Pig Pen. The court ruled in favor of Rockstar. | 2022-11-02T20:52:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Real locations in Valderas, Breenbergh Call of Duty maps raise questions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/02/modern-warfare-2-valderas-getty-breenbergh/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/02/modern-warfare-2-valderas-getty-breenbergh/ |
Climate change and rising sea levels threaten the Nile River Delta
The important farming area of Egypt faces ruin with saltwater threatening crops.
Farmland is overwhelmed with saltwater in the Mediterranean town of Mutubas in Egypt on Sept. 9. The impact of climate change has involved salt that eats away plant roots and makes fields barren. (Nariman El-Mofty/AP)
Thousands of acres of the Nile River Delta, an important farming area in Egypt, could be underwater by the end of the century, according to a new scientific report. The country’s leaders, who are hosting the COP27 climate change summit this month, hope other nations will help them avoid this disaster.
A quarter of the delta, which is on Egypt’s northern coast on the Mediterranean Sea, sits at or below sea level. A water-level increase of between 1 to 2 feet is likely by 2100, according to a recent report by an international group of scientists overseen by the Cyprus Institute’s climate and atmosphere research center and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. That rise will make thousands of acres unfit for living or farming, partly because of added salt from the seawater.
Egypt’s leaders have said the situation of the delta, known for 1,000 years for its fertile soil, is their biggest concern. Residents hope for help from the global community to deal with the consequences of a warming planet.
The delta covers roughly 93 square miles, starting just north of the capital of Cairo where the Nile River fans out. The river’s branches created the rich, fertile land by depositing silt as they made their way to the sea. Silt is fine sand, clay or other material.
The area is home to some 40 percent of Egypt’s 104 million people and accounts for half of the country’s economy, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Farms and fisheries along the two Nile branches, Rosetta in the west and Damietta in the east, help feed the country and provide products for export.
Farmers there have tried to save the land from rising seas by bringing in tons of soil, raising beds and using fertilizer to undo damage from salt.
On a September afternoon, a half-dozen farmers sat near a machine pumping water from an irrigation canal onto raised beds in a mango farm in Mutubas. The trees have just started to blossom, next year could be their first harvest.
Ouf el-Zoughby, one of the farmers, said this is his third time trying to grow mangos. Past attempts have been spoiled by salt.
“You see the tree dying before your eyes,” the farmer said, remembering how he had to pull the husks out one-by-one. His fields are within 1.8 miles of the Mediterranean.
This time, he’s hoping the newly elevated farmlands and a government-built runoff system meant to reduce salt in the soil will help them survive.
Mohamed Abdel-Atty, Egypt’s former minister of water resources and irrigation, said in January that the government had installed concrete barriers on 74 miles along the Mediterranean coast to shelter 17 million people. Abdel-Atty said they were also working to build a warning system to alert people about any climate changes such as rises in sea levels.
Authorities are also trying to put a stop to high-polluting practices, such as brickmaking and the burning of rice straw, which is an old farming custom.
“Though Egypt contributes 0.6 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions, it is one of the most vulnerable [countries] to the impacts of climate change, and the agriculture sector and food production are the most affected,” said Abdel Monem, a senior adviser on land and climate change with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. | 2022-11-02T21:01:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate change and rising sea levels threaten the Nile River Delta - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/02/climate-change-rising-sea-levels-threaten-nile-river-delta/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/02/climate-change-rising-sea-levels-threaten-nile-river-delta/ |
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is subject to more death threats than any other member of Congress. That, and being second in line to the presidency, means she gets extraordinary protection. She has an around-the-clock security detail. Security cameras installed eight years ago at her San Francisco home are actively monitored while she is there. And in the unsettling months that followed the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection, a San Francisco police cruiser was stationed outside her home night and day. But in the wake of last week’s vicious assault of her 82-year-old husband, doubts have been raised about whether the U.S. Capitol Police are up to the task of protecting not only the speaker but also other lawmakers and their families.
There was clearly a lapse during the break-in last Friday at the Pelosi home. As The Post reported, no one at the command center in D.C. was watching as the agency’s own cameras captured footage of a man with a hammer smashing a glass panel and entering the home. Only after someone noticed the flashing lights of police cruisers on the darkened street did Capitol Police realize there had been a breach. Paul Pelosi, who managed to summon San Francisco police by making a surreptitious 911 call to an astute dispatch operator, was assaulted — knocked unconscious — by the intruder as police arrived on the scene. He remains hospitalized. His assailant has been charged with attempted murder and other charges in what authorities have called a politically motivated attack.
Why have cameras if no one is monitoring them? In a statement, the Capitol Police said the agency has roughly 1,800 cameras in place. As security experts attested, it is both impossible and impractical to expect 24/7 monitoring, particularly considering the agency has 1,900 officers who are already spread thin with protecting the U.S. Capitol and its 535 members at a time of greatly increased threats against lawmakers.
The attack on Mr. Pelosi highlighted that it is not just lawmakers but also their loved ones who are at risk. That demands new strategies, which means additional resources. “Today’s political climate calls for more resources to provide additional layers of physical security for Members of Congress,” said Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger in a statement. Just as Congress acted to fortify protections for the families of Supreme Court justices after an aborted murder attempt on Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, so must it act to protect the families of members of Congress. Capitol Police have launched an internal security review to determine what other steps should be taken.
But responsibility for protecting the nation’s lawmakers shouldn’t rest solely on the shoulders of Capitol Police; others have a role to play. Prosecutors need to be more aggressive in pursuing cases against those who threaten lawmakers. According to Chief Manger, in the past five years, roughly only 12 percent of cases in which people were identified as making threats were prosecuted. But those are interventions after the fact. Most effective of all would be lowering the temperature of personalized political rhetoric — in Ms. Pelosi’s case, more than a decade of demonization by Republicans — that helps foster such hatred. | 2022-11-02T21:27:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why Capitol Police failed to protect the Pelosis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/pelosi-attack-capitol-police-failure/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/02/pelosi-attack-capitol-police-failure/ |
Washington Capitals' Beck Malenstyn was placed on IR Wednesday afternoon. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
The Washington Capitals placed T.J. Oshie, Beck Malenstyn and John Carlson on injured reserve Wednesday as the team’s injury woes continued. Connor Brown, who underwent successful surgery this week to repair a torn ACL in his right knee, was also placed on long-term injured reserve. His expected timeline to return is six to eight months.
Oshie, Carlson and Malenstyn have to remain on the injured reserve list for at least seven days after their respective injuries before they are eligible to play again. Oshie and Carlson were hurt Saturday in Nashville. Malenstyn was injured Tuesday in Washington’s overtime loss to Vegas.
Washington’s next game is Thursday in Detroit.
Washington previously announced Oshie would be out indefinitely with a lower-body injury. Carlson missed the last two games with an upper-body injury. The veteran defenseman will not be eligible to play Thursday in Detroit and will miss Saturday’s home game against Arizona. He will be eligible to play again Monday against Edmonton, at the earliest.
To help fill the gaps in the lineup, Washington called up a trio of players from the team’s American Hockey League affiliate in Hershey, Pa., recalling forwards Sonny Milano and Garrett Pilon, as well as defenseman Lucas Johansen.
This is Milano’s first call-up to Washington, which signed him to a one-year, $750,000 deal in mid-October. Milano, 26, has recorded two goals and one assist in five games for the Bears this season.
The former first-round draft pick had 14 goals and 20 assists in 66 games for the Anaheim Ducks last season. This year, Milano was at Calgary Flames training camp on a professional tryout offer but was released in early October. His fall to the AHL came at a bit of a surprise after his solid offensive showing last season.
Pilon, a right shot, has a goal and four assists in seven games with Hershey. Johansen was among the Capitals’ last round of cuts at training camp. The former 2016 first-round draft pick has scored one goal in six games with Hershey this season.
As of Wednesday afternoon, it was unclear which of the call-ups would play Thursday against the Red Wings.
“It’s kind of the next man up mentality,” Dylan Strome said after Tuesday’s game. “Lots of great players getting hurt and it is never good to see. Those are the players that you battle with every day, day in and day out and guys that are playing well too. It sucks to see.”
Malenstyn’s upper-body injury occurred midway through the first period against Vegas. The puck appeared to hit his arm when he dove to block a shot. Washington had a day off Wednesday and there was no update on his condition. Malenstyn will be eligible to come off injured reserve next Wednesday for Washington’s game against Pittsburgh.
Before the season started, Washington was already without three players: Tom Wilson had surgery in May to repair a torn ACL in his left knee. The team hopes to have him back in December. Nicklas Backstrom had hip resurfacing surgery in the offseason and there is no timetable for his return. Carl Hagelin had hip surgery in October and is out indefinitely. Hagelin is also recovering from an eye injury in March that required two surgeries.
Despite the injury issues, Washington has managed to salvage four out of six points in its last three games.
“I think you got to take the positives and take the four out of six points and move on to Thursday,” Strome said. “Obviously quick turnaround, back on the road, but that is the season and we got to be ready to go Thursday or Wednesday, whenever we play.” | 2022-11-02T21:31:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Caps place T.J. Oshie, Beck Malenstyn and John Carlson on IR - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/02/capitals-injury-concerns-tj-oshie-john-carlson/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/02/capitals-injury-concerns-tj-oshie-john-carlson/ |
Rep. Romano Mazzoli (D-Ky.) joins House and Senate members to discuss immigration reform on Capitol Hill in 1984. From left: Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.); Alan Simpson, (R-Wyo.); Mazzoli; Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-N.Y.); and Rep. Peter Rodino, (D-N.J.). (Ira Schwarz/AP)
Mr. Mazzoli’s former chief of staff, Charles Mattingly, confirmed the death but did not give a cause.
The Simpson-Mazzoli Act — named after its co-sponsor Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) — was a master class in bipartisan dealmaking and tenacity as Mr. Mazzoli and Simpson overcame political and industry opposition to proposals such as penalties for businesses that hire undocumented workers.
No other comprehensive immigration legislation has made it through Congress since the act was signed into law in 1986 — a 36-year span that underscores the huge challenges of reaching any common ground on immigration. The task is even harder because of the intense political polarization and shortcomings in the Simpson-Mazzoli Act that still resonate in current debates.
“Immigration is an economic, sociological, demographic and political issue, but it’s also a moral issue,” Mr. Mazzoli said in 2017.
Mr. Mazzoli was often a wild card within his party during his 24 years in the House, breaking ranks with Democrats on issues such as trade policies he considered too protectionist and abortion rights that conflicted with his Roman Catholic values. His drive to amend immigration rules also left him without a natural political coalition.
Some powerful members in Congress, including House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), did not favor such a broad amnesty for undocumented migrants. Industry lobbyists and agricultural groups opposed more aggressive moves to check employee status.
Bids for immigration reform failed in 1982. Then there was another near miss in 1984 after 51 hours of House debate that included Rep. Jim Wright (D-Tex.) proposing rudimentary English as a requirement for legal status.
“That might disqualify some members of Congress,” quipped Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).
Mr. Mazzoli, whose father emigrated from Italy, closed the House debate with a tearful reading of a letter from an undocumented migrant: “I beg you, sir, give me status as a human being.”
In November 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed it into law, saying it will “go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows.” In 1987, he issued an executive order extending legal status to the children of people covered by the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty.
Simpson-Mazzoli’s missteps also cast shadows over attempts to hammer out a broad-range immigration deal in Congress after President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, executive order in 2012 that blocked deportation of undocumented immigrants brought into the country as children younger than 16.
Mr. Mazzoli never wavered in seeing help for migrants as an imperative of his faith.
“There are narrow voices in our midst preaching a certain siren song of exclusion,” Mr. Mazzoli told the Record, a Catholic community news site in Kentucky. “We have to be aware that there are siren songs of inclusion and we have to listen to those voices of inclusion and say, ‘This may be tough to talk about, but I know it’s right.’ ”
Romano Louis Mazzoli was born Nov. 2, 1932, in Louisville, where his father worked as a tile layer. Mr. Mazzoli graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1954 and did a two-year stint in the Army. In 1960, Mr. Mazzoli graduated first in his law class from the University of Louisville and went into private legal practice.
He entered politics with an upset win over a favored Democratic rival for Kentucky Senate in 1968, campaigning as a military veteran calling for an end to the war in Vietnam. After an unsuccessful bid for Louisville mayor, he won a photo-finish race in 1970 for Kentucky’s 3rd District, which included Louisville, ahead by just 211 votes.
He won 10 more House races, becoming chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and International Law in 1981. By the early 1990s, Mr. Mazzoli refused contributions from political action committees and took nothing above $100 as individual campaign donations.
“I don’t like labels,” he said in 1988. “I don’t consider myself anything but thoughtful.”
He announced his retirement from the House in 1994 and returned to law practice in Louisville and lectured at the University of Louisville’s law school.
Mr. Mazzoli was invited in 2002 as a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The next year, he was back. This time as a student pursuing a master’s degree in public administration.
When Mr. Mazzoli was age 70, he and his wife moved into a second-floor dorm room in Lowell House near Harvard Square. They found no special trappings for a newbie older than most of his professors. It had two beds, two desks and no internet link. They had to wait like the others.
“I have to admit, as I was hauling things up the stairs, I said, ‘Am I crazy to be doing this at my age?’ ” he told The Washington Post. But they were soon in the groove of campus life, figuring out the best offerings in the dining hall and hosting fellow students dropping by to talk about politics. | 2022-11-02T22:28:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Romano Mazzoli, Kentucky Democrat who led immigration reforms, dies at 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/02/romano-mazzoli-immigration-simpson-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/02/romano-mazzoli-immigration-simpson-dies/ |
Was the attack on the Pelosi home preventable?
When a man entered Nancy Pelosi’s home in San Francisco last week and attacked her husband, the act was documented on cameras viewable by Capitol Police. What the delayed response exposes about limits in protecting lawmakers.
A police car blocks the street below the home of Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in San Francisco, Friday, Oct. 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
A Washington Post investigation found that while Capitol Police in Washington were tasked with monitoring live feeds of more than 1,500 cameras placed around the Capitol Complex and beyond, they had the best chance to stop what could have been a deadly attack at Nancy Pelosi’s home. The delayed response is opening up bigger questions about the weaknesses and limitations in protecting lawmakers as they face even more threats. Investigative reporter Aaron Davis explains how Capitol Police have handled Pelosi’s case and weighs whether the law enforcement agency is equipped for this contentious moment.
A Post exclusive on how Capitol Police cameras caught the break-in at Pelosi’s home, but no one was watching.
Post Reports examines how extreme rhetoric targeted toward members of Congress has been escalating lately, and is fueling even more threats on elected officials, including Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
Introducing "The 7"
Every minute of your morning counts. Host Jeff Pierre takes you through the seven most important and interesting stories of the day, with the reporting and insight of The Washington Post. Get caught up in just a few minutes every weekday at 7 a.m. Launches Nov. 14. | 2022-11-02T22:28:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Was the attack on the Pelosi home preventable? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/was-the-attack-on-the-pelosi-home-preventable/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/was-the-attack-on-the-pelosi-home-preventable/ |
In the weeks since Ian pulled away from the Sunshine State, city workers and concerned citizens filed hundreds of pollution reports to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection
Flooded campers are seen at the Peace River Campground in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Arcadia, Fla., on Oct. 3. (Gerald Herbert/AP)
As Hurricane Ian plowed across central Florida at the end of September, the manager of a Port Orange wastewater facility was worried about what would happen when the storm forced wastewater to overflow from a four-mile pipe and into a nearby body of water. He was searching desperately for a chemical compound that would reduce harm to marine and human life. But there wouldn’t be any accessible for almost two more days.
“We tried other providers but they were strapped as well due to Hurricane Ian,” Chris Wall, manager of the water reclamation facility, said in a recent filing to Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
Video taken on Sept. 29, shows Hurricane Ian slamming Fort Myers, Fla., with destructive winds and devastating flooding. (Video: Max Olsen)
The untreated wastewater overflowed from the site — accounting for just some of the millions of gallons of spills that have been reported around the state since the storm. In the weeks since Ian pulled away from the Sunshine State, city workers and concerned citizens have filed hundreds of pollution reports to the state’s DEP. Many of the most frequent in Florida were linked to sewage systems, which unloaded harmful bacteria and viruses for humans into waterways. Researchers say it could take months before the ocean flushes out the contaminated water.
“We knew that there was a large amount of sewage that was being released into the waterways, not just in one area, but in many areas,” said Jennifer Hecker, executive director of the Coastal & Heartland National Estuary Partnership (CHNEP), part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) National Estuary Program. “I’ve been working on this for nearly 30 years, and I’ve never encountered anything of this scale and magnitude.”
As more debris has cleared a month after Ian’s landfall, the CHNEP and its environmental partners have been able to take samples from watersheds, rivers and estuaries in southwest Florida to assess for common pollutants and bacteria. Still, Hecker said conditions in mid-October for sampling water were not ideal; some boat ramps had still been blocked and access to certain waterways remained difficult because of damage from the storm.
Florida’s waterways contaminated post-Ian, posing health risks
As of mid-October, the team had found numerous places where the water was six to 10 times the state’s safety threshold for the types of bacteria found in feces such as E. coli and enterococci. Those bacteria can cause urinary tract infections, life-threatening inflammation to the heart and other serious infections.
Drone footage released by Daytona Beach Police Department on Sept. 30 showed widespread flooding after extensive damage caused by post-tropical cyclone Ian. (Video: Daytona Beach Police Department)
As of Nov. 1, microscopic algae called Karenia brevis (commonly known as red tide) were also present at high enough concentrations to cause respiratory issues for people in Charlette, Lee and Sarasota counties, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“From Sarasota Bay south to Naples, levels of bacteria in the water are generally elevated and well above what the criteria are for bacteria in our in our waterways,” said Christine Angelini, director of the University of Florida’s Center for Coastal Solutions, which is one of CHNEP’s partners collecting data.
In Florida, flesh-eating bacteria follow in Hurricane Ian’s wake
Additionally, she said an excess of nutrients and debris were depleting oxygen levels in major waterways, such as the Peace River, which could lead to massive loss of fish important for the state’s economy.
Ian’s torrential rainfall and historic storm surge strained sewage systems that were already vulnerable. Florida’s wastewater systems rely heavily on electric “lift stations” that pump wastewater from trenches about 10 feet deep up to surface-level plants that clean the water. These stations are inexpensive and use smaller pipelines at shallow depths.
That’s why Florida needs to pump sewage to treatment plants.
But one disadvantage is that the pumps typically rely on electric power to run. In Ian’s wake, millions of Floridians were without electricity. If power supply is interrupted, the EPA said, it can “interrupt the normal operation” of the wastewater treatment and lead to flooding “upstream of the lift station.”
Hour-by-hour analysis shows toll of county’s delay before Hurricane Ian
When Ian caused a power outage in the city of Maitland, just northeast of Orlando, the pumps couldn’t operate, creating high water volumes that the surrounding area couldn’t hold. As a result, 150,000 gallons of untreated wastewater backed up into water bodies.
Stations sometimes have backup generators, but federal incident reports filed shortly after Ian showed they aren’t always reliable. An auxiliary pump in North Fort Myers ran out of fuel, which took time to replenish due to debris from Ian. A backup generator in Tampa Bay shut off unexpectedly after running for several hours. Another near Orlando turned off just two weeks after annual preventive maintenance.
Some of the most severe damage came in the city of Bradenton. At a lift station, electricity from Florida Power & Light, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, failed. Then the backup generator failed too, “after an extended period of operation,” the city’s water company said. As the storm raged, 4 million gallons of untreated wastewater poured from the site into Wares Creek. Later, the company applied lime — which retains pollutants — and collected other debris.
The sheer size of Ian, which brought more than 20 inches of rainfall in parts of the state, makes it difficult to plan infrastructure that would be sturdy enough to withstand similar storms. John Shaw, an expert witness in courts and a consultant to municipalities about wastewater, said that a hurricane is “an inundation event you really can’t design for. Let’s just call it an act of God that exceeds the capacity of the [pumping] station. And you can’t design a facility that’s going to survive an act like that.”
Cities sometimes don’t enforce regulations of wastewater systems with rigor. A few months ago, the Suncoast Waterkeeper and other environmental organizations settled a lawsuit with the city of Bradenton for a history of sewage spills in the Manatee River long before Ian hit. The city has committed to upgrade the aging infrastructure, perhaps to bigger pumps, over the next three years using federal grant money.
“These are large municipalities with miles and miles of sewage lines that over the course of the last several decades have come into disrepair. They’ve got to put investments in upgrading them,” said Justin Bloom, the founder and board member of the Suncoast Waterkeeper.
Bloom thinks a lot of the water-quality issues post-Ian were “preventable” if there had been more regulation and enforcement of such systems. “In improving regulations, I think we need to anticipate more storms and more severe rainfall,” he said.
While he said there’s no “overnight fix,” Bloom hoped there could be improvements “by this time next year ... but it’s going to take a while.”
For the recovery of the immediate damage, researchers say the return to clean waterways depends on how quickly natural weather systems and ocean circulation can flush the contaminants from the rivers and estuaries.
“So much of this depends on what sort of weather conditions are in the weeks and months to come,” Angelini said. “We really don’t know what that end point is and when we will come back to more normal levels.” | 2022-11-02T22:41:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After Ian, Florida waterways could remain polluted for months - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/02/ian-sewage-florida-wastewater/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/02/ian-sewage-florida-wastewater/ |
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