text stringlengths 237 126k | date_download stringdate 2022-01-01 00:32:20 2023-01-01 00:02:37 ⌀ | source_domain stringclasses 60
values | title stringlengths 4 31.5k ⌀ | url stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ | id stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats are scrambling to bolster candidates in places President Biden won comfortably in 2020
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton arrives to speak during a rally in New York on Thursday. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
Democrats across the country scrambled Thursday to bolster candidates in places President Biden carried safely in 2020, the latest sign of panic that they could face major losses in next week’s midterm elections.
Vice President Harris and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton held a joint rally in an effort to rescue New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), who faces a close race in a state Republicans haven’t won in two decades. Biden traveled to New Mexico and Southern California to support vulnerable Democratic incumbents — bypassing Arizona and Nevada, where officials fear he could be a drag on senators in tight races. Biden and Harris plan to spend part of the weekend in Illinois, boosting House candidates in suburban districts that have been trending back toward Republicans since 2020.
“There’s a general malaise that’s hanging over the country,” said Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist. “What you’re seeing is an angry electorate that keeps kicking the people in charge out. They did it in 2016. They did it in 2018. They did it in 2020. And, if things hold to what it’s looking like, they’re probably going to do it again in 2022.”
While many Democrats have privately believed for months that Republicans were likely to take the House, they have expressed increasing fears in recent days that voters could hand the GOP a significant majority — an outcome that would amount to a major rebuke of the party in power. In some cases, the party appears to be conceding seats it previously competed for, a retrenchment that strategists worry could signal a “red wave” of widespread Republican victories on traditionally Democratic turf.
While the battle for control of the Senate remains closely contested — with both parties pouring millions of dollars into a handful of states that will determine whether Democrats maintain, or even add to, their slim majority — in the House the debate has shifted to predicting how large the new Republican majority will be. Democrats have 220 seats in the House now, and need 218 to maintain control.
One House Democratic strategist said that if Democrats hold 200 to 205 seats, they will consider it a good night. If the party ends up with 190 seats or less — a loss of 30 seats that would require several districts Biden carried by double-digits to flip — that would reflect a big red wave, said the strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Biden allies are preparing to spin even a defeat as a win for the president, since President Barack Obama lost 63 seats in 2010 and President Donald Trump lost 40 in 2018, and Biden is not expected lose as many. But because Biden began his presidency with a much smaller majority than his predecessors, even modest losses could leave Democrats with fewer seats than the 193 they had in 2011.
The party has continued to express confidence about holding the Senate, where elections are historically less dependent on the national political environment than House races. Still, a number of competitive contests have tightened in recent days as Republican candidates have continuously linked their opponents to Biden, who faces stubbornly low approval ratings.
The White House announced Thursday that first lady Jill Biden will be traveling to Arizona, where Sen. Mark Kelly (D) faces a tough challenge from Republican Blake Masters. In recent days, she has traveled to Rhode Island and New Hampshire to appear alongside Democratic candidates in areas her husband carried in 2020. Some candidates have preferred campaigning alongside the first lady, even as they have avoided appearing publicly with her husband.
The president has avoided campaigning in Arizona, where his approval ratings are underwater. Kelly has kept him at arm’s length while fighting off attacks from Masters that he is too close to Biden.
Biden and Obama plan to appear together in Pennsylvania on Saturday, in an effort to boost Senate candidate John Fetterman, whose recovery from a May stroke has become a central issue in the race. Republicans have argued that their nominee, Mehmet Oz, is a favorite in that race after a debate last month in which Fetterman stumbled over his words and struggled with the question-and-answer format. They have poured money into the state, running ads highlighting Fetterman’s debate performance.
Democrats are also flooding money into the state, which has seen the most spending of any contest this year.
Even some voters who turned out to see Clinton and Harris rally for Hochul on Thursday evening were gloomy about the party’s prospects.
Easten Young, a senior political science and history student at Columbia University who said he votes in Kentucky, was worried about a lack of enthusiasm among young voters.
“I’m not feeling too confident, honestly,” he said. “I really hope that people like myself will get out and vote, especially young people, because it’s so important. But I think that it’s not looking too good.”
Democrats face head winds in a number of races, particularly in the House.
For example, the party has grown increasingly concerned that Republicans have a path to win all three House seats in South Texas, a longtime Democratic stronghold.
Party leaders in Texas and Washington have long expected that Republicans could gain a foothold in the region by flipping the state’s 15th Congressional District, where Republican candidate Monica De La Cruz has run an aggressive and well-funded campaign. But, now, Democrats are alarmed by GOP momentum they’re seeing in the neighboring 34th and 28th districts, where Biden won by nearly 16 points and more than seven points, respectively.
Local Democrats have been urging the national party and donors for months to send more resources and place more focus on the Hispanic-heavy districts, particularly Texas’ 34th District, where Republican Rep. Mayra Flores won in a special election in June. But national Democrats largely shrugged off Flores’s win because the district was set to become much bluer for the November midterms due to redistricting.
Republicans are “competing and taking advantage of a frustration, an anxiety in the community. They’ve shown up with real candidates and real money to compete. We’ve never seen that before,” said Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, a former senior adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), pointing to the GOP’s big spending in the region to build on Trump’s 2020 gains among Latinos.
“We’re facing head winds, no doubt,” Rocha added.
In Wisconsin, local Democratic leaders are looking with dismay at a once-close race in the 3rd Congressional District, where Rep. Ron Kind (D) retired, leaving the seat open. GOP candidate Derrick Van Orden, who was filmed outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, is running against Democrat Brad Pfaff, a state senator.
“We’re looking very, very good,” Van Orden said in a brief interview Tuesday night. He said the main issues in his race have become “gas, groceries and grandkids,” adding that “we’re all worried about the kind of country we’re going to grow up in.”
The House Majority PAC, the Democrats’ main super PAC for the House, recently canceled about $1.6 million in TV reservations for the final two weeks of the race, giving Republicans a clearer shot at the open seat. Republicans have spent about $3.8 million in the race while Democrats spent about $2 million.
In one ominous sign for the party, some finger-pointing and internal criticism over strategy has begun to spill into public view even as voters are continuing to cast ballots. Some party strategists have complained that warning voters about the threat a Republican-controlled Congress would pose to abortion rights, Social Security, health care and democracy itself has missed the mark.
Clinton said she wished Democrats “could convey more effectively” the benefits of their accomplishments on the economy, even as they address other issues.
“I would boil it down to this — it’s really difficult to tell people what’s going to happen in the future when, understandably, they are focused on the present,” she said in an interview on “CNN This Morning.”
Democrats acknowledge that Republican attacks on crime have hurt their candidates, especially in blue states. In New York, Hochul’s Republican challenger, Lee Zeldin, has tried to link the state’s rising crime rates to Democrats’ bail policies. It’s a message Republicans across the country have embraced to paint their opponents as soft on crime.
An analysis of House Majority PAC spending found that 42 percent of the group’s ads mention abortion, 48 percent mention economic issues, 19 percent mention extremism or Jan. 6, and 5 percent mention education. Most GOP ads have focused on the economy and crime.
Democrats continue to hold out hope that abortion concerns in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade will surprise on Election Day, allowing them to outperform the polls with surprising turnout, as they did in a Kansas abortion rights referendum and a New York special election this summer. But they acknowledge that gains in polling that happened in early September has begun to fade, as prices for gas and other staples have remained high and the Federal Reserve has implemented a series of rate increases to bring down inflation.
Some party officials have begun to consider a potential silver lining of a potential drubbing in House races, which are held every two years. Because some of the losses are expected to be in blue states and districts that Biden won handily in 2020, Democrats could have more opportunities for easier pickups in 2024, said one Democratic strategist familiar with House races, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to frankly discuss the state of play.
“Clear path back in 2024,” the strategist said, “if we lose those seats on Tuesday.”
Dylan Wells, Annie Linskey, Michael Scherer, Sabrina Rodriguez and Azi Paybarah contributed to this report.
Biden speaks on student debt relief in New Mexico in an appeal to young voters
9:09 PMObama in demand as Biden struggles to energize crowds | 2022-11-03T23:10:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats fear midterm drubbing as party leaders rush to defend blue seats - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/03/democrats-midterm-election-fears/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/03/democrats-midterm-election-fears/ |
Miles Bridges could be suspended by the NBA if he signs with a team. (John Minchillo/AP)
Charlotte Hornets restricted free agent Miles Bridges was given a sentence of three years probation Thursday after pleading no contest to one felony count related to domestic violence.
The sentence was part of a plea deal agreed upon by the four-year NBA veteran and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, after Bridges pleaded not guilty in July to three felony counts, including two related to child abuse. Those two counts, which stemmed from an accusation that Bridges physically abused the mother of their two children in front of them, were dropped as part of an arrangement settled Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
By pleading no contest, Bridges formally accepted the conviction without admitting guilt. He avoided a jail term while also signing off on the following conditions, per the district attorney’s office:
A 10-year criminal protective order for the woman involved
Weekly narcotics and marijuana use testing
Payments of restitution, for which a hearing is scheduled for Jan. 13
Bridges and the woman will share custody of the children, according to ESPN.
“We believe this resolution was the best avenue to hold Mr. Bridges accountable for his conduct,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement. “We also understand through the victim’s representatives that the victim wanted an expedited resolution of the case. The victim and her representatives were consulted about the proposed resolution and agreed with the outcome of the case. The District Attorney’s Office Bureau of Victim Services remains ready to aid the victims in this case.”
In June, the Hornets gave a qualifying offer to Bridges, a 20-point scorer last season who was in line for a massive payday before being arrested. That allows the team to potentially match any offer another team might make to the 24-year-old forward. If he signs with a team, Bridges could face a suspension by the NBA under its domestic violence policy. | 2022-11-03T23:14:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ex-Hornet Miles Bridges gets probation in domestic violence plea deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/03/miles-bridges-probation-domestic-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/03/miles-bridges-probation-domestic-violence/ |
Republican Barry Glassman and Democrat Brooke E. Lierman are running for Maryland comptroller. (The Washington Post)
Del. Brooke E. Lierman, a Democrat from Baltimore, and Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, a Republican, are presenting dueling visions of the job of comptroller to voters in the finals days of the campaign.
Democrats on the statewide ticket have a comfortable lead in polling and fundraising, but political analysts say the comptroller’s race could prove relatively competitive compared with other statewide races as Glassman works to separate himself from the extreme wing of his party.
While Glassman sees the role of Maryland’s chief financial officer as a nonpartisan check on a government run mostly by Democrats, Lierman said she hopes to use the position to advance values she feels are shared by most residents.
They are vying to replace Peter Franchot, who has been comptroller since 2006 but stepped down this year to run unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for governor. The comptroller serves four-year terms and, unlike the governor, is not limited to two terms.
If elected, Lierman would be the first woman independently elected to the statewide office in Maryland on a ticket poised to make history with the state’s first Black governor and attorney general on the ballot, alongside a candidate for lieutenant governor who would be the first immigrant and Asian American to hold statewide office.
More low key in temperament and ideology than the rest of the statewide Republican slate, Glassman is running as a mainstream conservative with a coveted endorsement. Gov. Larry Hogan (R) cut his only campaign ad this cycle for Glassman, portraying them as the “middle men” strolling down the center of a country road before hopping in a pale yellow convertible, license place “Middlemen.”
Glassman said he wrote in Hogan for president rather than vote to reelect President Donald Trump in 2020 and, unlike Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox, Glassman never disputed the result of that election.
“Clearly what I believe in is not in line with other folks on the ticket,” he said in a phone interview Wednesday, of a lineup that also includes attorney general candidate Michael Peroutka. Peroutka has said that if elected, he would not support laws enacted by the legislature if he believes they are in conflict with his understanding of God’s law.
Democrats, however, say Glassman’s voting record on guns, abortion and environmental policy over 16 years in the state House of Delegates and state Senate show he is more conservative than he would like voters in the blue state to believe.
“My opponent knows that his political views are outside the mainstream so his strategy is to pretend that the job of comptroller is just a bean counter rather than an office that’s uniquely situated to help tackle the economic challenges that families and small businesses are facing,” Lierman said in a phone interview Thursday.
The state comptroller, known as the state’s chief financial officer or accountant, collects about $16 billion annually in taxes, including taxes on individual and business income, sales, gasoline, alcohol and tobacco. The office also handles information technology for the state, paying the state’s bills and employee paychecks. The agency has 1,100 employees and a budget of $110 million.
As comptroller, Lierman said she would modernize the office by upgrading technology to help small business owners pay taxes more efficiently, and reach out to families and seniors who are eligible for but not yet receiving tax credits.
“That money can help those families build financial resilience,” she said. “Especially in these challenging times with inflation, families are counting their dollars, and we need to make sure the comptroller’s office is their advocate.”
Glassman said he wanted to run for comptroller because he sees the role as largely bipartisan and would use his vote on the powerful Board of Public Works to vet contracts and leave policymaking up to the legislature.
“As comptroller, I’m going to follow state law,” he said.
Lierman, co-chair of the special joint committee on pensions in the legislature, said she would watchdog state pension fund investments in companies that are susceptible to the negative impacts of climate change.
“We can’t bury our head in the sand,” she said. “We have to be smart and follow the market and secure our pension fund so that it continues to get a strong return.”
Glassman said he would adjust the state’s investment portfolio in rare circumstances.
“You’ve got to look at return and be cognizant of fact that you’re handling pension funds that literally hundreds of thousands of teachers will rely on for years to come,” he said. “I would not politicize investments.”
Glassman, who said he doesn’t have the campaign funds to advertise as much as Lierman, said a Washington Post endorsement gave his campaign a boost. (The Washington Post’s editorial and opinions divisions are separate.)
Lierman downplayed the value of partisan balance, pointing to former Democratic comptroller Louis L. Goldstein, whose four-decade stint as comptroller mostly coincided with Democratic control of state government.
“He never had a problem calling out waste fraud and abuse and neither will I,” she said.
Lierman, 43, lives in the Fells Point neighborhood and works as a civil rights and disability lawyer at the Baltimore firm Brown, Goldstein & Levy. She has a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law. She has served two terms in the House and bested Bowie Mayor Tim Adams for the Democratic nomination for comptroller.
Glassman, 60, was born and raised in Hartford County, a historically rural county that has become more suburban, on a farm and served as a volunteer firefighter and EMT before earning a bachelor’s degree from Washington College in Chestertown. He raised sheep for decades and is still active in 4-H programs.
He worked in insurance for Baltimore Gas and Electric while serving in the legislature and retired to run for county executive in 2014. Under his leadership, Glassman said the county grew its surplus, gave seniors a tax break and maintains a fully funded pension fund. He previously served as president of the Maryland Association of Counties.
Glassman said many of the land use and policy questions raised at the county level are nonpartisan, preparing him to carry out what he sees as the duties of comptroller. For him, the race boils down to the “question of balance.” | 2022-11-03T23:19:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Glassman, Lierman face off in Md. comptroller race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/03/comptroller-maryland-glassman-lierman/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/03/comptroller-maryland-glassman-lierman/ |
Joanna Simon, singer and TV correspondent, dies at 85
She became an arts correspondent for the “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" and won an Emmy in 1991 for a report on mental illness and creativity
Former TV news anchor Walter Cronkite and opera singer Joanna Simon in 2007. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
Joanna Simon, an acclaimed mezzo-soprano, Emmy-winning TV correspondent and one of the three singing Simon sisters who include pop star Carly, died Oct. 19 at a hospital in Manhattan. She was 85.
The cause was thyroid cancer, her family said. Ms. Simon, the eldest of four siblings, died just a day before her sister Lucy died. Their brother, Peter, a photographer, died in 2018 at 71. All three had cancer.
Joanna Simon began her career as an opera and concert performer. She made her professional debut in 1962 as Cherubino in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” at New York City Opera. That year, she won the Marian Anderson Award for promising young singers. As a concert performer, she leaned into classic and contemporary songs of her time.
She was a frequent guest on TV talk shows and, after her retirement from singing, she became an arts correspondent for PBS’s “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.” She won an Emmy in 1991 for a report on mental illness and creativity.
Joanna Elizabeth Simon was born in Manhattan on Oct. 20, 1936. Her father, Richard, was a publisher and founder of Simon & Schuster. Her mother was a singer and homemaker.
She graduated in 1958 from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. As she began her singing career, Carly and Lucy began performing as the Simon Sisters, opening for other acts in Greenwich Village folk clubs.
Joanna Simon was married to novelist and journalist Gerald Walker from 1976 until his death in 2004. She was the companion of retired “CBS Evening News” anchor Walter Cronkite from 2005 until his death in 2009. Survivors include her sister Carly, a stepson and grandson, according to the New York Times. | 2022-11-04T00:06:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Joanna Simon, singer and TV correspondent, dies at 85 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/03/joanna-simon-singer-carly-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/03/joanna-simon-singer-carly-dead/ |
Nets suspend Kyrie Irving for refusing to say he has no antisemitic beliefs
The Brooklyn Nets have suspended Kyrie Irving for at least five games. (Frank Franklin II/AP)
The Brooklyn Nets announced Thursday that Kyrie Irving has been suspended for at least five games without pay because he is “currently unfit to be associated” with the organization following his repeated refusals to apologize for a social media post about an antisemitic film and book.
Irving, who agreed Wednesday to pay $500,000 to support anti-hate with the Anti-Defamation League, said that he “took responsibility” for the post but refused to apologize when he met reporters Thursday.
“Over the last several days, we have made repeated attempts to work with Kyrie Irving to help him understand the harm and danger of his words and actions, which began with him publicizing a film containing deeply disturbing antisemitic hate,” the Nets said in a statement. “We believed that taking the path of education in this challenging situation would be the right one and thought that we had made progress with our joint commitment to eradicating hate and intolerance.
To return to the court, the Nets said that Irving must satisfy a “series of objective remedial measures that address the harmful impact of his conduct.”
Irving will miss Brooklyn’s visit to the Washington Wizards on Friday and be sidelined until at least Nov. 12. The earliest he could return is a Nov. 13 game against the Lakers in Los Angeles.
The Nets said that Irving’s refusal to “disavow antisemitism when given a clear opportunity” was “deeply disturbing” and constituted “conduct detrimental to the team.”
Earlier Thursday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that he was “disappointed” that Irving had not issued an “unqualified apology” or “denounced the vile and harmful content contained in the film.” | 2022-11-04T00:41:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nets suspend Kyrie Irving for refusing to say he has no antisemitic beliefs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/03/nets-suspend-kyrie-irving/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/03/nets-suspend-kyrie-irving/ |
George Booth, whose cartoon dogs became a New Yorker staple, dies at 96
His cartoons featured a menagerie of characters and a zany sense of humor. They ran in the New Yorker for more than a half-century.
A 1993 New Yorker cartoon by George Booth, whose art filled the magazine's pages for more than 50 years. (George Booth/The New Yorker)
George Booth, who created a cartoon world of boisterous, wacky characters in the pages of the New Yorker, drawing cross-eyed dogs, grumpy cats and neurotic but good-natured humans while helping define the magazine’s comic sensibility for generations of readers, died Nov. 1 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 96.
The cause was complications of dementia, said Sarah Booth, his daughter and only immediate survivor.
A droll, bright-eyed artist with an uninhibited laugh and gentle Midwestern drawl, Mr. Booth sold his first cartoon to the New Yorker in 1969, the year he turned 43. Editors came and went, but he was still published in the magazine as recently as January, when the New Yorker ran his cover illustration “Around the Clock,” showing one of Mr. Booth’s signature grungy dogs waiting expectantly at home, wagging its tail and stamping a paw while keeping an eye on the clock.
Mr. Booth brought a wacky, offbeat sensibility to one of the country’s most storied weekly magazines, developing a squiggly cartoon menagerie of cave men, bull terriers, feisty cats, prehistoric beasts and ordinary looking men and women, many modeled on people he knew as a boy in small-town Missouri.
His cartoons often examined contemporary neuroses, existential anxieties and the everyday difficulties that crop up at home, with a tone that was more tender than mocking, less cynical than amused.
“Don’t give the dog any more coffee,” a woman says in one cartoon, as the family pet convulses next to the refrigerator. Another was a farcical portrait of the way secrets are sometimes kept in a relationship, only for the truth to eventually come out: “There’s something you haven’t told me,” a woman says to her companion across the dining table, a smiling man in a furry bear suit. In the corner of the cartoon, a dog looks away in horror, or perhaps embarrassment.
Fellow New Yorker cartoonist Michael Maslin said that Mr. Booth was a master at creating “wackiness in an island of calm,” and cited him alongside some of the magazine’s most renowned artists. Like Charles Addams, Helen E. Hokinson, George Price, Saul Steinberg and James Thurber, “Booth invented a defined cast of characters and an environment for them to exist — a place entirely Boothian,” Maslin wrote in an email.
“No other cartoonist could (or would) touch the style and the tone,” he added. “All cartoons rely on the unexpected twist, but Booth reveled in the haywire. There was always a joyous thump or a whump hovering around his work — often with a measure of vaudeville humor.”
Many of Mr. Booth’s cartoons took place in a modest kitchen or dining room, including one that was strewn with tools, machine parts, boxes and cans, with a man seated calmly at the center. “I bond with things,” he explains.
Another showed a balding gentleman in front of his refrigerator, with a solitary lightbulb dangling overheard. “I have a mango in the fridge that I can’t deal with,” he says to nobody but his cat. In another, a pet cat is seated at the dining table across from a bespectacled woman in a floral dress. “Nation-wise,” she tells the cat, “we’re in a pickle.”
“We all sort of felt like those people in his drawings,” cartoonist Liza Donnelly said in a phone interview, noting Mr. Booth’s careful observations about human behavior and relationships. “We all have that dog in the corner, or think we do,” she added. “His people were just coping, and that’s what we’re all doing.”
Other Booth cartoons ventured into the realm of the bizarre and surreal. One shows a bowtied man seated with an oversized bag, talking with a loan officer who inquires, “What have you other than your bag of parrots?” In another, a woman floats into the sky like a runaway balloon as her family watches down below. “Your mother eats all the wrong foods,” the caption says.
“Something out of place is always funny,” Mr. Booth told his daughter in January, as part of an interview she conducted for the New Yorker. “A dog eating somebody else’s lunch, people and critters not playing their expected roles, doing something no one ever imagined, like an elephant eating breakfast with you. In cartoons, you can choose to make things fit, or you can choose not to. And, if you don’t, it’s kinda funny.”
Mr. Booth often made cartoons about art itself, drawing haggard or disheveled writers struggling to finish their work.
In one cartoon, a woman attempts to inspire her partner by imagining his future literary success: “I’ll run through it again. First, the exhilaration of a work completed, followed by the excitement of approaching pub date. Reviews pouring in from everywhere while the bidding for the paperback rights soars to insane figures. An appearance on Merv Griffin or Dick Cavett, sandwiched in between like Engelbert Humperdinck and Juliet Prowse. Finally, a flood of letters from people to whom your name, yesterday unknown, now has the shimmer of national renown. Hit those keys!”
By all accounts, however, Mr. Booth had little trouble making cartoons. “I never saw anyone enjoy his own drawings more than George,” said Martin Garrity, one of his former art teachers, in a 1980 interview with the Wall Street Journal. “He’d sit back and laugh at everything he did.”
The second of three children, George William Booth was born in Cainsville, Mo., on June 28, 1926. Both parents were schoolteachers, and the family moved several times before settling in the town of Fairfax, where his father worked as a superintendent. For a time, they lived in a converted schoolhouse illuminated by bare lightbulbs — the bulbs became one of Mr. Booth’s trademarks — and his father was paid in cherry trees because the district didn’t have enough money.
From age 3, Mr. Booth was obsessed with drawing, staying up as late as 2 or 3 in the morning to sketch racecars stuck in the mud. He worked as a printer’s apprentice after high school and in 1944 was drafted into the Marine Corps. Two years later, he re-enlisted to work for the Marine magazine Leatherneck as an illustrator and cartoonist.
He later studied on the GI Bill at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, the Corcoran School in Washington and the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he tried to build a career by selling cartoons to trade publications and magazines.
But he struggled to break into the business, and after marrying Dione Babcock in 1958 he got a day job, working as an art director for Bill Communications, a publisher of business magazines.
For nine years, he effectively set cartooning aside, struggling to summon the energy to make cartoons after he got home from work. Then he decided to give it another shot. He quit his job and soon sold his first piece to the New Yorker.
It helped, he said, that he had finally gotten a chance to meet some of the magazine’s editors, who had previously thought he was in his 80s, given his shaky style and older subject matter, and who worried he wouldn’t be around for long. He had also stopped “trying to draw to fit a market,” as he put it, after years of attempting to replicate cartoons he saw in the magazine.
“I worked very hard on those cartoons, but I wasn’t enjoying it,” he told The Washington Post in 1976. “For relief I’d write a letter home and draw some crazy thing on the envelope, chickens having a fit, and I’d sit there laughing. I had to transfer that joy to the work I was submitting. I made up my mind I had to do 100 percent George Booth and offer it. That was all I had to give.”
By 1980, Mr. Booth was working on contract for the New Yorker, making around 10 cartoons per week. He was also illustrating children’s books such as “Wacky Wednesday” (1974), written by Dr. Seuss under the name Theo LeSieg, and publishing cartoon collections including “Think Good Thoughts About a Pussycat” (1975). He later created a short-lived syndicated comic strip, “Local Item.”
Mr. Booth received the National Cartoonists Society’s Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, and was posthumously inducted into the Society of Illustrators’ Hall of Fame on Thursday.
For decades, he and his wife lived in a 19th-century saltbox house in Stony Brook, N.Y., on the North Shore of Long Island. They were accompanied by pet cats but never a dog, although his cartoons suggested otherwise. “Dogs are kind of like trees to me,” he explained in a 1998 interview with the New Yorker. “I enjoy them, but I’d just as soon not do all the chores.”
Mr. Booth and his wife moved to Brooklyn to live with their daughter in recent years. Dione Booth died of pancreatic cancer on Oct. 26, six days before her husband. She was 85.
“I see people floundering around in their lives — wanting to do something that they can’t do, or not knowing what they want to do, or not having the opportunity to do what they want to do — and I realize how blessed I’ve been,” Mr. Booth told the New Yorker. “I have spent my whole life doing the thing I love. … The work I do is the only work I’ve ever wanted to do. And no matter how long I do it, I always feel like I’m just on the verge of getting started.” | 2022-11-04T01:03:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | George Booth, whose cartoon dogs became a New Yorker staple, dies at 96 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/03/cartoonist-george-booth-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/03/cartoonist-george-booth-dead/ |
Employees said the layoffs came across teams, as Twitter broadly reduced its workforce. Musk originally pitched investors on cutting Twitter’s staff up to 75 percent.
SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk is beginning mass layoffs at Twitter, sharply reducing the company’s workforce of 7,500 and beginning his wholesale overhaul of the company, as he took aim at a work environment he has decried as too relaxed.
“Team, In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” an email to workers said, instructing them of how they may learn whether their position was affected. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”
The email kicked off an anxious wait for many employees, who would not find out immediately whether they would be affected. Instead, it said that by 9 a.m. Pacific time Friday, workers would receive an email with the subject line: “Your Role at Twitter.”
At Elon Musk’s Twitter, silence has workers bewildered
And anyone who did not receive an email by 5 p.m. Pacific was told to follow up with the company. The offices would be closed Friday.
The layoffs were expected to affect the sales, trust and safety, marketing, product, engineering and legal teams — targeting the company across the board.
Twitter employees prepared Thursday for what seemed like an inevitability, refreshing their internal tools such as messaging apps to learn the latest — as the possibility of losing their jobs loomed over them.
But information remained sparse until the e-mail arrived later in the day.
How to save, transfer and delete data on company issued laptops before leaving a job
Before Musk took over the site, Twitter had already planned broad layoffs, which would have affected up to a quarter of the staff, according to people familiar the plans. The Washington Post reported previously the company’s board was planning to cut thousands of jobs as part of an effort to save $700 million in labor costs. | 2022-11-04T01:16:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elon Musk begins mass layoffs of Twitter staff - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/03/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/03/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs/ |
Clinton was critical of Rep. Lee Zeldin as well as other Republicans including Kari Lake, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Arizona
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton (left) and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul embrace during a campaign event at Barnard College in New York on Thursday, Nov. 3, 2022. (Sarah Yenesel/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The event marked Clinton’s first candidate-focused appearance of the midterms and underscored the rising Democratic concern over Hochul’s race. Headlined by an all-woman lineup of surrogates and hosted by Barnard College, a women’s institution, the event was geared toward energizing women to turn out for Hochul.
Clinton was critical of Zeldin as well as other Republicans, hitting Kari Lake, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Arizona, for making a joke about Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband being violently attacked in his home. The speakers often highlighted the issue of abortion rights.
“Don’t take it for granted, because I’ve heard my opponent say, ‘Oh, don’t worry. The day after the Dobbs decision nothing changed in the state of New York. So don’t worry,’” said Hochul, speaking of protecting abortion rights and referencing the Supreme Court decision to strike down Roe v. Wade in June. “You know why nothing changed in the state of New York? Because I’m the governor.”
While Democrats across the country have run heavily on abortion since the high court reversed the decision ending the constitutional right to the procedure, some in the party have said that the fear of losing the right to the procedure is shaping up as a less motivating factor in blue states such as New York, due to existing protections and Democratic-led state government committed to preserving it.
In interviews with The Washington Post, some students attending the event said they were concerned about how Democrats will fare in the midterms, and noted a lack of enthusiasm among their peers compared to past elections.
Mia Davidson, a Columbia University student, noted a surge of outrage among young voters after the Dobbs decision, but said that energy has dropped as Election Day approaches.
“I think that enthusiasm went away and I don't know that the Democratic Party did a ton to really keep young people engaged, but at the same time, some of that is on us, we sometimes chose not to be,” she said.
Hochul’s struggles come as Democratic congressional candidates in New York and other blue states are also struggling, forcing party leaders to devote time and resources to some races that appeared less favorable to Republicans earlier this year.
Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, echoed Hochul’s pitch in her remarks, taking Republicans to task over abortion rights and seeking to tie Zeldin to former president Donald Trump, who supports the GOP contender.
“Of course they want to turn back the clock on abortion, they spent 50 years trying to make that happen,” said Clinton, speaking of Republicans. “But they want to turn back the clock on women's rights in general, on civil rights, on voting rights, on gay rights. They are determined to exercise control over who we are, how we feel and believe and act, in ways that I thought we had long left behind.”
Hochul is the first woman to serve as governor of New York. Formerly the lieutenant governor, she took office after the resignation of Democrat Andrew M. Cuomo last year. Clinton highlighted the historic nature of Hochul’s tenure in the state’s top job.
“I really appreciate the way she's bringing new leadership and stability and new hope for our future to New York, and I think it's about time since this was the state where the women's suffrage movement was born,” said Clinton.
Harris denounced Republican efforts to restrict abortion access and ran through a list of Democratic accomplishments by the Biden’s administration.
Democratic women in New York political leadership who spoke at the event stressed the need for voters to show up to vote for Hochul and not take the election for granted. Some recent polls show Hochul leading Zeldin, but by single-digits in a state that as a whole generally leans heavily toward Democrats.
Zeldin has lauded the Dobbs decision, but he has also said he would not change New York’s law. In a campaign ad released last month he said, “As governor, I will not change and could not change New York’s abortion law.”
The Republican has focused on rising crime in the state — an issues Republicans have highlighted elsewhere across the country. Clinton responded in her remarks, accusing the GOP of fearmongering.
“I have to also just reflect that I've seen, and I'm sure you have if you — maybe you don't watch television — but if you did, you would see what I see, which are ads about crime every 30 seconds, right? No solutions, but just a lot of really fearful, scary pictures and scary music,” said Clinton.
She referenced the attack on Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, who was assaulted last week by an intruder with a hammer, criticizing the response by some Republicans such as Lake, who have sought to turn the attack into a punchline. (“Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C. — apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection,” Lake recently said.)
“An intruder hits an 82-year-old man in the head with a hammer, who happens to be married to the speaker of the House, and the Republicans joke about it. The woman running for governor in Arizona jokes about it,” said Clinton. “Now why would any sensible person want to give power to somebody who thinks it’s funny that a person gets assaulted in his own home? So you know, they don’t care about keeping you safe. They want to keep you scared, so that you can’t think straight.”
Echoing other Democrats, the speakers here also cast Republicans as a threat to Social Security and Medicare. And Hochul made a direct pitch to young voters at one point, saying, “I want you to feel the weight on your shoulders as you march out of here. With that determination, the guts and courage that all of those who came before us had to pass down this gift to us.”
Emma Sherman-Hawver, a Columbia student attending the event, said she was glad Clinton was holding an event for Hochul, noting her home state ties.
“I think if she can play it strategically, then it helps a lot,” she said. “Obviously there are places in the country that may not be as supportive but I think here is like if you were to go anywhere, I think it's a really good choice that she came here.”
But Jack Lobel, another Columbia student and spokesperson for the Gen Z focused group Voters of Tomorrow, said Democrats need to put more work into their outreach to young voters.
“It is unreasonable for Democrats to expect that young people turn out but then don’t put in money into outreach, they don’t put in effort and time,” said Lobel. “It seems like the only people who are focused on Gen Z outreach is Gen Z, and that’s really something that is not going to be sustainable if Democrats want to keep winning in the future.” | 2022-11-04T01:42:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hillary Clinton returns to trail for struggling Hochul, slams GOP - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/03/hillary-clinton-returns-trail-struggling-hochul-slams-gop/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/03/hillary-clinton-returns-trail-struggling-hochul-slams-gop/ |
Infant, mother injured during dog attack in Northeast D.C.
Closeup of a scary black dog. (iStock)
A mother and infant child sustained critical injuries Thursday when they were bitten by dogs in Northeast Washington, D.C. police said.
Authorities are investigating the incident in the 4400 block of Dix Street NE, where responding officers found the mother and child just before 6 p.m., said Officer Hugh Carew, a police spokesman. The pair were taken to a hospital, he said.
After the attack, the dogs were later “contained” but it wasn’t immediately clear whether the animals were taken into custody, Carew said. Animal control and the police department’s Special Victims Unit were called to investigate, he said. | 2022-11-04T02:00:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dogs attack, injure an infant and mother in Northeast D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/03/dogs-attack-infant-mother-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/03/dogs-attack-infant-mother-dc/ |
Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade soars to all-around title at gymnastics worlds
Thursday's medalists, from left: American runner-up Shilese Jones, champion Rebeca Andrade of Brazil and British bronze winner Jessica Gadirova. (Thanassis Stavrakis/AP)
Rebeca Andrade’s meteoric rise toward the top of women’s gymnastics now includes the sport’s most-coveted title: all-around champion. On Thursday, the Brazilian star won the gold medal at the world championships, the most significant accomplishment of her remarkable run over the past two years.
Andrade has torn her ACL three times, most recently in 2019, but she emerged as a global star during a breakthrough 2021 season that included two Olympic medals and two world championships medals. In Thursday’s all-around final in Liverpool, England, she soared ahead of the field with a score of 56.899 and met the golden expectations that surrounded her entering the competition.
Andrade’s difficult routines gave her an edge and helped her weather an error on bars. As the final competitor, the 23-year-old delivered an excellent floor routine that was more than enough to clinch the top spot on the podium. She finished ahead of American Shilese Jones, who took the silver, and Jessica Gadirova, who earned Britain’s first women’s all-around medal at worlds.
Jones, who won a gold medal with the U.S. team two days ago, has had an impressive season, finishing second at nationals and showcasing newfound consistency. She has competed as a senior elite since 2018 but had never made a worlds or Olympic team. The 20-year-old placed 10th at the U.S. Olympic trials last year and decided to return to elite competition with the 2024 Paris Games as her goal. She’ll have a chance to win another medal in the bars final Saturday.
Heading into the last rotation, Andrade held a nearly one-point lead on Jones, who was comfortably in second. The next four in the standings — including American Jade Carey, who had the third-best all-around score in the qualifying round — were separated by 0.367 points before their final routines determined who would take the bronze.
In front of a home crowd, Gadirova posted the best floor score of the day with a 14.400 that Andrade tied later in the rotation. Jones had a less difficult routine but executed it cleanly and had enough of a cushion from previous events to tally a final score of 55.399, ahead of Gadirova’s 55.199.
Carey, the Olympic gold medalist on the apparatus, needed an excellent floor routine to pass Gadirova. She performed difficult tumbling but had minor deductions on each landing, earning a 14.166 to finish sixth overall. Her 54.698 total landed behind Alice Kinsella of Britain and Ellie Black of Canada.
The American women dominated major all-around competitions with a stretch of 10 consecutive winners at world championships and the Olympics beginning in 2011. Simone Biles, with six of those titles, led that run of excellence. Jordyn Wieber (2011 world championships), Gabby Douglas (2012 Olympics), Morgan Hurd (2017 worlds) and Sunisa Lee (Tokyo Olympics) also claimed all-around gold.
The streak ended at the world championships last year, held just a few months after the Tokyo Games: Russia’s Angelina Melnikova won the all-around title, and Americans Leanne Wong and Kayla DiCello finished second and third. The Russian women would have been medal contenders in this year’s team competition and in the all-around final, but they are banned because of their country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Andrade entered as the favorite. She finished second to Lee in Tokyo and won the gold on vault. Later that year at worlds, she performed on just three apparatuses but won two medals: gold on vault and silver on bars.
Andrade’s only significant mistake Thursday came on bars: She didn’t fall off the apparatus, but she went past vertical on a handstand and needed to add an extra swing with a half-turn before resuming her routine. Andrade maintained strong form as she navigated the error, but that issue, combined with a few imprecise pirouetting elements, led to a score of 13.800 that was nearly a full point lower than the ones she earned on previous days of this competition. Jones managed to trim Andrade’s lead, but Brazil’s best never slipped from the top spot.
American Jordan Chiles, a Tokyo Olympian and one of the country’s best all-around gymnasts, did not advance to the final after falling multiple times on beam during the qualifying round. She had the 12th-best score, but only two athletes per country can advance. National champion Konnor McClain withdrew from the U.S. selection process for the world championships because of an injury. She probably would have been in the mix for an all-around medal. | 2022-11-04T03:14:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rebeca Andrade of Brazil wins gymnastics all-around world championship - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/11/03/rebeca-andrade-all-around-world-championship-gymnastics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/11/03/rebeca-andrade-all-around-world-championship-gymnastics/ |
Appearance on Thursday focused on claims that Donald Trump broadly declassified documents before leaving White House
By Carol D. Leonnig
Kash Patel, a former White House deputy, speaks during a campaign event for Republican election candidates in Tucson on July 31. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Kash Patel, a loyal aide to Donald Trump and former White House deputy, faced questions before a grand jury Thursday as part of a criminal investigation into the former president’s possession of classified records more than 18 months after he left office, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Patel, a former federal prosecutor, is considered a key witness by the Justice Department in large measure because of what evidence he may provide in defense of Trump’s retention of the records, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss it. Some of the records contained top-secret information about Iran’s missile system and intelligence related to China, The Washington Post has previously reported.
Seized Mar-a-Lago documents include information on Iran missiles, China
Patel declared in media interviews in May and June that he was present when Trump decided to declassify material — though he brought up the subject in the context of investigations of any connections between Trump and Russian election interference, or past investigations involving Hillary Clinton, and did not mention the Mar-a-Lago probe, then in its early stages.
While Trump has publicly said he declassified material he brought to Mar-a-Lago, his lawyers have studiously avoided making such a claim in court filings — arguing only that he might have done so.
Patel’s grand jury appearance marks his second in less than a month. At his first appearance in October, he asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation. Prosecutors argued he was not in legal jeopardy and therefore could not take the Fifth, but a federal judge disagreed with the government.
Prosecutors ultimately decided to grant Patel limited-use immunity, the people familiar with the matter said, meaning he could not be charged for a crime based on what he said in the grand jury, as long as he didn’t lie.
That doesn’t mean his testimony will necessarily hurt Trump; it’s quite possible his answers could be helpful to the former president. But prosecutors would still very much like to understand how much of a declassification defense Trump may have, and Patel may be the witness most able to explain that.
Top national security prosecutor joins Mar-a-Lago investigation
“It’s information that Trump felt spoke to matters regarding everything from Russiagate to the Ukraine impeachment fiasco to major national security matters of great public importance,” Patel said in a Breitbart interview on May 5.
“Trump declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government that he thought the American public should have the right to read themselves,” he said.
FBI agents have since queried other former administration officials on whether there was such a declassification — and, more broadly, how Trump handled classified records. They asked specifically whether the officials had seen any evidence of what Patel claimed.
The agents’ first set of questions focused on whether the lawyers participated in packing boxes of records for Trump’s departure from office or knew details about that effort. Both said they did not.
But FBI agents also pointed the former White House lawyers to Patel’s statements and asked whether they knew if Trump had actually declassified scores of records, the people said. Their questions tested the validity of Patel’s claims and also sought to learn what, if any, process the Trump White House followed to declassify records.
In Trump White House, classified records were routinely mishandled, former aides say
In one case, the people said, Eisenberg told agents that agencies quickly reviewed an image of an Iranian missile on a launchpad — a picture from a top-secret document — and removed identification markings and other tradecraft clues so that Trump could tweet it.
In handling another Trump request to tweet a national secret, Eisenberg told the FBI, according to these people, Trump was discouraged from immediately declassifying and sharing a document that could reveal human intelligence sources. Aides persuaded the president to wait for a multiagency review of the potential damage from a release, Eisenberg said, according to these people. In the end, Trump did not send the tweet.
John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser until Trump fired him in September 2019, said in an interview that he has not been questioned by the FBI. He also disputed Trump’s claim that he had a standing order to declassify anything he took from the West Wing to his residence to review. And he said he was very skeptical of Patel’s description of Trump declassifying a trove of records all at once.
“There was never a standing order to declassify things. The notion of massive declassification or on a whim, declassifying things — I don’t remember Trump doing that. He didn’t do that,” Bolton said. “He acted so haphazardly that the formality of saying ‘declassify something’ just didn’t occur to him. He thought if he tweeted something out or said something, then it was just declassified.” | 2022-11-04T03:27:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kash Patel grand jury appearance focused on Trump declassification claims - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/03/kash-patel-grand-jury-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/03/kash-patel-grand-jury-trump/ |
Over the past weekend, perhaps as many as 4,000 black-clad Italian fascist sympathizers assembled in the birthplace of their hero. They shouted slogans and raised their arms in a stiff fascist salute by the crypt of former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in the town of Predappio, in the northern Emilia-Romagna region. One hundred years prior, amid the crumbling of a weak liberal establishment, Mussolini entered Rome along with thousands of black-shirted fascists who had marched on the capital. He soon emerged at the head of a new government that, in the years that followed, turned Italy into a fascist totalitarian state. It fell in the charnel house of World War II and Mussolini was unceremoniously executed by a leftist partisan in 1945.
Unlike in Germany, where Nazi monuments were torn down and a culture of shame about the horrors of the Holocaust pervades, Italy has a more mixed view of its fascist past. A considerable number of people even engage in nostalgia. “After 100 years, we are still here to pay homage to the man this state wanted, and who we will never stop admiring,” Orsola Mussolini, the dictator’s great-granddaughter, said to a cheering crowd in Predappio.
As the truism goes, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. If that’s the case, our political moment abounds in coarse doggerel. In Italy, the “post-fascist” inheritors of Mussolini’s political movement are now for the first time since World War II in power. In Brazil, supporters of defeated incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro openly engage in fascist spectacle and call for a military coup.
In the United States, the seeming normalization of anti-democratic conspiracy theories as well as threats of political violence prompted President Biden himself to warn of the “semi-fascism” gripping a section of American society. Scores of prominent Republican candidates in next week’s midterm elections have, on public record, denied the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. If victorious, some could be in position to potentially throw out the result of the 2024 vote. Polls show Biden’s entreaties and those of his allies likely won’t thwart the Republicans from taking control of Congress.
Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters raise right arm in the form of the Nazi/Fascist salue in São Miguel do Oeste in Santa Catarina, Brazil, yesterday, while singing the Brazilian anthem.
We said “Never Again” but
it’s spreading again across the globe.pic.twitter.com/vwN5Fl5Hnf
— Uki Goñi (@ukigoni) November 3, 2022
What does this all have to do with Mussolini’s infamous March on Rome? He came to power in vastly different context at a time when the ideology he propagated seemed new and world-changing, and as yet unmarked by the epochal tyranny and genocide to come. No one who invokes the threat of “fascism” now seriously believes the horrors of that era are about to repeated. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, for her part, has repeatedly been compelled to disavow Mussolni’s legacy.
“I have never felt sympathy or closeness to undemocratic regimes, fascism included, as I have always considered the racial laws of 1938 the lowest point in Italian history, a shame that will mark our people forever,” she told the lower house of Parliament last week, referring to Mussolini’s persecution of Italy’s Jewish population.
Yet the evident nostalgia for legacies like that of Mussolini is also a symptom of our angry zeitgeist and the recent success of politicians and parties that tap into it. “Italian attitudes to fascism are often ambivalent: collective memory of Mussolini’s regime reflects what many people would like to believe rather than the harsh reality,” wrote the historian Paul Corner, author of “Mussolini in Myth and Memory.” “It is a distortion which seems to run in parallel with the current drift to the right in both European and American politics.”
Corner added that “the mounting problems of representative democracy, economic instability accompanied by constant cuts in social services, immigration — these are all factors that serve to fuel a ‘memory’ of a dictator who, as the slogan went, ‘was always right.’”
Mussolini's March on Rome began 100 years ago today. Here's our material: https://t.co/PxsGudgSzV pic.twitter.com/5hdIMyhUFW
— British Pathé (@BritishPathe) October 27, 2022
Of course, the past always echoes in the present. For some scholars and analysts, the history surrounding the rise of fascism offers an instructive lens into the rhetoric and tensions of the current moment. They see, for example, how mainstream politics in many Western democracies has steadily normalized far-right views once on the fringe.
In her book, “Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day,” political scientist Sheri Berman noted how Mussolini’s assumption of power took place with the cooperation of a feckless liberal establishment that tacitly enabled his rise and arguably feared the spectral threat of Bolshevism far more. “Rather than a coup, for Mussolini the march on Rome was a nice train ride; he came to power via the connivance of elites, rather than by winning an election or firing a shot,” she wrote.
Consider, too, the parallel between Adolf Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 — inspired, in part, by Mussolini’s March on Rome the year prior — and the failed Jan. 6 insurrection. What may link the two is the lack of accountability that the perpetrators faced and the broader support that media attention generated for their cause.
“Every canonical example of European fascists’ success in the twentieth century involved political parties coming to power through the normal electoral process, after having broadcast their anti-democratic sentiments and sometimes even their express intentions,” wrote Yale philosopher Jason Stanley.
The commentator John Ganz invoked the example of Jan. 6 in an essay on the legacy of the March of Rome, pointing to how paramilitary, armed groups backing former president Donald Trump, are now an inescapable part of the political dynamic in the United States. “Are these paramilitaries as big a feature in American politics as either the Brownshirts or the Blackshirts were in interwar Europe?” Ganz wrote. “No, but … we are talking about an attenuated and weaker version of a similar phenomenon.”
There’s a risk in overstating the connections. “The conditions of the 21st century in both Europe and the United States are radically different from those prevailing in Italy in 1922 and so too are the movements that emerge in response to those conditions,” popular historian Adam Tooze wrote this week.
But that doesn’t mean they are irrelevant. “The reason to be interested in those periods of history a hundred years ago, is that they are only a hundred years ago, a blink of the eye in the broader sweep of history, the history of our grandparents and great-grandparents,” Tooze added. “And it is out of that history that the present was made.” | 2022-11-04T04:11:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A century later, Mussolini’s fascist rise in Italy casts a long shadow - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/mussolini-fascism-italy-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/mussolini-fascism-italy-history/ |
The chances of it hitting you are extremely slim, but space experts still condemn China’s practice of letting its boosters plunge uncontrolled back to Earth
The Long March-5B rocket carrying a lab module for China's space station is expected to plunge to Earth, perhaps as soon as Friday, five days after its Oct. 31 launch. (Hu Zhixuan/AP)
For the fifth time in less than three years, a massive Chinese rocket stage is expected to plunge to Earth, perhaps as soon as Friday.
The chances of any one person getting hit by the returning space debris are extremely low, less than the chance of winning the lottery, says Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant in the chief engineer’s office at the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit that has drawn possible tracks for the rocket’s return.
But several of those tracks pass over a large swath of the Earth’s populated areas, meaning there’s still the possibility of someone being injured by the rocket’s return. And that raises another question: Why does China, alone among space-faring nations, allow the unplanned return of its boosters, instead of ditching them at sea, as most others do, or returning them to a soft landing, like Space X?
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has repeatedly condemned China for its behavior. In a statement last year, he said the Chinese were acting irresponsibly. “Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations,” he said. “It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.”
“The technology exists to prevent this,” said Muelhaupt. The rest of the world doesn’t “deliberately launch things this big and intend them to fall wherever. We haven’t done that for 50 years.”
The booster of China’s massive Long March-5B rocket stays aloft for several days after launch and then comes crashing back to Earth, tumbling out of control. This one was launched Monday, carrying the final module of the Tiangong space station that China is assembling in Earth’s orbit.
As of Wednesday, the Aerospace Corporation’s calculations had the stage possibly landing over areas of land where 88 percent of the world’s population lives. And so the possibility of casualties, Muelhaupt said, is between one in 230 to one in 1,000. That risk far exceeds the internationally recognized standard that says a reentering space object should not have greater than a one in 10,000 chance of causing injury.
The Chinese rocket stage is massive — weighing 22 metric tons and measuring as long as a pair of 53-foot semitrailers parked end to end, Muelhaupt said. He estimates that between 10 and 40 percent of the booster will survive reentry and hit the Earth.
After a launch of the Long March-5B in May 2020, a piece of the rocket landed in the Ivory Coast in Africa. In July, debris fell in Indonesia and Malaysia. Chinese Long March rockets are the third, fourth, fifth and sixth largest uncontrolled re-entries ever into Earth’s atmosphere, he said.
NASA has gone to great lengths to ensure the expendable core stage of its Space Launch System rocket falls into the Atlantic far from people, Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development, told reporters Thursday. “We have very clear direction to safely dispose of what we put in orbit,” he said. “That is core to what NASA does.”
“The reality is that there aren’t any real laws or treaties internationally that govern what you’re allowed to do in terms of reentry,” said Marlon Sorge, a technical fellow at the Aerospace Corporation. “So, there isn’t really a direct legal way to control what’s going on an international level.”
“While it’s really difficult, we believe that establishing an international consensus on these norms for behavior involving space is absolutely a worthy and important endeavor,” said Lael Woods, a space traffic management expert at the Aerospace Corporation.
Earlier this year, for example, a part of a SpaceX’s booster landed in Australia, where it was found by a sheep farmer.
“Pretty frightening, actually,” Mick Miners, told the New York Times. “I was quite surprised. It’s not something you see every day on a sheep farm.” | 2022-11-04T05:16:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China Long March rocket set to plunge to Earth soon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/04/china-rocket-long-march-earth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/04/china-rocket-long-march-earth/ |
Ask Amy: We told our teen daughter we’re getting divorced. She laughed.
She refuses to speak to us. I’m not sure if this is just her expression of discontent, or perhaps something deeper.
Concerned: I’ve never seen a case like this (I’m not a caseworker), but I’ve been a case like this — an adolescent coping with divorce.
Adolescents have overlapping emotions that spill out in often unexpected ways. They lack the maturity to sort through their reactions in advance, and so, when faced with really big feelings, sometimes, they laugh.
Your daughter is currently refusing to speak to you. Now you’re finally getting somewhere. She’s angry. Talk to her together. If she doesn’t respond but sits there looking hostile, or rolls her eyes, talk anyway.
And then give her time. Be gentle with her, even if you’re frustrated. You should attempt to comfort and reassure her, even if she doesn’t ask for it.
I’ve worked through it and am no longer a victim of the trauma, but it does explain a lot of my behavior and habits associated with it, as well as some choices I’ve made in the past. He’s very empathetic and I know he will hurt for me.
I don’t want that, but I also don’t want to keep secrets from him. Should I tell him?
To Tell: Ultimately this decision will be yours alone to make, but when you’re contemplating a long-term future with another person, disclosing important aspects of your past will be one step toward intimacy.
Dear Amy: “Hurt and Puzzled Aunt” was being excluded from a niece’s wedding, and she didn’t know why. If the bride still remains petty and unapologetic, the aunt’s family should all refuse to attend her wedding.
Upset: This aunt was not suggesting any retaliatory exclusion, which I thought was wise. This immediate issue aside, retaliating is how long-standing family estrangements become established. | 2022-11-04T05:33:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: We told teen daughter we’re getting divorced. She laughed. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/04/ask-amy-divorce-daughter-laughs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/04/ask-amy-divorce-daughter-laughs/ |
Miss Manners: I’m having trouble recognizing people because of masks
Dear Miss Manners: For the past two years, we have been living behind masks as we strive to keep from spreading, and contracting, coronavirus. Although they help reduce contagion, masks also eliminate handy facial characteristics that help us identify people.
A quizzical look — from a respectful distance — may help the masked person realize that they are difficult to identify. Or Miss Manners has found the more proactive, “Hi! It’s me, Jerry!” from the person being stared at to be helpful and ingratiating.
Dear Miss Manners: My roommate invited a group of her friends over for wine and charcuterie boards as a “bon voyage” for one of them who would be spending a few months in Europe. She did not give me much notice of this get-together — she told me at 10:30 that morning that guests would be arriving around 6 p.m. — but she did extend an invitation to me. (I do not really know any of her friends, except in passing.)
“If we were giving a joint party, then of course I would share the costs. But you invited me to this last-minute, and there was no talk of splitting it. Next time, please give me fair warning that your friends are coming over and I will do my best to vacate the premises.” | 2022-11-04T05:34:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: I’m having trouble recognizing people because of masks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/04/miss-manners-masks-unrecognizable-people/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/04/miss-manners-masks-unrecognizable-people/ |
Students protest outside Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in the northwestern Iranian city on Oct. 22. (Twitter/AFP/Getty Images)
In Iran, sharing a meal can be a revolutionary act. University dining halls, which for decades have been gender-segregated spaces, have become a new front line in the country’s uprising.
Students chanting “woman, life, freedom” are risking expulsion, assault and arrest in a struggle to eat lunch together. When authorities have closed campus cafeterias in retaliation, students have congregated outside for protest picnics.
The cafeteria revolts are a small but symbolic part of the anti-government unrest that has swept Iran for nearly two months, now the longest running demonstrations against the leaders of the Islamic republic. As street protests have ebbed and flowed, university students have maintained the movement’s momentum.
Four students from universities across Iran talked to The Washington Post about their role in the protests, amid constant surveillance and the threat of arrest. They spoke on the condition they be identified by their first names, fearing reprisals from the state.
“They are not only protesting gender segregation, they are negating gender segregation,” said Mohammad Ali Kadivar, an assistant professor at Boston College, who went to university in Iran. “Students are not just asking to dine together, they dine together. Or they try to.”
Security forces have repeatedly raided campuses and faced off with student protesters. Last month, armed forces stormed Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, known as the MIT of Iran, and arrested hundreds of students.
The head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s most feared security force, warned Saturday that it would be “the last day of riots,” foreshadowing a further crackdown.
But it didn’t stop the protests. On Tuesday, some university students went on strike and organized sit-ins, holding up placards with the names and faces of detained classmates and professors.
More than 130 universities have participated in protests nationwide and nearly 400 university students have been arrested as of Wednesday, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), based in Washington. Overall, thousands of people have been detained and hundreds killed, according to rights groups, though reporting restrictions make exact figures difficult to verify.
Hamed, a 25-year-old student at Guilan University in Rasht, a northern city along the Caspian Sea, said rules around gender segregation were enforced sporadically in the past: some teachers, for example, let students sit together in class, while others separated them.
Now, he said, everyone is on edge, as he and his classmates have defied rules against gender mixing in the dining hall.
“As the protests continued more and more university guards and later plainclothes forces were sent to camouflage among us,” he said. “They take photos and videos and spot certain students who seem to be more active and arrest them outside the university.”
Hamed, who like others spoke on the condition that only his first name be used, shared a text message he received warning students not to participate in protests.
At Razi University in Kermanshah, a predominantly Kurdish city in the west, 20-year-old Nastaran told The Post the protests had not spread yet to the dining halls “because [students] are still afraid.”
“If the protests go on in this volume, we soon will,” she added.
Protests have persisted because Iranians have “a shared pain" of loving their country while “being deprived of the most basic rights of living and wanting a brighter future,” she said. "Unfortunately, the government has no strategies whatsoever in facing such protests. Their only tools are oppression.”
Nastaran said she has seen children younger than university age roaming around campus and taking pictures of students. Unmarked ambulances, which rights group say have been used to transport detainees, are parked outside of campus, she said.
The Post, which does not have accreditation to report inside Iran, could not independently verify the students’ accounts.
Iran has what students referred to as a “starring system" for alleged bad behavior, in which several strikes can mean a permanent expulsion or campus ban.
University students have long been the “torch bearers” of pro-democracy movements in Iran, said Foroogh Farhang, a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University. While studying as an undergraduate in Iran, she was suspended from her university in the aftermath of pro-democracy protests in 2009.
Universities are considered relatively progressive, Farhang said, but also pull students from diverse backgrounds.
Universities represent “the multifaceted quality of Iranian society,” she said.
Iranian students take a standardized test at the end of high school that largely determines where and what they will study. This process is meant to provide equal access to higher education — though there are constraints on what women can study and how they can participate in campus life.
Many of these restrictions were put in place after the 1979 revolution, when Shiite revolutionaries ousted Iran’s western-backed shah and set up a theocratic security state.
Tehran further tightened its grip after the 2009 Green Movement, when millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest election fraud and demand political reforms. University students were key leaders of those protests, and many were arrested, tortured, permanently expelled and forced into exile, said Manijeh Moradian, a professor at Barnard College.
In response, the government imposed new limits on the number of women who could study certain topics at universities, shut down student organizations and expanded the presence of pro-government groups on campuses.
Iran’s ultraconservative president, Ebrahim Raisi, clamped down further this spring, imposing stricter hijab and dress codes for women.
The contradiction of widely accessible higher education alongside deep political, social and economic discontent helped make universities central to this uprising, Moradian said.
“There’s this vast expansion of education, of free public education, of all these young people with expectations, with hopes that they can have jobs. And when those hopes are dashed you get rebellious,” she said.
While students rose up in 2009 to demand democracy and fair elections, this time students are “rejecting the Islamic republic as a failed experiment,” Moradian said. Due to “a combination of internal corruption and mismanagement and maximum pressure sanctions,” she added, this generation has seen “declining living standards [and] every effort of reform closed off.”
That has left students like Saber, 21, who studies science at the University of Tehran, at a crossroads.
“What I would like to see is a bright future for Iran,” he said. ”But if I want to be realistic, I need to say that there is also a serious crisis of hope among people. … My friends have left to Europe and North America.”
Every effort, in the dining halls and beyond, he said, is part of a broader struggle for freedom.
“This segregation is much more the regime’s attempt to show off their power rather than having anything to do with religion or beliefs,” he said. | 2022-11-04T06:26:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Iran universities became the center of the Mahsa Amini protests - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/iran-protests-students-hijab-amini/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/iran-protests-students-hijab-amini/ |
A Ukrainian rocket launcher fires toward Russian positions on a front line in the Kharkiv region on Nov. 3. (Ihor Tkachov/AFP/Getty Images)
Russian troops appear poised for a complete withdrawal from Kherson, Western officials said Thursday. The preparations for what would amount to an “orderly, well-planned and deliberate” retreat have reached an advanced stage, officials said, heightening speculation that the Russians could imminently pull back from the left, or eastern, bank of the Dnieper River, which serves as a natural defensive barrier for the bulk of the Russian force deployed further east.
Ukraine can take the remaining territory on the west side of the Dnieper River in Kherson, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at a news conference Thursday. Ukrainian officials in recent days have signaled that an assault on the city could be imminent.
U.S. Embassy officials in Russia have visited imprisoned basketball star Brittney Griner, the White House said Thursday. “We are told she’s doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One. She reiterated that the United States had made a “significant offer” to the Kremlin to secure the release of both Griner and Paul Whelan, another U.S. citizen detained in Russia.
Ukraine began scheduled power outages across Kyiv and 10 other regions this week after a barrage of Russian strikes damaged the country’s energy infrastructure. In his nightly speech Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said about 4.5 million people were temporarily without electricity.
Zaporizhzhia’s nuclear power plant was forced into full blackout mode late Wednesday because of Russian attacks that damaged transmission lines linking the nuclear plant to the Ukrainian power system, Energoatom, Ukraine’s national nuclear operator, said Thursday. It added that it had only enough fuel to run the plant’s diesel generators for 15 days. “This is an extremely concerning development that again demonstrates the plant’s fragile and vulnerable situation,” International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said.
More than 100 Russian servicemen were released following negotiations with the Ukrainian government, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday. The men will be flown to Moscow for treatment, the ministry said. Earlier Thursday, the pro-Kremlin separatist leader, Denis Pushilin, said 107 Ukrainian servicemen would also be returned to Kyiv-controlled territory.
U.S. personnel based at the embassy in Kyiv have for months inspected weapons deliveries at unspecified locations in Ukraine, the Pentagon said Thursday, at sites described as “not near the front lines.” The inspections were standard accountability measures, and there is no evidence of widespread weapons diversion, Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement. It is unclear whether the United States has detailed its activity to Russia, which has said it would view any U.S. military activity within Ukraine as a provocation.
The British ambassador to Russia was summoned by Moscow on Thursday after Russian officials accused London of being involved in a drone strike on Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Crimea. Britain has denied involvement, accusing Russia of “false claims.” British media reported that the ambassador, Deborah Bronnert, was met by protesters outside Russia’s foreign ministry.
Microsoft announced Thursday it was extending free vital technology support to Ukraine, which it valued at about $100 million. The support includes cybersecurity protection and Microsoft Cloud services and will last throughout 2023, the company said.
Sens. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) met Ukrainian families in Kyiv on Thursday and promised further humanitarian support for Ukraine. This year, the U.S. has given more than $1.5 billion in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and neighboring countries, according to the United States Agency for International Development.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created the “fastest and largest displacement witnessed in decades,” Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. Some 14 million people have been forced from their homes since the invasion was launched in February, he said. | 2022-11-04T06:26:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ |
Dusty Baker stuck with Justin Verlander in Game 5, and the Houston Astros headed home with a 3-2 lead. (Jason Szenes/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
PHILADELPHIA — Justin Verlander still had the ball, and Dusty Baker still had one of baseball’s best bullpens, which he kept cooped up behind the outfield fence at Citizens Bank Park. In the contemporary postseason, this just isn’t something you see much. What in the name of Kevin Cash is going on here?
It was only the fifth inning of Game 5 of the World Series. Verlander once thought of the fifth inning as about the middle of a normal outing. But when Bryce Harper of the Philadelphia Phillies doubled into the corner on Verlander’s 84th pitch, this was a critical juncture. Verlander was already navigating the pop-off-at-any-moment Phillies’ lineup for a third time — kryptonite for modern pitchers, enough to make front-office architects snap their slide rulers in half.
“I was considering after the Bryce double,” Verlander said afterward, “whether Dusty was gonna leave me in there or not. I wasn’t sure.”
Verlander had given up a home run on his second pitch of the game and walked four — more than he had walked in any of his 31 regular and postseason starts to date. The (in)famous stat about the 39-year-old former Cy Young and MVP was that he had never won a World Series start in eight tries. He held it together on Thursday night, with his Houston Astros leading 2-1, but the holding together part was with gum and glue.
Because you know the result, we’ll get it out of the way: The Astros beat the Phillies, 3-2, and now have two shots at home over the weekend to win their second World Series title — and Baker’s first. If that happens, will Baker’s decision on Verlander — pull him or trust him? — be pondered in history? Probably not. But it resonated on Thursday.
Increasingly, managing in the postseason calls for urgency, and if you don’t believe that, here’s an army of Ivy League-educated number crunchers to teach you why. Yet in the hours before Thursday’s game, Baker telegraphed what he would do if such a moment presented itself.
“Everybody’s wondering, is he on a short leash?” Baker said. “I mean, no. He doesn’t have a leash at all. I mean, he’s Justin Verlander. Nobody can get out of trouble better than him.”
Part of being Verlander — part of being a starting pitcher — is that it gets harder to retire hitters when they see you a third time. Verlander is coming off a season that will likely result in his third Cy Young Award, so the first time he faced lineups he held them to a paltry .451 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. By the third time through, that number crept up to .601. He’s still Justin Verlander, just a less effective version. That’s a plain truth about starting pitchers.
So with two outs in a one-run game, with Harper on second, Baker remained in the dugout. Verlander remained on the mound. Nick Castellanos, who drove in the first run off Verlander in the Phillies’ five-run comeback against him in Game 1, stepped to the plate. The bullpen door stayed closed. For Baker, this was not an inflection point. It was allowing a capable worker to perform his job.
“To me, that was his game,” Baker said. “Like I’ve said many times, he’s our ace, and it’s hard to pull your ace, because that’s why he’s the ace. Who can you bring in?”
A day earlier, Baker had pondered a question about how to balance the urgency of managing in the postseason with allowing the game to play out as it should. It’s an important one for him, because his postseasons are nothing if not star-crossed. He stuck with Verlander in Game 1, and the Astros coughed up a five-run lead. He stuck with Lance McCullers Jr. in Game 3, and McCullers gave up homers to the first two men he faced for the third time. The baseball ledger in the sky owes Baker some postseason breaks, but mortals down here know he has plenty of self-inflicted wounds.
Boswell: The combined no-hitter isn’t a sign of baseball’s decay. It’s the opposite.
“There is more urgency,” Baker said. “But at the same time, there’s a difference between urgency and panic. There’s a fine line between ’em.”
How to tell if Baker panics? Does he chomp on that ever-present toothpick any harder?
Who knows? What resulted was the kind of drama that should be injected into October (and November) more often: a tiring ace, a capable hitter, a one-run game, and a manager sitting on his hands. Baker’s non-decision was easy to second-guess in the moment — not in 1982 or 1992, but in 2022. .
Before we get to how this played out, remember when Cash, the manager of the crunch-every-number Tampa Bay Rays, pulled Blake Snell with one out in the sixth inning of Game 6 of the 2020 World Series? A refresher: Snell held a 1-0 lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers. He allowed a one-out single to Austin Barnes. Up next: the top of the order, three dangerous hitters in Mookie Betts, Corey Seager and Justin Turner. Snell’s evening against them, to that point: six at-bats, six strikeouts.
Cash came out of the dugout. Snell went to it.
Related: The Dodgers won Game 6.
“They’re not easy decisions,” Cash said afterward. “ … I didn’t want Mookie or Seager seeing Blake a third time.”
This is not a screed against analytics. It isn’t. They’re a combination of fascinating and essential, and they absolutely help individual baseball teams win more baseball games. Empirically, there’s no way to dispute that.
They’re also strangling the sport. One of the most appealing aspects of a baseball game — be it in April or August or the first week of November — is a starting pitcher navigating a lineup inning after inning. Yet because the numbers say starters should face fewer hitters than they once did, they do. Over time, the key question “Who’s pitching?” affects a smaller part of each game.
This is also not a defense of Baker’s strategy to allow Verlander to face Castellanos. In the moment, I thought he should have pulled him. I can say with confidence that a high percentage of front-office members on couches across the country thought the same thing.
Dusty Baker isn’t in a front office. He’s in the dugout. Thank goodness for that.
With some drama built, it’s worth asking: How could it be created more frequently? Could there be a rule that a starting pitcher who has given up two or fewer runs and whose team leads the game has to — I don’t know — face X batters for a third time? Or complete five innings? These are things to chew on in offseasons to come.
But here was Verlander, trusted by his manager, left to dig deep. How fun.
“I was thankful for the opportunity,” Verlander said.
He fell behind Castellanos 2-0. He evened the count with a pair of sliders. And then, the battle was on. Castellanos fouled off, in order, a 98-mph fastball, a slider and a change-up before taking a curveball for a ball to bring the count full. “Just doing anything I could to just stay relaxed and get the job done,” Castellanos said. Verlander came with another curve. Castellanos responded with another foul.
This is baseball. This is the World Series. This is what it’s about. Veteran starter. Capable hitter. Strap it on.
“You’re really just … as a pitcher, trying to read swings, see reactions, see what he’s seeing well, see what he’s not seeing well,” Verlander said, “maybe where I can expand [the strike zone], where I can expose a weakness, whether he’s making an adjustment mid-at-bat.
“A lot. A lot’s going on.”
On the 10th pitch of the at-bat, Verlander threw a slider.
“I just missed it,” Castellanos said. He lofted it to left. “This is a game of what? Centimeters or whatever? If I’m on top of that ball a little bit more, we’re in a different situation for the rest of the game.”
The Astros aren’t on the brink of a championship because Dusty Baker stuck with Justin Verlander in the fifth, or because Verlander finally has a World Series “W” to his credit. But there’s something to learn about why that moment was fun, and work to see if that feeling can be injected into the game — from April to autumn — more regularly. An old-school manager stuck with his old-school strategy, and it provided what might be one of the signature moments of this World Series. | 2022-11-04T06:26:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dusty Baker and Justin Verlander's World Series moment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/dusty-baker-justin-verlander-astros-world-series/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/dusty-baker-justin-verlander-astros-world-series/ |
A political ad financed by longtime Trump aid Stephen Miller’s America First Legal alleged Vice President Harris actively discriminated against White Americans. (Video: The Washington Post)
“When did racism against White people become okay?”
— voice-over of radio and television ads airing in Georgia, sponsored by America First Legal, Nov. 1
America First Legal (AFL), founded by Trump immigration guru Stephen Miller, bills itself as a conservative version of the American Civil Liberties Union. The organization has filed many legal challenges to Biden administration policies, both domestic and foreign, that it says undermine fundamental rights of Americans.
The group’s radio ad — which Politico said is running in several Georgia media markets and Tallahassee, just south of the Georgia border — and a similar television ad encapsulate a key argument of the group in explicitly racial terms. The group says that efforts by the federal government to prioritize aid for vulnerable communities — or to correct historic wrongs — is a form of racism against White people and is just as pernicious as racism against Blacks.
“Stop left-wing racism,” reads the text of the television ad. “End anti-white bigotry.”
The ads offer a window into how Miller’s group is laying the groundwork for legal and political steps that would undermine efforts by politicians and companies to address inequities between Blacks and Whites — often believed to be a legacy of slavery and systemic racism.
Many of the claims made in the ads stem directly from lawsuits filed by AFL, as we will explain below. At least one of the statements was derived from a misleading video that was highlighted on right-wing social media.
Let’s go examine the factual assertions in the ad line by line.
“Joe Biden put white people last in line for covid relief funds.”
When Biden ran for president, he highlighted how minority communities appeared to be disproportionately affected by the economic swoon caused by the coronavirus pandemic. When Congress was crafting the $1.9 trillion covid relief bill early in his administration, experts testified that minority-owned businesses were more vulnerable to economic distress than businesses owned by White entrepreneurs — and they were more likely to be in areas with higher rates of covid-19 infections.
But controversy erupted when the Biden administration sought to limit the first three weeks of applications to a $29 billion restaurant-relief fund to businesses that were 51 percent owned by “women, veterans, or socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.” Under U.S. law, “socially disadvantaged” is defined as “those who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias within American society because of their identities as members of groups and without regard to their individual qualities.”
AFL sued on behalf of a White male restaurant owner. A federal judge in Texas blocked the effort, saying the plaintiff is “experiencing race and sex discrimination at the hand of government officials” because the fund might be depleted before the first three weeks were completed. The Biden administration initially won another case — filed by a White man in Tennessee who owned a restaurant 50-50 with his Hispanic wife — but then lost at the appeals court level in a 2-1 vote.
The lawsuits put the restaurant-aid program in turmoil and nearly 3,000 restaurant owners whose grants were approved were told they would not be paid. Ultimately, the Small Business Administration says that in Biden’s first year, 42 percent of restaurant relief went to women-owned businesses and about 15 percent went to minority-owned businesses.
“Kamala Harris said disaster aid should go to non-White citizens first.”
This line reflects a claim that was recently hot in Republican circles — but it is false. A clip of the vice president was taken out of context.
On Sept. 30, Vice President Harris was interviewed by actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas, who asked a long multipart question that covered aid for Hurricane Ian, the impact of climate change and global disparities. Harris, in response, barely addressed the Ian part of the question but instead focused mostly on the climate-change aspect of the question.
“In particular on the disparities, as you have described rightly, which is that it is our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making,” Harris said at one point. “We have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity; understanding that not everyone starts out at the same place.”
Ryan Fournier, executive director of Students for Trump, tweeted over this clip a statement that took her words out of context: “You can’t make this up. Kamala Harris said the administration will be giving hurricane resources ‘based on equity’ by directing funds to ‘communities of color.’ I guess everyone else is just screwed.”
His tweet attracted the attention of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and now owner of Twitter: “Should be according to greatest need, not race or anything else.”
A Reuters reporter who covered the event posted a Twitter thread a day later saying that Harris’s remarks were “being deliberately distorted.” Nevertheless Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) amplified the misinformation when he was challenged by “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan about the rhetoric of some Republicans. He claimed Harris said “If you have a different skin color, you’re going to get relief faster.”
Brennan quickly said that Harris did not say that — and Scott retorted: “That’s exactly what she meant.”
“Liberal politicians block access to medicine based on skin color”
This line refers to an effort by Miller’s group to challenge efforts by states to account for the fact that hospitalization and death rates from covid-19 have cumulatively been higher for minorities throughout the pandemic. But again the central premise is false — there is no evidence that anyone has been denied access to medicine used to treat covid because of their race.
Under pressure from Miller’s group, Minnesota, Utah and New Mexico have rolled back policies that were once hailed by public health professionals as good-faith efforts to bridge the pandemic’s deadly racial divide. The ad offers as a source a Wall Street Journal opinion article, headlined “New York’s Race-Based Preferential Covid Treatments.” Miller’s group — and others — have also sued New York state to get it to remove race as one of many selection criteria for outpatient antiviral treatments, but a court in March dismissed one such lawsuit.
“Progressive corporations, airlines, universities all openly discriminate against white Americans.”
This line asserts that corporate and university policies that seek to consider the racial background of applicants to help achieve diversity in their workforce or student body constitutes discrimination against Whites. AFL, no surprise, is at the forefront of filing legal challenges to such policies.
For instance, after Amazon in 2020 announced a program to build diversity among its delivery contractors — offering $10,000 grants to “help reduce the barriers to entry for Black, Latinx, and Native American entrepreneurs” — AFL sued earlier this year, alleging “patently unlawful racial discrimination.” (The Washington Post is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.)
The Supreme Court is weighing whether race can be barred as a factor in college admissions — and it’s possible many of these other attacks on diversity efforts will end up before the high court.
“The Biden administration and left-wing officials in education, business, and governments across the country are imposing policies that systemically and routinely discriminate against American citizens based solely on the color of their skin. That is illegal. Our advertisements make the point that racism is always wrong — regardless of who it is targeted against,” Gene Hamilton, AFL’s general counsel, said in a statement to The Fact Checker. “The goal of our educational advertisements that AFL is running simply informs the American people about something they all know to be true in 2022, but that major news outlets fail to report on.”
The Pinocchio Test
These ads are a disingenuous stew that claim the Biden administration and liberals are harming Whites with policies intended to deal with racial inequities, such as minority communities being more affected by the coronavirus pandemic. But Harris did not say what the ad claims and there is no evidence people have been denied medicine on the basis of race.
The policy on covid relief funds for restaurants was not aimed at all Whites, as the ads claim — or even all White men. But there was a policy limiting funds until it was halted by the courts. The overall message that such policies constitute “anti-White” racism is worthy of Four Pinocchios, but the factual claims made in the ad earn Three.
Three Pinocchios | 2022-11-04T07:05:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stephen Miller’s disingenuous ad charging ‘anti-White’ racism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/stephen-millers-disingenuous-ad-charging-anti-white-racism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/stephen-millers-disingenuous-ad-charging-anti-white-racism/ |
Chinese police escort Taiwanese suspects extradited from Spain after being accused of telephone and online fraud at Beijing airport in 2019. (Yin Gang/Xinhua News Agency/AP)
The alleged Taiwanese ringleader of a big telecoms fraud syndicate was all set to be extradited from Poland to China last month — a coup for Beijing’s international policing operations and its extensive efforts to hunt down fugitives.
Hung Tao Liu’s handover would have been a breakthrough in a probe that three years ago saw nearly 100 Taiwanese suspects taken into custody in Spain, flown to Beijing and then escorted from the plane between uniformed Chinese officers. Instead, his case is likely to become a major setback and an embarrassing failure for Chinese authorities.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in October that Liu should not be turned over to Chinese authorities because they had failed to sufficiently guarantee that he would not face ill-treatment on arrival. That judgment will make extraditions from the continent to China significantly more difficult, if not near-impossible, according to lawyers, human rights activists and legal scholars. The Madrid-based nongovernmental organization Safeguard Defenders called it a “momentous decision” to protect human rights in Europe.
The ruling undercuts a decade-long effort by Beijing to normalize the repatriation of suspects wanted under Chinese law. But it is also signals a growing wariness of Chinese security operations on the continent. Multiple governments have launched investigations in recent weeks after the discovery of Chinese police “service stations” in dozens of cities from Dublin to Milan, reviving debates about whether China and Europe can agree on basic law enforcement protocols.
The court reflects “a shifting view in Europe in terms of rule of law and rights protection in China’s legal and criminal justice system,” said analyst Katja Drinhausen of the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.
This comes at a time when the European Union is rethinking its relationship with China. In recent years, ties have frayed over human rights issues, particularly in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — which China has yet to condemn — offered a stark reminder of the risks of engaging authoritarian regimes.
U.N. report: China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang
Miriam Lexmann, a member of the European Parliament from Slovakia, said Europe needs to heed the lessons of the invasion and reevaluate how it works with China, including on legal issues. “We have to rethink extradition treaties and any kind of cooperation with China,” said Lexmann, whom China sanctioned last year in retaliation for E.U. restrictions on Chinese officials over mass incarceration in Xinjiang.
The court’s unanimous decision on Liu’s treatment drew heavily on research from human rights groups and notes China’s refusal to allow visits from representatives of international organizations who might, for instance, inspect detention facilities. This opacity is cited as a key reason the court cannot take China’s informal guarantees at face value.
The accused’s citizenship was not relevant to the ruling because it does not touch on issues of sovereignty, according to Yu-Jie Chen, an assistant research professor at the jurisprudence institute of Academia Sinica in Taiwan. “It is really just discussing whether this Taiwanese, as a person like everyone else, can be extradited to China,” she said.
Unless the decision is appealed, it will apply to any extradition sought by China from a European country. Lawyers say it is unlikely to be overturned. Liu, who is in his early 40s, remains in custody in Poland.
“This ruling is actually very simple,” said Marcin Górski, a legal scholar at the University of Łódź in Poland who represented Liu. “If you are suspected of applying torture and if you close your country to international scrutiny, this is the outcome, because we do not extradite people from Europe unless we are pretty much sure that they wouldn’t be killed or tortured.”
Lawyers involved in ongoing extradition hearings expect the judgment to undermine ongoing and future proceedings, in part because the court addressed in such general terms the concerns of mistreatment in Chinese detention.
Enrico Di Fiorino, an Italian lawyer who has worked on extradition cases, said the ruling also was significant because the suspect is not political or part of a religious group. “What is requested to change is — at the end of the day — the Chinese legal and judicial system, to avoid the use of torture and other forms of ill-treatment in its detention facilities and penitentiaries,” he said.
China’s aggressive efforts to bring back fugitives grow more brazen
The investigations launched recently into the existence of those Chinese police “service stations” — believed to operate in at least 50 locations worldwide, according to a recent report by Safeguard Defenders — center on a separate legal concern. Yet both issues highlight the challenges that China’s transnational policing tactics pose for democratic countries.
“China is acting as if they could implement their own sovereignty on our soils,” said Reinhard Bütikofer, a member of the European Parliament from Germany, who was also sanctioned by Beijing. “It really speaks to the necessity to step up European self-defense against Chinese exportation of oppression.”
Bütikofer’s calls for E.U. member states to suspend existing extradition treaties with China have largely gone unheeded, but he believes that leader Xi Jinping’s harsh political repression and his recently extended authority at the Chinese Communist Party’s congress could “resuscitate that conversation.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Wednesday denied allegations that China is running illegal police stations, saying the service centers were run by volunteers from the overseas Chinese community to carry out processes such as renewing driving licenses. “They are not police personnel from China. There is no need to make people nervous about this,” he said during a regular news briefing in Beijing.
Neither China’s Ministry of Public Security or its National Supervisory Commission responded to requests for comment.
A high-profile, global anti-corruption campaign called Sky Net has been the driving force of China’s international policing efforts. The operation brings together law enforcement, anti-graft watchdogs, diplomats and judicial departments to hunt down fugitives. Since 2017, Sky Net has been responsible for more than 7,000 individuals being returned to China to stand trial, the party’s anti-graft watchdog said last month.
In addition to extradition treaties and Interpol red notices, Chinese authorities also rely on informal measures to “persuade” suspects to come back to China. Fox Hunt, a narrower campaign, focuses primarily on people wanted for economic crimes.
At an Oct. 24 news conference in Washington to announce charges against Chinese intelligence officers and officials in three separate cases, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said that the individuals involved had “mercilessly harassed a naturalized U.S. citizen to try to force him to return to China against his will” as part of a Fox Hunt probe.
Pushback against Chinese methods and the Liu judgment should make extraditions to China more difficult, but it remains unclear how much separate governments will respect the European Court of Human Rights judgment, noted Eva Pils, an expert on Chinese law at King’s College London.
There’s also concern whether China will respond to official channels being blocked by doubling down on off-books methods, Pils said, “where agents of the Chinese state carry out what they see as a kind of law enforcement activity, but without permission.” | 2022-11-04T07:27:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | European court ruling makes extraditions to China more difficult - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/china-europe-overseas-police-extradition/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/china-europe-overseas-police-extradition/ |
Oprah Winfrey, left, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles in September. (Chris Pizzello/AP)
Oprah Winfrey on Thursday endorsed John Fetterman (D) in the tightly contested Philadelphia Senate race, rejecting Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate running for the same seat, whom she helped make famous.
The TV icon also said Pennsylvania was “not the only race that matters,” and backed other Democrats running in next week’s midterm elections, including Beto O’Rourke in Texas, and Raphael G. Warnock and Stacey Abrams in Georgia.
Fetterman’s campaign welcomed the gesture. “It speaks volumes that Oprah would endorse Fetterman over Oz, after declining to weigh in during Oz’s primary election,” his campaign team said in a news release.
Winfrey was speaking at a Zoom event hosted by the Oprah Winfrey Network that focused on encouraging voters — especially young people and Black women — to vote.
Her comments supporting Fetterman come days before the crucial election in Pennsylvania, one of several tight battleground races that could determine which party controls the Senate after the midterms. Polling averages show at least seven Senate races within the margin of error, The Washington Post reported last week.
Fetterman and Oz clashed in a debate last month, but Fetterman gave a halting performance, showing signs of the stroke that he had suffered in May. It drew concern from those who worry he might not be able to carry out the duties of his office should he win the race, and applause from those who lauded his bravery in revealing the auditory processing challenges he still faces.
Winfrey’s support of Fetterman serves as a rebuke of Oz, whose prior TV career Winfrey helped launch and grow. Oz, a medical doctor, hosted a show on the Discovery Channel in the early 2000s called “Second Opinion with Dr. Oz.” Winfrey appeared on that show as a guest. Oz was later featured on Winfrey’s popular talk show, rising to national fame after more than 60 appearances. In 2009 he went on to host “The Dr. Oz Show,” which was co-produced by Winfrey’s company, Harpo Productions.
As a celebrity doctor, Oz provided a platform for potentially dangerous products and fringe viewpoints, The Post reported, including a weight-loss approach directly refuted by the Food and Drug Administration.
In Winfrey’s remarks Thursday, she urged voters to “use discernment and choose wisely to preserve the democracy of our country,” according to her spokeswoman.
Oz’s campaign team could not be immediately reached late Thursday, but his spokeswoman told the Philadelphia Inquirer that Oz “loves Oprah and respects the fact that they have different politics. He believes we need more balance and less extremism in Washington.” | 2022-11-04T08:45:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oprah endorses John Fetterman over Mehmet Oz for Pennsylvania Senate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/oprah-winfrey-endorse-fetterman-oz/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/oprah-winfrey-endorse-fetterman-oz/ |
By Jerry Brewer
Ever since his social media post last week sparked an outcry, Kyrie Irving's delusions have mixed with defiance in what has become a toxic combination. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says he will discuss the matter with the Nets guard, but will anything change? (Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)
Kyrie Irving, who is nothing more than a contrarian with a crossover, cannot be trusted to lead a pedestrian across the street, much less an NBA franchise in a borough of the nation’s largest city. Yet there he stood — noted anti-vaxxer, suspected antisemite, overexposed anti-logic windbag — in a position to hijack attention and humiliate a league that has gone to great lengths to promote social equality.
For nearly a week, he failed to muster the humility to quell his latest controversy, and this time he stirred something far more dangerous than the usual Kyrie nonsense. Given ample time, Irving wouldn’t apologize for posting a link on Twitter to a movie and book that contains atrocious misinformation about Jewish people. He dared his employer, the Brooklyn Nets, to show him that he’s not his own boss. On Thursday night, the Nets finally ended the ludicrous standoff and suspended Irving.
He will be gone for at least five games without pay. The Nets prolonged the pain and shame of this incident with their indecision, but in the end they were forceful in declaring Irving “currently unfit to be associated with the Brooklyn Nets.”
After several days of defiance and silence, Irving had accepted “responsibility” for his actions in an interview with reporters, talked in generalities about his respect for all people and released a joint statement with the Nets and the Anti-Defamation League in which he and the team each pledged $500,000. But he danced around direct questions about whether he had antisemitic beliefs.
Just minutes before Irving spoke Thursday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver strongly expressed his disappointment that Irving had yet to make an “unqualified apology.” Still, as Irving stood in front of microphones, cameras and recorders, he stopped short of saying sorry. The Nets realized they had given him enough chances to show sincere remorse.
“We were dismayed today, when given an opportunity in a media session, that Kyrie refused to unequivocally say he has no antisemitic beliefs, nor acknowledge specific hateful material in the film,” the team said in a statement. “This was not the first time he had the opportunity — but failed — to clarify. Such failure to disavow antisemitism when given a clear opportunity to do so is deeply disturbing, is against the values of our organization, and constitutes conduct detrimental to the team. Accordingly, we are of the view that he is currently unfit to be associated with the Brooklyn Nets.”
Irving didn’t relent until late Thursday night — after the Nets had announced the punishment. At last, Irving posted an apology on Instagram. All along, Brooklyn had wanted to slap Irving on the wrist. He was too stubborn to extend his hand until it was too late.
A man who takes so long to apologize — especially in this climate, when hatred of Jews is reinfecting society at an alarming level — is a troubling public figure. Irving has spent the past five years ruining the teams he has played for, espousing conspiracy theories and drifting into a narcissistic bubble. He has gone from a seemingly innocuous flat-Earther to a troubling coronavirus vaccine critic to a promoter of antisemitic tropes. Kanye West just got canceled for making vicious antisemitic remarks, yet Irving didn’t have the awareness to steer clear of posting that link. His behavior couldn’t go unchecked. He was sabotaging his team and the integrity of the entire NBA.
The Nets had punted on leadership all week. Owner Joe Tsai condemned the Twitter post, but initially he declined to suspend or fine Irving. The donation was an admirable gesture, but it didn’t really ask anything of Irving, who exercised a $37 million player option for this season with the Nets. There is no rehabilitation in writing a check.
Sean Marks, Brooklyn’s general manager, exemplified the Nets’ feckless approach when he spoke after the team parted ways with Steve Nash as coach. Marks had been a promising team architect until he got into the Kyrie business. Since acquiring Irving and Kevin Durant in 2019, the Nets have lost their way while trying to appease their stars.
Before this season, Marks talked about a culture reset, but it hasn’t happened. Irving flirted with leaving before opting into the final year of his contract this season because he had no good options. Durant requested a trade, but he backed off after teams were unwilling to meet Brooklyn’s asking price. Now, Nash is gone. And the Nets’ solution is reportedly to pursue embattled coach Ime Udoka, whom the Boston Celtics suspended for at least a season in September for an improper workplace relationship with a female subordinate.
On the court, Durant carries the burden of trying to lift a team that can’t be easily fixed. But Irving was still living his best, worst life somewhere beyond reality. He must have done his own research about playing successful basketball because the Nets are terrible. And they’re not going to get better with him as one of their central stars.
Irving embarrassed himself when asked about the Twitter post Saturday, attacking reporters instead of realizing he was also speaking to the public. The Nets did little beyond hide him from the media for several days. Marks acted as if the whole thing might blow over.
“At some point, he will come up here and do media again, but I think at this point we don’t want to cause more fuss right now, more interaction with people,” Marks said Tuesday. “Let’s let him simmer down and … I guess let’s let cooler minds prevail.”
It’s hard for Irving to have a cooler mind when he already thinks he’s the smartest person in any room. For most of the week, there was a leadership void throughout the sport when it was clear he needed to be held accountable. The players association sent out a boilerplate statement, but it didn’t bother to mention the name of Irving, who is a vice president in the union. Silver waited for Brooklyn to make a sufficient in-house resolution before coming with strong words. Everyone trusted Irving could be reasoned with; everyone looks foolish now. The league Silver oversees — in which players regularly declare “there is no place” for hate when other issues, particularly pertaining to race, arise — has tiptoed around Irving and watched him smear the NBA’s image.
The issue now isn’t the exploration of a star’s intentions. It isn’t about who Irving is or who he is perceived to be. The focus has shifted to what he is allowed to be. With Irving bringing a storm with him everywhere he goes, Silver seemed prepared to protect the league. The commissioner, who is Jewish, had announced he would visit with Irving in person soon.
If the two still have that meeting, the conversation will be different now. The Nets stepped forward and admitted they’ve had enough. Irving kept telling them and the entire world, “I’m going to be me.” At last, the Nets had the guts to show Irving who they are.
If Irving wants back on the court, he won’t be repeating what he told reporters Saturday: “I’m only going to get stronger because I’m not alone. I have a whole army around me.”
That was the 30-year-old at peak defiance and delusion. Irving is not getting stronger. He appears weaker and more misguided every day. And he doesn’t have an army around him. He has a legion of followers who will deem him irrelevant when his on-court highlights come to an end. His belief that he has nourished society in some lasting way is as ridiculous as his intimation two years ago that the Nets could be coached by committee. He has unintentionally fueled extremists, who now can manipulate his fame for their diabolical interests.
Now, the coddling of Kyrie has ceased. He has devolved from an eccentric to a detrimental star. He challenged the NBA to pick a side, and when the Nets had to prove that they stand for something, they could not allow their anti-everything, confused franchise player to carry on uninhibited.
The celebrity nuisance is gone — for now. His redemption may depend on whether he learns from this mistake. With Irving, sadly, you can’t be certain that will happen. | 2022-11-04T09:33:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Delusional, defiant Kyrie Irving is a stain the NBA could no longer ignore - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/kyrie-irving-nets-nba-antisemitism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/kyrie-irving-nets-nba-antisemitism/ |
The six-bedroom, 10-bathroom house was once home to a major supporter of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
This 50-year-old mansion in Bethesda, Md., underwent a lengthy modernization — including two years of design work and five years of construction. It now has a sleek, modern design. (Craig Westerman)
This 50-year-old mansion in Bethesda, Md., isn’t your typical 1970s house. It’s not just huge (15,000 square feet) and very expensive (at $12.5 million, the most expensive property now on the market in Montgomery County). It also underwent a lengthy modernization — including two years of design work and five years of construction — and lost its telltale vertical wood paneling and dark, warmly colored walls along the way.
“The owner definitely had a vision for that house,” architect Patrick Carter said of the recently completed renovation. “He wanted to really preserve it, the integrity of the core and the bones of it, but also transform it into what it is today from the 1970s that it was.”
The house was built for Albert Abramson, a commercial and residential developer who spent most of his life in the Washington area. Abramson was a major backer of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and served as chairman of the museum’s development committee. He was appointed to the museum’s council (board of trustees) by three presidents — Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton — and was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by Clinton.
Abramson’s landmark projects include the Washington Square office building in downtown Washington, which he built with another prominent developer, Theodore Lerner. (Lerner’s family is the majority owner of the Washington Nationals baseball team.) Abramson’s commercial background, Carter said, helps explain an unusual feature of the Bethesda house. It has a foundation of concrete and steel, which is not typical of this type of construction.
According to Carter, the unusual foundation appealed to the current owner, who was involved in “every detail” of the renovation. The construction team “went back to the drawing board a lot,” Carter said, which contributed to project’s extended timeline.
“He really added a lot of his own personalization,” said Al Otto, the project’s fifth and final builder. “So just because of the unique process, sort of designing as we built it, it was a very large house to build in that manner. I think in the end, it came out beautifully.”
The 1972 house is on a quiet road with mature trees. The real estate listing describes the property as “an estate with an old soul clad in contemporary finishes.” The site, expanded by its current owner, is nearly three acres. At the front of the house, an inlaid, crisscross pattern of pavement and grass has replaced a circular driveway surrounding an island.
“When you would come up to it before, with the landscaping and the heavy precast concrete balustrades, it was all very overbearing and dreary,” Carter said, “so by putting the patchwork of paving in the front, it just helps to lift the house.”
The 19-foot-high greeting hall gives way to an open-concept main level with slab-glass staircases on either end. Several formal spaces, set up with entertaining in mind, could be used as sitting or dining rooms. The new kitchen, part of the renovation, has twin wall ovens, a large quartz center island and Miele appliances. A primary bedroom suite is set apart at the end of a hallway.
The upper level is accessible by way of the stairs or two elevators. On this level, there is another primary bedroom suite. It has a raised ceiling and a walk-in closet/dressing room with mirrored doors. Three sets of French doors open to a Juliet balcony. The en suite bathroom has twin floating vanities and a heated floor. A hallway that overlooks the entry hall has three more bedrooms, each with an attached bathroom. Another bedroom and bathroom are on the lower level, which opens to the backyard.
In the rear of the house, the grounds have an outdoor kitchen, a stone terrace, a gazebo and an outdoor pool with an automated retractable cover. A tennis court sits near the edge of the property.
Another wing, a renovated part of the original house, has an exercise space, wet and dry saunas, and an indoor swimming pool with a built-in bar and a skylight. With its exposed wood paneling, the pool room is the only room that still hints at its ’70s origins.
8801 Fernwood Rd., Bethesda, Md.
Bedrooms/bathrooms: 6/10
Features: The mansion, built in 1972, was recently renovated. The property, almost three acres, features a tennis court, two swimming pools, wet and dry saunas, heated floors, an outdoor kitchen and two primary bedroom suites.
Listing agent: Daniel Heider, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty. | 2022-11-04T09:37:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Renovated Bethesda, Md., mansion lists for $12.5 million - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/04/renovated-bethesda-mansion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/04/renovated-bethesda-mansion/ |
Paul Mescal on ‘Aftersun,’ disaster movies and that ‘Normal People’ ending
Two years after his breakout role in “Normal People,” actor Paul Mescal, seen here in August, returns to lead status with the independent film “Aftersun.” (Euan Cherry/Getty Images)
(The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
Review: ‘Aftersun’ follows a father-daughter bond, seen through a haze of memory
A: I think so. I also don’t know how I would do something like that. I don’t know where I would start. It’s knowing what you’re drawn to, what you feel like you’re good at, and also knowing where your limitations lie. I feel like if I were in a disaster movie, it would be a f---ing disaster. I mean, that’s not true, but I don’t know how I would start, whereas I feel like something that’s rooted into a relationship I can hook onto, I know how to start those things. I know how they interest me. | 2022-11-04T10:21:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paul Mescal on ‘Aftersun,’ disaster movies and that ‘Normal People’ ending - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/04/paul-mescal-aftersun-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/04/paul-mescal-aftersun-interview/ |
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducts Washington guitar legend Libba Cotten
The legendary D.C. area performer, who came to fame in her 70s, receives the posthumous honor Nov. 5
Blues and folk musician Elizabeth Cotten, circa 1970. (GAB Archive/Redferns/Getty Images)
One of the nation’s top entertainers, Hazel Scott, blew up piano jazz in the 1940s. Then she vanished. A Washington arts presenter and Dance Theatre of Harlem are launching a revival.
Vinyl is booming in the digital age. So why does the best way to listen feel just out of reach?
Few would deny the enduring influence of Cotten’s signature song, “Freight Train,” a fingerpicking tour de force from her debut album that still dazzles today. Composed when she was age 11, the song became a folk standard in the late 1950s and ’60s. It exemplifies her guitar style, known as “Cotten-picking,” which has a pulsating, syncopated rhythm akin to the rippling of a mountain stream. Even today, it’s one of the first songs novices learn to play on acoustic guitar, with Cotten’s version garnering 2.7 million views on You Tube.
What is often overlooked, though, is that Cotten worked five years in the Seeger home in tony Chevy Chase before her talent was discovered, and, even then, it was discovered by accident. It speaks volumes about the racial divide of the era that in a house filled with music and instruments, Cotten did not feel it was her place to mention her musical prowess. Even so, she couldn’t resist returning to her first love in her spare moments.
“The family guitar was hung on a wall in the kitchen. I came in after school one day and found Libba playing it left-handed, index finger swinging away doing the job of the thumb, her thumb relegated to fingerdom,” wrote Peggy in her 2017 memoir about the moment she found Cotten playing “Freight Train." “She dragged songs out of her childhood, polished them up and sang them on Saturdays. Her church in North Carolina had deemed guitar playing unsuitable for a married woman so, a girl bride, Libba had laid the instrument down by the riverside. The Lord is fond of second comings. Libba picked up the guitar once more in a Chevy Chase kitchen and she damn well wasn’t going to lay it down again.”
Meanwhile, Peggy took her five-string banjo to England and made “Freight Train” a staple of her live shows as she launched her own career. It soon became a favorite in the British folk-music scene and a radio hit; it even made it into the repertoire of Liverpool skiffle band, the Quarrymen, sung by a teenage John Lennon.
In 1968, Cotten went on a tour of the South with Mike Seeger and his then-wife, musician Alice Gerrard. It was a package tour with a grass-roots mission to connect with working-class people. Along with Cotten, featured performers included fellow septuagenarian Dock Boggs, a banjo legend from the coal fields of southwest Virginia who called her “Miss Elizabeth.”
Cotten attracted a diverse fan base across the country. Evans remembers a show at the Sisterfire festival in Takoma Park in 1983, an outdoor celebration of women artists and musicians. “So we get up onstage and we look out at the crowd and we see all these women, and some are nude from the waist up, ” Evans recalls with a laugh. “And we realize it’s a lesbian festival! Granny looks at me and I’m looking at her and she says, ‘Well, Sweetie Pie, I didn’t know anything about this!’ ”
Eddie Dean is a writer in Maryland. | 2022-11-04T10:21:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Self-taught guitar legend Libba Cotten enters Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/11/04/libba-cotten-guitartist-hall-fame/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/11/04/libba-cotten-guitartist-hall-fame/ |
25 years on, dad and daughter return to ‘Lion King.’ Cue the tears.
A theater critic comes back to a pivotal musical on Broadway in his quest to pass on his love of theater
Illustration for sa-marks_lionking (Jin Xia for The Washington Post)
NEW YORK — As the actor playing Mufasa burst into song onstage, the little girl next to me tapped my forearm. “It’s from the second movie,” she whispered, with the depth of knowledge of an expert who had watched every incarnation of “The Lion King,” live, on video and DVD, over and over and over.
This wasn’t my first time seeing the show, either. But the person next to me was a little girl only in the recesses of my memory. My seatmate in the Minskoff Theatre was in fact my 30-year-old daughter, Lizzie. (30! How the heck did that happen?) We’d come back to “The Lion King” on the occasion of its 25th anniversary on Broadway.
A test of time for a Tony-winning show. A milestone of the heart for us.
I had first brought Lizzie to “The Lion King” on an evening in the fall of 1997, when she was 5 years old, in that blazing moment of awakening when theater was coming alive for her. (And her mother could still dress her, without complaint, in pretty embroidered dresses.) Clutching a bag of gummy bears and other mushy treats made of 1,000 percent sugar, Lizzie watched raptly, her feet tucked into a pair of mary janes. Were they even touching the floor of the New Amsterdam Theatre?
“The Lion King” celebrated its official opening night on Nov. 13, 1997. Since then, director Julie Taymor’s life-size puppets of elephants and rhinoceros, leopards and giraffes have loped onto the Broadway stage for the heart-stopping opener, “The Circle of Life,” on more than 9,750 evenings and afternoons. Seeing it again with Lizzie (the show moved to the Minskoff after “Mary Poppins” took up residence in the New Amsterdam) brought me back to one of my proudest achievements as a critic: I had turned my daughter into a theater lover.
At an Italian restaurant before the recent performance, we tried to recall all the shows I’d taken her to. I think we’re still counting. Lizzie has a quirky aversion to sitting on the aisle — the critic’s perch — so she’s seen every show from the orchestra, one seat in. My job’s special access accrued to Lizzie’s benefit, too. On days over the years when I wasn’t reviewing, we would on occasion get to go backstage, an opportunity I grabbed only if I thought it would bedazzle my daughter. So at a tender age she shook hands with the Beast of “Beauty and the Beast” (thanks, Jeff McCarthy!); fixed her tweener gaze up at Harvey Fierstein, decked out as Edna Turnblad in “Hairspray”; met, as a teen, the cast of “Next to Normal” when I was doing an article about its star, Alice Ripley.
“Next to Normal,” the story of a woman struggling with mental illness, set to a score by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, is Lizzie’s all-time favorite — and the cast album I would hear wafting out of her room once upon a time, as she worked on one of her art projects. I measure the advance of our musical-theater adventures in Playbills, the way arborists count the rings of sycamore trees: “Avenue Q,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Jersey Boys,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Wicked,” “Matilda,” “Movin’ Out,” “West Side Story,” “Spring Awakening,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Seussical.” Oh, “Cats,” of course. And triumphs such as “Hamilton” and boondoggles like “King Kong.”
Back when Lizzie was 9, I began playing the score of “Rent” in the car. She adored it, so the following year, I took her to a touring production of Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer-winning musical at the Warner Theatre in Washington.
“Dad, what’s in the bag?” 10-year-old Lizzie asked as one of the characters produced a packet of white powder. Oy vey, I thought. Sighing, I replied: “It’s drugs.” And now, back to the show!
“I learned a lot from ‘Rent,’ ” Lizzie recalled over our pre-“Lion King” pasta. “ ‘What are drugs?’ ‘What’s AIDS?’ ‘What’s a lesbian?’ ”
Did Lizzie teach me, too? Why, yes, of course. Back in ’97, the same year as “Lion King,” I took her to a revival of “Annie” on Broadway that was so desultory that she refused to return to her seat after intermission. A critic in training! (My wife sat with her in the lobby while I served out the remainder of my sentence in the theater.) Her impatience didn’t condemn the production, but it did help confirm for me what wasn’t working. In other words, a lot.
At the opposite end of the enchantment spectrum, I brought a pair of 6-year-olds — Lizzie and a school chum — to a Broadway revival of “Peter Pan” with Cathy Rigby. Watching them watch, wide-eyed, was a spectacle on its own. “Their contentment was unequivocal — in a theater, 6-year-olds tend to be enthralled or asleep,” I wrote in my review.
As we settled in for our return to “The Lion King,” I thought about how woven into our lives the musical has been — from the high chair from which Lizzie watched the video hundreds of times, to Row K in the Minskoff. (The voices in that animated version! James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Nathan Lane, Whoopi Goldberg, Matthew Broderick, Ernie Sabella …) Behind us, seeing the live show for the first time, was an 11-year-old French girl, who told us she lived in Jersey City. She was translating the dialogue for other children with her, who were visiting New York from their town in the Alps.
I thought about the astonishing durability of the show, how many others in attendance like them were not even born when Lizzie and I visited a quarter-century ago — even members of the cast. The masks and puppets by Taymor and Michael Curry remain the most beguilingly imaginative in musical-theater history. The actors, among them Brandon A. McCall as Simba, Tshidi Manye as Rafiki, L. Steven Taylor as Mufasa and Stephen Carlile as Scar, uphold the musical’s estimable standards. And the score, principally by Elton John and Tim Rice, contains the timelessly jaunty “Hakuna Matata” and silkily romantic “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.”
And, of course, “The Circle of Life.” A sense of well-being washed over me, as wittily conjured beasts trundled down the aisles, my grown child by my side — the girl who’d fallen in love with animals before she could speak and spent the ensuing decades drawing them, all the way to art school. Had it been 25 years since we first experienced this? Really?
“Thank you for such a wonderful night,” Lizzie texted me afterward, along with a face-with-three-hearts emoji.
Yes, I felt the love tonight.
The Lion King, music and lyrics by Elton John and Tim Rice, book by Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi, additional music and lyrics by Lebo M., Mark Mancina, Jay Rifkin, Julie Taymor and Hans Zimmer. Directed and costume design by Taymor. About 2½ hours. Minskoff Theatre, 200 W. 45th St., New York. lionking.com. | 2022-11-04T10:21:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'The Lion King's' 25th anniversary on Broadway: Cue the tears - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/11/04/lion-king-25th-anniversary-broadway/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/11/04/lion-king-25th-anniversary-broadway/ |
Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point network worked to purge officials who affirmed the 2020 election results
GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on Tuesday in Chandler, Ariz. (Caitlin O’Hara for The Washington Post)
“Rusty, I will be working toward ensuring you do not win your election in 2022,” Bowyer warned in a March text message obtained by The Washington Post. “I appreciate your service, I will do whatever it takes to ensure you are retired.”
Soon, the state legislator faced a rush of ridicule on social media and in negative ads as Turning Point’s political arm launched a campaign to “Replace RINO Rusty.” The speaker lost his primary for an open state Senate seat in August to a Turning Point-backed Republican who called the 2020 election a “conspiracy headed up by the Devil himself.”
The takedown of one of the most powerful Republicans in the state illustrates the rise of Turning Point USA and its network of affiliates, which have pushed beyond their core mission of energizing college conservatives to turn Arizona into a laboratory for a new brand of Republican organizing. The decade-old nonprofit organization has helped transform the state GOP, seeking to elevate acolytes of former president Donald Trump and purge old-guard centrists who led in the tradition of the late Republican senator John McCain.
The group’s success is reflected in the Republican midterm election slate — nearly every statewide candidate and many of those farther down the ballot have embraced Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. The political career of Kari Lake, the state’s GOP gubernatorial nominee, took off at a Turning Point event last year, and she has filled her campaign staff with former Turning Point employees. Lake has promised, if elected, to overhaul how votes are cast and counted in this pivotal swing state.
“They have a bigger impact than any other Republican group I know,” said Jeff DeWit, a former state treasurer in Arizona who served as chief operating officer for both of Trump’s presidential campaigns. “They’re more powerful than the RNC,” he said, referring to the Republican National Committee.
This account of Turning Point’s quest to remake the Arizona Republican Party is based on audio recordings of private meetings, personal messages and interviews with more than 80 people, including current and former Turning Point employees, public officials and their staffers, political consultants and state and local party activists who have interacted with the nonprofit’s leaders. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive details or avoid professional reprisal.
The Post review found that Turning Point, which forged an early alliance with the pro-Trump movement in 2016, devised an aggressive strategy to enforce discipline and purity in a divided GOP that was struggling to overcome Democratic gains in the state. The group recruited like-minded activists into the party ranks and often used provocative rhetoric online to pressure old-guard Republicans and “barrage the left,” as one internal document put it, while creating a new political action committee to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into statewide and legislative campaigns.
Nationally, Turning Point solidified its identity in the MAGA era. Like Trump, Turning Point’s leaders gravitate toward messages primed to go viral on social media, including a recent call for a “hero” to bail out of jail the man accused of assaulting the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Founder Charlie Kirk, now 29, was the 10th-biggest “superspreader” of misinformation about the 2020 election on Twitter, according to the Election Integrity Partnership, a consortium of researchers. Kirk encouraged his followers to attend the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that preceded the assault on the U.S. Capitol, and a website promoting the rally listed Turning Point Action, the group’s political arm, as a backer.
The Attack: The Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event
With more than $65 million in annual revenue, more than 400 employees and a massive network of conservative influencers, Turning Point’s vast network exerts its influence through a dizzying array of mediums, from podcasts to social media to concert-like rallies, funded by GOP mega-donors and aimed at younger generations.
Kirk is a prolific fundraiser, using his connections in Trump’s inner circle to fete donors at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. But it’s Bowyer, 37, who translates that influence and those resources into raw political power in Arizona, a state increasingly setting the tone for the national GOP.
Kirk and Bowyer declined to comment for this report. Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point USA and its affiliates, said that both men effectively channel conservative interests and that the group’s years-long work in Arizona is “bearing significant fruit in 2022.” Kolvet sought to distance Turning Point from some of Bowyer’s political advocacy, which he said was undertaken in Bowyer’s “capacity as a Republican Party leader.”
In a private meeting with conservative activists this year, Bowyer remarked on his role at Turning Point by calling himself “the guy that basically runs everything,” according to an audio recording obtained by The Post. At another point in the conversation, he boasted of his enthusiasm for political confrontation: “I have giant balls.”
Forged in the MAGA movement
It was January 2015, and a pivotal presidential election loomed.
Bowyer had just started to work for Turning Point as part of its expansion in Arizona and other parts of the West. He was also elected chair of the Maricopa County GOP, promising to revolutionize the party by recruiting a new generation of volunteers at the lowest levels of the party — a strategy now at the center of pro-Trump organizing.
Bowyer, who touts that his family has lived in Arizona for seven generations, had long chafed at the conventional party apparatus and longed for one more willing to push boundaries. As a student at Arizona State University, he earned the adoration of tea party activists when he ridiculed Gov. Jan Brewer (R) for expanding the state’s Medicaid program.
In the summer of 2015, Bowyer received a call from Trump’s campaign manager, who was trying to schedule a small gathering in Phoenix but was facing pushback from Republican state leaders who had recoiled at Trump’s style and uncompromising approach to immigration, according to a person familiar with the call.
The young activist and others helped organize and promote a rally that attracted thousands on a sweltering July day. Bowyer warmed up the crowd ahead of Trump’s 90-minute speech.
In the final months of the campaign, Kirk, then 22, took a leave from Turning Point to travel the country with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., 38 at the time. They focused on events tailored to students and appeared at a Fox News town hall aimed at millennials.
As they campaigned in the Phoenix area, Bowyer recorded a video of Trump Jr. helping a stranded motorist and pushing a car in triple-digit heat. He posted it on Twitter, writing, “This is why I’m voting Trump!” The message, which has been viewed more than half a million times, made clear to Turning Point leaders the online appetite for pro-Trump content.
Trump went on to win Arizona in 2016, and Republicans swept other races. Turning Point and the Make America Great Again movement fell into a well-defined symbiosis: Kirk and his associates helped amplify Trump’s messages on social media, and the group’s fundraising exploded.
In 2018, Kirk relocated his enterprise from the Chicago suburbs, where he was raised, to a two-story headquarters in a Phoenix office park. The sprawling facility includes a television studio where several live-stream shows are filmed, near a wall decorated with a huge American flag and pennants from dozens of college campuses.
An opening ceremony drew big names from across the Republican Party’s ideological divide, including Gov. Doug Ducey. Bowyer, who had recently had been promoted to chief operating officer, addressed the crowd.
“One thing I hope that you take away from today,” he said, “is that you see all of the wonderful things that are happening across the country in the name of conservatism.”
A rival to the GOP mainstream
Within months, Arizona Republicans were in crisis. Democrats had swept the 2018 midterm election, flipping a U.S. Senate seat, the secretary of state’s office and races down the ballot. Arizona had quickly gone from a conservative stronghold to a true swing state. Turning Point leaders and other conservatives saw it as confirmation that the state party needed a dramatically different strategy.
Bowyer viewed the results as affirmation of his long-standing philosophy: “If the Republican Party doesn’t do its job, you know, then the Republican Party has to go,” he said in the private meeting with activists this year, according to audio obtained by The Post.
Kolvet, the Turning Point spokesman, declined to elaborate on Bowyer’s comments but said, “Turning Point is confident Mr. Bowyer had the best interest of the conservative movement and the organization in mind.”
In January 2019, party members gathered in a Phoenix church to pick their next leader.
Bowyer threw his support behind Kelli Ward, a former state senator who had unsuccessfully run for U.S. Senate twice and had publicized her disdain for the establishment wing of the party. She pledged to recruit MAGA Republicans as foot soldiers and oversee a transformation of the state party.
Bowyer worked the room that day with help from Jake Hoffman, a Turning Point consultant. Hoffman ran a marketing firm that worked for a PAC that had supported Ward’s failed Senate bids.
Ward prevailed over a McCain ally, and Hoffman helped her transition into the role of party chair. When Republicans wanted to reach Ward, they started with Hoffman, whose businesses have remained key vendors for the state party, according to campaign finance records.
As the state’s top Republicans kept their distance from Ward, Turning Point saw an opportunity. Her title gave Turning Point credibility.
Ward, in a statement, called Hoffman and Bowyer “friends and allies” and “two of the most righteous people I know.”
Hoffman, a former school board member and town councilman, was listed on Turning Point’s staff directory through at least early 2019. In 2020, The Post revealed that he was running a deceptive online operation for Turning Point’s political arm in which teenagers peppered the internet with pro-Trump messaging, some using fake accounts. Hoffman defended the practice at the time.
Over the years, Hoffman has been an administrator for the Facebook pages of Turning Point, Kirk and Trump Jr., according to a person familiar with the setup. Hoffman did not dispute the details of his social media work for Trump Jr. or Turning Point, saying that he was “happy to consult with the organization.”
That fall, Hoffman won a race for the Arizona House, giving Turning Point an ally in the statehouse.
Turning Point was no longer on the GOP’s fringes. It was at the party’s center.
‘Repercussions could be big’
In 2020, Turning Point told donors its task was activating young voters, registering thousands to vote and delivering Arizona and other swing states to Trump, according to documents obtained by The Post.
The group aimed to capitalize on the electorate’s intensifying distrust of government, media and political parties, the documents show. Opportunities to do so expanded with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Kirk argued that the “China Virus” proved the need for Trump’s promised wall on the southern border, and text messages sent by Turning Point Action falsely claimed that the government was “sending goons DOOR-TO-DOOR to make you take a covid-19 vaccine.”
When Trump resumed holding large campaign events, Turning Point Action’s Students for Trump helped pack Phoenix’s Dream City Church for a June 2020 rally. Outside, police in riot gear clashed with protesters. Inside, the megachurch’s cavernous auditorium offered refuge from mask mandates.
Ahead of the election, Turning Point Action touted its “round-the-clock Digital War-Room to promote content we create and constantly barrage the left online,” according to a slide deck obtained by The Post. It seized on divisive culture-war issues such as how race is taught in public schools, the rights of transgender individuals and illegal immigration.
But Trump lost Arizona — the first time a Republican presidential candidate had ceded the state since 1996. Quickly, Turning Point became a linchpin of Trump’s efforts to deny his defeat and reverse his loss.
Bowyer, elected that year to the Republican National Committee, gathered with Hoffman and Ward at the state party’s headquarters on Dec. 14, 2020, the day the state’s presidential electors met to cast their votes for Biden, according to state party tweets. As part of a seven-state plan, the trio signed paperwork falsely declaring themselves the state’s electors. That plan is now a focus of congressional investigators and prosecutors probing Trump’s quest to stay in power.
On Twitter, the state party asked followers whether they would be willing to die to keep Trump in the White House. Another post proposed “contempt & jail time” for county officials who affirmed Biden’s win.
The posts alarmed Trey Terry, 35, a conservative who lives near a Republican county official who had helped oversee the election and was facing death threats as a result. Terry urged Bowyer to help tone down the messaging in a private exchange over Twitter that was obtained by The Post.
“His kids and wife can’t go anywhere without being harassed as they go in and out of their house,” Terry wrote, describing the county official’s experience. “That s--- is out of line. So it’s hard for me to ignore.”
Bowyer responded that while he had sympathy for the county official, elected leaders must adhere to the party’s platform and “repercussions could be big for those who aren’t on the same page with the party.”
Terry accused party leaders of “whipping” up activists “based on zero evidence” of widespread fraud. Bowyer did not disagree but suggested that his approach is the reason for Turning Point’s success.
“I didn’t build a 45 million dollar a year organization,” he wrote, by “misunderstanding the base.”
Meanwhile, Turning Point Action arranged for seven buses to take 350 activists from several states to D.C. for the Jan. 6, 2021, rally near the White House, according to three people familiar with the rally planning. Bowyer and Kirk have been interviewed by the House committee investigating the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that followed the rally, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Austin Smith, a Turning Point Action employee, tweeted a photo of himself speaking to “thousands of patriots” at a rally in Washington on Jan. 5.
“Don’t get comfortable,” he wrote in a since-deleted tweet. “Fight like hell.”
Kolvet, the Turning Point spokesman, said the group’s involvement that day was “isolated to the president’s speech at the Ellipse.”
In the months that followed, Maricopa County became a hotbed of unsupported claims about the election, and Trump allies launched a haphazard review of the results, over the objection of county officials and election experts.
The next year, Bowyer tried to convince Bowers, the Arizona House speaker, that the party needed to intensify its efforts to maintain power, Bowers said.
With a map in hand, the activist zeroed in on sprawling Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and 60 percent of the state’s voters, and called for breaking it into four counties, one that would concentrate most Democrats and three that would favor Republicans.
Hoffman, the marketing consultant close to Turning Point who was elected to the state House in 2020, introduced legislation to make it happen — but the opposition of legislative leadership ensured its demise.
A few months later, the speaker testified before the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Bowers detailed Trump’s attempts to overturn the election and his own decision to resist, intensifying the attacks from Turning Point influencers.
Alone in Washington, Rusty Bowers tells world what happened in Arizona
Turning Point expanded its political operation this year with a new PAC under Bowyer’s direction. The group has unleashed more than $415,000 in Arizona since July, according to state records, and has reported more than $600,000 in spending to the Federal Election Commission. About half of its spending in Arizona has boosted Lake after a bitter primary that pitted her against the party establishment, including the governor. But the money has also extended to legislative races in which spending is traditionally restrained. Hundreds of thousands of dollars went to Hoffman’s firm, records show.
The PAC helped a crew of far-right candidates win primary contests in state races, including Steve Montenegro, who helped coordinate bombastic election-denying messaging during the review of Maricopa County’s 2020 ballots; Liz Harris, who routinely spreads election falsehoods; and Smith, the Turning Point Action enterprise director who spoke at a D.C. rally the day before the insurrection.
Turning Point has played a wide-ranging role in Lake’s campaign, and former Turning Point staffers have filled key positions on her campaign, including a top adviser and a former press secretary. This summer, Lake said on Twitter that her daughter was involved with the group. In fact, she’s a full-time Turning Point employee, according to two people familiar with the matter.
“Turning Point has been essential in turning ... enthusiasm into a tsunami of activists that naturally flock to candidates like Kari Lake,” Caroline Wren, a senior adviser on the Lake campaign, said in a statement.
Election deniers march toward power in key 2024 battlegrounds
Lake’s rise also created new opportunities for Hoffman, whose firm was paid about $2.3 million by a pro-Lake super PAC, according to state records. A complaint about the source of the PAC’s funding is under review by the Maricopa County elections department. Hoffman said his company is “routinely contracted” for such work because it is “one of the leading creative agencies in Arizona.”
Lake, a former television anchor, gained MAGA stardom at a Turning Point Action candidate forum in the summer of 2021, when she urged the crowd not to forget about the 2020 election. When Trump spoke on the same stage and name-checked Lake, the room erupted in applause. He cocked his head and clapped. “This could be a big night for you,” he said.
One year later, Lake won the Republican primary and celebrated at a victory party at a Scottsdale resort. On the lush lawn, young women in semiformal dresses and strappy heels lined up for photos. Music blared from inside a ballroom as partygoers snapped selfies. The scene, reminiscent of a graduation party or school dance, highlighted how Turning Point has thrust young people to the center of the state party’s transformation.
One is Carrera Horan, 18, who attended the Turning Point summit that elevated Lake and watches Kirk’s videos on Instagram. “He tells you what you need to be hearing rather than just what you would want to hear,” she said.
Daniel Fuentes, 25, joined his Christian university’s Turning Point chapter, which offered a ready-made friend group. He tunes in to Kirk’s radio show every day on Spotify.
Fuentes is volunteering for Lake’s campaign, and he attended a recent Turning Point canvassing event at a Mesa park, one of 200 that the group says it has hosted nationally this cycle. With the smell of chicken roasting in barbecue pits wafting through the air, he listened intently as Bowyer spoke of the need to “rebrand the conservative movement and the Republican Party as a hope for a future generation.”
Fuentes argued that “Democrat clubs on college campuses are not doing this. Liberal, woke, feminist clubs, they’re not out there telling people: ‘Let’s go out and knock doors. Let’s go out and, you know, sign up to be a precinct [committeeman].’”
The midterms will test whether Turning Point can win races or just disrupt them.
After winning the primary, Lake quickly made overtures to the state’s GOP establishment.
When Bowyer learned that Lake was meeting with a former state GOP chairman who had been close to McCain, he erupted at her during a phone call as she traveled on a donor’s plane, warning that the base would turn against her, according to three people who heard about his comments.
Lake was unfazed, these people said. Kolvet said Lake and Bowyer “maintain a great relationship.”
With a growing number of well-placed allies, Turning Point is poised to again push election-related legislation favorable to Republicans ahead of 2024. A preview of that came last week when Lake promoted a legislative proposal from Hoffman to punish media outlets that mistakenly report election results.
The Turning Point strategy, said Kirk Adams, a top Republican operative in the state and Gov. Ducey’s former chief of staff, is “all geared toward 2024,” aimed at elevating GOP officials at every level who could thwart an election outcome unfavorable to the party. “Get a compliant governor,” Adams said, describing the strategy. “Get a compliant secretary of state. Get compliant legislative leadership.”
Turning Point’s leaders are looking ahead to 2024. The group’s political arm has hosted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), widely seen as a possible presidential contender, at rallies aimed at high-stakes races in Arizona and beyond.
Lake has embraced the title of “DeSantis of the West.” Others view her as a potential vice-presidential contender. For the moment, she wants to be governor — and if she wins, it will be with Turning Point’s help.
One week before the election, a Kirk aide — who also works as Lake’s deputy field director — kicked off a rally outside a steakhouse in suburban Chandler by praising both of her bosses. Once on stage, Kirk and Lake embraced.
“Kari’s really special,” Kirk said.
“Thank you for the compliment. I’ll take it,” the candidate said. “… We have to tune in to people like Charlie.”
Jacqueline Alemany, Alice Crites, Josh Dawsey and Beth Reinhard contributed to this report. | 2022-11-04T10:34:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Turning Point, a pro-Trump youth group, remade the Arizona GOP - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/arizona-gop-turning-point-usa/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/arizona-gop-turning-point-usa/ |
Justin Roebuck is the county clerk and register of deeds for Ottawa County in Michigan. (Evan Cobb for The Washington Post)
Justin Roebuck sought to rebuild faith in the election system with a public forum. At the same time, the Ottawa County Patriots were raising doubts.
By Greg Jaffe
GRAND HAVEN, Mich. — As democracy in Ottawa County wobbled under a wave of misinformation, mistrust and raw anger, Justin Roebuck decided it was his job to shore it up.
And so, on a rainy night in late October, the clerk in this lakeside community set aside two hours to answer questions from his voters about the election system he oversaw.
He strode past a dozen women knitting sweaters and into a public library meeting room where his staff was setting ballpoint pens and notecards on chairs. To keep the proceedings as civil as possible, he planned to ask attendees to submit their questions in writing.
About 20 miles away, the Ottawa County Patriots were gathering at a church to take their own stand in defense of a country that they believed was on the verge of collapse. From the pulpit, speakers blasted the Democrats for backing efforts that they said would embolden pedophiles, empower sex traffickers and make it easier to sterilize minors. To realize these “evil” ends, they said, the Democrats were prepared to commit massive fraud, as they had in 2020.
All across the country, election officials are dealing with the fallout of former president Donald Trump’s insistence that he won two years ago. Roebuck has seen it firsthand: the conspiracy-fueled questions and requests related to the 2020 vote, which occupy about a quarter of his staff’s time; the embrace of candidates spouting false claims; the erosion of trust in the fundamentals of the election system.
Dozens of Roebuck’s counterparts have received death threats or have had their homes or cars vandalized. A troubling number have quit, fed up with their fellow citizens.
Not Roebuck. With his horn-rimmed glasses, navy suit and hair combed in a ruler-straight part, the 38-year-old Republican looked like a throwback to an earlier era in America politics. He sounded like one too. He spoke of America’s election system with a reverence and wonder that seemed impervious to the anger and cynicism that swirled around him. “It’s beautiful thing,” he often said. “It’s an awesome thing.”
An “I VOTED” vanity license plate was affixed to the bumper of Roebuck’s Camry sedan. He had waited five years for it to become available, he said.
He planned to win over the skeptics and election deniers in his county, which Trump carried by 21 percentage points, with patience and civility. They were, after all, his voters, his neighbors, his fellow conservatives and, in many cases, his friends, he said. They worked in the county’s manufacturing plants, catered to tourists by Lake Michigan, grew corn or raised turkeys. They had elected him, starting in 2016, to serve them, and no matter how outlandish their claims, how angry their accusations, he believed he could bring them around.
“This is not an us versus them thing. I really don’t see it that way,” he said. “I really just think there’s been a lot of misunderstanding.”
Roebuck straightened his tie and took in the room at the Loutit District Library, which was filling with people, just as he had hoped. A friend from the League of Women Voters rushed up to hug him and asked if he was ready for Nov. 8.
“I feel very good about the election,” he said. “But there are other things going on.” Roebuck was thinking of his busy schedule, packed over the next two weeks with meetings, interviews and other county business.
His friend’s mind went to a darker place. “It’s tense in the community,” she told him. “I don’t like it when it’s tense in the community.”
Sometimes Roebuck wondered whether he too would have doubted the outcome of the 2020 election if he hadn’t been so deeply involved in running it in his role as county clerk. He had been volunteering for Republican candidates since he was a teenager, attended the conservative Christian Hillsdale College and worked for a Michigan congressman after graduation.
Even though Biden had won Michigan by 154,000 votes, Roebuck’s former boss, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), voted with 147 other Republicans to overturn the 2020 election.
Instead of condemning his former boss, Roebuck described the congressman in an interview as a “great mentor” who had been “fed” a false narrative. He tried to imagine how a typical Republican voter in a place like Ottawa County — largely White, mostly rural and reasonably prosperous — might process the same flood of bad information.
“I just think there’s stuff in elections that people don’t understand, and that’s because they’re normal and they have normal lives and they don’t have time to understand,” Roebuck said.
A week before his town hall, one of those normal people — a 60-year-old grandmother from Hudsonville, Mich. — emailed Roebuck to tell him that she couldn’t go to his event because she was attending the Ottawa County Patriots meeting.
“[I’m] trying to do anything I can to prevent election fraud like 2020,” she wrote. “It even went on here in Ottawa County … and for some reason you don’t want to believe that. Makes me think you know something.”
Roebuck did his best to win her over, praising her “willingness to step up” and her “passion.”
“I would truly love to have a conversation about any concerns you have or anything you feel like our team can be doing better,” he replied via email.
When that entreaty failed, he invited her to send him a question, which his assistant was now reading to the three dozen or so people assembled in the library: “What is the legal amount of ballots that someone is allowed to drop or handle for others, and what do we do if we see someone dropping off a lot?”
Her questions, she wrote, originated with “2000 Mules,” a documentary made by right-wing firebrand Dinesh D’Souza that falsely claims that criminals flooded drop boxes with thousands of illegal ballots for Joe Biden. Roebuck knew the film was full of baseless claims. But he also knew that many of his voters took the documentary’s allegations seriously and that nothing good would come from abruptly dismissing their concerns.
“Very good question,” he said.
Roebuck patiently explained — as he had dozens of times over the past two years — that Michigan voters were allowed to drop off ballots for members of their immediate family; that the boxes were under 24-hour video surveillance; and that the ballots inside them were scanned and logged daily. “If you see somebody dumping hundreds of ballots, please do call your local clerk, your county clerk,” he said. “That’s important, and it’s all on video.”
More questions followed. Voters wanted to know why Roebuck had turned off a new ballot-imaging function on the county’s voting machines. The feature was too “slow” and glitchy, he explained. Others wondered what would happen if a USB drive from one of the machines was misplaced or a secure modem, used for transmitting results, was pried open and its SIM card secretly removed.
“These are very nitty-gritty,” Roebuck said. “I’m impressed.”
Sometimes an audience member shouted a question. Mostly, though, they stuck to the cards.
Roebuck registered each exhausted sigh from the audience. His eyes drifted to the back where two men sat scowling, their arms folded across their chests.
“Are they frustrated with the questions or with me?” Roebuck asked himself.
At the Ottawa County Patriots meeting, Gretchen Cosby listened as speakers warned of stolen elections and enemies out to “destroy” people like her.
The setting was a big, steepled church that abutted some railroad tracks and an Elks Lodge. About 230 people filled the pews. The group’s origins traced to 2009 and the Tea Party movement. Its popularity and growing power in the county were a much more recent phenomenon.
Cosby, a Republican nominee for Ottawa County commissioner, cheered along with the crowd. The 58-year-old former nurse had never imagined that she would run for public office. Then came 2020. She watched in disbelief as Fox News called Arizona for Biden, drifting off to sleep that night with a splitting headache and a sense of dread. A year later, she and a team of volunteers set out to prove Trump’s false allegations of fake voters and doctored ballots in Michigan, knocking on 2,221 doors in Ottawa County.
“We did it through the sleet, the snow, and when it was raining sideways,” she said.
Cosby visited nursing homes, which she’d been told were hotbeds of voter fraud, and pressed Roebuck to take action. Roebuck said their canvassing hadn’t uncovered any wrongdoing.
Cosby’s frustration led her to run for office as part of a slate of like-minded conservative candidates. In the August primaries, she and her allies wiped out seven of the 10 more-moderate Republican incumbents on the Ottawa County commission.
From the church’s pulpit, Joe Moss, the driving force behind the summer takeover, was celebrating their collective victory. “I was going to open with a joke, but what’s funnier than seeing them all thrown out of office?” he asked. Amid whoops and cheers from the crowd, Moss read off the names of the winners.
In the back of the church, Cosby smiled and waved.
The top item on her agenda was fixing what she saw as the most grievous flaws in Ottawa County’s election system. She couldn’t tell Roebuck how to run his office, but she and her fellow commissioners controlled his budget. Cosby wanted to start by banning funding for voting machines and requiring a hand count of ballots. “We need to vote Amish,” she had said at an earlier Ottawa County Patriots meeting.
At the church, volunteers were signing up for shifts to watch the county’s drop boxes. A former GOP candidate for governor who faces disorderly conduct charges stemming from the Jan. 6 insurrection was warning of the Democrats’ plan to install a “communist China type government in America.”
Cosby had moved to a small room off the church’s main sanctuary where she was assembling campaign signs. She still had a Democratic opponent for the general election. Even though the county had been dominated for decades by Republicans, Cosby wasn’t taking any chances.
“I’m playing like I’m losing because I don’t trust the machine,” she said.
At the library, Roebuck was making his final pitch. His frustrations flared briefly when discussing an affidavit filed in late 2020 on behalf of Trump that had alleged 460 percent turnout in one of Ottawa’s townships.
“A complete, utter and total lie,” he said.
But he had come to realize that calling out lies didn’t fix the problem in Ottawa County or, for that matter, anywhere. Poll after poll showed that nearly two-thirds of Republicans believed that Biden had been propelled to victory by voter fraud, a number that had held steady for nearly two years.
Sometimes Roebuck felt like he was teaching a civics class, while the Ottawa County Patriots and other leaders of his party were screening a horror movie. How could he even compete?
“Unfortunately, candidates have found a message that sells,” Roebuck said in an interview. “And I just think we’re in dangerous territory when that happens.”
His best shot, he believed, was to focus on the things that had drawn him to election work, such as the sense of community he felt when he spotted a neighbor working at his local precinct, and the stirrings of patriotism he experienced when his children, ages 7 and 4, accompanied him to vote.
Roebuck and his staff had trained 1,200 election workers for the midterms. These were the people who performed the mundane duties that made the election run: checking voters off in the poll book, sealing up ballots, and printing out and delivering their precincts’ results.
Roebuck wasn’t telling the skeptics to trust him. He was asking them to have faith in their neighbors and friends who showed up before dawn on Election Day and often stayed past midnight to ensure all the votes were counted.
He wanted the doubters at the Loutit library to feel what he felt. And so he urged them to take part in the process; to see up close for themselves. “What I always tell people who have questions or who are cynical or concerned with the process: sign up,” he said. “It’s great. … It’s God’s work in my opinion.”
The meeting broke up. In the back of the room an argument erupted between two attendees. A retired electrical engineer praised Roebuck but insisted that there was rampant fraud in Detroit and surrounding Wayne County.
“They have exactly the same laws, exactly the same systems as we do,” countered Field Reichardt, a lifelong resident of the county who had run for Congress as a Republican in 2010. “This is all part of the giant lie!”
“So you think there was no corruption?” the engineer asked.
“Everything is audited!” Reichardt replied.
“What if the auditors are corrupt?” the man pressed.
The two kept at it for several more minutes, arguing in circles.
“Are you just a concerned citizen?” the engineer asked skeptically.
“I’m a very concerned citizen!” replied Reichardt, who recently had decided to leave the GOP.
Eventually, they went their separate ways.
In the morning, Roebuck was planning a Facebook Live interview with a retired elementary school principal who regularly volunteered at her neighborhood precinct. Then he had a news conference and a local television hit where he expected that he would once again be asked about the minutiae of his county’s election system.
He couldn’t help but wonder whether these sober recitations were any match for a former president screaming fraud.
“I don’t think it trickles down a lot,” he conceded.
The library was closing for the night. Roebuck headed out to his car. The midterm elections, the next big test of Ottawa County’s democracy, were two weeks away. | 2022-11-04T10:34:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Election official fights misinformation with civility as midterms loom - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/election-official-fights-misinformation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/election-official-fights-misinformation/ |
In Milwaukee, city and suburban voters are at partisan odds over crime
By Cara McGoogan
A sign outside the Black Leaders Organizing Communities (BLOC) outreach group headquarters. Members of the group have been hitting the streets in Milwaukee to get out the Black vote ahead of the midterm elections. (Alex Wroblewski for The Washington Post)
MILWAUKEE — The nightly news in Milwaukee paints a bleak picture of a city ravaged by crime: shootings, car-jackings and death by reckless driving are all too common. For voters, the issue is top of mind, but they’re divided on which party will make the city safer.
Jim Hagan, a suburban resident, and Deontae Robinson, who lives in the city, have both been closely affected by crime and have become concerned. But Hagan, 57, is voting for Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who he believes will be strong on crime by investing in the police and making sure perpetrators stay in jail. Robinson, 27, will be voting for Democrat Mandela Barnes, who is from the same majority-Black area of Milwaukee as Robinson and who he believes understands what the city needs to become safer.
Robinson and Hagan represent two sides of a tense political debate in a city where homicide rates have climbed nearly 17 percent over this time last year to 188. In the final stretch of the midterm campaign, the Republicans began a blitz of advertising focused on crime. Suburban voters, most of whom are White, believe Johnson’s argument that Barnes, the current lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, would be weak on crime and support releasing violent felons and defunding police departments. Black voters have accused the Republicans of playing on racial fears by darkening Barnes’s skin and calling him “dangerously liberal” in campaign ads.
The pattern is being repeated in other battleground Senate contests, with the Republicans pushing ads that paint Democratic candidates as weak on crime. In North Carolina, Cheri Beasley has been pummeled by ads accusing her of being too lenient on criminals during her tenure as a public defender and judge, and in Florida, Rep. Val Demings, a former police chief in Orlando, has had to fend off attack ads claiming she does not support law enforcement officers. Republican Mehmet Oz has also tightened the Senate race in Pennsylvania by hammering Democrat John Fetterman on the issue of crime. A Post-ABC poll in September found that Republicans led Democrats by 14 points as the party adults most trusted to tackle crime.
In Wisconsin, Johnson’s ads accuse Barnes of wanting to defund the police, abolish ICE and scrap cash bail. Johnson seemed to get a boost from the ad campaign. In mid-September, FiveThirtyEight’s polling average showed Barnes and Johnson roughly tied. As of Thursday, Johnson had a roughly four-point lead. The final Marquette Law School poll found Johnson at 50 percent and Barnes at 48 percent, within the poll’s margin of error.
“Republicans are pushing fear of crime,” said Professor Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll. “More of the public has an opinion of Johnson now than they did a year ago. And at the margins that’s a less negative opinion of him than they had a year ago. Some of that may be the crime issue.”
In April of this year, Hagan was driving on the interstate towards Milwaukee one morning to visit his mother when he said he and his wife were shot at by a man in an SUV.
“By the grace of God, we were not hit,” said Hagan. “But my wife has gotten very paranoid. She will try to avoid the freeway if she can.”
Since the shooting, Hagan is suspicious of strangers, believing anyone could be carrying a gun. “I’m much more aware,” he said.
Hagan moved to the suburbs years ago, in part because of crime and blight in Milwaukee. “It’s less stress, less traffic, less worrying about what potentially could happen if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.
He believes Johnson will address the city’s crime problem. “You can’t have a good economy with a lot of crime and being lenient,” said Hagan.
Robinson raced his younger brother to the hospital last year after they were caught in crossfire in Milwaukee on their way to visit a family member. “There was a lot of blood,” said Robinson, an ambassador for Black Leaders Organizing Communities (BLOC). “I was thinking, there’s a chance he could lose his leg.”
Since the shooting, Robinson has become concerned about his safety. “It was traumatizing,” he said.
Like Barnes, Robinson hails from the majority Black area to the north of downtown Milwaukee, which is one of the most segregated cities in the country. On the rare occasion when Robinson goes to the city center, White people have crossed the street to avoid him. “Being racist is heavy in this city,” he said.
But Robinson said people from the suburbs wrongly paint his area as a “wild jungle.” “It’s not as bad as they make it seem,” he said. “It’s not the best, but that’s why we need to get more resources.”
If elected, Barnes would become Wisconsin’s first Black senator, which Robinson believes would “help tremendously.” “He’s been through the struggle like we have, so he can make laws that actually help change,” said Robinson, adding that having a role model like Barnes would be invaluable for young Black Milwaukeeans.
After watching Republican campaign ads, Hagan said he came to believe Barnes would be soft on people accused of crime. “Not holding them accountable; not letting the police department do their job,” said Hagan. “Playing the race card would be a common thing for him and I don’t think that would be helpful to Milwaukee or the state of Wisconsin."
Angela Lang, executive director of BLOC, had a different reaction to the GOP’s rhetoric crime. “We’re seeing a lot of racist dog whistles in how [Johnson] talks about crime, how he alludes to Mandela inciting violence,” she said “It’s very frustrating.”
Among registered Black voters nationally, violent crime is a major issue, with some 81 per cent saying it’s very important to their midterm vote, compared with 56 per cent of White voters, according to a Pew Center analysis released this week. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll of Black Americans released in may found that 85 percent of Black Americans said gun violence was a major threat to Black people in the country. A majority of Black Americans, 84 percent, also said police brutality was a major threat. Still, 72 percent of Black adults said increasing the number of police officers in their communities would reduce crime, and an even larger share, 86 percent, cited more funding for economic opportunities in poor neighborhoods with higher crime rates.
At a campaign event at Coffee Makes You Black near where Barnes grew up, Barnes said gun violence was a “deeply personal issue” because he had lost loved ones to it. His message: cut off crime at the root by investing in the city.
“When communities lose opportunity, crime and violence is what fills the void,” he said. “This campaign is about rebuilding the middle class to make sure we do everything we can to combat poverty, give people a fair shot at success.”
On the street nearby canvassing for BLOC, Robinson said he had been upset by Johnson’s campaign against Barnes. “It’s like a slap in the face,” he said. “He’s not blunt like Trump. But he shows how he don’t like us. We’re not looked at like human beings. And that does not feel good.”
Robinson wants to see investment in community programs, local schools and inner-city parks. He hopes further training for police could help build bridges, adding that officers are "always harassing us.”
While canvassing for BLOC in 2019, Robinson said he was pulled over by the police. “If we’re knocking on doors with flyers and clipboards, we’re not doing anything suspicious,” he said. Another time, he said police searched his car for drugs, damaging his backseat in the process. “I never did a drug a day in my life,” said Robinson. “I don’t smoke or drink because I was always into sports and I love learning.”
In the wealthy suburb of Elm Grove, chocolate shop owner Mark Karrels is worried that inner-city crime is seeping outwards. “This is the first year where we’ve actually had items stolen or taken" from his outside displays, said Karrels, 66. “Ron Johnson is going to be tougher on crime; Mandela Barnes has never been tough on crime.”
Karrels echoed the portrayal of Barnes in the Republican ad. The Democratic candidates “talks about cutting the budgets for the police," he said. "I don’t know how you can think that would be a good thing.”
He also said Democratic Gov. Tony Evers “has been releasing a lot of people from prison, a lot of bad criminals.” As governor, Evers doesn’t have direct control over who is released on parole.
Up the road in Waukesha, the issue of prison release and bail is especially emotive. Darrell Brooks was convicted last month of first-degree intentional homicide of six people who died after he drove his car into a crowd at the Waukesha Christmas Parade last November.
“To be standing here right now, it still hits you in the heart,” said Kelly Gromowski, 42, on Waukesha’s Main Street, a block away from where Brooks started his lethal rampage, driving his car through the path of a high school band. Gromowski knows attendees who were left with broken bones and serious mental scars.
At the time of the attack, Brooks was out on $1,000 cash bail, having been charged with assault and running over the mother of his child. The Republican Party has claimed Barnes’ support for ending cash bail could lead to similar disasters. Barnes has said he wants to change the system so wealthy people accused of crime can’t post for bail as easily.
“Stop letting criminals out on the streets,” said Gromowski. “Every day you hear on the police scanner there’s just so many police chases and robberies. It’s a disaster right now, there’s no control over anything.” She added that Johnson “wants to put a stop to that.”
When Johnson and Barnes faced one another in their only debate in October, crime was central. The moderator quoted the mother of a 12-year-old girl who had been shot and killed in the week of the debate, saying she felt like she was “living in a warzone.” What would the candidates say to her?
“Senator Johnson has received $1.2 million in campaign support from the NRA, from the gun lobby,” said Barnes, adding that his first step would be to introduce background checks for gun purchasers. “He’s going to put their interests before the lives of our children.”
For Johnson, the solution was to “keep violent criminals in jail” and “support law enforcement.” “Unfortunately we have an administration in Wisconsin right now that their goal is to reduce the prison population by 50 per cent,” he said, referring to Evers.
Evers and Barnes have both said they want to halve the state prison population and reduce recidivism rates. But neither has direct control over parole decisions and their comments about reducing the prison population have focused on nonviolent offenders. During former Republican Governor Scott Walker’s two terms, nearly 1,400 people were paroled ahead of their mandatory dates.
Johnson admitted that Barnes had never actually used the words “defund the police,” which has been a focus of his campaign ads, but said Barnes “has a long history of being supported by people that are leading the effort to defund.” He explained Barnes has used “code words” like “reallocate over-bloated police budgets.”
In response, Barnes said: “No police officers in this country were more dispirited than the ones who were present at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6. He called those folks patriots, he called them tourists – the people who were beating up police officers in the United States Capitol.”
Independent voter Mitchell Olszewski said he believes Barnes doesn’t plan to defund the police. “I think that’s an extremist description of the Democrats’ values,” said Olszewski, 36. “If anything, Mandela would have more affinity to support programs that help police training, police cameras. People want to see developments with the police force.”
Olszewski lives in Oconomowoc, a lake town in the Milwaukee suburbs where residents have become scared of the city. “People at church are like, ‘Oh, I don’t even want to go [into the city] any more, it’s so dangerous,’” he said.
He has voted Republican in the past, but will be voting Democrat in the midterms. “I’m just not a fan of Ron Johnson,” said Olszewski.
At Studz Pub in blue-collar neighborhood West Allis, the full array of political opinions was on display.
“I think [Ron Johnson] would keep the criminals locked up rather than letting them out,” said Shirely Zinda, 72.”
Next to her, Bill Sanders, 68, said, “That is a lie from Johnson saying Mandela Barnes is against crime and letting people go.”
Behind them, Tom Shanahan chimed in: “My thing is, are people going to respect the election?”
In recent weeks, the Democrats have released a new campaign ad in Wisconsin, which attacks Johnson for calling the Jan 6 insurrection by Trump supporters a “peaceful protest.” Funded by the Senate Majority PAC, the ad features a retired police captain from Madison paying tribute to the five officers who died at the Capitol after clashing with rioters.
“Ron Johnson is making excuses for rioters who tried to overthrow our government, even calling them ‘peaceful protests’,” says George Silverwood in the voiceover.
Johnson has said it is “inaccurate” to call the riots at the beginning of last year an “armed insurrection.” He defended his position, saying he also described the 2020 Black Lives Matters protests as peaceful.
Shanahan, who has been an election official at Neeskara polling station for the past 16 years, said he will be voting for Barnes. Referring to Johnson, he said, “For heaven’s sake, I don’t respect the people who don’t respect elections.”
Scott Clement and Emily Guskin contributed to this report. | 2022-11-04T10:34:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mandela Barnes, Ron Johnson fight over crime divides voters by party, race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/johnson-barnes-crime-republicans-democrats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/johnson-barnes-crime-republicans-democrats/ |
Analysis by Ted Mellnik
Andrew Van Dam
Darrius Moore rides his horse, Flip, as he dunks a basketball in February in Tullahassee, Okla. The town of fewer than 100 people is considered to be the oldest all-Black town in the fast-diversifying state. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Deep in the bowels of the nation’s 2020 Census lurks a quiet milestone: For the first time in modern American history, most White people live in mixed-race neighborhoods.
This marks a tectonic shift from just a generation ago.
Back in 1990, 78 percent of White people lived in predominantly White neighborhoods, where at least 4 of every 5 people were also White. In the 2020 Census, that’s plunged to 44 percent.
Large pockets of segregation remain, but as America’s White population shrinks for the first time and Hispanic, Asian, Black and Native Americans fuel the nation’s growth, diverse neighborhoods have expanded from urban cores into suburbs that once were colored by a steady stream of White flight from inner cities.
Across the 9,700 neighborhoods that became mixed in 2020, White population dropped by almost 300,000. Meanwhile, the number of Hispanics jumped by 1.5 million, the largest part of a 4.3 million increase in non-Whites in those neighborhoods.
This demographic shift has scrambled the nation’s politics, introducing new groups of often left-leaning voters into typically conservative White-dominated enclaves, according to Chris Maggio, a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Criminology, Law and Justice.
Maggio says the changes may be helping to stoke a backlash against immigration, especially among less-educated White voters, that has helped boost the political fortunes of former president Donald Trump. “Latino growth in particular is associated with increased Trump voting in places where there were few Latinos previously,” Maggio said.
More broadly, a new majority of all Americans, 56 percent, now live in mixed neighborhoods where neither White people nor non-Whites predominate — double the figure that lived in mixed neighborhoods in 1990, according to a Washington Post analysis of census data. By racial group, 56 percent of White Americans live in mixed neighborhoods, as do 55 percent of Hispanic Americans, 57 percent of Black people and 70 percent of Asian people.
William H. Frey, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and author of the book “Diversity Explosion,” traces the trend to sharply increased immigration from Latin America and Asia during the 1990s, as more Latinos and Asian Americans began to disperse to the suburbs and elsewhere. “This dispersion continued more dramatically in the 2000s,” Frey said. “Also in the 2000s, for the first time, more Black Americans lived in suburbs than cities.”
To highlight the changing circumstances of White Americans, we’re using a conservative definition of mixed. Here it means that no single race, or even all non-Whites together, make up 80 percent of the neighborhood population. A more traditional measure of diversity, which treats each racial group separately, finds similar trends and rankings, albeit at slightly different levels.
Some of the swiftest change came in Oklahoma. In 1990, fewer than a third of Sooners lived in mixed-race neighborhoods; 15 states had higher rates. By 2020, 93 percent of Oklahomans lived in mixed-race neighborhoods — the highest rate in the nation.
A soaring Hispanic population powered the diversification of the Sooner State. It grew more than fivefold from 1990 to 2020 as newcomers rushed to work in food-processing plants, farms, feedlots and construction sites throughout the state.
But Kay Decker, professor emeritus of sociology at Northwestern Oklahoma State University, pointed out that a subtler force is also in action. The state’s Native Americans, many descended from the Southeastern and Midwest tribes that were forcibly removed to the state, have become more likely to report their heritage.
“Back when my great grandmother was young, even if you were American Indian, you didn’t say you were,” Decker said. “If you could pass for White, you would pass for White.”
“Those people are finally, in many respects, recognizing that it’s okay to claim their heritage,” she said.
And indeed, our analysis shows the share of Oklahomans claiming multiple racial backgrounds almost doubled from 2010 to 2020. And in Oklahoma, more than any other state, people reporting multiple racial backgrounds are likely to claim Native ancestry as one of them.
Washington and Oregon also saw extraordinary transformations. The once-White Pacific Northwest states drew diverse newcomers from around the nation and world to their emerging tech-fueled metropolises. In both states, the Hispanic population has more than quadrupled since 1990, while the Asian population has more than tripled.
[How the racial makeup of where you live has changed since 1990]
Racially mixed neighborhoods continue to be less common in small towns and rural areas, and are increasing the most in the suburbs. Across large metro suburbs and medium metros, the share of people in racially mixed neighborhoods jumped by double digits over the past decade to 59 percent.
Because of their large populations, those changing suburbs can influence close elections when their votes shift. In the presidential swing state of Georgia, for example, the rapidly diversifying Atlanta suburbs played a key role in President Biden’s 2020 victory. The suburban vote shifted toward Democrats by almost 214,000 votes, and Biden won the state by 12,000. Michigan and Wisconsin saw similar shifts.
The fastest-diversifying metro areas were the Northern California rodeo hot spot of Redding and the well-touristed eastern Poconos outpost of Stroudsburg, Pa. In both cities, every single resident lived in a predominantly White neighborhood in 1990 — now just 15 and 17 percent do, respectively.
The neighborhoods that transitioned from White to mixed over the past three decades often follow the path of population growth as it moves from city center to suburban rings around superstar cities like Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Minneapolis.
There are some exceptions to the declining White trend, especially in neighborhoods dotting dozens of inner cities. There, urban redevelopment has gone hand-in-hand with increasing White populations, while Black residents and other non-Whites have been slowly displaced.
When we say neighborhoods, we mean census tracts, which typically hold about 3,800 people. We created our tract data by rolling up even smaller block-level estimates to fit 2020 census tract boundaries, so that we could compare individual neighborhoods over time — something that’s not usually possible given the constantly shifting outlines of official census tracts.
(You can explore The Post’s tract-level and county-level data in beautifully evocative maps from our talented colleagues Brittany Renee Mayes, Adrian Blanco and Zach Levitt.)
We chose 80 percent as a threshold for a mixed-race neighborhood, where non-Whites begin to have a noticeable presence. Although mixed neighborhoods can still have a White majority, our analysis showed that threshold to be a tipping point that’s often followed by steady diversification.
In tracts that first became mixed in the 2000 and 2010 censuses, non-White population has continued to grow on average by double digits since. Neighborhoods that first became mixed in 2010 now average 37 percent non-White, and those that became mixed in 2000 now tend to be majority non-White.
Frey, the Brookings demographer, said age and race patterns point to more diversity ahead in growing neighborhoods.
“Not only are minorities growing faster than Whites in most parts of the country, but the younger segment of the population — those who make up most movers — are exceptionally diverse,” Frey said. “The 2020 Census shows that for the first time, minorities comprise more than half of the under-age-18 population — which suggests that most movers in future decades will be people of color.”
You can download the complete data and documentation compiled by The Washington Post on census tracts and race from 1990 to 2020.
Hi friends! The Department of Data is on a fact-hoarding mission! What are you curious about: Do bald candidates underperform in elections? Which state is the oldest, in geological terms? How many people die under anesthesia? Just ask!
If your question inspires a column, we’ll send an official Department of Data button and ID card. To get every question, answer and factoid in your inbox as soon as we publish, sign up here. | 2022-11-04T10:35:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Most Americans now live in mixed-race neighborhoods, census data shows - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/04/mixed-race-neighborhoods/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/04/mixed-race-neighborhoods/ |
‘Can I use my allowance, or you can take something away that I would get for Christmas?’ seventh-grader Romello “Mello” Early asked his mother.
Melvin Anderson, left, with his classmate and close friend Romello “Mello” Early. When students were bullying Melvin for having dirty shoes, Mello used his allowance to buy him a new pair. (Bryant Brown Jr.)
Romello “Mello” Early couldn’t stand watching his friend and fellow seventh-grader, Melvin Anderson, get taunted for wearing worn-out sneakers.
“I really didn’t appreciate other people talking about him that way,” said Mello, 12, a student at Buffalo Creek Academy Charter School in Buffalo
On Oct. 24, he called his mother on FaceTime, which he does every day after school. That afternoon, though, Mello broke down in tears the moment his mother, Anita James, answered the phone.
“Romello, what happened?” James recalled asking her son.
“I’m getting tired of them bullying my friend about his shoes. It’s making me so upset,” he responded, explaining that his classmates mocked Melvin for having muddy sneakers.
Then, Mello earnestly asked, “Can we go buy him some shoes?”
James told her son they would talk about it when she got home from work. During their in-person conversation a few hours later, she said, he was still distraught.
Mello was adamant about buying his friend a fresh pair of sneakers to stave off bullies — and remind him that he has people who care about him.
“Can I use my allowance, or you can take something away that I would get for Christmas?” Mello asked his mother.
James admired her son’s sincere plea.
“I was floored, because most kids are not willing to give up something to another child; most kids are about themselves,” she said. “Just to see at that age he was acting as an adult, it touched me in a way that I almost can’t even describe.”
For Mello, the decision was intuitive.
“You should always treat people the way you want to be treated,” he said. “I have a lot of stuff, so I was thinking, let’s bless somebody else today.”
That evening, they went to a sneaker store and bought a pair of black-and-white Nike Dunks for Melvin. Mello used savings from his allowance to pay for the $135 shoes.
This way, he said, “nobody could make fun of him or say anything about him anymore.”
James was touched by her son’s gesture, and she said it fit with his caring nature.
“He is super sensitive, and he is the most giving person,” James said, adding that the boys met about two years ago and are among each other’s closest friends.
James believes Mello was especially empathetic toward Melvin since he, too, has been a victim of bullying.
“He was bullied at his old school about his height, and he would come home crying sometimes,” James said. “I started encouraging him and letting him know that it’s all right to be different.”
Mello was so excited to give Melvin the gift that he woke up nearly an hour early for school. Before class began, he handed his friend the orange Nike box in private.
“I was totally shocked,” Melvin said. “I felt very happy and very surprised.”
After weeks of getting constant smirks about his sneakers — which his peers called “dirty” — Melvin was tired of being tormented.
“It made me feel sad, mad and very disliked,” he said. “I was so grateful that he gave me the shoes.”
Bryant Brown Jr., the dean of culture at the school, spotted the shoe box on Melvin’s desk and asked him for the backstory. It brought Brown to tears.
“I was so moved,” Brown said. “It’s so beautiful.”
It’s “everything I want these kids to be,” he continued.
The story hit home for many reasons, Brown added, including that when he was growing up, his older brother used to buy him sneakers when his parents couldn’t afford them. Now, in their adult lives, Brown buys his brother a pair of sneakers for his birthday every year to show his gratitude.
Having someone look out for him throughout his life “meant everything to me,” said Brown, who said he was also bullied as a child.
Brown decided to share the story on Facebook, hoping it might inspire others.
“My student Melo told me he was tired of other students picking on Melvin about his shoes. Melo used his allowance and bought Melvin some shoes. This is what I live for,” Brown wrote.
The post got thousands of likes, shares and comments. Brown was stunned by the response.
“I’m just overwhelmed with the outpouring of love,” he said.
As the story spread on social media, local news picked it up, and the founder of a local charity, Candles in the S.U.N., caught wind of the story, offering the boys tickets to a Buffalo Bills game this month.
The families of both boys are blown away by the generosity and positive reaction to the story.
“It has just been so amazing,” James said.
When Melvin originally brought his sneakers home, he told his parents that they were a hand-me-down from a friend who outgrew them. But when Brown asked permission to post the photo on Facebook, they learned the truth.
“I was a little disconcerted at first,” said Melvin’s father, Wesley Anderson. “I didn’t want anyone to think Melvin was a charity case.”
His son had never told him that he was being bullied, Anderson said, nor did he express a desire for a new pair of shoes.
“He’s a very humble young man,” Anderson said of his son. “I never had an inkling about it at all until I heard about Mello.”
Going forward, he urged Melvin to “start letting me know these things so I can step in,” he said.
While Anderson was initially disturbed about his son’s mistreatment, he was warmed by Mello’s meaningful gesture.
“That was very touching,” Anderson said. “I hope this is contagious for other children. Maybe they’ll realize that being kinder to another person goes a long way.”
That’s also Brown’s hope. He recently had a discussion with students in the boys’ class about bullying and how “there’s no place in the world for that.”
“Let this lesson show you that being good always wins. Love and kindness always wins,” Brown told the students. “Always find ways to do good.”
Brown, Anderson and James want to take those teachings even further. They are planning to launch an anti-bullying campaign in the coming weeks.
“Bullying happens every single day,” said Brown. “We’re going to do everything we can to prevent it, and make sure Mello’s helping hand always lives on.” | 2022-11-04T10:51:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bullies mocked his shoes. His buddy got him new ones with his allowance. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/04/shoes-bullying-school-nike-buffalo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/04/shoes-bullying-school-nike-buffalo/ |
Denver firefighters had a woman declared dead. Then she started moving.
Two firefighters have been disciplined for relying on a police officer’s assessment that the woman was ‘obviously dead’ instead of examining her themselves
A Denver police officer emerged from a house on a late June morning to tell firefighters that the woman they’d come to check on was “obviously dead.” The firefighters outside phoned a doctor to report that she was dead. The doctor declared her dead.
“Guys I’m really sorry, I walked in to clear the house and when I was near her she moved her head,” the officer told them, according to a recently released report.
The incident triggered an investigation and disciplinary proceedings against the two Denver Fire Department firefighters. Last month, both were punished for relaying the police officer’s assessment and passing it off as their own — instead of checking on the woman themselves. Public safety officials said both failed to do their jobs properly, lied or otherwise misled others, hurt the entire fire department and “brought disrepute on and compromised the integrity of the city.”
“Most importantly, this misconduct failed the patient and involved a demonstrable serious risk to public safety,” Mary Dulacki, chief deputy executive director with the city’s Department of Public Safety, wrote in her disciplinary order for one of the firefighters.
Wife crashes her own funeral, horrifying her husband, who had paid to have her killed
The Department of Public Safety, which oversees both the fire and police departments, said it handled the employees’ misconduct appropriately.
“The Denver Fire Department (DFD) took immediate action to address this incident and ensure the patient was transported and admitted to the hospital,” a public safety official told The Washington Post in a statement. “Following a thorough review subject to DFD’s discipline process, those involved were appropriately disciplined.”
The discipline stems from a 911 call that came in just after 8 a.m. on June 24. A father told dispatchers he was worried about his 57-year-old daughter, who lived alone. She’d recently had stomach surgery, and although they normally spoke every day, he hadn’t heard from her in nearly a week.
Police forced entry into her home about 2½ hours later, records show. Before anyone from the fire department entered the house, one of the officers came out, reporting that the woman was clearly dead, Dulacki said in her report. Her body was bloated, smelled like it was decomposing and was leaking fluid, the report states.
This led fire department Lt. Patrick Lopez to call a doctor in the Denver Health Medical Center and Hospital emergency department to pronounce her dead based on firefighters’ report from the field. As it rang, Lopez handed the phone to his subordinate, firefighter Marshall Henry, who proceeded to describe the woman’s condition to the physician despite never having seen her or given her a physical exam, as required by department protocol.
“The doctor asked clarifying questions about the patient’s condition and Firefighter Henry deliberately misrepresented himself to the doctor as being next to the patient and as having performed a patient assessment,” Dulacki wrote in her disciplinary order.
The doctor pronounced the woman dead at 10:41 a.m., Henry told investigators. Colorado state law requires a medical professional to be notified and make the official announcement of death.
Without a patient to help, Lopez and the rest of his firefighting crew headed back to the station. Around that time, an officer returned inside the house to search for weapons. During the scan, the officer noticed the patient “twitching.” He radioed for firefighters and paramedics to get back to the scene. And so, about four minutes after clearing the call, they returned. Once they did, the rescuers, including Lopez and Henry, took the woman to the hospital.
Realizing his mistake after the call was over, Henry reported the incident to his superiors, prompting them to request a statement from Lopez.
In that statement, the lieutenant said that two officers met his crew as they arrived at the scene, telling them they were about to check on the woman. After police forced entry, an officer went inside, eventually reemerging to report that the woman was “obviously dead.” The officer said firefighters didn’t need to go inside, Lopez told investigators, adding that he believed the officer didn’t want them in the house because it was now a crime scene.
At a pre-disciplinary hearing in late September, Henry admitted he botched the welfare call and apologized. He said he let down three families with his misconduct: the patient’s, his own and the one he’d built at the fire department, which had “gifted this career.”
“Firefighter Henry said that he knew better than to make that call,” Dulacki wrote in her report.
Although Lopez took full responsibility for the actions of his crew at his hearing, he accused police of inappropriate behavior, including giving a “horrific” description of the scene inside the house.
Five former volunteer firefighters accused of helping commit arson to respond to scenes
The officer who declared the woman “obviously dead,” Eugene McComas, told investigators he never barred Lopez or any other firefighters from going into the house, and Dulacki noted that no one else at the scene backed up Lopez’s assertion. A public safety official told The Post an internal investigation into McComas’s actions is ongoing.
As a result of his misconduct, Lopez was demoted from lieutenant to firefighter, barred from seeking a promotion for five years and suspended for 14 shifts without pay. He also agreed to be fired if he misbehaves in a way that results in “sustained discipline” over a five-year probationary period. Henry was also suspended for 14 shifts without pay.
“I will never trust what a cop says again,” he told investigators.
Jessica Lipscomb contributed to this report. | 2022-11-04T10:52:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Denver firefighters had a woman declared dead. Then she started moving. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/04/denver-firefighters-dead-woman-alive/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/04/denver-firefighters-dead-woman-alive/ |
For painter Bill Hill, literature, art and life swirl in the same air
On view at Gallery 2112, the area artist’s abstractions resemble landscapes seen through the lens of poetry
By Kriston Capps
Painter Bill Hill, whose atmospheric abstractions are on view in “Modalities” at Gallery 2112. (Gallery 2112)
About four years back, a book club was meeting to pore over a tome by James Joyce at an out-of-the-way Italian kitchen on Capitol Hill when one of the readers spotted Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders eating a meatball hoagie. Artist Bill Hill, a member of this self-described band of “Wakers” — who meet once a week to read two or three pages of Joyce’s famously impenetrable novel “Finnegans Wake” — asked Sanders to join them.
“We were on page 565,” says Hill. “And the first words are” — here Hill slips into a gruff bass in imitation of Sanders — “ ‘night by silent sailing night, Isobel, wildwood eyes and primrose hair … .’ ” While the senator got tongue-tied, he stuck with it, according to Hill, who says that Sanders left the group with a parting word: Reading this book is harder work than battling Republicans.
Bernie isn’t the Wakers’ only VIP guest reader; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once sat with them, as did a federal judge nominated by former president Donald Trump. Over the last 12 years, the club has wound its way through “Finnegans Wake” once, at which point the readers simply started the 688-page novel over again.
For Hill, an art handler and painter who’s made his home in the D.C. area since 1982, this stream-of-consciousness text is more than a high-water mark for modernism. For Hill, Joyce is more like a key to unlocking the universe — and maybe a model for his own mind.
“Modalities,” a show of Hill’s paintings at Gallery 2112 in Dupont Circle, opens a window into the artist’s multifaceted perspective. His bright abstractions point to the style, techniques and formal experiments of the Washington Color School, artists who transformed abstract painting in the 1960s and 1970s.
Hill, 65, knew them all: Gene Davis, Leon Berkowitz and more. Hill rented a studio on U Street NW from Sam Gilliam, a close friend and mentor and an artist who became internationally famous for his drape paintings. Hill says he and Gilliam would meet for breakfast and spend the morning going over the work of an artist; for their last session, in spring 2021, they studied Kenneth Noland. (Gilliam died in June.)
Works such as “Field Painting II” (2022) indicate Hill’s close connection to Washington’s painterly pantheon. An atmospheric painting of teal, tangerine and yellow ocher looks like light reflecting off clouds at sunset — a dappled abstraction that would be at home in Berkowitz’s or Gilliam’s studios. Yet a few haphazard dollops of eggshell blue suggest tension in the surface.
Hill describes the Washington Color School as his graduate education in painting. Once, Gilliam and fellow artist Simon Gouverneur even showed up at his studio door, demanding tuition (and bearing six-packs of beer.) “My whole youth was kind of like a floating opera with all of those guys,” he says.
Hill grew up in the D.C. area. His parents met on the naval base at Pearl Harbor just before the attack, and his dad studied law under the GI Bill. The family moved to McLean, where, as a child, Hill befriended Robert F. Kennedy’s children at their Virginia estate, Hickory Hill. Years later, as an art handler working for galleries and collectors in D.C., Hill would oversee the move of a massive four-foot-tall decorative urn for Kerry Kennedy, RFK’s daughter.
After rejecting the corporate law track, Hill’s father moved the family to a farm in southern Maryland, where Hill says he picked tobacco as a youth. In his father’s library, he found a copy of “Ulysses,” another doorstop by Joyce, that set his life on its trajectory. Hill studied painting at Carnegie Mellon University, where he met his wife, Elaine, while studying Chinese philosophy. But his real education didn’t take off until he returned to the District, lured back by the art and ideas coming out of Washington.
With his feathered white hair and easy cackle, the artist could be a storybook character from Dr. Seuss. He’s certainly got the Lorax’s mustache. But the ease with which Hill weaves tales of Washington art lore with heady ideas from modern art experiments makes for a more psychedelic character, if no less animated — like Lewis Carroll’s hookah-smoking caterpillar.
A conversation with Hill splinters into dozens of fractal tangents. Over the course of an hour, he glances from one connection to another, recalling a printmaker included in the corporate collection of Bethesda’s Artery Capital Group who made the last series of prints by the mercurial composer John Cage, or an assistant for sculptor Anne Truitt who went on to make jewelry for the sultan of Brunei, or the Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School grads who helped form Jefferson Airplane.
Following along isn’t necessary to understand Hill’s work. Strictly speaking, following along isn’t much of an option for someone who doesn’t possess his extraordinary recall, which he attributes to his early Jesuit education. But his fluid yet highly structured way of talking through his thinking offers insights into the decisions that guide his work as a painter.
Hill’s voracious intellectual appetites have not always served him so well. When he and his wife divorced seven years ago, Hill says, she told him that he still behaves the same way he did as an undergraduate. “I look at that as one of my better qualities,” he says.
But when Hill explains that he was thinking about Pierre Bonnard when he made “Solas Nua II” (2022), a subtle, almost impressionist painting — that tracks. And when Hill describes an Aristotelian sequence involving Joyce’s alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, in which his thoughts trace his footsteps on the beach as if they were on separate celestial spheres — and how this passage reflected his feeling when he biked along the Chesapeake Bay’s western shore — well, that almost tracks.
Hill has uncovered a “chromatic operation” in Joyce’s work that he intends to explore, using the tools that Gilliam, Berkowitz and Gouverneur gave him. Hill is carrying the torch for a tradition that is not yet spent: abstraction based on chance and experiment, resulting in paintings that look like landscapes seen through the lens of verse borrowed from hundreds of different dog-eared pages.
Bill Hill: Modalities
Gallery 2112, 2112 R St. NW. 202-213-9768. gallery2112.com. | 2022-11-04T11:00:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For painter Bill Hill, literature, art and life swirl in the same air - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/04/bill-hill-modalities-art-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/04/bill-hill-modalities-art-review/ |
Catherine Read and Sang Yi are running for mayor of Fairfax City. (Read campaign for Fairfax City Mayor/Yi campaign for Fairfax City Mayor)
Fairfax City’s mayoral election is meant to be a nonpartisan contest about land-use policies and other local governing issues. Instead, the race in this community of 24,500 residents — between city council member Sang H. Yi and Catherine Read, a civic engagement strategist — has attracted attention from both major political parties, as Read, a Democratic Party activist, highlights social issues while Yi, a Republican, vies to become Virginia’s first Korean American mayor.
In an era when Republicans and Democrats spend heavily to secure even the smallest victories, the race has easily become Fairfax City’s most expensive, with campaign signs and political mailers vying for voters’ attention.
Yi, who works as a GOP congressional staffer, has raised nearly $103,000 for his mayoral bid, with an additional $67,000 coming from his city council campaign. He counts among his donors several well-known local Republicans including former congresswoman Barbara Comstock, and featured Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) as a guest speaker at one of his fundraisers.
Read — who lost a bid for a city council seat in 2012 but hopes to become the city’s first female mayor — has raised $90,000, with backing from multiple Democratic lawmakers in the state and an endorsement from the local Democratic Party committee.
By comparison, Mayor David Meyer, who is not seeking reelection, won in 2020 after raising just $25,500. Meyer has endorsed Read while two former mayors — Rob Lederer and Steve Stombres — are backing Yi, along with three city council members, some of whom are Democrats or independent.
Nonetheless, Read casts Yi as an extreme conservative, arguing during an interview that voters need to know where he stands on abortion and transgender bathrooms.
A civil war among neighbors over Confederate-themed streets
“It absolutely is a local issue,” Read said, noting that some schools in the city are scheduled to undergo renovations while the Youngkin administration is trying to have transgender children categorized by their “biological sex” when it comes to using school bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities.
“There are transgender children in our Fairfax City schools,” she said. “Will the city council [with Yi as mayor] support gender-inclusive bathrooms in those renovations?”
Yi would not answer questions about his positions on those topics during a separate interview. Instead, he said he would focus on creating more affordable housing, attracting businesses and improving schools in a manner that reflects “the welcoming spirit” of his increasingly diverse community, which includes about 4,500 Asian Americans.
Read also said she counts better housing opportunities, schools and economic development as top priorities.
“All this is is an effort to add partisan drama to a nonpartisan race,” Yi said about Read’s attacks, noting that she received a $2,500 donation from Energized for Change, a political action committee launched by former Virginia House speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) to help Democrats win more seats in that chamber. “She’s the one who is partisan.”
Read’s supporters have attacked Yi over a sample ballot that suggested voting for him and other city council candidates who have endorsed his campaign, calling the ballot a violation of state election laws because it did not sufficiently identify who was behind it.
Yi was present outside an early-voting site when the ballots were being passed out. But he said he didn’t know that was happening and that his campaign did not create or authorize the ballot, distributed by a group called Concerned Citizens of Fairfax.
“I didn’t give permission for them to use my name on it,” he said, adding that he doesn’t know who is behind the group. The mailer did not have a phone number, mailing address or other identifying information, and the organization could not be reached.
Both candidates are out to make history in the city.
A beloved mayor. An alleged meth-for-sex scheme. And a secret life exposed.
Yi, the son of Korean immigrants, is aiming to become the state’s first Korean American mayor, highlighting that possibility during his campaign.
“One of the things that inspired me to be in public service was because my parents had a very low level of connectivity to the government,” he said. “There were many things I missed as a child because they didn’t speak the language or didn’t understand how the school system worked. My city is 30 percent foreign-born and I think about my parents every time I engage with them.”
His candidacy has garnered some support from Korean American donors but has not generated widespread excitement in that community because of his party affiliation, said Steve Lee, president of the nonprofit Korean American Association of Greater Washington, which is based in nearby Annandale.
“There are more Democrats in Northern Virginia, even in the Korean community,” Lee said. “Sometimes people think, hey, he’s Korean. Let’s help the Korean. It doesn’t necessarily work that way.”
Read is working to become the city’s first female mayor, though she has not made that an aspect of her campaign.
She said she hopes to champion the construction of more sidewalks in areas of Fairfax City. Read also wants to the city to install public bathrooms inside its parks, which the city has long resisted doing.
“Why an educated, affluent community like Fairfax City has somehow decided that normalizing Port-A-Johns as a permanent solution is quite beyond me,” she said.
Meyer, the current mayor, said Read has a better temperament to be the city’s mayor, adding that Yi’s “laissez faire approach” to development would take the city backward.
Meyer added that Yi split from most council members on important votes, including whether to rename some streets bearing Confederate names, most of which were in the Mosby Woods development, which was built around a Civil War theme.
Yi opposed renaming all but two streets — Rebel Road in Mosby Woods and Stonewall Avenue, which is in a different neighborhood — arguing that those choices should be up to the people who live there.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in last few years as a city,” Meyer said. “I believe that Catherine understands those accomplishments and would be effective in building on them.”
But in a city where many residents are employees of the federal government, Yi’s government experience has been an advantage, winning him broader support.
Kate Doyle Feingold, a federal government employee who is running for city council, said she is backing Yi despite disagreeing with him on social issues. Feingold declined to discuss her party affiliation or say which government agency she works for, citing the federal Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in explicitly partisan activities. Participation in nonpartisan elections is allowed under that law.
Feingold said Yi has been quick to respond to community concerns, particularly a concern she and some neighbors had over a developer’s plans to cut down trees in their community.
“Sang was one of the only council members who reached out and responded,” she said. “There have been other local city issues over the past years where you email the entire city council or mayor and Sang has been one of those who has consistently responded.”
Feingold added that the partisan nature of the race has made her uncomfortable. Council member So P. Lim, who also endorsed Yi, sympathized with that uneasiness.
She agreed to back Yi before Read entered the race, she said.
“I’ve worked with Sang for the past four years and I know his style, I know his thoroughness,” Lim said. But “if I knew there was another candidate, I would have probably stayed out of the picture.” | 2022-11-04T11:09:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lots of partisan money in Fairfax City's nonpartisan mayoral race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/fairfax-city-mayor-race/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/fairfax-city-mayor-race/ |
How Giorgia Meloni became a darling of the Trump right
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has become a subject of fascination among American conservatives. (Riccardo Antimiani/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
ROME — Hours after Giorgia Meloni’s party swept to election victory in September, American conservative strategist Greg Price shared a clip on Twitter of the soon-to-be Italian prime minister issuing a clarion call. In the video, she warned of an ongoing, global attack against gender, family and religion, carried out by unnamed forces seeking a world where forms of identity cease to exist.
“I can’t define myself as Italian, as Christian, mother, woman — no!” Meloni says in the clip, from a 2019 speech. “I must be citizen x, gender x, parent 1, parent 2.”
The clip, liked more than 200,000 times, went viral among Trump-aligned Republicans. And the reviews were fawning.
“So beautifully said,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
“Spectacular,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.).
“A model for Nov 8th candidates here,” said Steve Cortes, a former Trump campaign adviser.
In becoming the first far-right head of government in postwar Western Europe, Meloni has emerged as a celebrated point of reference for MAGA Republicans, who’ve interpreted her ascent as an affirmation of their own values and goals. In their narrative — prevailing on social media and in right-wing media outlets — Meloni is a truth-teller who speaks clearly about her beliefs, hasn’t compromised in the face of the woke left, and overcame a hysterical media calling her a fascist, a racist and worse.
The far-right leader who is changing Italy's tone
“This is somebody who I can relate to, because they’re doing the same thing to me,” Kari Lake, a Trump-aligned Arizona gubernatorial candidate who contends the 2020 election was stolen, said on Fox News.
There is no doubt that Meloni’s rise is remarkable — and if she succeeds in governing Italy, she could pave a path to power for other once-fringe figures in Europe.
She has caught on in the United States because, in some ways, her rhetoric mirrors Trump’s. She has leaned heavily on the idea of a forgotten middle class, scorned by elites, while portraying herself as a defender of the underdog.
“The narrative of the people against the power,” said Maurizio Molinari, the editor in chief of La Repubblica. “She is emulating and in a way translating to the Italian public some of the messages that helped Trump.”
Molinari, who reviewed examples of right-wing U.S. media coverage of Meloni at The Washington Post’s request, concluded: “She is winning; we will win. This is their narrative.”
But there are also some American misconceptions about what propelled Meloni’s rise.
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni sets agenda, says she has no sympathy for fascism
While the social media chatter among Republicans tends to focus on her firebrand culture war speeches, with the assumption that those views underpin her popularity, Meloni says her positions on such issues probably cost her votes. This summer, when an Italian government collapse triggered elections and opened a clear path to power, she cut out her most controversial and extreme talking points. No longer did she bash the “LGBT lobby,” for instance, or frame migration as “ethnic substitution.” She also tried to explicitly assure the establishment in Brussels and Washington that she’d govern Italy with a conventional foreign policy: pro-Atlantic, anti-Kremlin. In short, she managed to do what Republicans had once hoped for and never received from Trump: She moderated.
Still, some Americans on the right have presumed her victory demonstrates an anti-system popular revolt.
After the Italian election, Fox News host Tucker Carlson devoted much of one night’s program to Meloni, portraying Italy as a landscape “destroyed” by neoliberalism and its open-border policy, with some parts of the country becoming “flat-out dangerous” because of migrant crime. Meloni, he said, was one of the “very few politicians … who has been willing to say the obvious — the truth — out loud.”
“This is a revolution,” Carlson said.
The reality is more complicated. Italy did have a revolt, but in 2018, when it handed power to populist parties that subsequently fought with one another and squandered popularity. Those failures, coupled with long-standing problems — on-and-off recession, high government debt, limited job opportunities for the young — have fed a sense of political apathy, and skepticism that any political solution will work. Voter turnout in September was the lowest on record.
Meloni benefited from years in the opposition, when she was able to siphon off support from rivals on the right. But that doesn’t mean she has secured people’s loyalty. Some voters say they aren’t sure they’ll back her even a year from now.
Daniele Albertazzi, an Italian-born politics professor at the University of Surrey, noted that for three decades, between 42 percent and 48 percent of Italians have voted for right-wing parties.
Meloni’s party has a hard line on social issues that make its coalition different, and further right, than any prior postwar government. But Meloni has also filled key cabinet positions with familiar figures from past governments of Silvio Berlusconi, a nod to the many centrists who gave her their vote.
“It’s hardly a revolution,” Albertazzi said.
The reasons behind the far right's success in Italy
For American onlookers, one of the biggest points of discussion concerns the roots of Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy. Her party, created a decade ago, descended from an earlier group founded by Mussolini sympathizers after the war. Brothers of Italy policies aren’t fascist, and Meloni herself has said she has “never felt sympathy” for such beliefs. But her party has included a gaggle of members who have publicly made fascist salutes or celebrated Mussolini’s rise. Her government also took no action when several thousand Italians recently marched with fascist symbols in Predappio, Mussolini’s hometown.
In the eyes of Republicans, international media accounts about Meloni have been alarmist, unfairly tying her to fascism. Several TV segments on Trump-aligned media channels have featured a rundown of breathless headlines or MSNBC clips.
“[It’s] the left-wing media doing what they do best, labeling common-sense conservatives as far-right,” a Newsmax anchor said, before interviewing Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.). “We’ve seen the same thing happen at home, with MAGA supporters.”
“Giorgia Meloni is a breath of fresh air,” Norman then said. “It’s a preview of coming attractions” in the U.S. midterms in November.
Filippo Trevisan, an Italian-born associate professor at American University, who specializes in political communication and who reviewed several U.S. media clips at the request of The Post, said that neither the left nor right in America had been able to “truly represent the turn that Italian politics has taken.”
Meloni, for her part, has worked for years to build up ties with Republicans, and spoke in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando. In an August interview with The Post, she deflected a question about whether she felt more aligned to the Trump wing of the party or those opposed to his ideological takeover.
“I’m not interested in getting into the debate inside of the Republican Party,” she said, “because it would be too complex of a matter for me.”
Notably, at a time when the notion of election fraud has worked its way so deeply into the Republican Party, Meloni never suggested — before or after the vote — that Italy’s parliamentary election might be up for question. When the outcome gave her a chance to be appointed prime minister by Italy’s president, Meloni showed deference to her predecessor, centrist Mario Draghi. And when she spoke last week before parliament, she celebrated the smooth transition of power.
“So it should be in great democracies,” she said. | 2022-11-04T11:13:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Giorgia Meloni became a darling of the Trump right - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/giorgia-meloni-trump-right-maga/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/giorgia-meloni-trump-right-maga/ |
(Danny Clinch)
Steve Martin: How I got Hollywood to embrace Cyrano de Bergerac
In an excerpt from his new book, ‘Number One Is Walking,’ the actor and writer explains how he modernized a literary classic and — surprise — it was a hit
By Steve Martin and Harry Bliss
Steve Martin was once just “a wild and crazy guy,” but in the late 1970s he leaped from stand-up and SNL to the big screen, with movies like “The Jerk,” “Three Amigos” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” He is also the author of 15 books, including the novella “Shopgirl” and a memoir, “Born Standing Up.” His latest book, “Number One Is Walking,” a collaboration with illustrator Harry Bliss, is an illustrated reminiscence of his life in movies in which he reveals, among other things, how he got Hollywood to embrace Cyrano de Bergerac with the 1987 film “Roxanne.”
In the excerpt below, Martin — with help from Bliss and Bliss’s dog, Penny — explains.
My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions
Celadon. 272 pp. $30 | 2022-11-04T11:22:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Steve Martin: How I got Hollywood to embrace Cyrano de Bergerac - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/04/steve-martin-how-i-got-hollywood-embrace-cyrano-de-bergerac/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/04/steve-martin-how-i-got-hollywood-embrace-cyrano-de-bergerac/ |
A new report finds the rate of food insecurity among grandparent-headed households with grandchildren is 60 percent higher than that of all households with children
Food for distribution at the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank in Duquesne, Pa., in 2020. (Jeff Swensen for The Washington Post)
After Kathy Coleman and her husband became the primary caregivers to their six grandchildren in Baton Rouge, she found a way to temper her hunger pains.
She drank coffee.
Going without food became a necessary trade-off to ensure the children didn’t have to.
“I just couldn’t fathom eating something that one of my babies needed,” said Coleman, director of the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Information Center of Louisiana. “You make your coffee a little stronger.”
Eugene Vickerson also stepped in to care for grandchildren — one 7 years old, the other 16 months — when they came to live with him just as the housing crisis hit. He had a predatory mortgage with an adjustable rate, and soon his Atlanta home became unaffordable. For a time, until he could get his lender to modify his loan, he stopped paying the mortgage, partly to ensure the children were fed.
In households across the country, many grandparents are struggling to feed the children in their care. And inflation has only made that harder: The cost of food has jumped 11.2 percent in the past year, according to the September report on the consumer price index released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Opinion: We can — and should — end hunger before 2030
Coleman experienced what researchers call “food insecurity.” Such households are uncertain how to or unable to get enough food to meet all of their family’s needs, because they don’t have enough money or other resources.
The number of Americans who fall into this category is staggering: In 2021, about 34 million people lived in food-insecure households, Agriculture Department data shows.
Food insecurity is far worse for Americans who have taken over the raising of their grandchildren than those who haven’t, according to a new report by Generations United, an organization dedicated to helping what it calls “grandfamilies.”
I interviewed Coleman and Vickerson for a panel discussion on food insecurity. And they both illustrated one figure in the Generations United report that resonated with me, having been raised by my grandmother from the time I was 4, along with four siblings.
Roughly a quarter of grandparent-headed households experienced food insecurity between 2019 and 2020. That’s more than twice the national rate.
The stories the caregivers shared in the report are heartbreaking.
“Sometimes people would give us food that had been in their refrigerator for two weeks, but it was better than nothing,” said a Wyoming woman who raised two grandchildren. “Someone gave us a bag of oranges and we ate nothing but oranges for four days.”
Food security isn’t enough. Anti-hunger experts say the focus should be on nutrition security.
One finding, in particular, stood out: In 2019, only 42 percent of low-income, grandparent-headed households with grandchildren younger than 18 participated in the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
There are a lot of reasons these families don’t seek those benefits.
Grandparents who responsibly accumulated assets don’t always meet the low-income eligibility in their state to qualify for SNAP. About 46 percent of grandparents responsible for raising their grandchildren are 60 or older.
“Children shouldn’t go hungry because their caregivers were careful financially,” said Donna Butts, the executive director of Generations United.
One way to improve access to assistance would be to create a “child-only” SNAP benefit based on the needs of the child as opposed to household income, the report recommended.
Grandparents often aren’t aware they qualify for federal food assistance, because they mistakenly believe they must have legal custody of the children to qualify.
“I hear from the grandfamily caregivers that they don’t want to be a part of ‘the system,’” Keith Lowhorne, vice president of kinship with the Alabama Foster and Adoptive Parents Association, said in the report. “They worry that applying for food and nutrition programs would cause someone to come and take the children away if they don’t have legal custody, or go after the parents for child support, which would cause problems.”
Unlike many other public benefit programs, federal nutrition programs such as SNAP don’t require caregivers to obtain legal custody to receive aid.
The Biden administration held a summit on combating hunger and later released a 44-page report that included improving outreach and countering misconceptions about the government’s food programs.
“We need to improve outreach for existing federal nutrition programs like SNAP and to better reach more grandfamilies and connect them to benefits that they’re eligible for and should be receiving,” said Alexandra Ashbrook, director of root causes and specific populations at the Food Research and Action Center, which contributed data to the report.
But there’s another reason families don’t apply for SNAP benefits: embarrassment.
My grandmother, Big Mama, hated using food stamps, what SNAP was previously called. It wasn’t her fault my parents failed at parenting. Nonetheless, she felt shame in asking for help and would try to shop at times when she was less likely to see someone she knew.
She would try to slip the food stamps to the cashier without anyone in line behind her noticing. But even as a child, I could see the judgmental glares she received.
Eventually, she stopped reapplying for food stamps. The stigma was just too much for her. Somehow she made do with the money she had.
Whenever you may be tempted to judge families facing food insecurity and their need for assistance, think about Coleman and her strong cups of coffee. | 2022-11-04T11:22:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Children raised by grandparents face a higher rate of hunger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/04/grandparents-report-food-insecurity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/04/grandparents-report-food-insecurity/ |
How Imran Khan Wants to Win Back Power in Pakistan
Analysis by Khalid Qayum | Bloomberg
Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister, speaks in a prerecorded video during the United Nations General Assembly via live stream in New York, U.S., on Friday, Sept. 24, 2021. A scaled-back United Nations General Assembly returns to Manhattan after going completely virtual last year, but fears about a possible spike in Covid-19 cases are making people in the host city less enthusiastic about the annual diplomatic gathering. (Bloomberg)
Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was ousted by a no-confidence vote in early April, is making a major push to return to power. The former international cricket star has won several by-elections and led big protest rallies -- and even escaped an assassination attempt. Khan has also locked horns with the country’s powerful army, which has ruled the country for about half of its 75-year existence. He wants the new government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to call early elections, which Khan thinks he would win comfortably.
1. What is Imran Khan’s plan and what are the obstacles?
The ex-premier warned before his ouster that he’d be more “dangerous” leading popular protests on the streets. Since then, he has demanded the 13-party coalition government that replaced him set a date for early elections, which aren’t due until October 2023. On Oct. 25 this year, he called on his supporters to march from across the country toward Islamabad, the capital, in a bid to pressure Sharif. Ten days later Khan, who is 70, was shot in the leg during a march. He blamed his successor and a senior general for the attack, which killed a Khan supporter. Both Sharif and the military condemned the shooting. The violence prompted an outpouring of sympathy for Khan, who showed no sign of backing down. (In 2014 Khan led a 126-day sit-in protest in Islamabad in a failed bid to dislodge then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the elder brother of the current premier.) Separately, Khan faces several legal efforts to disqualify him as a lawmaker including corruption and criminal cases that may lead to his conviction and jail sentence.
2. Why was Khan ousted?
During his turbulent 3 1/2 years in office, Khan demonstrated an approach to governing that critics characterized as haphazard and inconsistent. Facing a balance-of-payments crisis, he delayed seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. He finally did so in 2019, only to see the program suspended in 2020 because of the pandemic. The plan was revived last year -- after another stall -- after Khan agreed to tougher conditions, including raising oil prices and electricity tariffs. But a few months later, Khan cut domestic fuel costs and power rates to soothe public anger over rising living costs, again putting the IMF program in jeopardy only to be revived again by the Sharif administration in August.
3. Why is Khan still fighting?
He has accused Sharif and other politicians of conspiring with the US to topple his government because -- he says -- he had been increasingly critical of Washington while seeking better relations with Russia and China. Khan provided no proof for his claim, which was denied by the US, the Sharif government and Pakistan’s military. However, his conspiracy theory, has gone down well with his supporters. In by-elections in October, Khan won six out of seven seats that he personally contested, demonstrating his continued popular appeal.
4. Why is the military’s position important?
Pakistan’s military has outsized power in a country conceived as a democracy. There have been three successful military coups. When Khan became prime minister, it was only the second time since the creation of Pakistan in 1947 that a civilian administration had transferred power to another. Even when elected governments are in power, the military, especially its spy wing has played a forceful role in foreign and security policies. The armed forces have entrenched positions in the economy through land ownership and shareholdings in large corporations.
5. Did the military support Khan?
Khan has said his relations with the military for his first three years in power were “excellent,” and that he and General Qamar Javed Bajwa were on “same page” on all issues -- an arrangement critics referred to as a hybrid regime. In behind-the-scenes maneuvers, the armed forces helped him survive several previous moves by opponents to remove him from power, according to interviews Khan gave after his ouster. (The military has denied helping him.) His government extended Bajwa’s term as army chief for another three years in 2019. However, relations soured in October 2021 when General Faiz Hameed, the ISI chief and a Khan favorite, was moved to a less significant post. The military announced his replacement, General Nadeem Ahmad Anjum, three weeks before the government did, sparking reports of a rift between Khan and Bajwa. When a new challenge to Khan’s leadership arose this year, the military apparently didn’t back him, opposition parties and analysts say.
6. What’s at stake?
The country’s foreign reserves have fallen to a three-year low and a $1 billion bond payment is due in December. Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded the country’s rating deep into junk, citing the impact of mid-year floods that have caused more than $30 billion in damage to the economy. The rupee has plumbed new lows against the dollar. Shehbaz Sharif and his finance minister, Ishaq Dar, have vowed to meet the country’s financial obligations, including the bond payment and completing the agreement with the IMF. The premier has promised a more balanced foreign policy, seeking good ties with “all-weather friend” China while also seeking better relations with the US and Europe. In September, Pakistan joined China in abstaining on the United Nations General Assembly’s resolution condemning Russia’s “attempted illegal annexation” of Ukraine. | 2022-11-04T11:22:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Imran Khan Wants to Win Back Power in Pakistan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-imran-khan-wants-to-win-back-power-in-pakistan/2022/11/04/726f6ab8-5c1e-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-imran-khan-wants-to-win-back-power-in-pakistan/2022/11/04/726f6ab8-5c1e-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
In 2005, when I was a 3-star vice admiral and senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, I met in Brasilia with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, universally known as Lula. He was about a year into his first term as Brazil’s president. The immediate impression was of a tough, working-class leader who famously lost a finger in an accident while he was a metalworker and trade unionist decades earlier.
At the time, there was an evident drift to the left across Latin America and the Caribbean. This greatly concerned the US, but seeing those two men at the top of their respective games was heartening.
Later, as commander of US Southern Command, I met several more times with Lula. Those were heady days for Brazil; commodity prices were high, and he had a lot of confidence in where the country was headed.
First, we need to realize this was an incredibly close contest: Polls in the final month of the campaign tightened significantly in the direction of the right-wing incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro. Lula emphatically does not have a mandate, and must govern a deeply divided nation, essentially a 50-50 electorate. A wounded Bolsonaro has yet to concede, although he has authorized the start of a constitutionally required transition process.
While there is a possibility of some protests and challenges, both the courts and the armed forces have shown no inclination to overturn the results, nor are they likely to do so. Bolsonaro will probably become a very difficult “leader in exile,” much as former President Donald Trump has done in the US. Nothing will come easily, and Lula knows it.
This will lead Lula to gradually seek more control of the political middle by positioning himself as a conciliatory figure who will govern (as he has said explicitly) for all the people of Brazil, not just those who voted for him. It will be a difficult course, especially given the strong possibility of a hard landing for many national economies next year, and a high level of expectations from his supporters.
Expect good cooperation in counternarcotics, environmental fishery enforcement, and general training between the Brazilian armed forces and the US Fourth Fleet, based in Florida.
During a Joe Biden presidency, the level of mutual respect between Washington and Brasília will be high, and good cooperation likely. If the US shifts hard to the right, however, either at next week’s midterms or in the 2024 presidential election, the seas will be far choppier between the two giant nations of the Americas. Lula’s deep experience in government will be an asset in navigating a critical patch in US-Brazil relations.
• Lula Could Be a Good Friend to Brazil Investor: John Authers
• Challenge Begins Now for Brazil’s Comeback Kid: Clara Ferreira Marques
• Brazil’s Middle Class Isn’t Buying What Lula’s Selling: Eduardo Porter | 2022-11-04T11:23:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Leftist Lula Will Move to the Center on the Military - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/leftistlula-will-move-to-the-center-on-the-military/2022/11/04/5ee2850c-5c23-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/leftistlula-will-move-to-the-center-on-the-military/2022/11/04/5ee2850c-5c23-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
Our Future Artificial Intelligence Overlords Need a Resistance Movement
Artificial intelligence has been moving so fast that even the scientists are finding it hard to keep up. In the past year, machine learning algorithms have started to generate rudimentary movies and stunning fake photographs. They’re even writing code. In the future, we’ll probably look back on 2022 as the year AI shifted from processing information to creating content as well as many humans.
But what if we also look back on it as the year AI took a step towards the destruction of the human species? As hyperbolic and ridiculous as that sounds, public figures from Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, and going right back to Alan Turing, have expressed concerns about the fate of humans in a world where machines surpass them in intelligence, with Musk saying AI was becoming more dangerous than nuclear warheads.
After all, humans don’t treat less-intelligent species particularly well, so who’s to say that computers, trained ubiquitously on data that reflects all the facets of human behavior, won’t “place their goals ahead of ours” as legendary computer scientist Marvin Minsky once warned.
Refreshingly, there’s some good news. More scientists are seeking to make deep learning systems more transparent and measurable. That momentum mustn’t stop. As these programs become ever more influential in financial markets, social media and supply chains, technology firms will need to start prioritizing AI safety over capability.
Last year, across the world’s major AI labs, roughly 100 full-time researchers were focused on building safe systems, according to the 2021 State of AI report produced annually by London venture capital investors Ian Hogarth and Nathan Banaich. Their report for this year found there are still only about 300 researchers working full-time on AI safety.
“It’s a very low number,” Hogarth said during a Twitter Spaces discussion with me this week on the future threat of AI. “Not only are very few people working on making these systems aligned, but it’s also kind of a Wild West.”
Hogarth was referring to how in the past year a flurry of AI tools and research has been produced by open-source groups, who say super-intelligent machines shouldn’t be controlled and built in secret by a few large companies, but created out in the open. In August 2021, for instance, the community-driven organization EleutherAI developed a public version of a powerful tool that could write realistic comments and essays on nearly any subject, called GPT-Neo. The original tool, called GPT-3, was developed by OpenAI, a company co-founded by Musk and largely funded by Microsoft Corp. that offers limited access to its powerful systems.
Then this year, several months after OpenAI impressed the AI community with a revolutionary image-generating system called DALL-E 2, an open-sourced firm called Stable Diffusion released its own version of the tool to the public, for free.
One of the benefits of open source software is that by being out in the open, a greater number of people are constantly probing it for inefficiencies. That’s why Linux has historically been one of the most secure operating systems available to the public.
But throwing powerful AI systems out into the open also raises the risk that they’ll be misused. If AI is as potentially damaging as a virus or nuclear contamination, then perhaps it makes sense to centralize its development. After all, viruses are scrutinized in bio-safety labs and uranium is enriched in carefully constrained environments. Research into viruses and nuclear power are overseen by regulation, though, and with governments trailing the rapid pace of AI, there are still no clear guidelines for its development.
“We’ve almost got the worst of both worlds,” says Hogarth. AI risks misuse by being built out in the open, but no one is overseeing what’s happening when it’s created behind closed doors either.
For now at least, it’s encouraging to see the spotlight growing on AI alignment, a growing field that refers to designing AI systems that are “aligned” with human goals. Leading AI companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s DeepMind and OpenAI have multiple teams working on AI alignment, and many researchers from those firms have gone on to launch their own startups, some of which are focused on making AI safe. These include San Francisco-based Anthropic, whose founding team left OpenAI and raised $580 million from investors earlier this year, and London-based Conjecture, which was recently backed by the founders of Github Inc., Stripe Inc. and FTX Trading Ltd.
Conjecture is operating under the assumption that AI will reach parity with human intelligence in the next five years, and that its current trajectory spells catastrophe for the human species.
But when I asked Conjecture Chief Executive Officer Connor Leahy why AI might want to hurt humans in the first place, he answered matter-of-factly. “Imagine humans want to flood a valley to build a hydroelectric dam, and there is an anthill in the valley,” he said. “This won’t stop the humans from their construction, and the anthill will promptly get flooded. At no point did any humans even think about harming the ants. They just wanted more energy, and this was the most efficient way to achieve that goal. Analogously, autonomous AI’s will need more energy, faster communication, and more intelligence to achieve their goals.”
Leahy says that to prevent that dark future, the world needs a “portfolio of bets,” including scrutinizing deep learning algorithms to better understand how they make decisions, and trying to endow AI with more human-like reasoning.
Even if Leahy’s fears seem overblown, it’s clear that AI is not on a path that’s entirely aligned with human interests. Just look at some of the recent efforts to build chatbots. Microsoft abandoned its 2016 bot Tay which learned from interacting with Twitter users, after it posted racist and sexually charged messages within hours of being released. In August of this year, Meta Platforms Inc. released a chatbot that claimed Donald Trump was still president, having been trained on public text on the Internet.
No one knows if AI will wreak havoc on financial markets or torpedo the food supply chain one day. But it could pit human beings against one another through social media, something that’s arguably already happening. The powerful AI systems recommending posts to people on Twitter Inc. and Facebook are aimed at juicing our engagement, which inevitably means serving up content that provokes outrage or misinformation. When it comes to “AI alignment,” changing those incentives would be a good place to start. | 2022-11-04T11:23:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Our Future Artificial Intelligence Overlords Need a Resistance Movement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/our-future-artificial-intelligenceoverlords-need-aresistance-movement/2022/11/04/be00019e-5c06-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/our-future-artificial-intelligenceoverlords-need-aresistance-movement/2022/11/04/be00019e-5c06-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
Prada Captures the Zeitgeist for All Things ‘90s
Analysis by Andrea Felsted and Rachel Sanderson | Bloomberg
For the past seven years, Kering SA’s Gucci has dominated the music and handbag hit parades. But Prada — and sister brand Miu Miu — are now creeping back into popular consciousness. The Italian luxury group seems to finally be turning its fortunes around, thanks in part to its popularity with Gen Z.
Prada SpA burst onto the luxury scene in the mid-1980s, when Miuccia Prada began designing for her family’s accessories house and the company built on the success of her nylon rucksacks. It shifted its focus on aggressive expansion, particularly in Asia, even listing in Hong Kong in 2011. But soon after, it was hit by China’s crackdown on conspicuous consumption. It was also slow to believe that shoppers would purchase luxury goods via the internet.
Funnily enough, Prada’s resurgence has partly been fueled by the zeitgeist for all things ‘90s, when the fashion house was in its heyday. Not only was it quick to seize on interest for its ‘90s nylon, but it gave the flagship product a sustainable makeover.
Indeed, its turnaround is down to more than luck. It has been investing heavily — more than €200 million ($194.9 million) last year — in its digital capabilities, store network and supply chain.
It’s also finally gotten ahead of family succession concerns. In a surprise move five years ago, Lorenzo Bertelli, eldest son of Co-Chief Executive Officers Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli, joined the business, bringing a focus on digital and sustainability. The 34-year old, who is next in line to be CEO, spearheaded the Re-Nylon collection, made with recycled ocean plastic, fishing nets and textile industry waste. The nylon bag — a ‘90s icon — was reborn with fully sustainable fabric, helping to propel Prada to a new, younger audience. It goes for £1,000 ($1,118) to £1,500. | 2022-11-04T11:23:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prada Captures the Zeitgeist for All Things ‘90s - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/prada-capturesthezeitgeist-for-all-things-90s/2022/11/04/bd9f14b0-5c06-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/prada-capturesthezeitgeist-for-all-things-90s/2022/11/04/bd9f14b0-5c06-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
Zach Cruz left Florida after the 2018 massacre. Now the men who gave him a home in Virginia are accused of stealing his inheritance.
By Jessica Contrera
Zach Cruz, center, is the brother of Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz, top left. Zach was taken in by Richard Moore, top right, and Mike Donovan, bottom right, who are now charged with stealing his inheritance money. (Julia Rendleman/For The Washington Post)(Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel via AP, Pool)(Norm Shafer/ For The Washington Post).
By the time the jury filed back into the Florida courtroom, its benches were full. Here were the families, whose sons and daughters and spouses had been slaughtered. Here were the attorneys, who had asked survivors to testify about the day their limbs, their entire lives had been irrevocably maimed. Here were the sheriff’s deputies, the judge, all the people who had come to court day after day, week after week, waiting for this moment, when they would finally learn what was going to happen to Nikolas Cruz.
But when the Parkland school shooter looked up, there was one person he did not see.
His brother.
Zachary Cruz, 22, was the only close family member he had left. When Cruz went on a killing rampage at his former high school, it was Zach, then 17, who agonized over whether he could have done something to prevent it. When Cruz was arrested, it was Zach who went into the interrogation room to demand, “Why did you do this?” When Cruz started to sob, it was Zach who wrapped his older brother in his arms.
“I’m gonna come to your trial. I’ll come to everything,” Zach promised his brother, who he always calls Nik, a transcript of the 2018 conversation shows. “I swear on everything I love, I will come see you every chance I’m given. All right? No matter what happens.”
Four and a half years later, Zach hadn’t been to Florida in months. He rarely held online video visits with his brother. And despite being the most highly anticipated witness in the death penalty trial, Zach never came to testify.
Zachary Cruz visited his older brother, Nikolas Cruz, at the Broward Sheriff's Office Parkland, Fla., in 2018. (Video: Whitney Leaming/TWP)
His brother confessed to gunning down 17 people in Parkland. But he’s the only family Zach Cruz has left.
“His brother loves him,” the shooter’s public defender had assured the jury during her closing statement.
The prosecutor objected. “Not in evidence,” he said.
To the defense team, Zach not taking the stand was a lost opportunity to show what the Cruz brothers had endured growing up. To the prosecutors, it was a missed chance to cross-examine the person who may have best understood the mental state of one of the nation’s deadliest school shooters.
But Zach’s absence was also noticeable to investigators far from Florida, who saw it as another sign of what they had suspected for more than a year: Zachary Cruz was in trouble.
On Oct. 5, one week before the verdict, police raided the house where Zach lives in Virginia. Zach was photographed sitting outside the house, surrounded by Augusta County sheriff’s deputies. But they weren’t there to arrest him. They said he was a victim of a crime.
The alleged perpetrators were Richard Moore and Mike Donovan, both 45, the Virginia entrepreneurs who offered to take Zach in shortly after the shooting. In depositions and previous interviews, Zach has called the couple his guardians, saying they gave him a home, a family and a place to do the one thing he loved, skateboarding.
But police and court records allege that Moore and Donovan, who were already being prosecuted by state and federal agencies for their business practices, stole the money Zach inherited from his late mother’s estate — more than $400,000 — to pay taxes, bills and car payments on their Ferrari.
During the raid of the couple’s home and business headquarters, police collected more than 90 phones, computers and other devices as potential evidence. Moore and Donovan were charged with obtaining money by false pretenses and exploiting someone who is mentally incapacitated. They were released from jail on $50,000 bonds.
The men have called the charges “bogus.” They contend Zach is being victimized not by them, but by the Augusta County Sheriff’s department, accusing its deputies of handcuffing and holding Zach at gunpoint during the raid.
“We love Zach, and we would never exploit him,” Donovan wrote in an email to The Washington Post, saying Zach has “always had 100% control over what happened to his money.”
The arrests of Moore and Donovan came more than a year after a Virginia social services agency began to question whether Zach, who had no other family looking out for him, was being taken advantage of.
Though Zach is an adult and Moore and Donovan have no legal guardianship over him, he has become entangled in the complex web that surrounds the couple — one involving dozens of lawsuits, a myriad of spinoff businesses, an FBI investigation and a contentious public battle with reality TV star Dog the Bounty Hunter.
On the day of the verdict in Florida, the jury delivered a decisive outcome for Nikolas Cruz: Instead of being executed, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.
But for Zach, the future is much less certain. He never finished high school and does not have a job. If convicted, the men who took him in could go to prison. Moore is facing even more prison time in separate cases involving perjury and tax fraud. And according to police records, Zach’s inheritance money is gone.
After a Post reporter spoke to Zach for this story in September, Zach’s phone number was changed. Additional attempts to interview him in person were unsuccessful.
Moore and Donovan, who are expected to plead not guilty to the charges against them, continue to post photos of Zach on social media. Following their initial appearance in the case, they shared a photo of their family standing outside the Augusta County courthouse.
Zach’s arm was wrapped around Moore and Donovan. He was smiling. Two words were embroidered on his shirt: “Go away.”
A post shared by Richard Moore (@richardmooreva)
‘They feel like parents’
Zach had known Moore and Donovan for less than two weeks when he agreed to move with them to Virginia. It was May 2018. He was orphaned, homeless and on probation.
His adoptive mother, who had raised him and his older brother since they were babies, had died unexpectedly of pneumonia in November 2017. Three months later, on Valentine’s Day, Nikolas Cruz opened fire inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, killing three staff members and 14 students — people Zach had known growing up.
After Zach was interviewed by detectives for hours, he hid out from news cameras for days. In March, he took his skateboard to the Stoneman Douglas campus, trying to grapple with what his brother had done there. He was arrested for trespassing.
Zach spent 10 days in jail, much of it on suicide watch, according to his public defender at the time. He was then placed on probation and sent back to the home of a former neighbor he had been living with since his mother’s death. By May, the neighbor had kicked him out and called police on him for driving a car without a license.
Prosecutors said Zachary Cruz, brother of convicted Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz, was heard admiring his brother’s popularity during jailhouse visits. (Video: Reuters)
But this time when Zach was released from police custody, he was told there were three people who wanted to meet him: Moore, Donovan, and their adopted 14-year-old son. They took Zach to the penthouse of the oceanfront hotel where they were staying, bought him clothes from the hotel gift shop and told him they were there to help.
Soon, Zach was back in front of the judge overseeing his probation.
Two of the couple’s employees testified that they would be providing Zach with an apartment of his own, online schooling, weekly counseling and a $13 an hour job doing maintenance work.
“You need to just take this moment and appreciate what they are offering you,” the judge, Melinda Kirsch Brown, told Zach, granting him permission to move.
Donovan and Moore, whose records include convictions for grand larceny, forgery and fraudulent checks, did not take the stand. A recording of the hearing shows no one asking who they were or why they were getting involved. No one brought up the media coverage of the allegations against their multimillion dollar business, Nexus Services.
This company is making millions from America’s broken immigration system
For the past seven years, advocacy groups and state attorneys general have accused Nexus of exploiting undocumented immigrants by bailing them out of detention, then requiring them to pay exorbitant fees to maintain their freedom. Lawsuits and investigations against the company have mounted from nearly a dozen states and federal agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In some cases, the lawsuits were dismissed or are still pending. In others, Nexus has been ordered to pay millions in damages.
Donovan and Moore maintain that they are not exploiting anyone. In Donovan’s book, “Not Free America: What Your Government Doesn’t Want You To Know,” he says the investigations are simply retaliation for “our unapologetic service to God’s flock.”
Donovan describes himself as the pastor of First Christian Church Universalist in Harrisonburg, Va. The church rarely meets in person, but its website advertises the podcast, book and businesses of “Rev. Mike.”
As Nexus made a name for itself, Donovan has consistently been the public face of the company, promoting a mix of social justice advocacy and anti-government tirades. Moore, whom Donovan said he married in 2016, deals with the company’s finances and tends to their side projects, including a store selling video games and Disney collectibles.
They are known for their generosity — providing their employees and friends with homes and vacations — and for their vindictiveness — filing lawsuits, launching social media attacks and admitting to hiring paid protesters to target those they perceive to be their enemies.
Nexus has been sued repeatedly by employees who say they were never paid and clients who say they were scammed. At the same time, the company has filed high-profile lawsuits of its own, typically in cases already in the news. It sued the Trump administration for separating families at the border and sued the police chief of Charlottesville for failing to prevent violence at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally.
It has also spun off a multitude of other ventures. At various times, the company has run “Nexus Investigations & Security,” “Homes by Nexus,” “Nexus Health Inc.” and “Entertainment by Nexus.”
The connection to Zach led to more lawsuits, more spinoffs and more headlines. Within a year Zach moving to Virginia, Nexus lawyers filed two lawsuits against Broward County officials, saying Zach’s rights had been violated after he was detained for trespassing. With a news conference in front of local and national media in Washington, Nexus launched “We Isolate No-One,” an anti-bullying hotline. The number is now disconnected.
When Zach gave interviews about his new life, as he did with The Washington Post in 2019, he was monitored at all times by Nexus employees, who recorded his interactions with a reporter.
“If I didn’t meet Mike and Richard, I don’t know what would have happened,” Zach said at the time. “They feel like parents to me. ... If I left, I wouldn’t find that anywhere else.”
He’d grown up in a house where his mother unplugged his Xbox to save on electricity. In Donovan and Moore’s 4,700 square-foot home in Fishersville, Va., he had his own bedroom and a room just for gaming, with a massive TV and multiple systems to play with their son Sam.
Instead of the maintenance job and high school classes that had been described to his probation judge, Zach joined Donovan and Moore on business trips, sleeping late in luxury hotel rooms. He posed for family photos, celebrated Christmas, and every time he cracked his skateboard trying out a new trick, he was able to buy a new one. The couple called him “our son."
Zach expressed a desire for a quiet life out of the spotlight. But Donovan and Moore continued to seek it.
In 2021, they began promoting an online streaming platform called “TV Unleashed.” Its centerpiece was “Dog Unleashed,” a new reality show about Dog the Bounty Hunter, Duane Chapman, who had started spending time in Virginia after his wife died in 2019.
Another show involved one of Chapman’s daughters. It featured her, Sam and a group of young activists who associated themselves with Black Lives Matter, protesting outside the headquarters of the Augusta County Sheriff — the same sheriff who had previously investigated Donovan and Moore, and who the couple has been publicly battling with for years through lawsuits and on social media.
The protest show also went to Illinois to picket outside the home of the president of RLI Insurance — the same insurance company that won a $5.7 million lawsuit against Nexus for unpaid bonds. (After losing an appeal, Nexus has yet to pay all it owes.)
Then came advertisements for shows called “Parkland: My Side of the Story” and “Being Zachary Cruz.” One preview showed Zach skateboarding as Donovan gave an impassioned voice-over about him. The show’s logo featured Zach encircled by pictures of the couple.
A post shared by Being Zach Cruz (@beingzachcruz)
“There’s no secrets in our household,” Moore is filmed saying in another preview. “A lot of people would say it’s dysfunctional, it’s strange, but so are all the people who live in our house.”
The venture never seemed to fully launch. The website for TV Unleashed remains “under construction.”
Meanwhile, the couple was becoming more involved in a matter that would soon be on TVs everywhere: Nikolas Cruz’s death penalty sentencing trial.
Records of jail calls show that after moving to Virginia, Zach almost never held video visits with his brother without Donovan or Moore present. Eventually, Moore started visiting alone. By 2022, the two were talking almost every day.
Moore sent thousands of dollars to the shooter’s commissary and bought him dress clothes to wear to court. He showed up to watch jury selection with a security guard by his side and gave an interview to the local news. He announced on Facebook that he was going to be called as a witness in the case.
“I never truly understood what it truly meant to hate the sin and love the sinner until now,” Moore wrote.
In almost every call, records show, Cruz wanted to know where Zach was. When, he asked, could he talk to his brother?
‘Where is your money?’
The caller said his name was Zachary Cruz. He was inquiring about the money he was entitled to receive from his mother’s life insurance policy.
“Do you know how they mail out the payment?” the caller asked the insurance company representative, according to police records. He asked that the check be overnighted to him via Fedex.
Two checks were mailed out the next day, Aug. 7, 2019, police records show. One was for $207.17. The other was for $426,553.30.
Police say the caller was not Zach. An FBI investigation, which was later described by the Augusta County Sheriff’s Department in search warrant affidavits, concluded the caller was Timothy Shipe, a vice president at Nexus. Shipe, who was later arrested alongside Donovan and Moore, had been the one to tell a Florida judge in 2018 that he would be personally responsible for providing Zach with a maintenance job.
“The allegations against me are all false and will be disposed of during trial,” Shipe said in a statement. "My only hope is that people will let Zach live his life post-Parkland trial.”
The checks, the search warrant affidavit said, were deposited into a joint checking account belonging to both Zach and Moore. The account had been opened after public defenders learned about the existence of a life insurance policy and disclosed in court how large the payout was expected to be. Police say the day after the inheritance made the news, Donovan called MetLife to ask about the money.
The half that belonged to the shooter would likely be tied up in the lawsuits filed by families of the victims. But Zach was entitled to more than $426,000. Overnight, he had gone from destitute and dependent to having the money to buy a house and a car, or to kick-start his dream of owning his own skate shop.
But four days after the checks were deposited, police records show, someone logged into the shared bank account from Moore and Donovan’s home address and withdrew $300,000. The next day, someone logged into the account from the Nexus Services headquarters, and removed another $100,000.
The first withdrawal, police allege, was used to pay the Internal Revenue Service.
It is unclear if Moore was already aware that he was under scrutiny for not paying payroll taxes. In 2021, he was charged with tax fraud by the Justice Department for allegedly failing to pay the IRS more than $1.5 million. He has pleaded not guilty.
Court filings show that in recent years, Nexus has suffered major drops in revenue, has been ordered to pay millions from lawsuits and class-action settlements and has endured what their lawyers described as “crippling, multimillion dollar expenses that were not anticipated.”
The $100,000 that remained from Zach’s money, the search warrant affidavit states, went to credit card bills and car payments linked to a BMW and a Ferrari.
By January 2021, someone had learned about the transactions. This person, whom law enforcement has not named, alerted Shenandoah Valley Social Services, which investigates allegations of abuse of children and vulnerable adults in the community.
According to a petition filed by the agency and obtained by The Post, the tipster reported that Zach was not aware that his money had been spent. The person claimed that Zach had mental health challenges, was not able to manage his own finances and also referred to him as “mentally retarded,” a term widely considered to be a slur toward people with developmental and learning disabilities. Moore and Donovan later expressed outrage about the offensive term and said Zach is completely competent.
Under Virginia law, when an Adult Protective Services unit receives a tip, it is required to begin an investigation within 24 hours, and to attempt to make face-to-face contact with the potential victim within seven days.
“The law places financial exploitation in the same category of concerns as physical abuse or neglect,” said Stephen Strosnider, an attorney for the agency who declined to comment on the specifics of Zach’s case.
But the petition states that when a social worker tried to visit Zach at Donovan and Moore’s home, she was stopped by one of the armed guards the couple pays to monitor their property. The social worker was not allowed into the house, the petition stated.
She left a letter explaining why she wanted to speak to Zach.
Strosnider said it is rare for Shenandoah social workers to be denied access to a potential victim of exploitation.
The agency took the matter to a judge, explaining in its petition that the social worker was coordinating with an FBI investigator. The judge granted the request, writing that there was good cause to interview Zach.
In response, Donovan and Moore filed a lawsuit against the social worker.
They claimed she was involved in a conspiracy against them, along with what they acknowledged was an unlikely group of co-defendants. They sued the FBI agent, whom they said had gone “rogue.” They sued one of their former employees, whom Moore has referred to as a “stalker,” alleging he was involved. They sued Chapman, a.k.a. Dog the Bounty Hunter, whom they accused of being the tipster.
The lawsuit, which garnered tabloid headlines, claimed Chapman was exacting revenge for their decision to cancel “Dog Unleashed."
“Zachary Cruz is not the only person that Donovan and Moore have purportedly taken advantage of," Chapman said in a statement. “My family has fallen prey in various ways to their scams as well.”
The suit also claimed Virginia was trying to place Zach into a conservatorship, “much like the one Brittany Spears has been forced to endure, where he would have no control over his life.” (The suit misspelled Spears’s first name, Britney.)
Through it all, Zach shared little with the outside world besides videos of himself at the skate park.
Lawyer Mario Williams was hired by Donovan and Moore to represent both Nexus and Zach. As social services investigated, Williams took Zach aside and asked him if he was comfortable with Donovan and Moore managing his money. Williams said in an interview that he believed Zach was competent to make his own financial decisions. But he had no idea, he said, that the inheritance was already gone.
“Zach did not care at all what they did with the money,” Williams said. “He said the words, ‘I trust them, and they can do what they want.’ ”
In September 2021, Zach was called to testify about the matter in front of a federal grand jury. An excerpt of his testimony included in police records shows he told the prosecutor Moore had given him a lot of money over the years. But when asked if he ever gave permission for Moore and Donovan to use his money to pay the IRS, Zach answered no.
“If the Department of Justice has Zach saying no, I never gave them permission to use the money for that specific thing ... that could be a real problem for them,” Williams said.
Though Moore and Donovan were not charged at the time, the scrutiny of the inheritance money did not go away. In April 2022, Florida prosecutors held a video-conference deposition with Zach in preparation for the Parkland sentencing trial. He was required to answer their questions if he was going to testify on his brother’s behalf
The attorneys repeatedly asked Donovan to leave the room. He refused.
“Where is your money?” prosecutor Jeff Marcus asked, referencing the inheritance.
“It’s, like away. Like, I still have, like, money that’s supposed to be coming,” Zach said.
“So do you have the money or is it still supposed to be coming? It’s now over four years later,” Marcus said. “Is it fair to say you have no idea where any money is that you may have inherited?”
Before Zach could say more, his new attorney, who was also representing Moore, interrupted. She wouldn’t allow him to answer questions about the money. She wouldn’t allow him to answer questions about his life in Virginia, or “TV Unleashed,” or Moore and Donovan’s felony records.
When Moore was deposed, the attorney, Amina Matheny-Willard, objected to similar questions.
“Are you making money off of Zach Cruz’s notoriety of being Nikolas Cruz’s brother?” Marcus asked.
Moore didn’t answer.
Prosecutors took the issue to the judge, arguing that under Florida law, witnesses are required to answer relevant questions during depositions. The judge agreed, issuing an order commanding Moore and Zach to meet with the attorneys again and this time, “answer all questions asked of them."
It never happened. On Sept. 14, a “statement from Zachary Cruz” was sent to the media announcing Zach would no longer voluntarily testify in the case.
“Broward prosecutors partnered with a racist Virginia Sheriff and a corrupt prosecutor to attempt to arrest me, search my home, and subject me to a conservatorship,” the statement read.
It was filled with accusations of witness tampering and a warning to Broward County officials. When his brother’s case was over, Zach’s statement promised, he’d be filing a lawsuit.
‘LOST SOUL’
On a sunny afternoon two weeks before the police raid on his house and three weeks before the verdict in his brother’s case, Zach was in the place he’d always rather be: a local skate park.
Approached by The Washington Post reporter who’d interviewed him extensively in 2019, he said he did not know that she had been trying to reach him for months through Donovan and Moore.
There was a lot he wanted to say, he explained. He knew about the statement that had been put out, which he said he gave input on, but Donovan wrote.
“I’m not good with speeches or nothing like that,” Zach said.
He was on his way to buy another new skateboard, after an off-balance landing had left a jagged crack between his wheels. He’d been spending nearly all of his time here, perfecting his tricks, one aspect of his life that was his to control. But lately, he said, even skating had been hard to concentrate on. Sometimes he just sat in his car, watching his brother’s trial unfold. He read the news coverage. He thought about what people say to him when they learn who his brother is.
“As many times as your brother shot those people, that’s how many times he deserves to get shot,” he said a friend at the skate park had told him.
Everyone seemed to be paying attention again, reliving the horrific thing his brother had done. But for the past 4½ years, Zach had never stopped reliving it.
In 2019, Zach Cruz, brother of Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz, gave an interview to The Washington Post about turning to skateboarding as an escape. (Video: Whitney Leaming/TWP)
He said he sometimes went weeks without sleeping. He broke his skateboards on purpose. One night in 2020, he broke a window and didn’t know why. He ended up hospitalized for his mental health, he said.
“I always think, what did that to me?” he said. “And I think it’s just thinking of my brother, every day.”
He knew that his brother wanted to talk to him more often. He knew the attorneys had wanted him to testify. He just didn’t know what he wanted to do.
“It sounds bad to say, but I don’t think that he deserves a chance, sometimes,” Zach said about his brother. “That’s the thing with me. Sometimes I just don’t know if I’m supporting the right side.”
All the while, he said, Moore and Donovan have been guiding him.
When asked what had happened to his inheritance money, he answered, “Really it’s like Richard is helping me with all of that. I’ve never even asked Richard about the stuff, the plans we’ve already made. We already talked about it but, I feel like I forgot already. That type of information doesn’t stick well with me. He can tell me, ‘Oh we are going to do this, this, this, this, and this.’ And I’ll barely remember like half of the list.”
He shifted his broken skateboard. He didn’t look like the four-year-old Post photograph that had been sent to the media along with his statement.
He now had a multiple face tattoos, including a green ribbon beneath his left eye, a symbol of mental health awareness. Tattooed across his knuckles were the words ‘LOST SOUL.’
Zach shared his phone number. He wanted to get going to the skate shop. But then he thought of something else he wanted to say.
“Another thing I can tell you is, that show — ‘Being Zach Cruz’ — nothing is happening with that. I’m not doing that,” he said.
“I don’t want to be on TV … especially because I don’t think things are fairly represented. I just feel like things feel scripted when there’s cameras and stuff,” he said.
He searched for the right words.
“I don’t know, it’s hard. I feel like there’s more to explain, but I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t want to make a scene, that’s really it. I’m gonna cut it at that. I don’t want to make a scene.”
He drove off. Then he texted Donovan.
‘Saving people like myself’
The jury’s verdict had been delivered, but the sentencing for Nikolas Cruz was not over. Under Florida law, the families and survivors were allowed to return to the courtroom a final time. One by one this week, they stepped up to a podium, looked the shooter in the eye and told him just how much he had taken from them. They spoke of the goodbyes they would never get to say and the feelings of safety they would never get back. They called him a remorseless monster. A domestic terrorist. Pure evil.
Their anguish was streamed live on YouTube.
As they spoke on Tuesday, attorneys in Virginia were working on a new lawsuit against Augusta County Sheriff Donald Smith, for the raid on Donovan and Moore’s home. Also named in the suit: the social worker who tried to check on Zach. (The sheriff’s department and the social services agency declined to comment.)
The lawsuit, filed in Zach’s name Wednesday, alleged misconduct, corruption and racism. It was accompanied by a 10-page “sworn affidavit of Zachary Paul Cruz.” It stated that Zach had been present when Shipe asked for his inheritance check to be overnighted to him.
“I told Mike I wanted to give the money to Nexus, and that I wanted to support a company that was saving people like myself,” the affidavit said. “Richard and Mike have NEVER taken any money from my account that I did not authorize.”
Zach, the sworn statement said, has received more than $460,000 from Moore and Donovan since he moved to Virginia for “trips, cars, skating and other expenses.”
“To be clear,” the affidavit from Zach concluded, “Richard and Mike have cared for me when no one else cared.”
In an email, Donovan said the decision to sue the sheriff was Zach’s. A Nexus attorney also forwarded a statement, attributed to Zach, which largely repeated the assertions in the lawsuit.
But when the attorney checked to see if Zach could do an interview Tuesday afternoon, she was told he was busy.
Another survivor was taking the stand in Florida, and Zach was watching.
Story editing by Lynda Robinson, photo editing by Mark Miller, copy editing by Thomas Heleba and Jordan Melendrez, design by Michael Domine. Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report. | 2022-11-04T11:23:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Zach Cruz, Florida school shooter's brother, robbed of inheritance, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/zach-cruz-inheritance-stolen-police/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/zach-cruz-inheritance-stolen-police/ |
The Senate’s unanimous vote in March to allow states to permanently shift their clocks caught some of its own members by surprise. (The Washington Post)
Early this Sunday morning, Americans will engage in the annual autumnal ritual of “falling back” — setting their clocks back one hour to conform with standard time.
If some lawmakers had their way, it would mark the end of a tradition that has stretched for more than a century. But a familiar story unspooled of congressional gridlock and a relentless lobbying campaign, this one from advocates that some jokingly call “Big Sleep.”
“We haven’t been able to find consensus in the House on this yet,” Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) said in a statement to The Washington Post. “There are a broad variety of opinions about whether to keep the status quo, to move to a permanent time, and if so, what time that should be.”
“This isn’t a partisan or regional issue, it is a commonsense issue,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who co-authored the Sunshine Protection Act, which passed the Senate in March, said in a statement. Senate staff noted that a bipartisan companion bill in the House, backed by 48 Republicans and Democrats, has been stalled for nearly two years in an Energy and Commerce subcommittee chaired by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).
Rubio and his colleagues’ gloomy mood this fall is a stark contrast from their sunny celebrations when the Senate abruptly passed their bill two days after the “spring forward” clock change, with still-groggy lawmakers campaigning on it as a common-sense reform.
“My phone has been ringing off the hook in support of this bill — from moms and dads who want more daylight before bedtime to senior citizens who want more sun in the evenings to enjoy the outdoors to farmers who could use the extra daylight to work in the fields,” a fundraising email sent in March by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said.
But behind the scenes, the bill’s forecast was almost immediately cloudy.
There also are regional differences in who would most benefit from permanent daylight saving time. Lawmakers in Southern states such as Florida argue it would maximize sunshine for their residents during the winter months — but some people who live in the northern United States or on the western edge of time zones, such as Indianapolis, would not see the sunrise on some winter days until 9 a.m.
A congressional aide who has been working on the issue put it more bluntly: “We’d be pissing off half the country no matter what,” said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss internal deliberations.
Pallone and other lawmakers have said they’re waiting on the Transportation Department, which helps govern enforcement of time zones, to review the effects of permanently changing the clocks. While the transportation agency in September agreed to conduct a study, the due date for that analysis — Dec. 31, 2023 — suggests that the issue may not get serious consideration in Congress again until 2024 at the earliest.
And while the lobbying efforts around clock changes pale next to the tens of millions of dollars spent by advocates for so-called Big Pharma or Big Tech, some congressional aides joke that the debate has awakened “Big Sleep”: concerted resistance from sleep doctors and researchers who issued advocacy letters that warned against permanent daylight saving time, traveled to Capitol Hill to pitch lawmakers on permanent standard time instead and significantly ramped up their lobbying spending, according to a review of federal disclosures.
For instance, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, or AASM — which in recent years had focused its advocacy on issues such as improving care for sleep apnea — this year included new priorities in its federal filings: lobbying lawmakers on the Senate’s Sunshine Protection Act and “issues relating to seasonal time changes.”
AASM also nearly doubled its lobbying spending from $70,000 in the third quarter of 2021 to $130,000 in the third quarter of 2022, and added a lobbyist who specializes in health-care issues and used to work for Schakowsky.
The daylight saving time debate roused the sleep-medicine academy’s attention, an official confirmed.
“When the Sunshine Protection Act was passed by the Senate last spring, we determined that advocacy for the establishment of permanent standard time needs to be an immediate priority,” Melissa Clark, the AASM’s director of advocacy and public awareness, wrote in an email.
Clark added that AASM had met with the offices of dozens of legislators to advocate for permanent standard time. “It’s an issue that is relevant to everyone,” she wrote.
It’s also an issue that resonates abroad. Mexican lawmakers passed legislation last month to end daylight saving time in most of their country, a measure that the nation’s president swiftly signed into law.
But not everyone agrees that a change — any change — is necessary.
Josh Barro, a political commentator who has repeatedly argued to preserve the current system, said that neither permanent daylight saving nor permanent standard time make sense.
“I think we have the system we have for good reason … we have a certain number of daylight hours in the day and it’s going to vary depending on the axial tilt of the earth. And we need a way to manage it so that we wake up not too long after sunrise on most days,” Barro said. “It’s really the government solving a coordination problem.”
Beth Ann Malow, a neurologist and sleep medicine researcher at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, stressed that she continues to favor permanent standard time, a position she testified about in a congressional hearing earlier this year. But even Malow says that the United States may end up needing a compromise — moving the clock by 30 minutes, and then staying that way permanently.
“I know that the permanent standard time people and the permanent daylight saving time people will be disappointed because they didn’t get what they wanted, and we will be out of sync with other countries,” Malow said. “But it’s a way to stop going back and forth.” | 2022-11-04T11:24:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Clock runs out on efforts to make daylight saving time permanent - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/04/permanent-daylight-saving-time/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/04/permanent-daylight-saving-time/ |
Itaewon Halloween tragedy conjures ghosts of 1995 Seoul store collapse
The aftermath of the 1995 Sampoong Department Store collapse in Seoul. More than 500 people died. (Kim Jae Hwan/AFP via Getty Images)
SEOUL — Built in 1989, the Sampoong Department Store was a sprawling nine-story structure that proudly stood in Seoul’s luxurious Gangnam district. It symbolized South Korea’s economic rise from a poor nation ravaged by the Korean War to a developed country that was now producing Samsung TVs and Hyundai sedans.
But on a hot, humid summer day in June 1995, the store came tumbling down, crushing more than 500 people to death — and along with them, South Korea’s image as a newly affluent country. The collapse remains the deadliest peacetime disaster to hit South Korea and its capital, Seoul.
Minutes after the collapse, footage showed bloodied people walking away from the debris in shock. Rescuers recalled finding the limbs and bodies of the dead, while survivors feebly called out for help, stuck under layers of cement and twisted iron.
South Korean officials blamed the department store’s management and the construction company that had built the building, saying it had sidestepped safety rules to illegally expand the structures and increase profits. Executives also ignored signs of trouble: Staffers told investigators that they had reported cracks in the walls to higher-ups, hours before the collapse.
In the years and months leading up to the disaster, local government officials looked the other way, prosecutors said, after receiving bribes from the department store’s top brass.
The Sampoong disaster “raised questions about whether South Korea’s zeal to modernize has caused contractors and government officials to cut corners on safety,” The Washington Post reported in 1995. A man who lost his wife said that Sampoong should be a “wake-up call.”
“We want to remind people of how large this accident was, and that we have to prevent things like this from happening in the future,” he said, almost six months after the tragedy.
SEOUL STORE COLLAPSES, KILLING MORE THAN 80
More than 27 years later, a crowd crush killed more than 150 people in Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood last week — the single-bloodiest incident in Seoul since Sampoong’s collapse. On the Saturday before Halloween, tens of thousands of partygoers gathered in the area for Halloween festivities. Some people, caught in a narrow alley as people tried to move in different directions, got pressed into one another and suffocated.
The episode has led some to question whether the country has learned anything in the three decades since Sampoong.
Author and journalist Lee Sun-min, a survivor of the Sampoong disaster, is one of those people. In 1995, she was a recent high school graduate working part time at Sampoong. She oversaw a group of lockers on the department store’s basement floor, where shoppers would leave their belongings while they went shopping.
“Someone called for me from the other side [of the hall], so I said ‘yes’ and was about to walk over to where I heard my name,” she said in a recent interview. “That’s when the building collapsed.” Debris and shrapnel from the collapsing building that were flying “as fast as bullets” hit her in the back and head, she said. “Blood was pumping out of me everywhere,” she said. “I remember I didn’t even know where I was injured. I don’t remember feeling any pain.”
On Thursday, angered by the tragedy in Itaewon, she wrote a statement on Twitter, saying it was hard to understand how that many people in the middle of Seoul could die in a single incident, in peacetime. “I just don’t understand. How? Why? Again?”
“I’ve said this before: It feels like the entire country is playing Squid Game,” she added, referring to the hit Netflix drama series that depicts a fictional life-or-death survival game.
“Disasters do not discriminate,” she said. “It was just pure luck it wasn’t you.”
The abrupt loss of hundreds of people in 1995 shook South Korea, forcing it to confront what it had tolerated during its swift economic ascension — safety shortcuts, neglect and greed. In the aftermath, South Korea tightened government oversight of building safety and strengthened penalties for unintentional manslaughter, according to local reports at the time.
Subway Inferno in South Korea Kills at Least 124
The tragedy in Itaewon is forcing the country to confront familiar ghosts.
Preliminary police investigations showed that emergency calls started coming in several hours before the crowd crush turned deadly. Those calls went ignored and unheeded, police said. Police officials have also been criticized for deploying 137 officers to the area, despite expectations that around 100,000 people would be spilling into the narrow alleyways of Itaewon.
In a news conference this week, South Korean police admitted lapses that may have contributed to the high death toll. Top South Korean officials have also apologized, pledging once more that this will never happen again, as their predecessors did in 1995.
Just as the Sampoong disaster was a wake-up call for a fast-rising economic power, the Itaewon tragedy came at another moment of ascendance for Korea, this time as a global cultural beacon, thanks to the Oscar-winning film “Parasite” and global pop stars like BTS.
“It’s just simply so sad and arguably infuriating, especially to the victims’ families, to realize how preventable all these tragedies are,” said Alexis Dudden, a professor of history focusing on East Asia at the University of Connecticut.
Both tragedies show a pattern of “people in charge presuming a level of untouchability and unaccountability” at the cost of human lives, she added.
But one striking part of the Itaewon disaster is that people from more than two dozen countries — including the United States, Japan, China, Russia and Iran — got killed, Dudden said. “That’s what makes South Korea great. People from countries that don’t get along, get along when they’re in Korea.”
She added, “There’s something about Korea right now, which makes it this global magnet for cool. And to still not have squared the responsibility that goes along with that … is just sad.” | 2022-11-04T11:24:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seoul's Itaewon Halloween tragedy conjures 1995 Sampoong store collapse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/11/04/itaewon-halloween-sampoong-store-collapse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/11/04/itaewon-halloween-sampoong-store-collapse/ |
King Tut’s tomb was discovered 100 years ago — and unleashed a ‘curse’
Recent studies have suggested a more mundane — and organic — explanation for the deaths of tomb explorers
King Tutankhamun’s golden sarcophagus on display at his tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. (Amr Nabil/AP)
On Nov. 4, 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter and his team discovered the entrance to a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. Three weeks later, on Nov. 26, Carter smashed a hole into a stone wall in an underground hallway there. As he aimed his flashlight into the darkness, his friend and sponsor, George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, asked if he could see anything.
“Yes, wonderful things,” he replied, according to his book “The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen,” written with Arthur Cruttenden Mace in 1923. Suddenly, the world became transfixed on a little-known pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty as gold, jewelry and other fantastic treasures saw the light of day for the first time in more than 3,000 years.
Almost as quickly, public attention shifted to the possibility of a curse plaguing all those who had entered King Tut’s tomb. Sudden deaths, grievous misfortune and other inexplicable events gave rise to speculation that an evil spell was afflicting any who had dared defile the pharaoh’s final resting place.
A media frenzy descended on Luxor after each calamity. Shortly after the first archeologist death a few months following the tomb’s discovery, newspaper headlines blared about the “Curse of the Pharaohs” and claimed, “Famous Spiritualist Sees Occult Reason for Fatality.”
But was there really a curse? Some studies suggest a more mundane explanation: mold found on mummies and in the air at burial sites in Egypt.
Belief in a “mummy’s curse” predates the Tutankhamen discovery by a century. It may have originated in England in the 1820s. In 2000, Egyptologist Dominic Montserrat reported he had discovered the first mention of it in a London “striptease” show, according to the British newspaper the Independent.
No curse was ever found written in hieroglyphics at the tomb of Tutankhamen, the Egyptian king who died at 18 or 19, around 1323 B.C. His father is thought to have been the pharaoh Akhenaten, while his mother was his father’s sister, according to DNA testing. King Tut had a club foot and scoliosis, possibly caused by the tradition of incest among the royal family.
Carter himself dismissed the notion of a curse as “tommy rot.” “The sentiment of the Egyptologist ... is not one of fear, but of respect and awe ... entirely opposed to foolish superstitions,” he said, according to H.V.F. Winstone in his book “Howard Carter and the Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun.”
However, Lord Carnarvon’s death on April 5, 1923 — less than five months after the tomb was opened — drove rumors of a wicked spell. Newspaper accounts were rife with the possibility as more archaeologists and explorers fell ill and died. In 1926, the New York Daily News ran an article with the headline, “Vengeance of King Tut Is Seen as Death List Mounts.”
Piling on was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the popular Sherlock Holmes stories. Upon learning of his friend’s death, Doyle, a known spiritualist, told a reporter, “An evil elemental may have caused Lord Carnarvon’s fatal illness.”
Archaeologists discover more than 20 sealed coffins just as the ancient Egyptians left them
After the earl died, others followed, including George Jay Gould, an American financier who succumbed to pneumonia shortly after visiting the tomb in 1923; Sir Archibald Douglas Reid, who perished soon after X-raying the mummy in London; and James Henry Breasted, an American archaeologist, who lived until 1935 but died of an infection following his final trip to Egypt.
In addition, the media frenzy fed off a series of unfortunate events that beset others who had visited the tomb. British archaeologist Hugh Evelyn-White, who worked on the dig at Luxor, died by suicide in 1924. He reportedly left a note in which he wrote, “I have succumbed to a curse.” Carter’s personal secretary, Richard Bethell, the first person to enter the tomb behind his employer, was found smothered to death at his London men’s club in 1929. Some historians believe he was murdered by Aleister Crowley, an English occultist.
Carter died in 1939, a full 17 years after the discovery, of Hodgkin’s disease, a type of lymphatic cancer. And yet newspapers around the world focused almost exclusively on the “Curse of the Pharaohs” when printing his obituary.
They found Viking coins worth millions using metal detectors — but their discovery led to prison
Today, science has a more rational explanation. Studies have shown that an organic source might have been a contributing factor in at least some of the deaths. Common mold — especially Aspergillus — may have been present on King Tut’s mummy. The fungus is known to cause serious infections in people with weakened immune systems.
“Potentially harmful fungi survive for extreme lengths of time in tombs, and results of research indicate that such prolonged phases of dormancy can result in increased virulence,” wrote English doctors Sherif El-Tawil and Tariq El-Tawil in a letter to the British medical journal the Lancet in 2003.
The death of Lord Carnarvon, who was sickly most of his life and prone to upper respiratory ailments, seems to fit the diagnosis. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he died on April 5, 1923, of pneumonia brought on by blood poisoning from a mosquito bite on his cheek that became infected after he nicked it with a razor. The El-Tawils wrote that he had likely been exposed to Aspergillus, which in turn caused the deadly streptococcus infection that killed him after he cut himself with a razor.
Spores of Aspergillus, the El-Tawils wrote, “grow especially well on grain, the supply of which was abundant in Tutankhamen’s tomb, with offerings of bread and raw grains stored in numerous baskets. Lord Carnarvon could readily have inhaled contaminated grain dust as the sealed tomb was broken into.”
More recent scientific studies have found two varieties of the fungi — Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus — on mummies and in tombs of ancient Egypt. According to National Geographic, these strains can cause various allergic reactions, ranging from chest congestion to pulmonary hemorrhaging, or bleeding in the lungs.
That mold might have had a hand in the earl’s death — or any others — is speculative. Researchers have argued for and against the idea for years. Without conclusive evidence, it will remain just a theory.
Which, of course, makes the belief in the “curse of the mummy” even more enduring. | 2022-11-04T11:24:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | King Tut’s tomb, discovered 100 years ago, unleashed a deadly ‘curse’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/11/04/king-tut-tomb-curse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/11/04/king-tut-tomb-curse/ |
Readers critique The Post: This Kanye headline was all wrong
The headline on Karen Attiah’s Oct. 27 op-ed, “Call me when White guys get canceled like Kanye,” was poorly written.
Far from excusing the actions of Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, or justifying them on the basis of his skin color, Attiah bluntly and unequivocally called him out for his bigotry and antisemitism. She is owed an apology for such a misrepresentation.
If the editors truly believe West is worthy of sympathy and that his hateful behavior is somehow justified, they should have the decency and courage to put that in an editorial. Don’t try to lure wrong-thinking people into reading a column that will surely disappoint them, while misleading readers about the columnist’s real message.
Ronnie J. Kweller, Washington
A missing swan song
I was surprised the Oct. 23 Post included a long obituary for Lucy Simon, “Singer-songwriter composed Broadway’s ‘The Secret Garden,’” who died at 82 on Oct. 20 and was part of the Simon Sisters, but not one thing about the eldest sister, Joanna, who died one day earlier at 85, except as an aside in Lucy Simon’s obit.
Joanna Simon was an accomplished opera singer and became an award-winning journalist as part of PBS’s “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” where she won an Emmy in 1991 for a report on mental illness and creativity.
I’m not sure why one sister was worthy of lengthy coverage and the other only an afterthought.
Leslie Campbell, Oakton
Remembering ‘the first musician of Japan’
The death of Toshi Ichiyanagi closed the book on an important period in U.S.-Japanese cultural relations [“Experimental composer who straddled cultures,” Obituaries, Oct. 23]. Back in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, when I was cultural attache at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, we initiated an annual program to right the lack of contemporary American performing arts being introduced to Japan. Called Interlink, it focused on music and featured composers, string quartets, chamber orchestras and critics to show the best in current American composition to Japanese audiences. To make it more acceptable, we needed Japanese representatives on our executive committee and suggested Ichiyanagi as the chairman. He willingly joined, and through his influence, he wielded a significant effect on the Japanese scene. In his understated style, he was always questioning yet constructive. He was both a critic of previous events and an advocate of up-and-coming American musicians who should be brought to Japan. We had lively meetings often over sake late at night, and Ichiyanagi and I always came out good friends.
I always thought of him as “the first musician of Japan” and very much regret his death.
Robin Berrington, Washington
The writer is retired from the State Department.
A map of Outback Way would have helped
The Oct. 23 front-page article “Can Australia tame its remote Outback Way?” was very informative, but it could have been greatly improved if a map showing the main roads in Australia and the Outback Way had been included. It would have enabled the American audience to gain an appreciation of the immense size of the country and how few blacktop roads provide access to the interior of the continent. Unlike the Midwestern United States, the interior of Australia is quite arid, desolate and unpopulated and has few highways.
L. Michael Kaas, Arlington
Deep praise for a shallow-river map
What a thrill to see a well-designed and informative map to accompany the Oct. 28 front-page article “On the river, blues turn to browns.”
On this page, others have expressed their disappointment with the lack of maps in The Post, an opinion I share. Congratulations to Post cartographers Laris Karklis and Tim Meko for elegantly and effectively visualizing a great article on the shrinkage of the Mississippi River. I hope to see more like this.
Leo Dillon, Arlington
Why use the Russian name for a Ukrainian river?
The Post seems to consistently use the Russian name for the Dnipro River in Ukraine: Dnieper, as in the Oct. 23 news article “Another wave of strikes causes blackouts nationwide.” This seems a curious editorial choice in light of the ongoing Russian attempt to erase Ukraine’s culture and language.
Lev Raphael, Okemos, Mich.
Wake up, Post!
Michael de Adder’s Oct. 26 editorial cartoon was awful. How can The Post continue to allow articles, cartoons and opinions to make fun of a person who says he has a behavioral health issue? Kanye West, now known as Ye, is not a clown. He is a person struggling with a health issue. Goodness. Wake up, Post! Mental health care is sorely missing in today’s society. This biased, insulting and insensitive cartoon has no place in the media.
Bridget Zarate, Bethesda
More like Pop-eyesore
I strongly agree with Michael Zarowny’s Oct. 22 Free for All letter, “Surely there were better options than ‘Popeye’ to join the comics page.” The “Flashbacks” strip was the best. When it was there, I read the whole Comics section in a way that reserved it for last. Reading “Flashbacks” made the rest of the section interesting. I looked forward to it every week.
Adding “Nancy” was bad enough. Now I have to avoid reading “Popeye,” as well. The strip shown with Zarowny’s letter was decidedly not funny. If The Post can’t give us a weekly dose of local history and real human affairs after Patrick M. Reynolds’s retirement, at least get some new strips that are funny and enlightening. I suppose “Calvin and Hobbes” is no longer available.
Jonathan Sanford, Washington
In his Oct. 22 Free for All letter, “Surely there were better options than ‘Popeye’ to join the comics page,” Michael Zarowny bemoaned the replacement of “Flashbacks” with “Popeye.” I agree that the loss of “Flashbacks” was tragic (though the cartoonist retired) and that replacing it with “Popeye” was a foolish choice. My rationale is slightly different: When I watched Popeye on TV as a youth, I began to note its overuse of politically incorrect terminology and actions. I also remember a Post article from a couple of years ago about some wonderful, up-and-coming Black female cartoonists. Why not replace misogynistic “Popeye” with one of them?
Daniel B. Johnston, Gaithersburg
A puzzling placement
Please don’t put the crossword puzzle on the back side of Scrabble Gram, as was done on Oct. 24. This is the third time in the past few months. I do believe this has been brought to The Post’s attention in the past.
Pam Chappell, Bethany Beach, Del.
Exposing a blind spot
While ranting that letters are the opinions of the writers, when The Post carries the water for displays of blatant misinformation and racism by publishing letters such as the Oct. 25 letter “Neanderthals are among us,” it should expect objections.
Some of my distant relatives were Neanderthals, as were probably some of the author’s. More informed understanding of our relatives such as Neanderthals has been published for years. It is past time to retire the “cave man” and Neanderthal quips. It’s time to rethink using “otherness” reflexively. Would The Post publish Polish quips? Blonde quips? Black quips? It is not humor. It is ignorance that could be more fruitfully addressed with thoughtful discussion than was displayed with this letter. This only served to reveal a blind spot of the author, who otherwise is most likely a thoughtful person, and of The Post.
Kathleen D. McLynn, Washington
Clarifying a confusing clause
The Oct. 19 news article on mosquitoes’ attraction to different people based on body odor, “If you feel like a mosquito magnet, it’s probably because of how you smell,” was interesting, but I was a bit confused by the following: “The A. aegypti mosquitoes are known to live in tropical or subtropical climates, but the insect now breeds year-round in the District and parts of California.” The sentence is a bit unclear for those who don’t know where “subtropical” begins and ends.
Does it mean that outside the tropics or subtropics, the mosquitoes breed only in D.C. and parts of California? I would have been interested in clarification of where exactly they breed now. Perhaps it would have been clearer to say, “The insect now breeds year-round as far north as the District and parts of California.”
Alvin Hutchinson, Bethesda
Martin Weil’s radiant writing
I applaud Martin Weil’s weather articles in the Metro section. His writing is poetic and uplifting. Just one example from his Oct. 23 Metro piece, “Delightful warmth belies the calendar”: “Although we face a time of diminished daylight, Saturday seemed designed to cause us to celebrate what we had. The afternoon sun radiated a brilliance that almost denied the calendar.”
I don’t know whether online readers see beyond the headlines. If not, they are missing out on this special little gift.
Erin R. Devine, Arlington
How 1 reader sees a Weekend feature
Congratulations and many thanks to Kelsey Ables and the photographers for the Oct. 28 Weekend feature “How 7 artists see the big picture.” As aging Marylanders, my wife and I don’t drive around D.C. as much as we used to, so seeing pictures of the brilliant murals and learning about the artists were a real treat.
John T. Rich, Bethesda
Travel section is on the wrong side of the tracks
I was delighted when I saw that the Travel section featured scenic train travel in the Oct. 23 article “7 scenic train routes to see peak fall colors,” but then I was dismayed to see that it made no mention of our own Western Maryland Scenic Railroad.
Isn’t it about time the Travel section stopped promoting exotic getaways? We are experiencing a climate emergency, and we all need to do things differently. Vacation closer to home and explore the vast treasures the Mid-Atlantic has to offer. What we do now will determine whether there is a habitable planet in the near future. Cutting down on unnecessary air travel is just a start.
Marney Bruce, Bethesda
A fault on pickleball coverage
I was disappointed with the lack of coverage in The Post of the n2Grate DC Open held at College Park. The Post had a nice article about Anna Leigh Waters’s rise to the top [“The teen queen of pickleball,” Sports, Oct. 20]. However, it would have been nice if The Post had followed that article up with the results of the pro matches (which were on CBS) as well as the many area players who participated in the tournament.
The sport has exploded over the past couple of years, and the national tournament in our backyard deserved to be covered.
Rick Gannon, Chevy Chase
How about a little cricket coverage?
Why is the international game of cricket not given any coverage in The Post?
It is a game played by most major countries except the United States, though even here it is slowly gaining fans.
Countries such as England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh all play the game.
The recent T20 and ODI matches were played, and at least two networks in the United States carried it. It would be beneficial to all of us locally to have coverage of international cricket matches.
Tony Henry, Ashburn
Un-sports-department-like conduct
With an ever-growing number of people turning away from the printed word in favor of online information, it boggles the mind that the Sports department has decided to do away with its power rankings of teams in the National Football League as they once were presented. Now, instead of all the teams ranked, only the top five and bottom five are presented. Makes absolutely no sense.
Richard Busch, Leesburg
Opinion|Readers critique The Post: Show us this female Nobel Prize winner | 2022-11-04T11:25:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Readers critique The Post: This Kanye headline was all wrong - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/reader-critiques-kanye-west-headline-wrong/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/reader-critiques-kanye-west-headline-wrong/ |
How Zeldin’s tough talk on crime in New York could lead to more of it
Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin at a campaign rally in Hauppauge, N.Y., on Oct. 29. (Julia Nikhinson/AP)
As a former New Yorker, I understand crime’s hold over an electorate’s emotions. In 1990, the city endured 2,245 homicides. One of the slayings took place at a phone booth a half block from the Jane Street apartment I would move into six months later.
Over the next 16 years, I learned an enduring lesson: When the fear of crime sets in — even in an unflappable city and state where Democrats have a huge advantage — Republicans get elected. But for New York state this time around, electing one could make crime much worse.
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R), a staunch ally of former president Donald Trump, is uncomfortably close to ousting Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul for governor of New York. As in past close contests, crime is to thank; Zeldin is hoping to benefit from the same fear that got Rudy Giuliani elected to the first of two terms as mayor in 1993. It’s a theme we saw, too, with George E. Pataki’s 1994 gubernatorial victory on the back of his support for the death penalty.
But a Gov. Zeldin would be awful for New Yorkers’ safety. The root of this concern is pro-gun Zeldin’s support for the Supreme Court’s decision in New York Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the case that invalidated New York City’s century-old law limiting concealed-carry permits as a violation of the Second Amendment.
Under Zeldin, New York would not only face a possible flood of guns on its streets, but also the repercussions of additionally weakened gun laws. And if New Yorkers want a glimpse of their future with a gun-friendly governor, all they need do is look to Missouri.
In his book “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland,” Jonathan M. Metzl chronicled what happened in Missouri when gun laws there were loosened. Gun sales, gun crimes, homicides and suicides went through the roof. “Loosening gun laws didn’t just lead to shootings. It really destroyed the social fabric of cities like Kansas City, Mo.,” Metzl told me. That’s why he has been sounding the alarm for months that Missouri’s nightmare could become New York’s, too.
Capehart Podcast: Jonathan M. Metzl on how White identity permeates policymaking outside of Washington
“People don’t fully realize that when the Bruen case was decided, the court made it virtually impossible for a city like New York to enact gun laws that make it safer. You would think, ‘Oh, crime is rising, gun crime is rising. Why don’t we regulate assault weapons or say that people can’t carry loaded weapons on the subway,’ ” Metzl explained. “But because of this case, any gun law has to show in court that it is commensurate with the intentions of the original framers of the Constitution. This is preposterous because there were no assault weapons when the Constitution was ratified.”
A week after the Bruen decision, New York’s state legislature passed (and Hochul signed) a package of gun-safety measures that included restrictions on carrying concealed weapons in sensitive locations. The law took effect on Sept. 1, but it’s being challenged in court. Zeldin, whose own front stoop has witnessed New York’s gun violence, also wants the measure repealed.
“It’s black and white unconstitutional,” Zeldin declared in a recent interview. “It’s far more unconstitutional than what the Supreme Court had overturned.” He decried criminals’ access to firearms but said he wants “law-abiding New Yorkers” to have firearms for self-defense.
Yet Zeldin pretty much ignored the real-world implications of his stance when his interviewer recounted the story from Florida in which road-raging drivers fired guns into each other’s cars, the bullets hitting a child in each back seat. “We have to look at this as two different types of people who are trying to acquire firearms,” Zeldin said before immediately pivoting back to criminals.
The possibility of everyday interactions turning lethal in a densely packed city such as New York is what worries Metzl about Zeldin. “You can’t really spend a lot of time in New York and think it a good idea to allow a lot of weapons in subways, Times Square or elsewhere, but that’s what’s at stake in this election,” Metzl said.
New Yorkers have borne witness to a slew of horrific crimes that strike at the heart of their collective sense of security. That’s why Zeldin’s tough talk on crime and his promise to declare a crime emergency have helped him narrow the polling gap with Hochul.
But I pray my old hometown doesn’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. That tough talk won’t mean anything if there are more guns on the street and lax laws making everyone less safe. | 2022-11-04T11:25:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Zeldin’s gun policies could raise crime in New York if he's governor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/zeldin-new-york-governor-race-guns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/zeldin-new-york-governor-race-guns/ |
Perspective by Matt McClain
Kenneth Dickerman
A painting of President Abraham Lincoln for tourists to pose for photographs with is seen in July in Gettysburg, Pa. People gathered for the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, which was fought July 1-3, 1863. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
It’s no understatement to say Abraham Lincoln has loomed large in the mythology of the United States ever since he was president. For as long as I can remember he has represented truth, honesty and equanimity. He is the man who, on Jan. 1, 1863, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring, “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.
Lincoln has been one of the most revered and mythologized presidents of the United States, at least throughout my life. He is on the $5 bill! His myth and legacy have never waned in the life of the United States.
Traces of the man can be found everywhere, from the Lincoln Cottage, where he developed the aforementioned Emancipation Proclamation, to Ford’s Theatre, where he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14,1865 to his birthplace and, yes, immortalized on our nation’s showcase of power on the National Mall at the Lincoln Memorial.
Scores of books have been written about Lincoln, and interest in him remains high to this day. Recently, this review of a new book on the man by author John Meacham was published here at The Washington Post. It makes some eerie parallels between the political climate during Lincoln’s time and the one we find ourselves in today:
“That political universe bears uncomfortable, but illuminating, parallels to our own. Lincoln’s time was one of passionate intensity, of loud voices and closed minds, of demagogues who exploited public opinion and conflict-averse officeholders who cowered in fear of it.”
As you can see Lincoln’s life remains relevant to today. Indeed, the past always informs the present. That is why we study it, right? The past provides clues to how we could navigate present day circumstances. There’s always the risk that we ignore the past and, as the saying goes, then become condemned to replay it.
As politicians, and the public, continue to formulate what kind of nation we are to have, now is not a bad time to think about the scions of our beginnings — the people who laid the framework for what life is like today and the struggles they went through to bring about change.
The Post’s Matt McClain went on a journey to find traces of the man and his legacy. As you see in the photos here, that legacy has not waned. McClain shared with me what motivated him to go on this extraordinary hunt:
“Abraham Lincoln routinely ranks as one of our nation’s most revered presidents. The legacy and image of ‘The Great Emancipator’ or ‘Honest Abe’ has taken on a life of its own since the time of his assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth in 1865.
“Lincoln laid down his life in order to achieve his promise of holding the country together during its most trying and fragile time. In the process he achieved a near biblical admiration and is still seen by many on both sides of our political system as a guiding light of what we should aspire to.
“This year saw the commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the Lincoln Memorial. In celebration of this milestone, I wanted to take the opportunity to document how Lincoln still shapes our society through the places and events that carry on his memory.
“I visited various places important to Lincoln’s legacy, including the area in Kentucky where he was born, the battlefield of Gettysburg that served as a turning point during the Civil War and Ford’s Theatre, where he was shot, and later died across the street at the Petersen House as well as other places too.
“As his legacy continues to evolve with time, Lincoln seems always to have a place in our nation’s collective memory.” | 2022-11-04T11:25:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Remembering Abraham Lincoln - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/11/04/post-photographer-finds-enduring-traces-abraham-lincoln/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/11/04/post-photographer-finds-enduring-traces-abraham-lincoln/ |
Can young voters help Democrats hold Congress?
Both Gen Z and millennials are just as motivated to vote as they were in 2018, the GenForward survey found.
Analysis by Kumar Ramanathan
Matthew Nelsen
A voting information sign on the Emory University campus in Atlanta in October urges students to get ready to vote. (Elijah Nouvelage/AFP/Getty Images)
In 2018 and 2020, young people turned out to vote in historically high numbers, helping to defeat Donald Trump and push the Democratic Party into power.
With midterm voting almost over in another extremely close election cycle, young people’s turnout — or lack thereof — may again influence key races that will determine control of Congress.
So will they vote — and if so, how do they lean? Our research suggests that they’re highly motivated — and especially concerned about both inflation and abortion.
Young adult interest in the 2022 midterm elections is similar to 2018
Millennials (ages 25-40) are now the largest generational group, and Gen Z adults (ages 18-24) are the most racially diverse generational group in the nation’s history. Turnout for this age group of 18-to-40-year-olds surged decisively in 2018, reaching 41 percent compared to only 26 percent in 2014, according to the Current Population Survey.
To provide a closer look at the views of these critical generational groups, we draw on data from a large survey of young adults.
Our data comes from the GenForward Survey, directed by Dr. Cathy Cohen at the University of Chicago, which focuses primarily on young adults and oversamples Black, Latino and Asian American young adults. GenForward surveyed 2,294 young adults (ages 18-40) online from Oct. 16 through 28. The survey uses a combination of a random sample and an opt-in sample, and is weighted to match population estimates for race, age, gender, education, region, and partisanship. GenFoward has been conducting similar large surveys since 2016, allowing us to examine trends over time.
How the next Congress could overturn House elections
GenForward data suggests that young people are interested in the upcoming election. Young adults’ engagement in midterm elections usually trails that of older generations. While this was true in 2018, a record 41 percent of voters ages 18 through 40 nevertheless voted. Recently, some observers have suggested that early voting trends may mean lower youth turnout than in the presidential election of 2020. But as political scientist Michael McDonald noted, early youth turnout in 2022 has not lagged far behind that in 2018, the last comparable midterm election.
Our October 2022 survey found that 39 percent of young adults were interested in midterm election news, the same level we found in October 2018. In October 2022, 43 percent of young adults said they definitely planned to vote or already voted, including 51 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans. In both cases, that’s more than we found in 2018, when it was 39 percent and 27 percent, respectively.
Racial and ethnic groups express different levels of intentions to vote: 46 percent of White and 41 percent of Black young adults say they definitely plan to vote (or had already voted), compared to 36 percent of Latino and 34 percent of Asian American or Pacific Islander young adults.
These self-reported rates of intention to vote have stayed fairly steady across our three surveys in 2022, in April, July and October.
These data only tell us individuals’ stated intentions to vote, and are unlikely to translate directly into actual turnout, which can be affected by such factors as campaign mobilization efforts, ease of access to voting and candidate quality. They do, however, suggest that young people’s motivation to vote is similar to that in the last midterm election, even if their interest in current events trails older generational groups, as it always does.
Inflation and abortion rights are top-of-mind for young adults
Our results also reveal that young adults share many political concerns with older generational groups. When asked about the most important issue for the midterm elections, one in four named inflation, making it young adults’ top choice. Fully 87 percent of young adults agreed that inflation is affecting them and their families; 85 percent expected it to rise further in the next six months.
Young adults are also concerned about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. GenForward data suggests that this issue motivates many young people, especially young Democrats. Eleven percent of young adults selected abortion and reproductive rights as the most important midterm election issue, making it the second-most selected issue and the top choice among young Democrats (18 percent). Fully 65 percent of young adults opposed the court’s decision; almost half, or 49 percent, hold an unfavorable view of the court, compared with 28 percent who see it favorably.
We asked respondents how either the Dobbs decision or inflation would affect their midterm vote choice. For each issue, 32 percent of respondents said it would not affect their vote. Sixty percent of young democrats said that Dobbs would make them more likely to support Democratic candidates; 38 percent of Black and 37 percent of AAPI young adults said the same. Fifty-eight percent of young Republicans said that inflation would make them more likely to vote for Republicans, and 32 percent of White young adults said the same.
Who do young people think is responsible for inflation? Fifty-five percent of Republicans and 36 percent of White young adults blamed President Biden or Democrats in Congress; only 13 percent of Democrats and 18 percent of Black young adults agreed.
In other words, young adults aren’t changing their minds about who to vote for based on prominent issues of the day; rather, those issues are motivating partisans. Democrats have emphasized abortion rights in their election messaging in recent months, which could help them mobilize young Democratic partisans — particularly the young people of color at the core of their coalition — to return to the polls in 2022.
Kumar Ramanathan (@kumarhk) is a PhD candidate in political science at Northwestern University and a GenForward Research Fellow at the University of Chicago.
Matthew Nelsen (@nelsen_matt) is assistant professor of political science at the University of Miami. | 2022-11-04T11:25:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Young voters could sway the midterm elections, as they did in 2018. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/midterms-voting-genz-millennials-youth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/midterms-voting-genz-millennials-youth/ |
Keira D’Amato’s ‘pretty darn awesome’ 2022 will end with NYC Marathon
Keira D'Amato trains in June at a school near her home in Richmond. (Jonathan Mehring for The Washington Post)
Keira D’Amato’s first New York City Marathon on Sunday will cap a spectacular year of running, one in which she rose to the top ranks of American women and turned professional with one of the sport’s more unusual backstories.
“I’m extremely happy with it,” D’Amato said of a year that began when she grabbed headlines for claiming the American women’s record in the Houston Marathon in January. She was well known in the running community but became a national story for setting the record after a decade off from running because of injury, along with the happier arrival of marriage and two children.
“I’m a 38-year-old mom, and I just had the best running year of my life. You know, most pros race a handful of times, maybe five [a year],” she said. “I think if I make it to the starting line healthy in New York, this will be my 14th time racing this year, and for a 38-year-old mom, that’s pretty darn awesome.”
D’Amato ascended to the ranks of awesome by winning in Houston in 2 hours 19 minutes 12 seconds, toppling a U.S. record that had stood since 2006. A realtor in Richmond, she is also now a professional runner sponsored by Nike.
“I think I’ve raced double [the number of races] of any of my competitors,” she said. “I’ve won some really iconic races, I’ve set course records and I feel like overall, my body of work, this has been my best year ever. But it’s really exciting for me because I see a lot of room for improvement, and I think 2023 can be even better.”
After setting the record in Houston, D’Amato won the Boston Athletic Association 10K in June; finished eighth in the World Athletics Championships marathon in Eugene, Ore., in July; broke a 24-year-old course record to win the USA Track & Field 20K Championships in New Haven, Conn., in September; and finished sixth as the top American (with a time of 2:21:48) in the Berlin Marathon later that month.
She's a mom of two and one of America's fastest female marathoners
D’Amato attended high school in Northern Virginia and was a four-time all-American at American University. She joined DC Elite, a professional running team led by Scott Raczko, who coached Alan Webb when he set the men’s U.S. record in the mile in 2007. But her left foot derailed her career. Two bones were not connected in the proper way and she needed surgery that her insurance didn’t cover, so she went to work for the mortgage company Freddie Mac and eventually became a Realtor.
For eight years, her focus was elsewhere, until, in 2009, she had foot surgery. She tried a marathon in 2013 but told The Washington Post this summer that a “perfect storm of everything that could go wrong in a marathon” led her to think that 26.2 miles wasn’t for her.
She and her husband, Tony, welcomed son Thomas in 2014 and daughter Quin two years later. Things changed in 2016 when she signed up her husband, also a runner, for the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach then decided she had to run it, too. She began training, and the races kept following, and her times kept falling, fueling goals that have come fast and furious: Compete with the world’s best at marquee marathons, represent the United States on a global stage, qualify for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. As one of two American women with sub-2:20 times, reclaiming that American record would be nice, too.
“I’ll be honest — is it fun being the American record holder?” she said. “Hell, yeah!”
D’Amato’s record stood until Oct. 10, when Emily Sisson lowered her mark by 43 seconds, winning the Chicago Marathon in 2:18:29 with D’Amato looking on. D’Amato joined running royalty and previous American marathon record holders Joan Benoit Samuelson and Deena Kastor in Chicago as a spectator. As much fun as it was to have the record, she didn’t mind seeing Sisson improve on her time. Besides, it gave her a new goal.
U.S. women's marathoners' bonds go far beyond the course
“It wasn’t about me that day, and I wasn’t going to let someone else having a good day make it be a bad day for me,” D’Amato said. “I wasn’t going to let any sort of negative emotion creep in because it wasn’t about me.
“It was always about chasing the goal. I hit the goal on my day. I went for it in Berlin and I did not hit that goal. And I knew if I didn’t push down my time, someone else would, you know?” she said. “I was really proud of her and just thinking that I played a role. Now it’s her journey, the journey of the American record and pushing it down to be even more competitive on the world stage. I feel really proud about that.”
A post shared by Keira D'Amato (@keiradamato)
Besides, “the tide raises all ships. Me moving that bar forward — Emily just moved it forward again,” she said. “I’m going to have to work even harder now. I want it back. I’m going to have to run a sub-2:18, which is my plan anyway. I think it’s a really healthy competition, and I think all American women are going to be better for it.”
D’Amato comes to the end of the year with “healthy” legs and “feeling fresher than ever” despite dealing with a minor bug. That, she said, is her “X Factor,” although she believes she has gotten it out of her system.
The weather forecast for the New York City Marathon calls for a warm day, with cloudy skies and temperatures in the 60s in the morning and the low 70s by midafternoon. D’Amato is fine with whatever the weather gods come up with.
“Bring it, Mother Nature,” she said. | 2022-11-04T11:26:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Keira D'Amato ready to compete in New York City Marathon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/keira-damato-new-york-city-marathon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/keira-damato-new-york-city-marathon/ |
David Still of United States scores a try against Spain during the first day of the Hong Kong Sevens rugby tournament in Hong Kong, Friday, Nov. 4, 2022. The Hong Kong Sevens, a popular stop on the World Rugby Sevens Series circuit, is part of the government’s drive to restore the city’s image as a vibrant financial hub after it scrapped mandatory hotel quarantine for travelers. (AP Photo/Anthony Kwan) (Anthong Kwan/AP) | 2022-11-04T11:26:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Revelers return to Hong Kong 7s for 1st time since pandemic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/revelers-return-to-hong-kong-7s-for-1st-time-since-pandemic/2022/11/04/a5860b74-5c1d-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/revelers-return-to-hong-kong-7s-for-1st-time-since-pandemic/2022/11/04/a5860b74-5c1d-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
Friday briefing: The biggest midterm issues; Paul Pelosi; Elon Musk’s Twitter layoffs; Kyrie Irving; daylight saving time; and more
Abortion is on the ballot in five states next week.
California, Michigan and Vermont will ask voters to make abortion rights part of their constitutions. Kentucky and Montana voters will weigh in on two antiabortion ballot measures.
Why this matters: The Supreme Court left abortion rules up to individual states when it struck down Roe v. Wade this summer, and it has become one of the defining issues of the midterms.
What else is on the ballot? Marijuana legalization, in five states, and changes to voting-related policies, including whether Nevada should adopt ranked-choice voting.
Nancy Pelosi’s husband was released from the hospital yesterday.
The details: Paul Pelosi was hospitalized for six days after an intruder — who was allegedly looking for the House speaker — attacked him in their San Francisco home.
The bigger picture: Nearly 9 in 10 Americans are worried about politically motivated violence, according to a Post-ABC poll taken after the Pelosi attack.
Ukraine is preparing for what may be the most important battle of the war.
Where? The southern Kherson region. Ukrainian officials have signaled that an assault on the Russian-held regional capital could be imminent.
Why it matters: The battle could be the single best test of whether Moscow will win any significant territory from its invasion.
Mass layoffs at Elon Musk’s Twitter have begun.
What happened? An email went out to employees late yesterday, telling them that they’ll find out this morning whether they still have a job.
Why is he doing this? The Tesla CEO went into debt when he bought Twitter last week for $44 billion, so he’s trying to cut costs while increasing revenue.
The Brooklyn Nets suspended Kyrie Irving yesterday.
Why? The NBA star had repeatedly refused to apologize after he posted on social media last week about an antisemitic film and book. He apologized on Instagram late yesterday after the suspension.
The bigger picture: This incident comes after high-profile antisemitic statements from people like Donald Trump and Kanye West, a pattern that’s worrying experts.
There’s a huge college football showdown tomorrow.
The details: No. 1 Georgia (the defending national champion) hosts No. 2 Tennessee at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time. The game will air on CBS.
Why people are excited: Games between the top two teams (known as “Games of the Century”) are rare. Both teams are undefeated, and the outcome will have a big impact on the rest of the season.
Daylight saving time ends Sunday.
What that means: Clocks will “fall back” one hour overnight (so you’ll get some time back), unless you live in Hawaii and most parts of Arizona.
Yes, it’s annoying: Every few years momentum builds to stop changing our clocks twice a year, but then people can’t decide between permanent daylight saving or standard time.
Which is better? Daylight saving is much worse health-wise, because it throws off our natural body clocks.
And now … you’ve got another chance at a $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot tomorrow. Plus, blockbuster season is here: Here are the movies to look forward to. | 2022-11-04T11:27:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Friday, November 4 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/11/04/what-to-know-for-november-4/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/11/04/what-to-know-for-november-4/ |
FILE - In this image taken from video, South Korean Air Force’s F15K fighter jet takes off Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022, in an undisclosed location in South Korea. South Korea has scrambled dozens of military aircraft, including advanced F35 fighter jets, Friday, Nov. 4, 2022, after spotting 180 North Korean warplanes flying in North Korean territory in what appeared to be a defiant show of strength. (South Korean Defense Ministry via AP, File) (Uncredited/South Korean Defense Ministry) | 2022-11-04T11:27:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rival Koreas scramble warplanes in extension of tensions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/rival-koreas-scramble-warplanes-in-extension-of-tensions/2022/11/04/d9b545b8-5c13-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/rival-koreas-scramble-warplanes-in-extension-of-tensions/2022/11/04/d9b545b8-5c13-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
(Illustration by Nigel Buchanan for The Washington Post based on a photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The tragedy of John Roberts
On the final day of oral arguments last term, the chief justice’s voice cracked with emotion as he bade farewell to the retiring Justice Stephen G. Breyer. It was a striking moment for the normally buttoned-up John G. Roberts Jr., and one that seemed to signify more than sorrow at the departure of a longtime colleague. It is not far-fetched to imagine that Roberts was mourning the decisive end of his vision of presiding over an institution seen as operating above the partisan fray.
“I’ve lost my only friend on the court,” Roberts told someone afterward.
As Roberts, 67, begins his 18th term, he is an at times isolated and even tragic figure. Roberts wanted to be at the helm of a court that was more often unanimous than splintered; now it is cleaved, 6-3, along hardened ideological lines. Roberts wanted to help shore up the court’s institutional standing; instead, he has watched it plunge in public esteem, helpless to prevent the fall.
He has been outflanked and marginalized by five conservative justices to his right, even as he has been subjected to unsparing criticism by those to his left.
In the last term alone, Roberts witnessed the unprecedented — and, from all appearances, still unsolved — leak of a draft opinion, in the Dobbs abortion case. In the aftermath of that jarring event, his most conservative colleague, Clarence Thomas, openly lamented the days when “we were a family” — and pointedly dated those to the “fabulous court” before Roberts’s tenure.
When the final Dobbs ruling was released, Roberts was a lone voice, his suggested compromise unable to attract a single additional vote.
And with trust in the court at a record low — down 20 points in two years to just 47 percent of Americans saying they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of faith in the institution — Roberts felt compelled to speak out in its defense, engaging in an extraordinary public back-and-forth with Justice Elena Kagan about the court’s legitimacy.
In short, with the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the arrival of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to shore up the conservative wing, this is the Roberts court in name only. The chief now finds himself in the unexpected position of being — or at least voting — to the left of the new swing justice, Brett M. Kavanaugh.
Conservative justices ranked by ideology
Political scientists Lee Epstein, Andrew Martin and Kevin Quinn ranked justices’ decisions on an ideological spectrum.
Kavanaugh
Source: Analysis by Lee Epstein, University of Southern
California; Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in
St. Louis; and Kevin Quinn, University of Michigan, using
the Supreme Court Database.
Conservative justices ranked
Source: Analysis by Lee Epstein, University of Southern California;
Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis; and Kevin Quinn,
University of Michigan, using the Supreme Court Database.
Source: Analysis by Lee Epstein, University of Southern California; Andrew D. Martin, Washington University
in St. Louis; and Kevin Quinn, University of Michigan, using the Supreme Court Database.
Roberts remains at the top of the pack of justices voting with the majority — 95 percent of the time in divided cases last term, tied only by Kavanaugh. But that statistic obscures the reality that time after time, Roberts’s colleagues have ignored his pleas for patience.
Roberts has found himself dissenting when his fellow conservatives refused to block Texas’s abortion law as the case was litigated; when they allowed an Alabama redistricting plan to take effect despite the fact that, as Roberts said, the trial court that found it violated the Voting Rights Act “properly applied existing law in an extensive opinion with no apparent errors for our correction”; and when they enjoined New York’s pandemic rules even though restrictions on religious services had been revised. Dobbs wasn’t an outlier.
“I don’t think I would want to be Roberts right now,” said University of Southern California law professor Lee Epstein, who specializes in studying the justices’ voting patterns. “He has some very aggressive, ambitious colleagues on his right who want to do a lot very quickly, and that’s just so not Roberts. … He tries to slow things down, but they’re not going to be slowed.”
Tellingly, conservatives and liberals use the same stark adjective — relevant — when they describe Roberts’s current predicament.
“He’s just less relevant now,” said Mike Davis, who heads the conservative Article III Project and worked to confirm President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees. With three appointments to the court, he said, “Trump transformed the 5-to-4 John Roberts court into the 5-to-4 Clarence Thomas court, meaning it’s more likely the court’s just going to follow the law and not be concerned about the political fallout.”
Harvard Law School professor emeritus Laurence H. Tribe, co-author of a book on the Roberts court, made the same point from the opposite ideological perspective. “He’s largely irrelevant, except that the court has gone so far, so fast that he may become more relevant depending on whether anybody else is chastened,” Tribe said.
You thought the Supreme Court’s last term was bad? Brace yourself.
The question now is how Roberts will respond to this new reality. He is a chief caught between conflicting imperatives. If he insists on hewing to the go-slow, decide-no-more-than-necessary approach that has been the hallmark of his tenure, he risks appearing weak — and losing what little ability he retains to influence and constrain the conservative majority. If he votes with that majority, as might be his underlying inclination in most cases, he risks contributing to what he has been laboring to prevent: the decline of the institution.
A chief justice is little more than the first among equals; his vote counts no more than that of the other eight justices. His main authority derives from the power, when he is in the majority, to assign the authorship of opinions, either writing himself or giving the job to a colleague.
But Roberts, with a careful eye on history, had a far grander, even audacious, mission in mind, one he laid out in an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Rosen in 2006 at the conclusion of his first term. “It’s sobering to think of the seventeen chief justices; certainly a solid majority of them have to be characterized as failures,” Roberts told Rosen. “The successful ones are hard to number.”
To reread the interview now, with foreknowledge of the changes to come, is poignant. Roberts talked about the danger of polarized politics, and the “high priority to keep any kind of partisan divide out of the judiciary as well.” He wanted his colleagues to “factor in the Court’s institutional role” and elevate consensus-building over ideological purity.
Like his greatest predecessor, Chief Justice John Marshall, who served from 1801 to 1835, Roberts wanted to see the court speak as often as possible with a single voice, not a cacophony of concurring and dissenting opinions. That would produce more jurisprudential stability and, consequently, more public respect for the court.
It all sounds quaint now. Last term’s numbers tell the story. According to Epstein’s calculations, just 28 percent of the court’s opinions were unanimous in the last term — far below the 41 percent average since Roberts joined the court. The most common voting pattern wasn’t 9-0, as is the general rule, but 6-3. And the vast majority of those (14 of 19), according to statistics compiled by Scotusblog, reflected the six-justice conservative bloc.
“Chief Justice Roberts tried to avoid the polarization of the court from the beginning,” Rosen told me. “The whole point of his vision was to avoid the court blowing itself up and squandering its legitimacy.”
And that is the tragedy of John Roberts. The man whose career betrays virtually no hint of failure appears to be failing at the most monumental task he has confronted, one he set for himself.
Roberts is an accidental chief justice, but his arrival at the court was anything but accident. In a city of glittering résumés, Roberts had compiled one that was burnished to perfection by the time he was nominated to the high court by President George W. Bush in 2005.
Raised in Indiana, the son of a Bethlehem Steel executive, Roberts graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College after just three years, then headed straight to Harvard Law School, where he was managing editor of the law review.
That was capped by the most prestigious of clerkships, for appeals court judge Henry Friendly and then-Justice William H. Rehnquist, and a subsequent trip up the ladder of the plummiest jobs for a conservative young lawyer in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations: special assistant to the attorney general, associate White House counsel, principal deputy solicitor general.
As much as Roberts served as loyal foot soldier in President Ronald Reagan’s legal revolution — memos from the time show him forcefully urging conservative positions — he combined that stance with a Midwestern geniality, a gift for forging across-the-aisle relationships and canny circumspection about exposing his views to public scrutiny.
“An ultimate insider in the capital,” the New York Times wrote after his nomination in July 2005. “Judge Roberts is a conservative, but he has never been an ideological crusader,” said The Post’s Editorial Board, adding that “nobody really knows what Judge Roberts believes, because he has been unusually careful about not discussing his views.”
If Roberts’s paper trail was thin — he had been on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for little more than two years — Democrats had only themselves to blame. Roberts had originally been tapped for the D.C. Circuit by George H.W. Bush in 1992, but the Senate never voted on his nomination; after George W. Bush renominated him in 2001, the Democratic-controlled Senate again delayed acting, and Roberts was not confirmed until Republicans regained control in 2003.
Two years later, the younger Bush nominated Roberts — at age 50 — to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired to help care for her ailing husband. But on Sept. 3, 2005, just three days before Roberts’s confirmation hearings were to begin, chief justice Rehnquist died of cancer. Bush, dealing with the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, quickly decided to slot Roberts into Rehnquist’s seat, notwithstanding his relative youth (the youngest chief justice since John Marshall) and scant judicial experience.
That fortuitous timing is important to understanding Roberts’s performance. He has been known to muse about what kind of justice he would have been had he not been invested with the additional responsibility of safeguarding the institution. That is not to say that Roberts’s votes as chief justice have trended liberal — anything but. Roberts is no hardcore originalist — he has said that “I do not have an overarching judicial philosophy” — but he is unmistakably conservative.
“He may think the court is moving too fast, but he thinks it’s moving in the right direction,” said University of Chicago law professor Aziz Huq, who serves on the board of the liberal American Constitution Society.
On race, which for decades has been an animating issue for Roberts, he has written opinions decimating the Voting Rights Act and preventing public schools from using race to achieve diverse classrooms. On gay rights, he dissented bitterly when the court found that the Constitution protects a right to same-sex marriage, warning that “stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.”
On campaign finance, he has demonstrated unrelenting hostility toward efforts to reduce the influence of money in politics. On government regulation, he has voted to curtail the power of administrative agencies, most recently using a case limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to combat climate change to declare a new “major questions” doctrine that will invite further challenges across the regulatory landscape.
And yet, Roberts — even before conservatives took firm control — sometimes put his foot on the brake. Before he dismantled Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, he gave Congress one last chance to fix it, noting that “the importance of the question does not justify our rushing to decide it.” Most famously, in 2012 he switched his initial vote to strike down the Affordable Care Act and, engaging in some interpretive contortions, saved the statute but infuriated his conservative colleagues. Three years later, he did it again — this time adding insult to conservative injury because his vote wasn’t even needed to save the statute.
Roberts’s tenure can be divided into three distinct Roberts courts. The first, which lasted from 2005 until Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s retirement in 2018, is best described as a jump-ball court: Often Kennedy would lean in a conservative direction, but sometimes — in particular, on gay rights — he would side with liberals. And sometimes, as in the Obamacare case, Roberts himself would surprise and determine the majority.
The second chapter was fleeting — from Kennedy’s departure until Barrett’s arrival in October 2020, the span of just two terms. With five conservatives and four liberals, Roberts was finally in control, his vote determinative. He was both the chief justice and the median justice, imbued with remarkable influence. “Roberts is not only the most powerful player on the court. He’s also the most powerful chief justice since at least 1937,” Epstein told the New York Times’s Adam Liptak in June 2020, as the court was wrapping up its work.
In that term’s divided cases, Roberts voted with the majority 95 percent of the time — more than any chief justice since at least 1953 and more than any of his colleagues. (Kavanaugh was next with 90 percent, and Neil M. Gorsuch followed with 82 percent, with the rest of the court hovering between the mid-50s and mid-60s.)
Among that court’s 5-4 rulings, Roberts was in the majority in every case but one. He cast an uncharacteristic vote in favor of abortion rights, a decision he said was compelled by a precedent from which he had dissented, and another blocking Trump’s bid to repeal immigration protections for “dreamers.”
Three months later, Ginsburg died.
Once, conservatives had found themselves reduced to griping about what Justice Antonin Scalia, in a 2007 campaign finance case, called Roberts’s “faux judicial restraint.” With the arrival of Barrett in late 2020, Roberts’s go-slow admonitions proved, for the most part, unpersuasive.
Now, the more conservative justices show little inclination to heed him — a phenomenon on painful display in last term’s abortion case. Roberts could summon no justices to support his middle-ground position, to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban but stop short of overruling Roe v. Wade. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s majority opinion dismissed Roberts in almost sneering tones. “The concurrence’s most fundamental defect is its failure to offer any principled basis for its approach,” Alito wrote.
It was a dramatic turnabout from Roberts’s ascendant position just a year before. “This,” said one conservative lawyer, “was John’s worst nightmare.”
Majorities can turn out to be fleeting, although the current supermajority appears rather durable. It’s possible that Kavanaugh will be taken aback by the public reaction to the court’s lurch to the right and show more willingness than he has so far in helping Roberts slow things down.
But, although Kavanaugh and Roberts tend to vote together more than any other pairing of justices, in most of the critical cases where Roberts has sided with the liberals, Kavanaugh has declined to go along. Less likely, but not impossible, Barrett could still surprise; she’s new, and her record on some issues — race, to take one current example — is still unwritten.
That leaves Roberts, as he nears the end of his second decade on the court, a chief without a constituency.
Many of his fellow conservatives, including some of his own colleagues, view him with suspicion, if not outright disdain. Roberts, as they see it, has subordinated his simple duty to apply the law in the service of somehow protecting the institution — and, perhaps not coincidentally, his own reputation.
Liberals understand that his seeming moderation is only by contrast to his hot-under-the-collar colleagues, and that his ultimate goals are deeply at odds with their own constitutional vision. Roberts might be an occasional accomplice, but he is not their ally.
He faces every temptation to join the conservative majority. That imbues him with the power to assign the writing of key opinions to himself, or, alternatively, to keep the authorship away from the most extreme conservatives. The bottom line might be the same. But the precise language the court uses in deciding a case matters for those yet to come; it matters whether an opinion’s author is Thomas or Kavanaugh.
As it happens, the court’s highest-profile cases this term — on affirmative action, voting and the right of a Christian business owner to refuse to serve same-sex weddings — will all push Roberts in the direction of his fellow conservatives. “The fact is that the kind of issues that he cares most about are some of the most important cases on the docket this term,” said Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who was solicitor general under President Barack Obama. “I feel like he can and will reassert his leadership by playing a dominant role in those cases, and it will seem like, ‘Oh, Roberts is back. He’s regained control.’ ”
The Rule of Six: A newly radicalized Supreme Court is set to reshape the nation
Perhaps, but for how long? Roberts might be with the radical majority on race, but will that alliance hold in other areas? And would this be Roberts in control — or merely the illusion of control? The majority to his right, to the extent it holds solid, retains the power to do what it will, whether Roberts signs on or not. It is fully aware it holds that power and is not afraid to exercise it.
Conversely, Roberts might see benefits to being on the losing side. As a nominee, Roberts famously insisted that judges are mere neutral umpires calling balls and strikes; as chief justice, he publicly reprimanded Trump for denouncing a jurist as an “Obama judge.” Roberts is the chief justice of the United States, the head of the entire judiciary. He might perceive an advantage in demonstrating with his vote that the high court — and the judiciary itself — is not neatly divided along party lines.
And there is another way for Roberts, who once aspired to be a history professor, to think about his choice: over the long sweep of time. Ineffective now might look heroic decades hence. Roberts can be remembered as the chief justice who went along with the conservative crowd and, in so doing, helped bring disrepute on an activist, radical court. Or he can be the conservative who tried to stop, or at least slow, the tide, lauded for his steadfastness even if it proves unavailing.
History seems certain to remember the Roberts court in a different way than John Roberts once imagined, but he retains the ability to shape history’s verdict on his own performance.
The Opinions Essay: Read more in our long-form series
Sign up for the Opinions Essay newsletter to get the next essay in your inbox.
Ruth Marcus: The tragedy of John Roberts
Bob Woodward: The Trump Tapes: 20 interviews that show why he is an unparalleled danger
Ruth Marcus: You thought the Supreme Court’s last term was bad? Brace yourself.
Steve Brodner: Look! It’s the winged monkeys of the Wizard of Trump
Michael Gerson: Trump should fill Christians with rage. How come he doesn’t?
Dana Milbank: The GOP is sick. It didn’t start with Trump — and won’t end with him.
Christian Caryl: Russia locked up Vladimir Kara-Murza for telling the truth about Ukraine
Karen Tumulty: How Gabby Giffords found her voice again
David E. Hoffman: ‘Liberation is born from the soul’: Oswaldo Payá’s struggle for a free Cuba
Molly Roberts: Susan Collins confronts a moment of truth
Emefa Addo Agawu: Why we should pay people to stay off drugs
Karen Tumulty: Disease took my brother. Our health-care system added to his ordeal.
Christine Emba: Consent is not enough. We need a new sexual ethic.
Josh Rogin: Biden doesn’t want to change China. He wants to beat it.
Sebastian Mallaby: Behind the ‘power law’: How a forgotten venture capitalist kick-started Silicon Valley
Ruth Marcus: The Rule of Six: A newly radicalized Supreme Court is poised to reshape the nation
Perry Bacon Jr.: Have Democrats reached the limits of White appeasement politics?
Robert Kagan: Our constitutional crisis is already here
George F. Will: The pursuit of happiness is happiness
Megan McArdle: America forgot how to make proper pie. Can we remember before it’s too late?
Michele L. Norris: Germany faced its horrible past. Can we do the same?
Mike Abramowitz and Nate Schenkkan: The reach of authoritarian repression is growing. Now, not even exile is safe.
George T. Conway III: Trump’s new reality: Ex-president, private citizen and, perhaps, criminal defendant
Fareed Zakaria: The pandemic upended the present. But it’s given us a chance to remake the future.
Read other Opinions Essays and see more special features. | 2022-11-04T12:10:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is at a crossroads. How will he handle this term? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/supreme-court-john-roberts-tragedy-ruth-marcus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/supreme-court-john-roberts-tragedy-ruth-marcus/ |
Three governor's races that really matter for climate policy
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! There are three days until the start of the COP27 climate talks and five days until the midterm elections. 📆 But first:
3 governor’s races that really matter for climate policy — especially if the GOP takes control of Congress
Many political journalists, including the author of this newsletter, have written countless stories about the ramifications of high-profile House and Senate races.
But with Republicans poised to control one or both chambers of Congress after next week’s midterm elections, the prospects for climate legislation on Capitol Hill look bleak. That means states will play an even more important role in setting policies to slash planet-warming emissions and transition to renewable energy.
In turn, that means a handful of key governor’s races could have major consequences for the nation’s climate trajectory. The winners of these contests could help the United States achieve President Biden’s ambitious climate and clean-energy targets — or they could undermine those goals for the duration of their four-year terms.
Here are three gubernatorial races we’re watching in three different parts of the country — New England, the Midwest and the Southwest:
Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey is facing off against Geoff Diehl, a former Republican state lawmaker, in the race to succeed current Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a rare Republican who has prioritized climate action from his perch in the governor’s mansion.
Healey, who has been endorsed by the Environmental League of Massachusetts, has rolled out an aggressive climate plan that calls for reaching 100 percent clean electricity in the state by 2030 — five years ahead of Biden’s target date for eliminating carbon emissions from the nation’s power sector.
The plan also suggests ending the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035. Baker signed legislation this summer to accomplish that goal, following in the footsteps of California regulators.
By contrast, Diehl has released few details about his climate plans, although his campaign website calls for “a greater commitment to renewable energy and promoting energy independence.” But as a state lawmaker, Diehl sought to block Massachusetts from joining the Transportation and Climate Initiative, a regional program aimed at slashing emissions from the transportation sector.
Kyle Murray, Massachusetts senior policy advocate at the Acadia Center, an environmental group, said a victory by Healey would speed the state’s shift to clean energy, helping to reduce residents’ utility bills.
“There’s an energy price spike coming this winter that's due to our overdependence on natural gas,” Murray said. “Had we pursued more clean energy, we could've avoided some of these issues. And unfortunately, Diehl would enshrine the status quo.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a rising star in the Democratic Party who has teased her ambitions for higher office, is vying for a second term against Republican Tudor Dixon, a businesswoman and political commentator.
Whitmer, a member of the U.S. Climate Alliance, has championed investments in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, saying they will entice business to the car-loving state. She has also criticized Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline as a “ticking time bomb” that threatens the Great Lakes.
Dixon, who drives a Chevrolet Tahoe, has denounced EVs as unaffordable for most consumers. She has called Line 5 “critical infrastructure” that can lower energy costs for Michiganders.
In addition, Dixon has vowed to cut, reduce or streamline 40 percent of state regulations during her first term. Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment about which environmental rules she would ax.
Still, environmental issues have not played a big role in the race, with Michigan voters placing a greater emphasis on abortion, inflation and the economy, said Barry Rabe, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies climate policy.
“The abortion issue is just front and center here,” Rabe said. “I say that from my home study, where I can look out my window and see my neighbors' signs.”
Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, another member of the U.S. Climate Alliance, is running for a second term against Republican Mark Ronchetti, a former meteorologist.
Soon after taking office in 2019, Grisham signed landmark legislation that set a statewide renewable energy standard of 50 percent by 2030 for investor-owned utilities.
She has also championed stringent methane regulations for the state’s oil and gas industry, which accounted for more than 11 percent of total U.S. crude oil production in 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Grisham “has been an incredible leader on climate, which is even more significant in light of the fact that New Mexico is one of the largest oil and gas states in the country,” said Demis Foster, executive director of Conservation Voters New Mexico.
Meanwhile, Ronchetti has vowed to “increase oil and gas production,” even as scientists say the world needs to rapidly phase out fossil fuels to avert a climate catastrophe. He has also rejected the link between climate change and wildfires, despite scientific evidence that warmer, drier conditions are leading to longer and more active fire seasons in New Mexico and across the West.
The Ronchetti campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Conservative Climate Caucus members will travel to COP27
Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus, will lead a delegation of House Republicans to the upcoming COP27 climate negotiations in Egypt, his office announced Wednesday evening.
The trip comes as Republicans seek to carve out credibility on climate change, which polling shows younger conservative voters want elected officials to address.
The delegation will include Republican Reps. Greg Murphy (N.C.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa), Tim Walberg (Mich.), Debbie Lesko (Ariz.) and "potentially others," according to a news release.
“Republicans have solutions to reduce world emissions while providing affordable, reliable and clean energy to our allies across the globe," Curtis said in a statement. "Our delegation in Egypt will be the proof that the Republicans are not just at the climate table but leading with solutions.”
Curtis previously led a GOP delegation to COP26 with Rep. Garret Graves (La.), the top Republican on the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.) spent much of that trip touting carbon capture and natural gas, which Democrats and activists have decried as false climate solutions.
Countries vowed to try to ramp up climate pledges this year. Very few have.
Almost none of the world’s largest emitters, including the United States, have unveiled stronger pledges to combat climate change ahead of COP27 in Egypt, despite promising last fall during COP26 in Scotland to “revisit and strengthen” national climate targets over the coming year, The Washington Post’s Brady Dennis and Harry Stevens report.
So far, only 21 countries out of 172 have submitted fresh pledges, according to the independent Climate Action Tracker. And of those 21, only one large country, Australia, has filed a plan that includes stronger, credible commitments to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The data shows that humanity remains on a perilous path, with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warning earlier this year that at the current level of emissions and pace of action, the world could blaze past the crucial 1.5 degrees Celsius target in less than a decade. Experts say that momentum has stalled in part because of other global crises that have demanded the world’s attention, including the war in Ukraine and rising inflation and energy costs.
Britain’s Rishi Sunak to attend COP27 after all
In a reversal, Britain’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said on Twitter on Wednesday that he will attend COP27 in Egypt next week, despite 10 Downing Street saying last week that Sunak would skip the talks because of other domestic duties, Rowena Mason and Helena Horton report for the Guardian.
“There is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change. There is no energy security without investing in renewables. That is why I will attend Cop27 next week: to deliver on Glasgow’s legacy of building a secure and sustainable future,” Sunak said in a tweet, making no reference to his prior reluctance.
The turnaround comes after environmentalists and some world leaders criticized Sunak’s decision, saying that it seemed like the United Kingdom was abdicating leadership on climate change.
Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss, had been expected to attend the talks. But King Charles III, who has been a pro-environment voice for many decades, has been advised by 10 Downing Street not to attend.
Here’s why Biden’s inner circle is obsessed with gas prices
President Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, wakes up every morning at 3:30 to check the national average price of gasoline. His fixation on the number reflects an understanding among administration officials that Biden’s approval rating is closely correlated with whether gas prices are rising or falling, even as many economists say the metric gets more attention than it deserves, The Post’s Jeff Stein reports.
Nobody in the White House has been more focused on lowering gas prices than Klain, according to interviews with a half-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, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal deliberations.
The focus has partly driven the White House to sacrifice other major agenda items as it scrambles to lower fuel costs, including by approving new oil and gas lease sales on public lands and waters and urging energy companies to rapidly boost production, despite environmental concerns.
Glaciers in Yosemite and Africa will disappear by 2050, U.N. warns — Rick Noack for The Post
Manchin aims to hitch permitting legislation to defense bill — Josh Siegel and Debra Kahn for Politico
Here’s where the U.S. is testing a new response to climate hazards — Christopher Flavelle for the New York Times
Egypt calls for pledge fulfillments at climate conference — Samy Magdy for the Associated Press
World falling short on funding for climate adaptation — UN report — Gloria Dickie for Reuters
1.3 billion pounds of pumpkins are landfilled in the US every year after Halloween. These emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Here are some fun ways to save your pumpkin from landfill 🎃 pic.twitter.com/FjPI01sbb9
— Nicole Kelner (@NicoleKelner) November 1, 2022 | 2022-11-04T12:23:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Three governor's races that really matter for climate policy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/03/three-governor-races-that-really-matter-climate-policy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/03/three-governor-races-that-really-matter-climate-policy/ |
The Terps are at Wisconsin at noon Eastern on Saturday (Big Ten Network)
After sitting out Maryland’s game against Northwestern, Taulia Tagovailoa is back and will play at Wisconsin. (Gail Burton/AP)
Maryland’s path to making a November statement will start Saturday in Madison, Wis., followed by games at No. 16 Penn State and at home against No. 2 Ohio State.
Despite the looming challenges, the Terps emerged from the bye week with an aura of belief surrounding the team. This season has already shown signs growth of throughout the program, but this final stretch could further amplify this progression. Maryland has a chance at its first eight-win season since 2010 and an outside shot at its first 10-win season since 2003. While Locksley continues to emphasize focusing on the short term, it’s clear he understands the magnitude of the last four games, especially with his quarterback back at the helm.
Terps do just enough to squeeze past Northwestern and get bowl eligible | 2022-11-04T12:36:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland QB Taulia Tagovailoa is back from injury - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/taulia-tagovailoa-returns-maryland-football/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/taulia-tagovailoa-returns-maryland-football/ |
Howard students host nighttime chess game to raise funds for competition
Howard University Chess Club president Malik Castro-DeVarona, left, makes his next move during a chess game debuting the club's new giant, glow-in-the-dark chess set featuring Howard's colors, red and blue, on 'The Yard' of the school's campus. Students used the debut to raise money to help the chess club compete in an upcoming national tournament. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
As the evening sky darkened across the Yard at Howard University, school chess club members unfurled a parachute-size board across the historic lawn.
The players carefully placed large plastic pieces that glowed red and blue in the night before they stood on opposite sides of the large chessboard to strategize how to capture the opposing king. Neon blue represented the white pieces, red the black.
Small robots delivering food crisscrossed the sidewalks. Students carrying backpacks paced across the center of campus, while a small group sang African lyrics from Ghanaian and Nigerian songs above ancient rhythms banged on an apentemma drum and a Dawuro bell, that sounds similar to a cowbell.
Early in the chess contest, Howard Chess Club president Malik Castro-DeVarona swung a bishop to take the queen side knight from his opponent Lloyd Davis.
“First blood!” Castro-DeVarona declared. Davis quickly retaliated with a move from his queen to take the intruding bishop. The handful of club members who watched shouted, “Woo!” as Davis knocked the piece off the board.
“So it’s like that, huh? It’s like that, huh?” Castro-DeVarona responded.
The nighttime game on Wednesday was a friendly match, but played in public with a specific purpose: to attract attention to the school’s small chess club, both to increase membership and to launch a fundraising campaign to help the group enter an intercollegiate competition in January.
Being able to compete and win matches matters most, but their entry also means a lot, club leaders say.
“One thing we really pride ourselves being is the only HBCU chess club that’s competed in recent years,” said Castro-DeVarona, a 20-year-old political science major from Los Angeles. “The last time we went there, we were the only all-Black team competing in the tournament.”
“We trying to go there and really show out,” he said. “It’s the biggest congregation of competitive collegiate chess that we have. We definitely feel like we are representing a lot of people when we are out there.”
Club leaders want to send an A team and a B team to compete in the Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship in early January, Castro-DeVarona said. The team began an online fundraiser to reach a $9,000 goal to pay for eight players to travel to Seattle.
The decades-old competition is expected to draw more than 100 schools for the three-day event, which includes a tournament, career fair and workshops designed to help students after graduation, said Brad Tenenholtz, an owner of Corporate Esports Association, the tournament’s host.
“We are trying to offer students something beyond just chess,” Tenenholtz said.
Beyond the fundraising, Wednesday night’s public games were designed to draw in new members. The Howard Chess Cub has existed on and off throughout the school’s history, Castro-DeVarona said, but has only about a dozen members who meet on Monday and Wednesday evenings each week.
Pandemic boredom and a Netflix show “The Queen’s Gambit” rekindled a love of the game for Davis, a senior majoring in political science who played Castro-DeVarona in the opening match. The Rochester, N.Y., native learned the game as a child from his parents but now finds the weekly sessions important to fueling his competitive side.
“I got to meet people and got to hang out with friends; I slowly but surely got better and better. I got to play faster times,” Davis said.
Wednesday’s outdoor nocturnal game set was donated by Jamaal Abdul-Alim, a writer and longtime chess journalist who has served as an informal adviser to club members to help raise attention to their existence and their fundraising.
“Sometimes people don’t even know there is a chess club here. It’s important to invest in the chess players,” Abdul-Alim said. “They’ve got a strong game. I’ve been in quite a few games where I thought I was winning, and they showed me otherwise.”
Abdul-Alim, who has covered chess since 2005, said he has covered a “final four” of collegiate chess. The January competition would help Howard to qualify. The club won their section the last time they competed
“It’s to chess what March Madness is in basketball,” Abdul-Alim said. “It’s important. This is probably the only historically Black college and university represented at that tournament.
“We wish it was otherwise.”
Abdul-Alim said he is impressed by the dedication shown by the club and how members have grown as players and as a team by inviting a chess master to speak to the club and help them learn.
“This is a serious club,” Abdul-Alim said. “They are looking to prove themselves in the chess world and play at the highest level they can.”
Wednesday night’s match ended as Castro-DeVarona moved his queen to C7 and cornered his opponent’s king. Davis conceded the defeat. | 2022-11-04T12:40:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Howard students host nighttime chess game to raise funds for competition - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/howard-chess-fundraise-competition-hbcu/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/howard-chess-fundraise-competition-hbcu/ |
Man fatally shot this morning near Kennedy Center
There was no further information immediately available on the circumstance or any suspect in the incident.
A man was fatally shot Friday morning near the Kennedy Center, according to D.C. police.
The man, who has not been identified, was pronounced dead on the scene.
The man was found with gunshot wounds around 8 a.m. on the 2700 block of F Street, NW. There was no further information available Friday morning on circumstance.
Police said they are actively investigating the incident and closed down Southbound Rock Creek Pkwy. diverting onto Virginia Ave. | 2022-11-04T12:40:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man fatally shot this morning near Kennedy Center - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/man-shot-this-morning-near-kennedy-center/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/man-shot-this-morning-near-kennedy-center/ |
Fairfax city poised to have first all-female school board in years
Fairfax City is poised to have an all-female school board with the election of five women on the November ballot. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
All five seats on the Fairfax City school board are up for election this November and for possibly the first time, all elected members will be women.
Those women — Stacy Hall, Amit Hickman, Sarah Kelsey, Rachel McQuillen and Carolyn Pitches — are uncontested candidates running for the board governing the city’s four schools and the Fairfax Academy for Communications and the Arts within the high school. The city system enrolls more than 5,000 students, both from the city and certain areas of the county.
“As far as I know, this will be the first time that all five board members will be women,” said Pitches, the current board chair and only incumbent running for reelection. “So, it’s kind of a historic moment.”
At least one man has been elected to the board each election between 2000 and 2020, Virginia election data shows. Fairfax City Schools, which was formed in 1961, does not track candidate data, Susan Wiczalkowski, the school system’s executive assistant said in an email.
“To my knowledge there has never been an all-female school board in the city of Fairfax,” Wiczalkowski said.
Women across the United States make up the majority of teachers, principals and school administrators, though comparatively only make up half of school board members and less than 25 percent of superintendent positions, according to the National School Boards Association.
School boards across the United States also lack racial diversity, research shows. Additionally, LGBTQ people make up less than 1 percent of board members in the nation, according to a report by the LGBTQ Victory Institute.
In Fairfax City, this year’s candidates are all White women. There are no people of color on the board.
Pitches, 52, said she contacted people from across the community, asking them to run when current members Jon Buttram, Bob Reinsel, Toby Sorensen and Mitch Sutterfield decided this would be their last term.
“When you serve in an elected position, it’s work, it’s time and for a lot of people with children and who have jobs, it’s a sacrifice,” Pitches said. “Some people don’t have the ability to make that sacrifice for a number of reasons.”
John Singleton, a University of Rochester economics professor who researches school boards, said communities across the United States face this problem.
Fairfax school board member apologizes for using slur in meeting
“It’s likely true that school boards are generally unrepresentative of the communities that they serve,” Singleton said. “In general, they're going to be more affluent. In general, they're going to be more White.”
People of color make up 46 percent of Fairfax City. They also represent at least roughly 50 to 60 percent of the city’s schools, school data shows. Hickman, 39, said the ballot did not reflect the local demographic.
“I'm thrilled to see more women stepping up to be involved in local politics,” Hickman said. “I think that's amazing. But it does, of course, mean that the board is not as diverse as we might want to see in a city with such diversity.”
Virginia guidelines limiting rights for transgender students delayed
Hall, 43, said she gets asked a lot about the ballot’s lack of representation. She believes the board will need to do more community engagement this term than has been done in a long time, she said. If board members can listen to residents’ perspectives, then they can better represent the community.
“This is not just, ‘We’re running the show, and it’s what we think,’ ” Hall said.
Commitment to inclusion
Between the four new candidates, a parent from each of the Fairfax City schools will be on the ballot. Three of the candidates also work in education outside of the school system, and two have a background in finance and accounting. One of the candidates is a stay-at-home mom.
School board members receive $4,600 a year, and the chair receives $5,600 annually.
Singleton said diversity is an important factor that can help improve school boards. But another factor is whether members of school boards work well together to effect change.
“You can potentially see a trade-off,” Singleton said. “Yes, the school board is potentially all women, but maybe it’s also a board that’s really functional.”
School board meetings used to be boring. Why have they become war zones?
The city’s election comes at a time when polarized boards across the nation are grappling with how schools should teach students, debating issues such as critical race theory and LGBTQ education. In neighboring Loudoun County, Va., the tight race for two board seats is described as heavily partisan.
Kelsey, 42, said the Fairfax City board candidates have already met to discuss some of the issues they would like to tackle this term, such as potential overcrowding in classrooms or future renovations. She thinks the lack of competition for the positions has made their conversations a bit easier.
“It helps us already start to build an understanding with each other,” Kelsey said.
McQuillen, 41, said she wished the board reflected the community’s diversity but knew part of their work would be engaging diverse candidates for boards to come.
“We will definitely be seeking that out for sure,” she said. | 2022-11-04T12:40:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fairfax city poised to have first all-female school board in years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/04/fairfax-city-school-board-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/04/fairfax-city-school-board-election/ |
Oath Keepers militia founder Stewart Rhodes uses a radio as he departs with volunteers from a rally held by then-President Donald Trump in Minneapolis in 2019. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes took the stand in federal court Friday in an attempt to convince a jury of Washington, D.C., residents that he committed no crime when members of his group went into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Rhodes stayed outside the building, but prosecutors argue he was the ringleader of a seditious conspiracy to keep President Trump in office that began months before the Capitol riot and continued for months afterward.
He is on trial with four others accused of taking part in that conspiracy: Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs, his fellow Florida Oath Keeper Kenneth Harrelson, Ohio Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell, a Virginian who never formally joined the group but allied with them around Jan. 6.
His decision to take the stand is notable, as its rare for defendants to testify at their own trials, and Rhodes’s case is one of the most high-profile so far in the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation.
Before and after Jan. 6, the records shown in court indicate, Rhodes was pushing Trump to deputize private militias to keep control of the White House. Rhodes argues that he believes that would have been a lawful order, and that he only brought his members and their firearms to D.C. to be prepared for a possible civil war.
Prosecutors counter that Rhodes was not just anticipating but fomenting conflict, and that until members started getting arrested for their actions on Jan. 6, he was planning for more violent action.
Rhodes, who spent three years in the Army before a disabling parachuting accident, founded the Oath Keepers in 2009 to bring together people with military and law enforcement backgrounds who would pledge to resist unconstitutional federal overreach. Over time, former members say, the group evolved from libertarian to partisan and extremist, aligning itself with white supremacists and with Trump. | 2022-11-04T14:21:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stewart Rhodes testifies in his own defense at seditious conspiracy trial - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/rhodes-testifies-oathkeepers-trial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/rhodes-testifies-oathkeepers-trial/ |
The FBI headquarters belongs in D.C.
The J. Edgar Hoover Building on Aug. 16 in D.C. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)
Jack Evans, a Democrat, represented Ward 2 on the D.C. Council from 1991 to 2020 and served on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Board of Directors from 1992 to 1999 and 2015 to 2019.
After more than a decade, the federal government might soon announce a new site for the FBI headquarters.
The original plan was canceled in 2017 by the Trump administration for being too costly, though some believed it was because President Donald Trump did not want a new hotel built at the current FBI building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Northwest D.C. — across the street from the hotel his company managed.
Now, sites in Landover and Greenbelt in Maryland and Springfield in Virginia are again being considered, but the FBI headquarters belongs in D.C. — and there’s a perfect place for it.
I have been working on this issue for decades. It is time for the federal government’s General Services Administration (GSA) to take control and finish this project.
The current FBI building is in terrible shape and needs to be torn down. The Post reported in 2015: “Beneath the headquarters of America’s premier crime-fighting organization, one of the parking ramps has been condemned because corroded pieces of the ceiling were falling on cars. Netting hangs on the Ninth Street facade to prevent broken concrete from hitting passersby 160 feet down on the sidewalk below. During a July fire drill, half of the building’s alarms didn’t go off.”
A new FBI campus needs to be built on federal land at Poplar Point — directly across the Anacostia River from Nationals Park.
Why there?
The federal government owns the land and could start work literally tomorrow. No need to involve the D.C. government, Maryland or Virginia.
It is bordered by the river on one side, making security easier.
The Anacostia stop on Metro’s Green Line is nearby, and the location is accessible by car and bus from anywhere in the region.
Building on this site would enable the FBI to consolidate all of its officers throughout the region without interference from local governments.
When this complex is complete, the GSA could tear down the Hoover Building and build a mixed-use project that includes residential, retail and commercial space and a hotel. The commercial space could house, among other things, the FBI headquarters offices, right where they currently are, across the street from the Justice Department and a 10-minute drive or Metro ride to the FBI campus at Poplar Point.
This is what the FBI leadership wants. This is a win-win situation for the federal government and for D.C. For the feds, the cost of the project is a fraction of what it would be at the proposed sites in Maryland and Virginia. This could be done quickly and would be convenient for the region. A new building at the Hoover site would continue the revitalization of Pennsylvania Avenue and put a valuable piece of property back on the tax rolls.
I was chair of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Board of Directors from 2015 to 2019. I visited the proposed Maryland and Virginia sites. They are clearly not suitable for the FBI campus, even though the Springfield site is closest to Quantico, which the GSA newly said is important, and all sites have Metro access.
I understand why politicians in Maryland and Virginia want it, but the FBI should not be used as a tool for economic development. It is too important. What I propose has been extensively studied and was outlined in a letter from me to the then-president in 2017.
It is time the federal government takes matters into its own hands and get the FBI project done. At Poplar Point.
Opinion|Did Elissa Silverman misstep? She calls it campaigning.
Opinion|Silverman’s stumble opens a door in the D.C. Council at-large race | 2022-11-04T14:25:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Jack Evans: The FBI headquarters belongs in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/jack-evans-fbi-headquarters-belongs-dc-not-maryland-or-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/jack-evans-fbi-headquarters-belongs-dc-not-maryland-or-virginia/ |
The new FBI site is a matter of equity
By Angela D. Alsobrooks
(Jonathan Newton /The Washington Post)
Angela D. Alsobrooks, a Democrat, is the Prince George’s County executive.
Thanks to President Biden’s leadership, the selection of a location for the new FBI headquarters is again moving forward after plans were stalled in 2017 under President Donald Trump. However, I am deeply concerned with recent developments in the site-selection process that undermine the Biden administration’s commitment to advancing equity.
The process for selecting a new FBI headquarters dates back to 2012, with 35 sites under initial consideration now down to three finalists. Prince George’s County has two of the three sites under consideration, in Greenbelt and Landover; the third site is in Virginia, in Springfield. Throughout the past decade, the General Services Administration (GSA) has said it would focus on access to transit, cost and environmental impact when selecting a new site.
Both Prince George’s sites are superior based on the criteria the GSA set in 2012. They include great transit and highway networks, access to quality amenities, proximity to an outstanding workforce and an unmatched STEM research ecosystem where the FBI could engage with public and private institutional partners to meet the new cyberthreats of the 21st century. And the sites are ready now.
Further, the Greenbelt site offers direct access to Metro, making it the only site that would not increase negative environmental impacts by putting more cars on the road. Landover, with a lot of available space, has unmatched security buffer options. My administration, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), Maryland state leaders and our Maryland congressional delegation all agree that the two sites in Prince George’s remain the best options for the new FBI headquarters.
The GSA recently announced new selection criteria for the FBI headquarters, in which proximity to Quantico, Va., was added. It is heavily weighted and seemingly the deciding criterion. It also undermines a key priority of the Biden administration — advancing equity — that ranked only fourth out of GSA’s five criteria and has so little weight it barely registers. This is an abrupt change that favors the site in Springfield and clearly puts the Prince George’s locations at a disadvantage. We strongly believe equity should be prioritized, and we ask that it be given equal consideration along with the other criteria.
Prince George’s County is a majority-minority community whose population is more than three-fifths Black and about one-fifth Latino, and we have historically missed out on federal investments when it comes to government office space. Though we house 20 percent of the region’s federal workforce, we host less than 5 percent of the region’s federal office space.
Decisions such as this have major, and sometimes generational, effects on communities. The federal government’s decision in 1941 to situate the Pentagon on the west bank of the Potomac in Virginia created decades of additional and massive investment in the area. Likewise, the federal government’s decision to locate the National Institutes of Health in Montgomery County has had a similar effect. Federal centers have driven job and income growth in our region, and decisions about where to situate them have historically advantaged majority communities over minority communities such as Prince George’s.
The results of this lack of investment are clear. Median household incomes are 48 percent lower in Prince George’s County compared with Fairfax County, where the Springfield site is. Out of the largest 150 counties in the country, Fairfax ranks second in growth of income and wealth over time; Prince George’s ranks 142nd. Additionally, even though we have some of the same assets in availability of land and transit access, we have faced obstacles in attracting the same types of private investment that we see in jurisdictions such as Fairfax and Montgomery counties.
The GSA’s site-selection criteria represent policy decisions, and, again, it appears that some in the federal government are seeking to favor investing in the same communities that have historically received the majority of these investments for decades. Meanwhile, it appears communities of color, such as Prince George’s, again might get left behind.
It’s time for a change.
The Prince George’s sites clearly remain the best positioned to serve as the new home of the FBI headquarters. Our sites would provide the dedicated men and women of the FBI with modern, safe, world-class accommodations as they work daily to protect this nation from its threats. But just as important, situating the headquarters in Prince George’s would create long-overdue generational transformation and investment. | 2022-11-04T14:25:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Maryland is the most equitable spot for the new FBI headquarters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/maryland-most-equitable-spot-new-fbi-headquarters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/maryland-most-equitable-spot-new-fbi-headquarters/ |
Carmen Sandiego had nothing on these Russian plunderers
A 1,500-year-old golden tiara, inlaid with precious stones, at a museum in Melitopol, Ukraine, in November 2020. Russian troops have stolen numerous artifacts since invading in February. (AP)
When I was a kid, one of my favorite characters was Carmen Sandiego, the mysterious, globe-trotting woman with a fondness for stealing important cultural artifacts. My siblings and I would play “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” on our Sega Genesis, using our geographic and historical knowledge to try to track her and her henchmen. (Remember the pun names? Nosmo King, Lee & Bill Ding.) She didn’t even let time get in her way; “Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?” had us gumshoes tracking her across centuries or even millennia.
Hell, Carmen Sandiego might be the reason I was drawn to journalism in the first place.
The Carmen Sandiego to journalist pipeline https://t.co/UHvxu5TBJ1
— Susan Gonzalez (@TheNewsan) March 26, 2021
So, it’s perhaps no surprise that one of the topics that fascinates and stirs me most is the plundering of culture and heritage — in particular, the plundering of objects that hold meaning for a people or a nation.
I’ve written about the pressure on Western museums to return to Africa artifacts stolen during the colonial era — including, most recently, a column on the Smithsonian Institution’s agreement to return a significant portion of its Benin Bronzes (purloined by the British) to Nigeria.
But cultural thievery during war and subjugation is not a thing of the past. It’s happening now.
Ukraine’s minister of culture and information policy, Oleksandr Tkachenko, told the Associated Press last month that invading Russian forces have stolen thousands of cultural artifacts from almost 40 Ukrainian museums. Tkachenko said that losses from the destruction of cultural sites were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of euros.
One of the most valuable objects taken, seized from the Museum of Local History in Melitopol, dates to the rule of Atilla the Hun: the 1,500-year-old Hun diadem, a tiara of gold, inlaid with semiprecious stones, of the kind buried in the graves of Hun women.
It’s not only washing machines.
🇷🇺 soldiers also snatched artifacts from almost 40🇺🇦 museums.
On this photo is a golden diadem of the Huns, a piece of a historical jewellery set from 90 items the ruscists stole from a Melitopol museum.
Once a war criminal, always a war criminal pic.twitter.com/GhIVRai2Hf
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) October 9, 2022
Museum officials tried to hide the diadem and other objects in a secret basement. But Russian forces managed to find the room and lifted the diadem along with 1,700 other artifacts.
When we speak of war and conquest, the headlines often focus on territory gains, death tolls and refugees. We don’t often speak of cultural desecration, which is its own crime against humanity. To plunder a nation’s valuables is intellectual and spiritual violence. It erases the markers of a people’s history, and robs and humiliates for generations after the fact. Just ask any person from a formerly colonized country how they feel when they see their cultural objects in a place like the British Museum.
I’ll be dedicating more words to stories about looted and contested objects, the fights to get them back, and what it means to reclaim culture and identity.
So watch this space! If you have suggestions for objects I should look into, send me an email.
Global Radar: Hollywood-washing colonial plunder
Speaking of plunder and colonial theft …
Years ago, I wrote about how Tiffany & Co. had announced it was part of efforts to source conflict-free gold in Congo, despite the fact that activists had long said that conflict minerals were not the main driver of instability and violence in the country.
Last year, I called out Tiffany again, this time for parading Beyoncé around as the first Black woman to wear the yellow Tiffany diamond, plucked from an apartheid-era colonial mine in South Africa. I said then and I still say now, there’s nothing aspirational about a wealthy Black woman wearing a diamond that, for many Africans, represents inequality, depredation and humiliation. Of course, Tiffany, attempting a rebrand to appeal to a “modern” audience, wants to hop on the “social justice meets hip-hop” train. Instead, it has drawn a flood of social media backlash and a reckoning over the colonial history of the Tiffany diamond.
This week, the grand dame of diamond companies joined the “first Black woman to work for us” train. De Beers announced that Kenyan Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’o would be its first global ambassador:
I have a lot more thoughts about luxury Western companies that extract wealth from Africa while blackwashing their image — and do so under the guise of “global women’s empowerment.” (Expect a column.) But it’s hard to understand how an African celebrity is willing to partner with a ruthless cartel company such as De Beers, which was once run by founder Cecil Rhodes, the notoriously racist colonizer.
I’m a Grade AAA-level cynic when it comes to these things. As I said in the case of Tiffany and Beyoncé, ordinary Black people and Africans aren’t the target market. These gestures are used by White companies to signal and market to non-Black, wealthy customers who want to feel better about buying diamonds. Color me unimpressed.
Home Front: RIP Takeoff and the rap world’s body count
Some tragic news out of my home state, and for the world of music and hip-hop: On Tuesday, Kirshnik Khari Ball, a.k.a. “Takeoff” from the popular Atlanta rap group Migos, was shot and killed in Houston outside a bowling alley. He was only 28. The group’s record label said he was hit by a stray bullet.
This is an incalculable loss for Southern rap. Migos’s music has been a part of the soundtrack to my young adult life. A couple of their songs are among my favorites: “Versace” and “Bad and Boujee.” Takeoff and his groupmates, Quavo and Offset, helped revitalize Atlanta hip-hop. Jon Caramanica of the New York Times wrote an excellent memorial analysis of Migos’s importance to the rap game.
Premature death has taken a number of iconic male rappers in the past several years. DMX, Coolio, Nipsey Hussle, Young Dolph, DJ Kay Slay, Biz Markie — to name just a few. Drug overdoses, sickness and gun violence are stealing from Black American culture.
Black men deserve to grow old.
Fun Zone: Get that ‘security guard’ … a contract!
It’s been a heavy week, but this video brings a smile to my face every time I watch it. A man who appears to be a security guard blocks the dance routine of the University of Tennessee’s dance squad. Watch what happens when he gets confronted:
Apparently, it was Michael Galyean’s 20-year dream to dance. He’d wanted to try out for the school’s cheer team when he was in high school, never worked up the nerve to do it and regretted his decision for more than two decades. Until now. According to Galyean, the University of Tennessee dance squad contacted him and asked if he wanted to join their routine, and the rest is viral internet history.
Galyean wrote about the experience on Instagram, saying to his high school self, “Keep pushing, keep trying and keep being you. You’re gonna be ok kid.” Let it be a lesson to all of us and our younger selves: It’s never too late to pursue your dream.
Do you have questions, comments, tips, recipes, poems, praise or critiques for me? Submit them here. I do read every submission and may include yours in a future version of the newsletter. | 2022-11-04T14:25:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Carmen Sandiego had nothing on these Russian plunderers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/ukraine-hun-diadem-debeers-lupita-nyongo-takeoff-migos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/ukraine-hun-diadem-debeers-lupita-nyongo-takeoff-migos/ |
Ask Damon: I’m going into adult entertainment. What if people find out?
Hi Damon: I expect to soon enter a niche of the adult entertainment industry. I intend to take all precautions to do so anonymously. But if I am successful, the warm blanket of anonymity may one day disappear. How should I respond if and when this knowledge becomes commonly known in my community? For the record, I am not ashamed, and I wish to simply respond with grace. But I expect that it may be uncomfortable. Any suggestions?
Anonymous: My first question, of many, is uncomfortable for whom? You’ve articulated a peace with the decision you’ve made to enter the adult entertainment industry.
So who will these conversations be uncomfortable for? I ask because shame is tricky and sneaky and slithery, and it sometimes finds a path to a place we assumed was protected. Some of your language choices (“the warm blanket of anonymity”) suggest that you might have some trepidation, which is a natural thing when starting anything new, particularly something with the potential to polarize.
But I think that, before even considering how other people might feel once they discover your new gig, you should be honest with yourself about how you’ll feel. Could it have a negative effect on your mental health and emotional well-being? Are you prepared for what might happen if people you care about treat you differently? What about acquaintances or random people on the street? Also, how many communities do you belong to? Because a response from your buddies from college might be different from a response from your buddies from church.
It must also be said that there’s a tangible risk of your work having a negative effect on your livelihood. I don’t just mean friends and family, but your money. I’ve lost count of the number of stories I’ve read about schoolteachers losing their jobs after an OnlyFans account was discovered. I don’t know what you do for a living. Perhaps it’s not the same sort of public-facing occupation that drives people to be aggressively puritanical. Either way, the risk is real.
Anything past what I’ve offered so far is beyond my expertise. Fortunately, I know an expert. Jessica Stoya (with Rich Juzwiak) writes Slate’s How to Do It sex advice column. I’ve been a fan of it for years. Her advice is always thoughtful, radical, rigorous and conscientious (and sometimes even funny), so I reached out to her for some help.
Stoya writes: “Generally speaking, there’s a lot of debunking to do. For instance, people outside of adult work tend to think camming and OnlyFans is masturbating all day and miss the marketing, bookkeeping, legal paperwork, and physical upkeep involved. Other major misconceptions stem from news stories about outliers who make incredible amounts of money, and outliers who are trafficked.
“Be prepared for invasive questions, the kind of stuff that [author and therapist] Lucie Fielding talks about as unethical curiosity, like ‘What’s your weirdest client story?’ or ‘What’s the worst thing that ever happened on set?’ and ‘How disappointed are your parents?’ I’ve often shut these conversations down with ‘I feel like I’m in an interview right now and would prefer to have an equal discussion between two humans,’ or by referring people to my own writing work and essays by others. I also often do the work of explaining the complex reality, which can be draining but is worth it for people who I want to have in my life in a significant way. At the end of the day, discomfort is part of life, and doubly so when we’re walking a path that is uncommon and stigmatized. This isn’t fair, but it’s the facts.”
She also recommends Heather Berg’s book, “Porn Work,” as “a great resource for understanding the nuance of one area of sexual labor — most can carve out a decent living, and most are subject to the kind of exploitation that is unfortunately common across all industries.” I also spoke to a friend who has some insights on sex work (and wishes to remain anonymous). She suggested that you follow the work of Black women such as Mireille Miller-Young and others thinking about sex work in a critical and intersectional way.
Each piece of advice here comes from the same umbrella: a call for you to educate yourself as much as possible, so you’re as prepared as you can be for this industry and have a healthy experience with it. I hope this was helpful. | 2022-11-04T14:38:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Damon: I'm going into adult entertainment. What if people find out? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/04/ask-damon-adult-entertainment-response/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/04/ask-damon-adult-entertainment-response/ |
The Falcons run the ball no matter what. It’s carried them into first place.
Atlanta’s Tyler Allgeier runs for a touchdown against Carolina as teammate Elijah Wilkinson celebrates. (Danny Karnik/AP)
While the Atlanta Falcons are only 4-4, they are already on the verge of topping oddsmakers’ preseason win totals and, more importantly, are alone in first place in the NFC South. The Falcons have clawed back to .500 from losing records three times with help from impressive wins against the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers, and their most recent victory came in a somewhat bizarre nail-biter in overtime Sunday against the division-rival Carolina Panthers.
All of this could be a lot for a young team to handle, but Atlanta Coach Arthur Smith has found a highly effective way of keeping it grounded: by keeping the ball on the ground as much as possible.
When the Falcons are ahead, they run. When they’re behind, they run.
Even when trailing by three touchdowns early in a road game — as was the case in a Week 7 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals — they run. Down 21-0 in the third quarter at Tampa Bay in Week 5, the Falcons called 18 more rushing plays, including on every play of one of their two subsequent touchdown drives, and they could have been in position to win if not for a controversial roughing-the-passer call that allowed Tom Brady and the Buccaneers to hold on.
“It’s very different, because most teams look to throw the ball, but the Falcons, they established their identity as they’re a run team,” Buccaneers safety Jamel Dean told the Athletic after that game. “They’re going to stick to their game plan. It’s different, and they’ll catch you off guard if you’re not aware.”
The Cleveland Browns, who also feature a run-focused attack, may not have been ready for what hit them in a Week 4 loss at Atlanta. The Falcons answered the Browns’ 177 rushing yards with 202 of their own, and at one point Atlanta handed the ball off 14 straight times over two drives that netted 10 second-half points.
“We’re not creeping up on anybody. People know we want to run the football,” Smith told reporters following that 23-20 win. “When you can run the ball when they know you’re going to run it, that speaks volumes about your guys.”
Only the Chicago Bears are averaging fewer pass attempts per game and a greater run-to-pass ratio than Atlanta. The result hasn’t always been pretty for the Falcons, but Smith’s dedication to the ground game has helped take advantage of quarterback Marcus Mariota’s skill set and given his squad a strong identity in a division where other teams have been searching for consistency.
These Falcons know exactly who they are. Atlanta is giving up the fourth-most points per game (25.6) in the NFL and is dead last in defending the pass, allowing an average of 306.9 yards per game through the air.
That has made it critical for the Falcons to be able to stay out of shootouts and limit opponents’ possessions. Averaging the third-fewest plays per game, Smith’s squad appears convinced that a slow-and-steady approach is its best hope of winning the race.
Asked after the loss to the Bengals, in which Mariota threw just 13 passes, whether it was “tempting” to get away from the run after falling behind by so many points, Smith replied: “Yeah, it was, and that’s what you’re always trying to balance, because there’s some things we could do a better job of, and we’ll continue to evolve. … If you try to get it all back at once, there can be some severe unintended consequences. You don’t want to put your defense right back out there [after] a quick three-and-out.”
In his second season with the Falcons after two years as the Tennessee Titans’ offensive coordinator, Smith has overseen a dramatic reshaping of Atlanta’s offense. Every year from 2018 through 2021, the Falcons ranked between 27th and 31st in rushing yards per game. This season they rank fifth. Passing attempts plummeted from at least 38.6 from 2018 through 2020 to 33.7 last year — the final season in Atlanta for longtime quarterback Matt Ryan — and this year’s mark is just 22.3.
That might have been expected given that Smith oversaw a notably run-heavy attack with the Titans. But in Tennessee he had arguably the league’s best back in Derrick Henry, whereas the offensive talent in Atlanta is more on the pass-catching side.
After using the No. 4 pick in the 2021 draft on tight end Kyle Pitts, who went on to become just the second rookie at his position in NFL history to exceed 1,000 receiving yards, the Falcons used the eighth pick this year on wide receiver Drake London. He has also looked like a very promising young player, yet both Pitts and London play complementary roles to a running back group not exactly packed with marquee names.
Journeyman Damien Williams was set to be a co-leader of a committee with Cordarrelle Patterson, but Williams has been sidelined since suffering a rib injury in Week 1. Patterson, a 31-year-old former special teams ace whom Smith helped become a standout running back last year, suffered a knee injury in Week 4 and just returned to practice this week. In their absence, and in addition to Mariota’s contributions, the rushing attack has been mostly composed of Tyler Allgeier, a fifth-round rookie, and Caleb Huntley, a 2021 undrafted free agent who spent all of last season on the practice squad.
As a result, the Falcons don’t have anyone in the NFL’s top 32 in rushing yards heading into Sunday’s home game against the Los Angeles Chargers. Patterson (340 yards), Allgeier (324), Mariota (280) and Huntley (265) are all ranked between 33 and 47, however, and return specialist Avery Williams has chipped in with 10 carries for 58 yards and a touchdown.
By comparison, the Falcons’ top pass-catcher, London, has just 346 yards on 30 receptions. Wide receiver Olamide Zaccheaus is next at 312 on 20 catches, then Pitts at 258 on 21 catches. No one is complaining, at least not publicly.
“We talk about our brand of football, and that’s physical football,” London told the Athletic after the loss to the Bucs, in which he caught four passes for 35 yards. “No matter who is back there, we’re going to try to run it down their throat.”
Saying that he and his fellow backs “can’t do what we do without the guys blocking for us,” Allgeier has praised the less visible contributions of “the receivers working farther down the field,” as well as of his offensive line.
The line grades out fifth in run blocking by Pro Football Focus, which has guard Chris Lindstrom eighth among all linemen in that category and tackle Kaleb McGary 24th. Patterson, Huntley and Allgeier are all among the top 32 running backs in the league in yards before contact, a statistic generally considered reflective of line play.
“We establish our goals during the week, and moving the ball on the ground is always one of them,” left tackle Jake Matthews, the No. 6 pick in the 2014 draft who has spent his entire career with Atlanta, told reporters last month. “Running the ball in the NFL is really hard. If one guy’s off, the whole thing’s off. It takes a lot of preparation and focus and a willingness to do the not-so-flashy hard work. The good thing about it is that it can wear a defense down.
“You want to bring it to them,” he continued. “You want to be the aggressor.” | 2022-11-04T14:51:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Falcons running game has Atlanta atop NFC South - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/falcons-running-game/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/falcons-running-game/ |
D.C. public works employee shot and wounded in Northeast, police say
The employee was shot on a block that includes a Department of Public Works office building
An employee with D.C. Department of Public Works was shot and wounded this morning in Northeast Washington, according to D.C. police.
The shooting occurred before 7:30 a.m. in the 1800 block of Fenwick Street NE, an area that includes a Public Works office building. It was unclear Friday morning where exactly the shooting took place.
A spokesperson with the Department of Public Works declined to comment on the incident. The victim, a man who authorities did not identify, was conscious and breathing, police said. He has been taken to a hospital.
Police said they are actively investigating the incident. | 2022-11-04T15:22:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. public works employee shot and wounded in Northeast, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/dc-public-works-employee-shot/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/dc-public-works-employee-shot/ |
The three reasons American elections are always so close
Voters mark their ballots during the New Hampshire primary in 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The people who swing between the parties often decide elections. But the overwhelmingly majority (more than 85 percent of the electorate) who stick with their side in most national elections are the voters who truly shape American politics.
A few decades ago, a party in control of the White House led by a president with low approval ratings at a time of historically high inflation (that’s the Democrats today) would have been virtually guaranteed to sustain huge losses in midterm election season.
There isn’t a precedent for Jan. 6, 2021, but ideally, the party whose top leader tried to overturn the results of the prior election would be guaranteed to lose resoundingly in the next one. Republicans lost 48 House seats in the midterms immediately after the Watergate scandal and Richard M. Nixon’s resignation.
But in the United States today, it’s rare for Democrats or Republicans to get below 46 percent or above 52 percent of the vote in any national election. We have an electorate split into two solid blocs that each comprises about 45 percent of voters. That means every election is competitive, and the House, Senate and presidency keep changing hands. Republicans held the presidency for all but four years between 1969 and 1993, but since then it has flipped four times. Democrats held the House from 1955 to 1995, but it has flipped three times since then, with a fourth change likely after next week.
So it’s important to understand what’s keeping America so clearly split — and what’s not.
Americans are not divided by education
Education is not the reason. After Donald Trump surprisingly won the 2016 presidential election and exit polls showed his margin of victory among White voters without college degrees was significantly larger than Mitt Romney’s four years earlier, political observers have increasingly focused on education levels as an explanation for the partisan divide. The general idea is that Democrats have become the party of the college-educated, the Republicans the party of those without degrees.
It is true that over the past decade White voters without degrees have shifted to the GOP, while White voters with degrees have become more Democratic. In 2020, Joe Biden won about 33 percent of White voters without college degrees, compared with 57 percent of White people with at least a bachelor’s degree.
But the idea that education is driving our political divides is flawed in three ways. First of all, Asian, Black and Hispanic voters without degrees aren’t Republican-leaning. Biden won about three quarters of voters of color without degrees in 2020. Some surveys suggest that Democrats do better with Latino college graduates than Latino non-college graduates, but that’s not a consistent finding. There is little evidence of a big education divide among Asian and Black voters, both of whom are overwhelmingly Democratic.
Overall, Biden won 45 percent of voters without degrees, compared with 61 percent of those with degrees, a gap much smaller than many other divides in our politics. Polls suggest the 2022 elections will have a similar split.
Second, Democrats are not just college graduates — about half the party’s voters don’t have degrees.
Third, even among White people, education status isn’t that useful in predicting voting patterns. Asking a White person, “Do you support or oppose the Black Lives Matter movement?” or “Are you an evangelical Christian?” is way more predictive of their political party than their education level is. More than 80 percent of White Americans who identify as evangelical Christians voted Republican in 2020, as did more than 90 percent of White people who have an unfavorable view of BLM. White evangelicals with college degrees are overwhelmingly Republican. White voters who don’t have college degrees but also aren’t evangelicals are not.
They are divided by policy
What’s really driving our highly partisan, polarized voting? One hugely important factor is ideology and issue positions. The best predictor of how Americans vote is partisanship — people who are formal members of one of the two parties, generally align with one or almost always vote that party line in national elections. Another very strong predictor is ideology. Most voters identify as either liberal or conservative, and the overwhelming majority of liberals vote Democratic and conservatives vote Republican.
No matter how you label your ideology, having left-wing or right-wing views on most specific issues is also correlated with how you vote. Black voters often describe themselves as moderate or conservative. But when Robert Griffin of the Voter Study Group analyzed voters’ positions on issues based on 2020 polling, he found that 43 percent of Black voters were in the most liberal cohort of voters and only 10 percent were in the most conservative. That 43 percent was the largest of any racial or ethnic group; the 10 percent was the smallest. So Black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning in part because they are more left-leaning on issues.
Duh, you might say. But this alignment is important — and it’s increasing. Three decades ago, there was a sizable faction of Republican politicians and voters who held more liberal views. Meanwhile, many Democrats, particularly in the South, often had more conservative positions, such as opposing abortion rights. But increasingly, Democratic voters and politicians have either shifted to the party’s views on most issues — or changed to become Republicans if they disagree on something significant. Same for Republicans.
So each party is more internally consistent on policy but more divided from the other.
“The reason so many Americans intensely dislike those on the other side of the partisan divide is that they consistently disagree with those on the other side of the partisan divide on a wide range of issues,” says Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz.
They are also divided by racial views
Another major factor driving Americans into partisan, polarized voting is attitudes on issues of identity, particularly on race. This is related to ideology. But this divide seems more intense and irreconcilable because the parties are fighting over issues that are more personal and emotional than health-care policy.
Over the past decade, Democratic voters, inspired by movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, have shifted decidedly to the left on identity issues. Republicans haven’t, creating a huge chasm between them on these issues.
About 71 percent of Democrats now disagree with the statement, “If Black people would only try harder they could be just as well off as White people,” according to polling conducted by the Voter Study Group. Only 15 percent of Republicans disagree.
That Democratic number was only 50 percent in 2011, while the Republican number was about the same then (12 percent). About 74 percent of Democrats think undocumented immigrants “make a contribution to American society,” compared to 12 percent of Republicans. Those numbers were 39 percent and 10 percent in 2011.
Our divides on matters of identity go beyond race. Seventy percent of Republicans think American society is moving too quickly to accept transgender people, a view held by only 21 percent of Democrats. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans think America has become “too soft and feminine,” a view held by only 19 percent of Democrats.
These divides mean that Democrats are increasingly casting Republicans as hostile to some groups in American society, while Republicans angrily reject the idea that they are racist, sexist, homophobic or anti-trans. It is hard to consider voting for the other party if you consider it to be full of racists — or full of people who unfairly suggest your friends and family are racists.
“Democrats and Republicans disagree not only about the appropriate size and role of government — spending, taxation, etc. — but about basic questions of what America is and who is, or can be, fully American. And because issues like race and immigration tap into strong emotional currents, politics feels more divisive than it might if the scope of conflict mostly concerned income tax rates or cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security benefits,” public opinion scholars Robert Griffin, Mayesha Quasem, John Sides and Michael Tesler wrote in an essay last year.
They are also divided socially
A third factor entrenching the partisan divide is what scholars refer to as social polarization. Most voters don’t really have set policy or ideological views, even on racial or gender issues. But they have parents, spouses and friends; attend churches, synagogues and mosques; live in particular neighborhoods and cities; and consume certain kinds of media. Americans typically choose their party based on these social factors.
Then, they meet other Republicans, adopt more Republican policy stands, and eventually Republican isn’t just their political party but a kind of “mega-identity,” a term coined by Johns Hopkins political scientist Lilliana Mason.
“Partisanship, like religious identification, tends to be inherited, durable, and not about ideology or theology,” political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels argue in their book “Democracy for Realists.”
Certain identities, such as White evangelical and Black voter, put you in very partisan political blocs. In 2020, 92 percent of Black voters backed Biden, and 84 percent of White evangelicals voted against him.
There are also geographic settings that reinforce partisanship. In D.C., 92 percent of the voters backed Biden. In Leslie County in Eastern Kentucky, 90 percent of voters backed Trump. The social polarization thesis is that those 90 percent-10 percent results aren’t just about ideology. Instead, living in D.C. pushes people toward being Democrats, and living in Leslie County pushes people toward the GOP. (About 25 percent of people in Leslie County voted Democratic in 2004.)
States like Iowa and Ohio that Democrats won in the 2012 presidential election had become so Republican eight years later that the party barely contested them. There is no obvious explanation for this shift in terms of policy, economics or demographics. Similar states (Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin) haven’t become as Republican.
What appears to be happening is that in some areas (rural White communities in Ohio and Iowa, Latino ones around the country) being a Republican became more popular socially. That spread happened more easily in areas without strong ties to the Democratic Party, so heavily Black areas, college towns and big urban areas didn’t shift rightward much.
At the same time, anti-Trump sentiment has made attending Black Lives Matter protests and voting Democratic a regular practice in many majority-White, once-Republican suburban areas across the country.
“Issues, whether economic or social, are much less powerful than identities. Issue positions can inform identities, but it is identities — perceptions of shared allegiance and shared threat — that really mobilize,” political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson write in their book “Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules In An Age of Extreme Inequality.”
Three-pronged polarization is hard to overcome
When you put these three kinds of polarization together, you understand why the United States is so divided by partisan voting — and hence in so much trouble. America needs a big bloc of the people who are voting Republican to at least temporarily back Democrats to force the Republican Party away from its current radical, antidemocratic posture.
But the overwhelming percentage of Republicans have stuck with their party, even as it has switched from Bush-McCain-Romney conservatism to Trumpism. This three-pronged polarization explains why. If you are a longtime Republican voter but wary of the party’s increasingly antidemocratic moves, you have two choices. You could vote Democratic, which would mean not only abandoning your conservative policy stances on a wide range of issues but also embracing a Democratic Party that talks about racism and sexism in ways that might offend you and probably distancing yourself from your friends, family and church.
Or you can just try to forget Jan. 6, 2021, happened and vote Republican. Unsurprisingly, most Republican voters are doing that.
It would be easier to resolve the United States’ differences if the nation were cartoonishly divided into overeducated snobs with three degrees and normal people. But we are divided into a group of people who describe themselves as liberals, hold left-leaning positions on most issues, are deeply committed to racial and gender equity, and spend most of their time with fellow Democrats and a group of people who describe themselves as conservatives, hold right-leaning positions on every issue, aren’t deeply committed to reducing gender and racial disparities, and spend most of their time with fellow Republicans.
Until all of that changes, we have a future of very divisive, very close elections. And there is no sign any of it is changing anytime soon. If neither Jan. 6 nor sky-high inflation can really shift American politics, it’s hard to imagine what will. | 2022-11-04T15:35:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The three reasons American elections are always so close - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/three-reasons-partisan-polarization-elections-close/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/three-reasons-partisan-polarization-elections-close/ |
Participants leave the Global Financial Leaders' Investment Summit in Hong Kong on Wednesday. The gathering was meant to restore the city's image as an international financial hub. (Bertha Wang/AP)
HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s first major financial summit since the start of the pandemic just concluded with rousing declarations that the “worst is behind us” and that the city is still the most important business center in Asia.
Yet the messages rang somewhat hollow, despite the presence of more than 200 international leaders, who were exempted from some of the pandemic restrictions that local residents still face.
Hong Kong had remained largely closed since the coronavirus hit in early 2020, hewing closely to mainland China’s severe “zero covid” policy and requiring mandatory quarantine for travelers. Combined with the democracy protests and security crackdown that shook the city the previous year, the impact was devastating. The once-thriving financial center became further isolated, its economy pummeled. The labor force continued to shrink as an exodus of residents accelerated.
The three-day Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit, hosted by the city’s Monetary Authority, was intended to signal Hong Kong’s comeback as an international powerhouse. It drew top officials from 120 financial institutions around the world, including Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Blackstone.
Hong Kong to abolish hotel quarantine in bid to end city’s isolation
In an opening speech in a ballroom at the Four Seasons Hotel, one of the region’s most luxurious venues, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee told executives and bankers that the city is resilient and “bounces back, better than ever.”
“Opportunity and timing are right here, right now, in Hong Kong,” said Lee, a Beijing loyalist who took office in July. “Go for it. Get in front, not behind.”
Fang Xinghai, vice chairperson of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, urged those gathered not to “bet against China and Hong Kong” and “not to read too much international reports about China, which don’t understand China and only focuses on the short term.”
But the summit couldn’t escape controversy. At least four top executives pulled out beforehand, citing coronavirus infections or schedule changes. Financial Secretary Paul Chan attended despite later confirming that he had tested positive, with a “low viral load,” after returning from a Middle East business trip. Officials denied that he had received any special treatment.
Visiting executives were exempted from the restaurant bans and medical monitoring that people arriving in Hong Kong typically must comply with until they receive a negative PCR test result. Any bankers with confirmed covid were allowed to leave on a private jet.
While “the summit is a good start” for the city’s resurgence, economist Gary Ng of Natixis noted that the discussions didn’t address concrete plans for further easing pandemic policies. Follow-up action on lifting the restrictions is “the most important,” he said.
Chinese officials and bankers addressed issues related to the country’s uncertain economic forecast, said Laurence Li, chairman of the Financial Services Development Council. “There was no feeling of an elephant in the room,” he said, adding that most attendees were more interested in global inflation and exchange rate risks, as well as economic upturn and downturn cycles.
Zhiwu Chen, a finance professor at the University of Hong Kong, said the summit was a show where officials tried to put Hong Kong in the best light. The government, he suggested, should instead be prioritizing deregulation and freer markets to restore the city’s international financial luster, with “true rule of law” and speech and press freedoms.
Coronavirus binds Hong Kong even closer to Beijing as the mainland takes lead on pandemic response
Some U.S. lawmakers had urged American bankers not to participate to avoid legitimizing China’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists. There was no formal discussion during the summit of Hong Kong’s declining rule of law under Chinese control.
To Hong Kong citizens like Owen Ng, everything about the summit seemed remote, if not irrelevant.
Ng, who is 27 and works in marketing, said the messages about Hong Kong’s resurgence sound “a bit ridiculous” given most people’s reality — lower living quality, inflated prices and coronavirus policies that have been relaxed “very minimally.”
“It feels distant and unrelated to me,” Ng said Friday. “How positive can it be when the policies they are maintaining are not in sync with the world trend?” | 2022-11-04T15:52:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hong Kong hosts an international financial summit to regain its luster - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/hong-kong-china-financial-summit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/hong-kong-china-financial-summit/ |
Spate of global assassination attempts hints at violent new era
Supporters of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's party, 'Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf' chant slogans during a protest to condemn a shooting incident on their leader's convoy, in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 4, 2022. (Fareed Khan/AP)
The attempted assassination this week of former Pakistani leader Imran Khan came just days after an intruder broke into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a failed bid to harm or kidnap her, according to federal prosecutors. Weeks before that, a man approached former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Buenos Aires and attempted to shoot her in the face at close range.
That attack followed the July assassination of Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, by a man wielding a homemade gun in Nara City. And Abe was slain almost exactly a year after gunmen killed Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in a raid on his home in Port-au-Prince.
Together, these high-profile acts of violence potentially point to a new, volatile era in global politics, experts say. After years where terrorist bombings dominated headlines, this new spate of attacks is reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s, when major U.S. figures such as President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. were killed in pivotal moments.
“There’s never going to be an end to individuals who want to assassinate public individuals,” said Colin P. Clarke, director of research and policy at The Soufan Group, an intelligence and security consulting group. But Clarke also said there were a number of factors that could lead to a rise in assassinations, including the “decline, at least in some parts of the world, of jihadi organizations" that favored different tactics.
In their place, “you’ve got the rise of far-right extremists who are far more decentralized," he said. “And then you’ve got what people are calling salad bar terrorism, which is when they kind of pick and choose different aspects of what motivates them to engage in these types of acts.”
Data from the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database (GTD), which includes figures up to 2020, shows a sharp increase in assassination attempts on government figures around the world starting in 2014. The number of assassinations has stayed consistently high since then — even as the number of terrorist attacks has fallen.
It’s a trend that may have been overlooked in recent years. Erin Miller, program manager at GTD, noted that most of the attacks targeted low- to mid-level officials — and not prominent political leaders such as Khan or Pelosi. The most recent statistics, she said, were dominated by insurgent-led attacks in Afghanistan prior to the Taliban takeover in 2021.
GTD’s data suggests that the late 1980s was another period when assassinations spiked. Miller said that at that point, terrorist attacks such as suicide bombings that often kill indiscriminately were used much less.
“Targeting political leadership was a tactic used to get attention for a cause with less risk of alienating the civilian population,” Miller said. “In more recent years, assailants adopt both targeted assassinations and mass casualty strategies.”
Part of the shift may be structural. Clarke said that as groups like the Islamic State lost their territory, there was a rise in violence committed by people working alone, some of whom had been radicalized online to hate or target specific individuals.
To some extent, there may also be a tactical logic to the shift. Assassination attempts on individuals can often prompt significant political changes. Some have changed the course of history, though not always in precisely the way that their perpetrators intended: the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, for example, is considered the spark that began World War I.
Views of assassinations can also change over time. In India, the assassin who killed beloved independence leader Mahatma Gandhi has retroactively been branded a “patriot” by some supporters of the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Some historians consider the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a far-right extremist in 1995 a disastrous moment for the Middle East peace process. But almost three decades later, the far-right has emerged as kingmaker in the country’s most recent election.
Even in Japan, the shocking assassination of former leader Abe in July sparked a surprising turn: The country took the alleged assassination’s motives seriously.
The alleged killer, Tetsuya Yamagami, later told police he wanted to carry out the assassination because his mother had made large donations to the Unification Church, a religious group to which Abe had apparent close ties. After the former prime minister’s killing, Abe’s former party pledged to end its relationship with the church, though it later backtracked.
Japan, while generally non-violent, has a significant history of political assassinations. But some countries that had long avoided attacks on senior officials have seen assassinations in recent years: Two British lawmakers have been killed in separate politically-motivated murders since 2016.
In Brazil, where there has long been political violence around election periods, the number of violent incidents involving political party representatives and supporters in the lead-up to the 2022 election “eclipsed” the number recorded in the election four years before, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
At least some of the apparent rise in assassinations may be due to technological changes. Abe was shot dead using a “craft-made” gun created with readily available materials. Designs for similar weapons, which can be purchased without a trace and sometimes produced in a way that avoids metal detectors, can be found with ease online.
There have been reported attempted assassinations via drone in recent years, such as the 2018 attack on Nicolás Maduro, the President of Venezuela, during an event in Caracas. Maduro survived the alleged attempt, a low-tech inversion of U.S. drone-based attacks like the one that killed Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
“Cruder technology lowers the barriers to entry for attackers, allowing even untrained or unprepared extremists [...] to attempt serious plots,” Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, two experts in counterterrorism with the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote for War on the Rocks.
Experts have also noted a rising trend in assassinations committed with state-backing, including the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the murder of Kim Jong Nam by North Korean agents and numerous deaths linked back to the Russian state.
But the ever-widening political polarization around much of the world, aided by online echo chambers that can radicalize potential perpetrators and demonize potential victims, has only added to the risk of assassination — as in the attempted attack on Pelosi that left her husband, Paul, wounded.
Clarke noted that in the United States, figures on both the left and the right had been targeted in politically motivated attacks. In some ways, the spate of attempted political killings felt worse than what had come before.
“We’ve been here before. We’ve survived it," Clarke said of U.S. political violence. “But there are people I speak to who say this feels fundamentally different. It feels like nothing’s beyond the pale, at least in terms of the rhetoric.” | 2022-11-04T16:36:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Attacks on Paul Pelosi, Imran Khan hint at violent new political era - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/nancy-pelosi-imran-khan-political-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/nancy-pelosi-imran-khan-political-violence/ |
Elon Musk’s mass Twitter layoffs turn the page on a Silicon Valley era
Twitter was hailed for its welcoming and relaxed work environment. Elon Musk made it a relic of the past.
Twitter headquarters. (Amy Osborne/For The Washington Post)
SAN FRANCISCO — As dawn rose on the city Twitter has made home, employees here awoke to a new era for a company that has been lauded for its open-minded culture, its work-from-anywhere policy and perks like a monthly day of rest.
Elon Musk began his overhaul of the newly privatized Twitter on Friday with his first round of layoffs, which struck across the workforce — impacting teams including sales, engineering and product, and trust and safety and legal. In all, around half the staff was expected to be cut, casualties of Musk’s debt-financed $44 billion purchase of the site, which is expected to saddle the company with bills the new CEO will face pressure to quickly address.
On Friday, Musk alluded to those pressures in a tweet which said Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue because of activists pressuring advertisers. He reiterated that nothing has changed with the company’s moderation.
“Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” he tweeted.
Some workers said as early as Thursday night their access to internal systems such as email and messaging service Slack had been cut — indicating they were laid off.
Workers had been told they would receive an email by 9 a.m. Pacific time, with the subject line reading: “Your Role at Twitter.” If they were let go, a notification would go to their personal emails. If they were retained, they’d receive a ping in their work inboxes.
“We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted,” a Thursday night email said, the first known companywide acknowledgment of the new regime. It was signed, “Twitter.”
This version of the company “isn’t what we all signed up for,” the person said. The person described the new environment as “cruel, toxic, padding Elon’s debt pockets.” | 2022-11-04T16:40:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Twitter layoffs: Workers lose jobs as Musk takes hold - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/04/twitter-layoffs-musk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/04/twitter-layoffs-musk/ |
FBI identifies person alleged to have threatened New Jersey synagogue
The person no longer poses any danger to the community, the FBI said in a statement on Friday
Updated November 4, 2022 at 12:17 p.m. EDT|Published November 4, 2022 at 11:19 a.m. EDT
New Jersey law enforcement officials said Friday morning that they have identified a person accused of threatening a synagogue in the state and the individual no longer poses any danger to the community.
The statement from Newark’s FBI office did not indicate whether the person had been arrested.
“Upon receipt of threat information against an unspecified New Jersey area synagogue, the FBI notified community leaders and our law enforcement partners,” a statement from the FBI’s Newark office read. “We identified the source of the threat who no longer poses a danger to the community.”
The threat prompted the FBI’s Newark office to issue an unusual warning Thursday afternoon on Twitter, saying it had received “credible information of a broad threat” to New Jersey synagogues and urging Jewish leaders to take security precautions to protect their communities.
The statement Friday morning, in contrast, said the threat was against a single, unspecified synagogue.
Dov Ben-Shimon, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ, said Thursday that his organization alerted leaders in the community, which includes more than 90 synagogues in north-central New Jersey, and those houses of worship quickly implemented heightened security measures.
The threat arrived at a time when reports of antisemitic harassment and violence have surged across the country.
The Jewish Federations of North America said it launched its largest security initiative last year “in light of increasing hate rhetoric and anti-Semitic threats targeted at our institutions, including this latest threat to New Jersey synagogues.”
“Today’s terrifying threat is a reminder of why we need it,” said Eric Fingerhut, Jewish Federations of North America CEO and president, in a statement Thursday.
Fredrick Kunkle contributed to this report. | 2022-11-04T16:44:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New Jersey synagogue threat eases after FBI identifies suspect - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/04/new-jersey-synagogue-threats-fbi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/04/new-jersey-synagogue-threats-fbi/ |
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks during a campaign rally attended by former president Donald Trump on Thursday at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, Iowa. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
But it’s also because spending has increased broadly and because of inflation. Relative to total government spending, defense spending (here meaning Department of Defense outlays) has been fairly flat.
As a percentage of total outlays, defense spending is far lower now than it was in the Cold War era. It plunged in recent years, although that was in part thanks to a surge in spending aimed at containing the coronavirus.
Why is this context important? Because a central point of the Cold War-era spending was to combat Moscow’s expansionism (and, more broadly that of communism). For a much smaller portion of the federal budget and with much lower relative defense spending, the United States has been very effective in blocking Russian’s expansionist designs on Ukraine.
According to analysis from the Congressional Research Service that was updated late last month, the United States has committed a bit under $18 billion to the conflict since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Here’s how that stacks up with defense spending since the early 1960s.
This isn’t all Defense Department spending. It includes funding from the Foreign Military Financing program of the State Department. It’s also not all of the spending that’s been approved. As you may remember from the last time the country’s attention was heavily focused on Ukraine — during Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 — the government has a two-step process for spending. There’s appropriation, meaning that Congress clears money for spending, and then the spending itself. In total, about $28 billion has been appropriated in fiscal 2022 and 2023 (the fiscal year begins at the start of October) to aid Ukraine.
If we compare those figures to total 2022 outlays, the spending on Ukraine looks like this.
Look, $28 billion is a lot of money to you or me, certainly. (Well, I assume.) It is not really very much to the U.S. government. It is common, though, that these numbers will be cited outside of the context of all federal spending to make it seem that the United States is being dangerously profligate. But that’s a rhetorical point that is generally aimed less at the spending than at the focus of the spending — as Greene is doing here.
Remember that Greene, like others on the fringe right, has expressed sympathy for the Russian position since the outset of the conflict. In March, she said in a Facebook video that the United States should not aid in Ukraine’s defense. She framed this as humanitarian: Extending the conflict simply meant more death.
“It’s not our responsibility to give [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and the Ukrainian people false hope about a war they cannot win,” she said then — an assessment that has certainly aged poorly. Then, too, she claimed that the government was spending on Ukraine instead of the border and then, too, she was incorrect.
That speech included various other false claims and disparagements of Ukraine. Greene went on consistently to oppose Ukraine funding. At one point, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) unsubtly suggested that she was parroting Russian propaganda.
The reality is that the United States is providing relatively few pennies (relative to total spending, that is) on containing and degrading Russian aggression. To suggest that it is doing so at the expense of other priorities, such as the border, is disingenuous.
But, again, Greene’s frustration is not really over how much is being spent.
Democratic ad highlights progress Whitmer has made fixing roads in Michigan
2:49 PMPelosi credits congressional Democrats for stronger-than-expected jobs report
2:40 PMLeading Democrats push for action on electoral reform after midterms | 2022-11-04T16:49:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Greene’s call for an end to Ukraine aid isn’t about the money - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/ukraine-us-aid-republicans-marjorie-taylor-greene/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/ukraine-us-aid-republicans-marjorie-taylor-greene/ |
Police arrest man in killing of 2-year-old in Southwest D.C.
Dasean Matthews, 23, is facing first-degree murder charges in the October killing of Mars Jones
D.C. police have made an arrest in the October killing of 2-year-old Mars Jones in Southwest Washington.
Dasean Matthews, a 23-year-old from Southeast D.C., has been charged with first-degree murder, the police department announced Friday.
Matthews’s relatives could not be immediately reached. His relation to Mars was not immediately clear.
Police rule death of 2-year-old boy in Southwest D.C. a homicide
The incident occurred Oct. 13 in the unit block of Atlantic Street SW. Police said they found Mars unconscious and unresponsive. He died of his injuries five days later.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later found that Mars died of inflicted trauma. | 2022-11-04T17:06:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police arrest man in killing of 2-year-old in Southwest D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/dc-arrest-two-year-old/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/dc-arrest-two-year-old/ |
Dave Butz helped anchor Washington's defense during the franchise's glory days in the 1980s. (Allen Steele/Getty Images)
Dave Butz garnered a reputation as something of a gentle giant over his lengthy NFL career, a notion he disabused in the 1980s by becoming a menace to opposing quarterbacks.
Butz, the massive lineman who helped anchor the defense for Washington’s NFL team in the 1970s and ’80s and was part of two Super Bowl-winning teams, has died, the team announced Friday. He was 72. The cause of death was not disclosed.
After a standout college career at Purdue that eventually landed Butz in the College Football Hall of Fame, the St. Louis Cardinals selected him with the fifth pick of the 1973 NFL draft. Butz played only two seasons with St. Louis before departing acrimoniously (a hatred that would fester throughout his career with Washington, which then played the Cardinals twice a year as NFC East rivals). Though Butz technically was a free agent who could sign with whichever team he chose, at the time NFL rules stated the team that signed a free agent had to compensate his former team. That didn’t bother Washington Coach George Allen, who in 1975 paid the Cardinals what was then the largest compensation for a free agent in NFL history: first-round draft picks in 1977 and 1978 plus a second-round pick in 1978.
Allen would call it “one of the best trades I ever made,” even though Butz came to Washington soon after suffering a serious knee injury and would only start 18 of 42 games his first three seasons in D.C. But Butz eventually became a dependable presence at left tackle on Washington’s defensive line, starting all but one game for the rest of his career.
Simply massive at 6 feet 7 and 300-plus pounds — he also wore size 12EEEEEEE cleats — Butz eventually became Washington’s primary run-stuffer, his helmet annually showing the scars of his trench wars with offensive linemen.
From 1984: When Butz is inspired, mountains are moved
Butz’s pass-rush skills would soon present themselves as well. In the strike-shortened 1982 season, Butz tied for second on the team with 4.5 sacks as Washington won its first Super Bowl title, its defense limiting the Miami Dolphins to 16 yards in the second half of Super Bowl XVII. The next year, Butz’s finest, he recorded a career-high 11.5 sacks and earned Pro Bowl and all-pro honors for the only time in his career, rebutting critics who questioned his supposed lack of a mean streak.
“If you mean do I have the ability to blindside a quarterback or hit him in the middle of the back as he’s throwing the ball, I have absolutely no problem with that whatsoever,” Butz said of his methods. “To hit him with 300 pounds, plus another 30 pounds of equipment.
“Because my problem is I’m immense. Once I’m there, I’m going to hit him. But if I had to hit that quarterback — and I could take his legs out from under him, break his legs or whatever — I wouldn’t do it. I’d still hit him high.
“I’ve broken collarbones, dislocated a few shoulders on some quarterbacks. On one quarterback, I heard the bone break, when [teammate Karl Lorch] and I hit him. He was trying to get up and I said: ‘Stay down; you’re hurt.’ ”
Still, Butz developed a reputation as an enigmatic player who was “equal parts serious and sensitive,” as The Washington Post’s Gary Pomerantz put it in a 1984 profile.
“He kids around a lot, but sometimes it’s hard to tell,” Darryl Grant, who lined up to Butz’s right on Washington’s defensive line, told Pomerantz. “I try to stay clear of him when I’m not sure what his mood is.”
Butz’s 59 career sacks rank fifth in Washington history.
No one questioned Butz’s toughness after a 1987 game against the New York Jets. Butz had been hospitalized for an intestinal virus but checked himself out of an Arlington hospital on the morning of the game. He finished with three tackles and a sack in the 17-16 Washington victory, even though he had lost 26 pounds because of the virus.
“It was,” he said after the game, “the first time in 15 years that I’ve weighed under 300.”
In his final season in 1988, Butz played in his 197th game for Washington, at the time a franchise record. In an interview with The Post around the time he set the record, he recalled coming up six inches short of a touchdown on one of his two career interceptions, in 1981 against the Chicago Bears. | 2022-11-04T17:11:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dave Butz, stalwart of Washington's 1980s defenses, dies at 72 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/dave-butz-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/dave-butz-dies/ |
(Activision; iStock/Washington Post illustration)
A Tuesday morning news release from video game publisher Activision included a staggering figure. Counting presales, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II,” the latest installment of Activision’s mega-popular military sim franchise, exceeded $800 million in sales in the three days following its Oct. 28 release.
The $800 million in sales includes preorders of the game, but it also represents the biggest first weekend in the history of the Call of Duty franchise, topping the previous high-water mark of $775 million established in 2011 by “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” over five days. (The newest “Modern Warfare” games from 2019 and this year are a reimagining of the original “Modern Warfare” trilogy.)
To put this money in context outside of the gaming world, consider that the largest movie opening weekend in history, Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame,” earned “just” $357 million, per the figures of Box Office Mojo. The biggest grossing film in history, “Avatar,” has earned just under $3 billion since it hit screens in 2009. “Modern Warfare II” just earned over a quarter of that figure in three days.
For years now, as “Grand Theft Auto V” became the top grossing entertainment product of all time and “Fortnite” dances swept the nation’s schools, video games have played an ever increasing role in our culture. While video games may seem insular or mysterious to those who don’t play them, or institutions that still see them as kids’ stuff, the one language everyone can certainly grasp is money. Here’s what all that Call of Duty cash means for Activision’s flagship franchise, the game industry as a whole, and the American culture in which this all resides.
For starters: America loves Call of Duty
The first and most obvious takeaway is that the makers of Call of Duty are clearly serving up something that a significant number of gamers want to consume. Even as the sales figures ebbed following the releases of “Call of Duty: Black Ops 4” in 2018 and “Vanguard” in 2021, Call of Duty games have consistently ranked among the best-selling console games of the year.
This should probably tell us something about American culture. Call of Duty is a juggernaut for a reason, and that reason is people are willing to pay a lot of money to play the game when the new version releases every year. A lot of people do the same for EA’s Madden NFL franchise. That makes sense: NFL is pure American culture. So too, it appears, are military simulations.
Call of Duty isn’t the cause of America’s obsession with the military, of course. From childhood, American kids are presented with glorified soldiers ranging from the tin variety, to G.I. Joe, to even Captain America. There are debates to be had over whether this is harmless or could lead to disillusionment about the impact of war and military conflicts — particularly when Call of Duty has sometimes blurred the lines between fantasy and reality — but it’s undeniable that there are plenty of people willing to pay to play soldier.
Call of Duty intersects with a lot of topics covered on the front pages of newspapers nationwide: Military conflicts, foreign policy ethics, the concept of heroism, American hegemony, terrorism, and that’s just in its single-player campaign modes. The interactions of the game’s players in multiplayer lobbies branches into numerous other areas of sociology, for better and worse. Given its massive popularity — 94 million players in August of this year after reaching 150 million in March of 2021 — it’s well worth thinking of Call of Duty beyond a mere “video game” and more as a cultural touchstone.
What does this say about Activision Blizzard’s financial health?
The sales bonanza marks an emergence from something of a trough for Activision. Consider the last two years: The company rode Call of Duty’s potency to new heights following the release of “Call of Duty Mobile” in 2019 — downloaded by over 650 million users globally, according to Activision — and the free-to-play battle royale “Warzone” in the spring of 2020. But by last winter the company was dogged by fallout from a sexual discrimination and harassment lawsuit filed that summer by the state of California against Activision Blizzard, the parent company of Activision and the studios that develop Call of Duty. The franchise’s annual installment, the World War II-based “Vanguard,” also fell short of sales expectations and stock prices plunged from a high point of $103 per share in February 2021 to $56.94 on Dec. 1 that same year. The company announced the following month it would be acquired by Microsoft. (More on those implications later.)
For as expansive as the Activision Blizzard game portfolio is, including hits like “World of Warcraft,” “Overwatch,” and “Candy Crush,” Call of Duty has always served as its core for console gamers. In the early summer of 2022, the company announced its plans to reshape Call of Duty with “Modern Warfare II” and an updated version of “Warzone,” which will release Nov. 16. The first of those two dates has already been a staggering success and could be further fueled by in-game sales from the free-to-play “Warzone 2.0.”
Despite any challenges the company continues to face, its Call of Duty sales revenue does not figure to be among them in 2022.
Project Magma: The untold origin of Verdansk, the Gulag and ‘Call of Duty: Warzone’
What does this mean for the Microsoft acquisition?
Activision’s acquisition by Microsoft has earned some scrutiny from regulators in the U.K., who seem to have found merit in Sony’s position that, should Microsoft make the Call of Duty franchise exclusive to PC and Xbox platforms, it would unfairly destabilize the video gaming market. While the sales windfall is undoubtedly good news for Activision, will it also serve as evidence that Sony’s argument is justified?
Given the “Modern Warfare II” revenue, it’s interesting to consider what the financial picture would look like if Call of Duty were no longer available on PlayStation. “Modern Warfare II” is currently available on Xbox, PlayStation, Activision Blizzard’s PC storefront, Battlenet, and the Valve-owned Steam PC store. If this acquisition went through and Microsoft made some exclusivity arrangements, Microsoft’s ecosystem could be the sole beneficiary.
It’s worth wondering, though, if Activision could achieve such a staggering figure without access to Sony’s platform, which has significantly outsold Xbox consoles in the past.
“Based on Activision Blizzard’s earnings, Sony is the third largest platform and accounts for 15 percent of the publisher’s revenue,” said Joost van Dreunen, a lecturer on the business of games at the NYU Stern School of Business. “Not all of that is related to Call of Duty, of course, but it represents a total of about $400 million annually. Beyond the revenue, a major franchise like Call of Duty serves as a consumer acquisition tool.”
Xbox CEO Phil Spencer has publicly stated Microsoft intends to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation, but there is also no mechanism to stop Microsoft from changing course after the merger, according to Mitch Stoltz, senior staff attorney for nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation. Given that, Stoltz said Sony’s posturing around the potential loss of access to Call of Duty is a “valid concern.”
“I don’t know for sure that Microsoft would remove Call of Duty from the PlayStation — it might not benefit them — but they might,” Stoltz said. “If they did decide to remove Call of Duty from the PlayStation, the antitrust enforcers couldn’t stop them unless they had made a binding promise not to do that. Essentially, the merger is the antitrust enforcers’ only opportunity to stop Microsoft from making Call of Duty exclusive to the Xbox, so I’m not surprised they’re raising it now.”
What does this mean for Activision developers?
Following the success of “Call of Duty: Mobile” and “Warzone,” Activision reallocated resources at studios developing other games to support its military sim juggernaut. The decision appears to be paying early dividends. While the “Modern Warfare II” launch has not been without hiccups (players have been getting booted from the game when trying to play with friends on different platforms), it has gone far smoother than that of other recent high-profile games, such as Blizzard’s “Overwatch 2” or EA’s “Battlefield 2042.”
Will Activision continue to devote resources to make sure its cash cow is presenting its state-fair best to its player base? Whether that means more resources for Call of Duty’s many laborers, including the recently unionized quality assurance testers at Wisconsin-based Raven Software, will be something to follow in the coming year.
Will profits prompt Activision and other publishers to safeguard their cash cows?
This is where we get into those aforementioned sociological issues. Yes, Call of Duty is a video game, but like many other modern games it also functions as social media, hosting a community of players. They can add friends, just like on Facebook, and communicate with them in real time through voice or text chat in lobbies or while playing cooperative or head-to-head missions. It is nowhere near as big as platforms like Facebook or TikTok or Twitter, but the size is noteworthy. In 2021 Activision announced Call of Duty had around 150 million active players (roughly 1/3 the size of Twitter, for example) thanks to the popularity of “Warzone.”
In many ways, these communities offer a common ground, akin to a country club. At their best, they provide an environment where players with a shared interest in a game can relax and chat. But the experiences often encountered in a game are largely produced by those playing it — again, just like many social media platforms — and can produce some unsavory moments.
Video game companies vow to fight racism in their communities, but offer few details
At any given time in a Call of Duty lobby — or any other multiplayer game with live voice chat — you could hear people catching up on their day, fighting with their family, reminiscing with a group of friends, accusing opponents of cheating, discussing game strategy or political takes, spreading conspiracy theories, talking about the World Series, trash talking or worse: hurling racial and homophobic insults at one another, and bullying from a distance while enjoying the anonymity provided by gamertag pseudonyms.
Games offer safeguards to shield users from toxic behavior, and tools to report it when it’s encountered. But this still requires game makers to actually police their communities to enforce these policies. In 2020, following the killing of George Floyd, a video was posted to Reddit showing a series of explicitly racist usernames in “Modern Warfare.” Infinity Ward, the Activision-owned studio that made “Modern Warfare” in 2019 and the now “Modern Warfare II,” admitted on Twitter they “need to do a better job.”
“Modern Warfare II” features a screen that appears after installing the game requiring users to acknowledge a pledge they will refrain from utilizing offensive usernames and engaging in toxic behavior like bullying or spouting slurs. Will the monetary windfall provide an incentive for Activision to keep toxic elements, including cheaters, out of the game to avoid criticism and outside scrutiny? Or will it convince those in charge that the community does not need any fixing, instead fixating on their most recent bonanza?
Shannon Liao contributed reporting to this analysis. | 2022-11-04T17:37:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Call of Duty Modern Warfare II's $800 million sales weekend, explained - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/04/call-duty-modern-warfare-2-sales/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/04/call-duty-modern-warfare-2-sales/ |
A sign in English and Chinese seen in March 2020 outside St Thomas' Hospital in London explains ways to identify coronavirus infection. (Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images)
After further tests in February 2021 and January 2022 came back positive, the team in London carried out a genetic analysis of the virus, which showed that the same strain was present at each stage, with only minor variations — meaning that the patient was suffering from a chronic coronavirus infection, rather than multiple new infections.
“Nowadays, everyone is infected with omicron, but when we looked at his virus, it was something that existed a long time ago — way before omicron, way before delta and even before alpha. So it was one of those older, early variants from the beginning of the pandemic,” Luke Blagdon Snell, a specialist in infectious diseases and a researcher on the case, told The Washington Post on Friday.
The case was among several highlighted by Snell and the team of researchers from Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and the Department of Infectious Diseases at King’s College London in a preprint article published in the peer-reviewed Clinical Infectious Diseases journal on Thursday.
Although the more-recent variants now dominant in Britain do not respond to the antibodies used in this case, the findings show the potential for individualized therapies in patients with chronic coronavirus infections. The process of genome sequencing outlined in the paper offers results within 24 hours, allowing medical teams to respond quickly to patients’ needs.
Scientists have a powerful new tool for controlling the coronavirus: Its own genetic code.
“But there’s definitely a difference between a normal community infection which resolves within two weeks,” as happens in most cases, and the small proportion of immunocompromised patients who are at risk of a chronic infection lasting more than six weeks, said Snell.
Among persistent infections, he said, there are two groups: those, like the man who was cured, who are relatively asymptomatic, and others who face more-serious outcomes.
Any long-term infection will affect the body, but even asymptomatic cases can prove dangerous: “We do know that some people, even after several months, if they have this persistent infection, can deteriorate at a later date.”
And even though cases of chronic infection are rare, high levels of infection mean that vulnerable patients are more likely to be infected and potentially develop chronic infections, he added.
The aim of future research in this area is to collect enough data on persistent infections to identify new treatment options — an issue that has become all the more important given new variants’ increasing resistance to antiviral treatments, Snell said. | 2022-11-04T18:07:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UK researchers cure man with persistent Covid for over a year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/04/chronic-covid-uk-cure-genomic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/04/chronic-covid-uk-cure-genomic/ |
Georgia Coach Kirby Smart, along with defensive back Christopher Smith, have the Bulldogs off to an 8-0 start. (Brett Davis/AP)
In the confetti-drenched aftermath of Georgia’s national championship last season, Coach Kirby Smart conceded it was slightly sweeter coming against Nick Saban’s Alabama, the standard-bearer of excellence in college football.
“Let’s be honest — they’ve been the measuring stick,” Smart said of Alabama after Georgia’s 33-18 triumph snapped a 41-year title drought and seven-game losing streak to the Crimson Tide.
Saturday brings college football’s measuring stick of the moment, when 8-0 Tennessee, the SEC’s only other unbeaten team, travels to Athens, Ga., to contest the most anticipated regular season game in years.
It’s a battle of top-ranked Georgia (8-0) against No. 2 Tennessee, according to the latest Associated Press poll. But the season’s first College Football Playoff rankings released Tuesday installed Tennessee at No. 1 and Georgia at No. 3.
Regardless of who’s doing the rankings, it’s a clash fans are clamoring to see.
According to online ticket broker TickPick, it has set a record for the most expensive regular season game on the resale market, with $626 the cheapest price for securing a last-minute spot in 92,746-seat Sanford Stadium.
CBS TV ratings are expected to eclipse the season-high 11.557 million viewers the network drew for its Oct. 15 broadcast of Tennessee’s 52-49 upset of Alabama, which ended with a goal-post dismantling melee in Knoxville.
And the outcome will go a long way toward revealing whether Georgia’s national championship from the 2021 season heralded a changing of the guard atop the sport or just reflects the next step in Smart’s promising work-in-progress at his alma mater.
“A lot of coaches have been able to go up a year when they have a special class, like LSU did with Joe Burrow (winning the national championship for the 2019 season),” Danielson said. “But you could almost tell that when those guys left, there would be somewhat of a rebuild. Kirby Smart using all of the great history of Georgia football and the availability of great players located around them.”
It has been a steady build of five-star prospects since Smart arrived at Georgia in 2016 after eight seasons as Alabama’s defensive coordinator under Saban.
His recruiting classes consistently rank among the top five in the nation. Over the last five years, Georgia has landed 25 five-star recruits, according to the 247 composite rankings.
That, in turn, ensures quality depth on Georgia’s roster that enables the Bulldogs to weather inevitable midseason injuries, such as the torn pectoral muscle suffered by linebacker Nolan Smith in last week’s 42-20 victory over Florida. He’s expected to miss the balance of the regular season.
Georgia’s pass rush will be essential against Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker, the Virginia Tech transfer who has transformed himself into a Heisman Trophy contender under second-year coach Josh Heupel. The Vols lead the nation in yards per game (553) and total touchdowns (52). They haven’t scored fewer than 34 points in a game this season. They also arrive in Athens on the heels of a 44-6 rout of Kentucky and the swagger that comes with the CFP’s No. 1 ranking.
The challenge facing all college coaches, of course, is keeping top players on their rosters long enough to sustain success in an era in which transferring carries no penalties and moneymaking opportunities abound through largely unregulated name, image and likeness deals.
It’s simply not as easy to stockpile outstanding players, as Saban has famously done, when they now have options to walk away for the promise of more playing time or a payday.
But in Danielson’s view, Smart’s roster-building success doesn’t revolve around stockpiling players. It’s more about investing in their growth and success, much like gifted teachers do, through tough times and good.
He cites the example of starting quarterback Stetson Bennett, who chose to return to Georgia for a sixth season after being named offensive MVP in the national championship victory over Alabama.
“Stetson was not a superstar as he grew into being the starter,” Danielson noted. “In fact, he had some really rough games. There was a lot of clamor from the fans: ‘Why don’t we play one of our elite five-star players?’ But Kirby, I think, by sticking with Stetson, showed everybody on the team, ‘You have a chance to play, no matter what.’ And ‘I’m not going to bury you the first time you make a mistake.’”
And though many on his roster have their sights set on the NFL, Smart has tempered the quasi-pro culture by instilling a team-first ethic.
The upshot, ideally, is that players see their biggest payback not in an NIL deal dangled by a rival school’s boosters but in staying in Athens to develop their skills.
In Georgia’s case, this spring’s NFL draft was a powerful example of just that. Fifteen Bulldogs were drafted, a single-school record. Among them, five defenders were chosen in the first round alone, led by edge rusher Travon Walker, taken No. 1 overall by the Jacksonville Jaguars.
At 46, Smart is a generation younger than Saban, 71, his foremost mentor, with decades to build college football’s next dynasty in Athens. After Georgia officials rewarded him with a 10-year, $112.5 million contract for winning the national championship, he has another reason to stay the course. | 2022-11-04T18:34:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is Georgia the new Alabama? Kirby Smart has Bulldogs on track. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/georgia-kirby-smart-new-alabama/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/georgia-kirby-smart-new-alabama/ |
Mortgage company executive Mat Ishbia, right, shown in 2015 with former Michigan State basketball teammate Mateen Cleaves, is interested in pursuing the Commanders. (Al Goldis/AP)
Mat Ishbia, a mortgage company executive who attempted to purchase the Denver Broncos, plans to consider a bid for the Washington Commanders, he said Friday.
“The NFL is a great league and Washington is one of the elite franchises,” Ishbia said in a statement issued to The Washington Post through a spokesperson. “I am interested in exploring this opportunity further in the very near future.”
Ishbia is a former Michigan State basketball player who is the president and chief executive officer of Michigan-based United Wholesale Mortgage. Forbes estimates his net worth at $4.3 billion.
He was among the bidders for the Broncos before they were sold in June from the Pat Bowlen Trust to a group led by Walmart heir Rob Walton for $4.65 billion. NFL owners officially ratified Walton’s purchase in August.
The Commanders said Wednesday that owner Daniel Snyder has hired an investment bank to “consider potential transactions” related to the franchise. The Commanders did not specify whether Snyder and his wife, Tanya, the team’s co-CEO, are considering the sale of the entire franchise or a minority share.
“We are exploring all options,” a Commanders spokesperson said Wednesday.
The team said in its statement Wednesday that the Snyders have hired a division of Bank of America, BofA Securities.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is interested in potentially bidding on the team, a person familiar with the situation said Thursday. It is possible but not certain that a bid by Bezos for the team would include music mogul Jay-Z as a prospective investor, according to that person.
“I don’t know if they will partner on it,” that person said Thursday, adding that each is “interested.”
Bezos owns The Post. He has been mentioned as a potential owner of other NFL franchises, including the Seattle Seahawks. Amazon carries the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” package. | 2022-11-04T18:34:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mat Ishbia announces interest in bidding on Commanders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/mat-ishbia-commanders-sale/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/04/mat-ishbia-commanders-sale/ |
Changing affirmative action
Karen Choi, 19, a student from Harvard University, holds a sign during an Oct. 31 rally outside the Supreme Court. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
A far simpler solution to the affirmative action conundrum than Roland G. Fryer Jr. presented in his Oct. 31 op-ed, “Affirmative action doesn’t work — but it could,” that would both maintain diversity and advance equity without any consideration whatsoever to race or ethnicity in the application and admissions process would be to ask two questions: What are the educational levels of the applicant’s parents, and what are their occupations?
Which of the following two applicants would receive preferential treatment under these criteria: the one whose parents are college-educated, whose father is a CPA accountant and whose mother a high school teacher; or the one whose father graduated from high school at age 21 and is a factory worker, and whose mother graduated from the eighth grade and is a housecleaner? It would not be surprising if the latter applicant is a student of color, but that might not necessarily be the case. Under these criteria, no claims of racial/ethnic bias or reverse discrimination could be made.
Noel James Augustyn, Chevy Chase
Taking an “originalist” position on using race in determining college admission can only lead to the conclusion that it is allowable. Can you name a time in our history when race was not a factor in determining access to education?
Vincent Hazleton, Radford, Va.
In his Oct. 31 op-ed, Roland G. Fryer Jr. mentioned the use of artificial intelligence as a solution for college admissions. I happened to have just finished an article in Scientific American, ““Artificial General Intelligence Is Not as Imminent as You Might Think,” in which Gary Marcus cast doubt on the use of artificial intelligence, including for items cited by Mr. Fryer, such as improving radiologists’ accuracy and driverless cars — especially in novel situations.
Though AI has astronomical potential, it might be premature to hand over such a fraught subject as college admissions to a still-evolving technology.
Melvin Klein, Columbia
Although I usually agree with Eugene Robinson on most issues, I disagreed with the thrust of his Nov. 1 op-ed, “Jackson asked the right thing on affirmative action,” in which he praised the question asked by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of the plaintiff’s attorneys. Justice Jackson had compared two potential applicants to the University of North Carolina, one being a legacy and another being an African American whose enslaved ancestors were barred from attendance. Justice Jackson noted the unfairness of giving preference to the first applicant, but not the second.
A better comparison might have been between a White Appalachian student raised by a poor single mother and an African American student from a wealthy professional family. With race being a factor in admissions, Black students often find themselves unfairly stigmatized as being admitted solely on that basis. The idea that there might be “too many” White and Asian applicants to Harvard, for example, reminds this old-timer of the era when the same was said about Jews.
Using socioeconomic factors is a much better way to help achieve a diverse student body than racial (or religious) preferences that identify favored and disfavored groups.
Robert Ehrlich, Lorton | 2022-11-04T18:38:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Changing affirmative action - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/changing-affirmative-action/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/changing-affirmative-action/ |
Climate change absolutely poses risks to our financial system
Homes were pummeled and flooded from the storm surge from Hurricane Ian that ravaged all of Pine island, Fla., on Oct. 2. (Octavio Jones for The Washington Post)
I disagree with the assertion in George F. Will’s Oct. 27 op-ed, “The Fed has its own take on the Peter Principle,” that climate change poses no systemic risk to the banking industry over the next five years.
Consider Arlington’s River Place. It is a spectacular property with amenities that few surpass, but it sits on leased land, the lease runs out in about 30 years, and it is widely expected to be demolished at that time. Because nobody who lives in River Place now expects to be there in 30 years, River Place units sell for a fraction of the price of similar units in Rosslyn. The asset has a limited lifetime, so the market has deeply discounted the units’ current value.
Trillions of dollars of coastal real estate assets have a similarly limited lifetime: They will no longer be viable for human habitation within the next few decades, thanks to the sea-level rise and increased storm intensity that human-caused climate change is bringing us. (ClimateCentral.org has a great tool that illustrates the problem.) My real estate colleagues tend to be optimists who focus on short-term outcomes. Moreover, few are scientists — climate, rocket or otherwise. Given these factors, and the confusion sown throughout our society by the climate-denial industry, the real estate industry has not yet discounted the value of coastal properties to reflect the fact that they will no longer be viable within the lifetimes of our children.
Someday, the industry will wake up to that reality. When it does, it will lead to one of the greatest evaporations of wealth in human history.
The nonviability of coastal property is a certainty. The real estate industry’s belated recognition of this is a certainty. The attending collapse of wealth is a certainty. The only uncertainty, the source of the risk, is when all of this will happen. Could it be within the next five years? Could Hurricane Ian have knocked over the first domino by demolishing Florida’s home insurance industry?
Does climate change pose systemic risks to our financial system? Yes, Mr. Will, it does. Should the Federal Reserve attend to those risks? Yes, Mr. Will, it should.
M.R. Roy, Arlington | 2022-11-04T18:38:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Climate change absolutely poses risks to our financial system - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/climate-change-absolutely-poses-risks-our-financial-system/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/climate-change-absolutely-poses-risks-our-financial-system/ |
Glenn Youngkin showed that he is not a ‘Virginia gentleman’
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) on Oct. 31 in Westchester, N.Y. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP)
When Alexandria’s Armistead L. Boothe died in 1990, his obituary in The Post recounted not only his political career and his adamant opposition to racial segregation, but it also characterized him as “a Virginia gentleman.” A reason he deserved that praise was what he did in the summer of 1966. Boothe was then locked in a tight race for the Democratic nomination for senator from Virginia, a nomination tantamount to election. In the final days of the campaign, his opponent’s father, Harry Flood Byrd, a longtime senator from Virginia, fell into an irreversible coma. Byrd Jr. suspended his campaign the Thursday before the election. Boothe suspended his campaign the next day out of respect for the Byrd family and because his opponent would not be campaigning, given his father’s condition. Boothe lost by less than 1 percent of the vote.
This kind of moral courage, the instinct to do the decent thing, is why I am proud to be a Virginian. It is the sort of thing that all Virginians should honor, especially those who believe in the wisdom of traditional values.
The vicious attack against Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), gave Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) a chance to show that he understands Virginia values, knows how a Virginia gentleman should act and, as a good conservative, treasures and passes on the teachings of the past. Sadly, we learned that the instincts of Virginia’s governor are not those of a gentleman.
His immediate reaction did not include any hope that an 82-year-old man undergoing surgery to repair a skull fracture would recover. Instead, there was a taunt for the grieving spouse. Mr. Youngkin is a disgrace to traditional Virginia values.
Ken Letzler, McLean | 2022-11-04T18:38:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Glenn Youngkin showed that he is not a ‘Virginia gentleman’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/glenn-youngkin-showed-that-he-is-not-virginia-gentleman/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/glenn-youngkin-showed-that-he-is-not-virginia-gentleman/ |
The Republicans will put China front and center
The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson participates in an exercise off Hawaii on July 26, 2018. (Petty Officer 1st Class Arthurgwain L. Marquez/U.S. Navy via AP)
When Republicans lost the 2006 midterm election — Democrats picked up a net six seats in the Senate and 30 House seats — President George W. Bush declared it “was a thumpin’ ” and pledged to work with both parties.
In 1994, when his party lost eight seats in the Senate and 52 in the House, Bill Clinton was more understated: “We were held accountable yesterday,” he said.
That kind of accountability is returning to the White House — again, to the Democrats — on Tuesday. Although Democrats are bracing for bad news, the massive rebuke that comes with a wave election doesn’t really arrive until the next day, when a president traditionally appears before reporters to take his medicine in public.
That tradition is part of our democracy — of accepting election returns no matter how bad the news.
Then, almost as quickly, the political spotlight will shift to the future. The question about the president: Will Joe Biden run again, even if his party loses 25 to 40 House seats and the Senate majority? My guess is yes. Big political personalities don’t step out of the spotlight, as a rule. They wouldn’t have gained the spotlight if they were the retiring types to begin with. Stepping aside is not in their DNA.
Such questions do not matter now to voters, who are worried more about record inflation, rising crime and falling school test scores. Even as the machinery of the sure-to-be-fascinating 2024 GOP nominating contest begins to engage, solving more immediate problems should be Job One for future House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
The top priority: restocking America’s arsenal, especially those parts of it depleted with the shipment of so many weapons and weapons systems to Ukraine and nearby countries. The good news is that Washington’s bipartisan support for Kyiv has helped to reduce Russian stockpiles of tanks, armored personnel carriers and precision guided missiles by large, double-digit percentages.
The larger — and more important — test comes in preparing for an almost inevitable confrontation with China. Here is one area that McCarthy and McConnell can be relied upon to address and solve by making additions to the defense budget, especially for the Navy and that service’s submarine fleets.
Biden remains the commander in chief, but Congress has the primary responsibility authorizing the funds that keep the United States strong. Let us hope the next president does not — as Donald Trump was obliged to do — spend much of his first two Pentagon budgets restocking the cupboard.
The generation that stepped forward to fight the global war on terrorism after 9/11 has many talented representatives in Congress. More are likely coming in the new class. A second “greatest generation” of legislators who have moved from service in uniform to service on the Hill will prove to be strong supporters of national defense. The GOP needs to reclaim Ronald Reagan’s mantle as the proponent of a strong and confident America. That reclamation project begins a GOP Congress’s imprint on an underfunded Pentagon. | 2022-11-04T18:38:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | More Republicans In Congress mean more money for the Pentagon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/gop-congress-china-pentagon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/gop-congress-china-pentagon/ |
Methane is a threat to local health
A flare burns methane from oil production on Aug. 26, 2021, near Watford City, N.D. (Matthew Brown/AP)
With the news that methane concentrations are rising faster than ever, it’s clear that methane reductions must be among the top priorities for U.S. and international policymakers as we approach the international climate negotiations at COP27 [“Climate-warming methane emissions are rising at record highs, study says,” news, Oct. 27].
Methane is a dangerous greenhouse gas causing climate change; it is also a threat to local health. It is a precursor to ozone and smog, which causes lung damage, coughing and sore throat, greater susceptibility to respiratory infections and lung diseases such as asthma, emphysema and bronchitis.
Oil and gas wells and their methane pollution are present near homes, schools, parks and day-care centers and particularly threaten nearby communities of color. For example, 1.8 million Latinos live within a half-mile of an oil or gas facility. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 48.4 percent of all Hispanic Americans live in counties that frequently violate ground-level ozone standards. This has become an egregious threat to public health: Latino children are twice as likely to die from asthma as White children.
Environmental Protection Agency regulations allow for methane emissions to be unmonitored and also allow for the deliberate release of methane into the atmosphere. This must change to strengthen the U.S. climate pledge. The EPA must close loopholes that allow for oil and gas wells to continue polluting and releasing methane without monitoring or consequences. Our communities’ health — and the health of the global climate — depends on it.
Shanna Edberg, Washington
The writer is conservation director at Hispanic Access Foundation. | 2022-11-04T18:38:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Methane is a threat to local health - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/methane-is-threat-local-health/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/methane-is-threat-local-health/ |
Confronting Metro’s looming fiscal cliff
A Red Line train arrives at the Metrorail station in Silver Spring in December 2020. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Nearly five years ago, the Republican-led legislature in Virginia joined forces with Democrats who dominated Maryland and D.C. to establish an earmarked annual subsidy of hundreds of millions of dollars for Metro, the capital’s transit system, which opened in 1976. Weeks before the deal was clinched, many considered it a long shot. Ultimately, partisan rivals on both sides of the Potomac acknowledged that the region’s economic vitality was inseparable from the fiscal stability of the bus and rail network that binds it together, and they acted.
Today, a similar reckoning faces the region, and Metro, whose future is imperiled by a looming fiscal cliff that, left unaddressed, means passengers will face longer waits, reduced hours, shorter trains and other unhappy outcomes. The question is whether local officials and leaders in Richmond, Annapolis and the District will be as farsighted now as they were in the spring of 2018.
Metro’s general manager, Randy Clarke, has been on the job scarcely 100 days, and all the major problems he faces are ones he inherited. His early moves are encouraging — cracking down on turnstile-jumping fare-dodgers; pushing for an accelerated return of rail cars mothballed a year ago with wheel problems; ordering the agency to be more transparent; and, the symbolic scene-stealer, announcing the long-delayed opening of the Silver Line extension to Dulles International Airport, set for Nov. 15.
That’s a promising start for the new boss at the United States’ third-largest transit network, who took the reins in July after having run a much smaller one, in Austin. It comes even as the system faces perennial problems with what is euphemistically referred to as its safety culture — too many employees ignore protocols and real threats — as well as other, more recent problems that Mr. Clarke acknowledges are serious headwinds. Those include a lingering pandemic-related passenger aversion to riding buses and trains, rising crime on transit nationwide, and Metro’s own reduced subway service since its wheel problems were detected a year ago, following a derailment.
He will need to grapple with all those issues, structural and cyclical, to give Metro a chance to tackle its greatest medium- and long-term menace: the budgetary chasm that spells painful service cuts next year, and draconian ones thereafter. Put simply, without an annual infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue, Metro will have no choice but to shrink bus and train availability in a way likely to drive away passengers even as the system struggles to woo them back. The result could be an existential threat for a system critical to the daily lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of local residents.
State and local leaders are understandably wary of seeking new funding sources for Metro — read: taxes — as surging inflation weighs on their constituents. Jeffrey C. McKay (D), chairman of the Board of Supervisors in the Washington region’s biggest locality, Fairfax County, in Virginia, has called on Congress to increase funding for Metro. His rationale is that more than half of Metrorail stations serve federal facilities, and one-third of the subway’s pre-pandemic rush-hour seats were occupied by federal workers.
Mr. McKay also insists that Metro simultaneously fix internal problems “that have led to a lack of confidence from both riders and nonriders.”
All true. Yet the fact is that Congress has not stood pat. It bailed out Metro with $2.4 billion in pandemic rescue funds over the past two years, and also contributes roughly nearly $500 million annually to the agency’s capital budget — about one-fifth of the total for construction, new vehicles and other major expenses.
What’s more, for years Mr. McKay himself has stressed the central role Metro plays in the region’s economic health. In an op-ed for The Post in 2017, he noted that for every dollar invested by Virginia in Metro and Virginia Railway Express, a commuter rail service serving Northern Virginia, the commonwealth gets back about $2.50, according to an analysis by the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission.
The bottom line is that Metro is a regional system, and it’s up to the region to plug the system’s daunting operating budget deficits. They are projected at $185 million next year, over $500 million the following year and even more in subsequent years. And those numbers are optimistically predicated on a relatively robust rebound in subway ridership from its ongoing pandemic doldrums, which have depressed passenger counts to less than half their pre-covid levels.
That means Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, a Democrat, and the winner of next week’s gubernatorial contest in Maryland, along with local officials, should be preparing now for no-nonsense negotiations with Metro to avoid what could become a death spiral for the system. The goal is clear: a bump in annual dedicated revenue sufficient to ensure Metro’s ability to sustain pre-pandemic service levels, in line with Mr. Clarke’s own prescription. Fulfilling that goal is key to getting more workers back to the office and revitalizing not only the downtown core but also once-vibrant suburban commercial hubs.
Like Mr. McKay, other local and state leaders are right to demand simultaneous improvements in management, safety, operations and oversight. Beyond the wheel problems that have affected the system’s most modern rail cars, the 7000-series, Metro needs to show that it is tightening procedures that somehow enabled half the system’s roughly 500 train conductors to fall behind on their training, a problem divulged in the spring that forced dozens of them to be pulled from their day jobs, exacerbating delays. Incomprehensibly, Metro still lacks a permanent new inspector general months after the previous one was not reappointed by the agency’s governing board; that lapse will only feed criticism that waste, inefficiency and fraud are left unaddressed.
Mr. Clarke is clear-eyed about the challenge he confronts. “We can’t solve the financial conversation if I can’t dig us out of the trust and credibility gap of the last year,” he said in a meeting this week with The Post’s Editorial Board. At the same time, he said, “I can’t solve the financial problem on my own. We’ll either have an aspirational vision for Metro or, without [new] revenue, we are going to have service cuts.” | 2022-11-04T18:39:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Randy Clarke needs a new strategy for Metro as a budget deficit looms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/metro-randy-clarke-fiscal-cliff-budget-deficit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/metro-randy-clarke-fiscal-cliff-budget-deficit/ |
The midterms are a choice
The Meta Platforms Inc. booth at a tech expo in Hong Kong on Nov. 1. (Paul Yeung/Bloomberg News)
In the coming elections, we have a choice between focusing on an immediate problem, inflation, or a long-term, much more important problem: the threat to our democracy. Periods of inflation are unavoidable, and governments have limited tools for dealing with inflation. Because their election campaign is based on inflation, Republicans have opposed measures that would mitigate inflation. Inflation will go away; losing democracy is more serious. Democracy, once lost, is difficult to bring back.
The threats to our democracy are distrust in our elections and media, using money to take over information sources and the three branches of our government, and losing our moral compass. We need to elect people who repeatedly call attention to the threats, weaken the influence of money and strengthen a free media that does not provide alternative facts.
Consider three Oct. 31 articles. A front-page article pointed out that right-wing figures are sowing doubt about the attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Every time I think that the right wing cannot go lower, it proves me wrong. In her op-ed, “The biggest 2022 fight you’ve never heard of,” Ruth Marcus pointed out how conservatives are spending large sums to elect judges who will make decisions that favor conservative causes. The editorial “Paying a fair share” expressed concern that because the value of Meta stock has decreased, Mark Zuckerberg would lose money if we taxed wealth. The bigger problem is that some people have so much money that they could purchase all the media and social news companies. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is an example. And Jeff Bezos owns The Post.
Alan S. Edelstein, Alexandria | 2022-11-04T18:39:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The midterms are a choice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/midterms-are-choice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/midterms-are-choice/ |
A help-wanted sign in Deerfield, Ill., on Sept. 21. (Nam Y. Huh/AP)
The October jobs report, released Friday, was generally quite strong — overall payrolls rose by a higher-than-expected 261,000 jobs; previous months’ hiring numbers were revised upward; employers added jobs across almost every major sector.
Once again, these are not the kinds of numbers you would expect to see if the economy were actually in recession, despite widespread perception (among the general public, at least) that we’re already knee-deep in one.
1) What do these numbers mean for the midterms?
This was the last jobs report ahead of the elections, and you can expect President Biden and other Democrats to crow about their record-breaking job growth. Roughly 10.3 million jobs have been added since the month Biden was sworn in, an astounding figure. We’ve regained, on net, all the jobs lost at the start of the pandemic, and unemployment is not appreciably different from what it was pre-covid-19.
However: Voters have been saying for a while that they’re not terribly worried about the availability of jobs. They’re much angrier about how more expensive everything has become. Plentiful jobs are great, obviously, but if those jobs don’t offer wages that keep up with the cost of everyday expenses, they might offer little comfort. We won’t get the next batch of inflation data (for October) until a couple of days after the midterms, but it’s likely to show once again that earnings growth fell behind price growth.
The salience of these price increases is, of course, good for the party out of power, and Republicans will continue to talk about it in every ad and stump speech — even if, as I’ve said many times over, they don’t have a plan for dealing with inflation, either.
2) What does the jobs report mean for Federal Reserve policy?
Labor shortages have been contributing to inflation pressures. These latest data suggest that problem will continue. It’s not entirely clear why people are dropping out of the workforce again; maybe the latest decline in labor force participation is just statistical noise and will be reversed again next month. But it probably doesn’t help that there’s still a lot less capacity in the child- and elder-care sectors than there was pre-pandemic, leaving many would-be workers without reliable options for caring for their family members.
As I said, this kind of job growth is not something you would normally associate with recession. And in fact when the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) surveyed its members last month, just 11 percent said they believed the United States was already in recession. By contrast, a whopping 58 percent of Americans overall believe we’re in recession, according to a YouGov survey.
This disconnect likely relates to the definition of recession: While the public uses the term “recession” to mean a time when something about the economy generally doesn’t feel good (including price growth), economists have a much more precise definition. In economics, a recession is when economic activity is declining, across the economy, for more than a few months; it generally covers a period when hiring, output, consumer spending, industrial production and other key measures are turning negative at the same time.
While most of those metrics still look pretty good, the fear is that they’ll start to contract soon. And in fact, that same NABE survey found that 53 percent of respondents expect a recession in the next year. Other surveys of economists and executives are similarly pessimistic.
The new jobs report doesn’t directly speak to this risk. But per No. 2 above, it is unlikely to deter the Fed from continued interest rate hikes, and those tightening financial conditions are among the biggest reasons that economists fear recession is nigh.
The Fed wants higher interest rates to dampen demand just enough to get price pressures down but not so much that it tanks the economy altogether. But the Fed has basically this one medicine for curbing inflation, and getting the dosage exactly right is challenging. The longer inflation remains uncomfortably high, the more aggressively Fed officials have to raise rates — and the greater the chance that they accidentally overshoot, as they have several times in the past.
One encouraging number in Friday’s report, however: The number of people employed by local governments (though not state governments) rose a tick. As I’ve noted elsewhere, state and local payrolls are well below their pre-pandemic levels; if there is indeed a downturn with a lot of private-sector layoffs, people will turn to their state and local governments for various safety-net services, so it’s helpful to have that government capacity in place ahead of time. | 2022-11-04T18:39:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Three key ways to think about the jobs report - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/october-jobs-numbers-mixed-message/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/october-jobs-numbers-mixed-message/ |
By Sophia A. Nelson
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) on Sept. 1 in Stafford, Va. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Sophia A. Nelson, a former House Republican Congressional Investigative Committee counsel, is the author of “Be the One You Need: 21 Life Lessons I Learned Taking Care of Everyone but Me.”
I do not know Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). I have never met him. The people I know who work for him all say the same thing: He’s smart, inquisitive, decent, a devoted Christian and family man with a big heart and a good soul.
Like many here in the commonwealth, I watched with great concern last Friday as Youngkin stumbled on his words at a campaign rally for Virginia 7th Congressional District Republican nominee Yesli Vega as he weighed in on the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Youngkin started with a proper message — “There’s no room for violence anywhere — and then came the “but” — “but we’re going to send [Pelosi] back to be with him in California.”
I knew Youngkin had really stepped in it and was going to get grief for his words. And get grief he did. One example was Karen Tumulty’s skewering in her hard-hitting Post op-ed, “I’m sorry I said nice things about Glenn Youngkin.”
He tried to clean up his comments on Newsmax with host Greta Van Susteren, but the outcry grew louder. I felt for him because I know what it is like to get pummeled for off-the-cuff remarks. Once it’s out there, it’s not going away without a lot of social media anger and threats being directed your way.
Youngkin’s press aide sidestepped the issue in a statement: “As the governor clearly said, the assault on Paul Pelosi was wrong and there is no place for violence. He wishes him a full recovery and is keeping the Pelosi family in his prayers.” At that point, it was clear that the Youngkin team knew he got it wrong but still couldn’t get it right.
Youngkin finally spoke from his heart — almost six days too late. As reported by CNN: “At the end of the day, I really wanted to express the fact that what happened to Speaker Pelosi’s husband was atrocious. And I didn’t do a great job.”
What took so long? Moreover, why would such a decent man say such a thing in the first place? I think the short answer is he got caught up in the partisan rhetoric of a hotly contested congressional campaign. Youngkin, a political novice, simply did not pivot properly to the serious issue of Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband being bludgeoned with a hammer in his home.
He got caught up. Isn’t that the great dilemma of our time? We get caught up on our social media feeds. In our tribal rallies and grievances. In our caricatures of people — Nancy Pelosi has been demonized for decades by the right. We get caught up in our own pride and prejudices about “them” versus the righteous “us.” Youngkin became a victim of his own making because he is caught betwixt and between who he is at his core: decent Christian businessman, family man-turned Republican rising star in a Republican Party that is wholly owned by former president Donald Trump and dark, angry and at times violent MAGA forces.
Youngkin’s problems are not limited to his Pelosi gaffe, though. If he wants to run for a national office in 2024, he is not going to be able to walk the tightrope he artfully walked in Virginia in 2021.
Youngkin has openly supported controversial anti-democracy election-denier candidates in 2022, including Arizona’s Kari Lake and Michigan’s Tudor Dixon. Youngkin says he wants to see Republicans win and govern. As a former Republican, I get that, but at what cost to American democracy?
Though I did not vote for him because he campaigned on “election integrity” and the critical race theory boogeyman, I was hopeful about the Virginia Republicans’ historic victory last November. As a conservative woman of color, I hoped Youngkin would govern from the center. I joined a group of prominent Virginia Republicans who endorsed Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe because we feared Trump and his election deniers would bring their anti-democracy divisiveness to Virginia. Here, we honor free and fair elections and concede when we lose. Just ask the Virginia state delegate who won his seat in 2017 — maintaining Republican control of the chamber — in a coin toss. The Democrat who lost that coin toss did not protest. She did not storm the state Capitol or incite the death and injury of law enforcement officials. We don’t do that in Virginia.
Here’s my point: Youngkin must lean into and answer to the higher calling of his faith. Our Christian faith teaches us to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to sow love and unity, to help the oppressed be free and to teach men how to be self-sufficient and entrepreneurial. Youngkin excels when he is among the diverse people of Virginia. Consider his historic partnership with Petersburg that, if successful, will bring new jobs, dignity and opportunity to the majority Black city. Or his commitment to the full funding of Virginia’s historically Black colleges and universities, or his wonderful work just this past week with Virginia HBCUs and the Urban League.
Youngkin has to choose between playing to the darker impulses of the angry, divisive Trump forces, or leading the once-great Republican Party out of the wilderness like a modern-day political Moses. But to do that he must challenge the pharaoh, not placate him. He must lean into his vision for healing what ails America. All of America. He must lead as a good man with a good soul. God knows Republicans need that now more than ever. | 2022-11-04T18:39:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Youngkin's Pelosi comment shows he's walking a different tightrope - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/youngkin-christian-pelosi-maga-tightrope/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/youngkin-christian-pelosi-maga-tightrope/ |
Toxic smog engulfs New Delhi, prompting school and factory closures
Niha Masih
A man rows his boat in the Yamuna river amidst heavy smog in the old quarters of Delhi, India November 4, 2022. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi (Adnan Abidi/Reuters)
It happens every winter in India’s sprawling capital: the cold air arrives, trapping the dust and other pollutants emitted by its 20 million residents. The result? A filthy, choking haze that engulfs the city and halts daily life.
For the third day this week, air quality in the city passed the “severe” threshold, reaching 445 on Friday, India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences said. The figure is 10 times the target level established in the World Health Organization’s 2021 air quality guidelines, which advises a 24-hour mean of 45.
As the smog descended on Delhi and the surrounding areas, officials on Friday ordered schools, factories and construction sites closed and banned diesel trucks from bringing non-essential goods to the capital. About half of the city’s government employees were urged to work from home.
The WHO estimates that millions die annually due to air pollution, and recognizes it as the world’s largest environmental health threat. IQAir, a Swiss air quality company, ranked New Delhi as the most polluted capital in 2021.
Air pollution has been linked to heart diseases, a higher risk of stroke and lung cancer, and in 2019 was the leading cause of death in India, according to government data.
Siddharth Singh, the author of “The Great Smog of India,” tweeted that, unlike immunity developed from a virus or a vaccine, “the human body cannot get used to air pollution,” as “the particulate matter enters your lungs, your bloodstream, and then lodges itself in your organs.”
Both the state and federal governments in India have faced criticism for failing to tackle the air pollution problem. And as the crisis mounted this week, regional politicians tried to blame each other for the health hazard.
In a news conference on Friday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that Delhi and Punjab should not be held responsible for the smog, which he called “a northern India issue."
He said that there would be no solution without joint state and federal action, adding that the six months since the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) formed a government in Punjab was “not enough" for the government to implement solutions.
India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, however, blamed the northern Punjab state for failing to stop farmers from burning crop residues, writing on Twitter that “there is no doubt over who has turned Delhi into a gas chamber.”
In a Twitter thread in October, Vimlendu Jha, environmentalist and founder of the youth organization Swechha, said the Delhi government lacks “political will and urgency.”
The central and state governments “have FAILED to find a medium to long term solution to this problem,” Jha wrote, "often stopping at just blaming the farmers and passing the buck, instead of farm reforms, crop rotation incentives, technology assistance etc.”
The crisis comes as India’s government called Friday for rich countries to deliver on their pledge of providing $100 billion in annual climate finance to developing countries — and to increase the amount at the U.N. climate conference next week.
Masih reported from New Delhi. | 2022-11-04T19:17:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Toxic smog engulfs India's New Delhi, prompting closures - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/new-delhi-air-pollution-smog/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/04/new-delhi-air-pollution-smog/ |
The White House has been highlighting Indian Americans as a group that’s thriving in Biden’s America
President Biden, surrounded by leaders in medicine, government and business, many of them of Indian descent, speaks at the White House last week before receiving a coronavirus booster shot. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)
As President Biden rolled up his sleeve to receive his coronavirus booster shot at the White House last week, he was surrounded by leaders from the worlds of medicine, government and business — half of whom were of Indian origin.
The event took place less than 24 hours after Vice President Harris joined Biden to light a ceremonial diya at a White House Diwali celebration for hundreds of South Asian American guests. Biden used his speech during the event to hail the ascension of Rishi Sunak, Britain’s first prime minister of Indian descent.
“A groundbreaking milestone,” Biden said during remarks he drafted with the White House director of speechwriting, Vinay Reddy, also of Indian descent. “And it matters. It matters.”
Ahead of midterm elections that could be decided by razor-thin margins, Democrats are hoping to capitalize on some of the optimism felt by Indian Americans, a growing and increasingly vital bloc of voters. At a time when many Americans are anxious about the economy and believe the country is on the wrong track, the president’s aides and supporters have pointed to the rising prominence of Indian Americans inside and outside government as an example of a group that’s thriving in Biden’s America.
“It was sort of this moment, this time of celebration for a community that really has hit its stride as part of the American narrative,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who attended the Diwali celebration and is one of four members of Congress of Indian descent. “As one of my friends said it: It’s really a good moment to be Indian American in this country.”
Khanna has repeated that sentiment while campaigning across the country for candidates who have asked him to headline events to mobilize Indian American voters in key swing states.
Among Asian Americans — who make up the fastest-growing slice of the electorate — Indian Americans are the most Democratic-leaning and among the most politically active, said Shekar Narasimhan, a Democratic fundraiser who leads a super PAC focused on turning out Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.
Like all Americans, Indian Americans are focused on pocketbook and quality-of-life concerns ahead of the midterms, Narasimhan said, citing polling by his AAPI Victory Fund. The group has not been insulated from the rising cost of living and general sense of economic unease, he said, expressing concern that voters may sit out this election or support Republicans.
Harris, who has spoken about her mother’s journey from India to the United States, plans to hold a get-out-the-vote event for the Asian American community in Chicago on Sunday. While the event is aimed at energizing all Asian Americans, it will feature prominent members of the Indian diaspora, including Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval and actor Aasif Mandvi.
South Asian Americans — U.S. citizens with ties to a vast region including India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal — are not a monolith and represent all sorts of religions, economic classes and political leanings, and Republicans are also courting their votes. Former president Donald Trump recently told a group of South Asian American supporters that he has already put together a coalition of Hindu advisers and created a Hindi slogan for a potential reelection campaign.
With nearly 4 million people of Indian descent in America, the community is now primed to “punch above its weight” when it comes to politics, as it has in other spheres including business and science, Narasimhan said. Upward of 70 percent of Indian American voters cast ballots for Biden in 2020, a year when Asian American turnout soared and both parties campaigned heavily for the group’s votes.
“In 2020, for the first time, people paid attention,” Narasimhan said, adding that the upcoming midterms give Democrats a chance to make the case to Indian Americans that they have delivered on their promises.
While Biden has received low marks for his stewardship of the economy, Asian Americans view him favorably for his commitment to diversity and representation within government, Narasimhan said. There are more than 130 Indian Americans in senior roles across the administration, with several serving in high-ranking White House positions that have never before been occupied by a person of color.
Last week offered a prime example of the community’s growing clout, White House officials said. At the Diwali celebration on Monday, Biden told the group of more than 300, including Broadway performer Shoba Narayan and dozens of White House officials, that his administration included a record number of Asian Americans.
On Tuesday, Biden received his coronavirus booster during a public event featuring U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, Albertsons Companies CEO Vivek Sankaran, CVS Health Chief Medical Officer Sree Chaguturu, and White House covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha, who also made an appearance at the White House press briefing that day.
On Wednesday, Biden was introduced by Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, before giving a speech on efforts to counter “junk fees” charged by banks. On Thursday in Syracuse, N.Y., as the president touted a planned $100 billion investment by Micron Technologies, he received a tour from the company’s India-born CEO Sanjay Mehrotra.
Behind the scenes at the White House, the influence of Indian Americans shows up in big and small ways, from the occasional servings of tikka masala in the White House Mess and the informal staff group chats to the high-level meetings that include cabinet officials and top aides with South Asian heritage.
“Whenever I see other brown people, you do this sort of immigrant head nod,” said Gautam Raghavan, director of the Presidential Personnel Office. “It’s just like saying, ‘I see you, and I know you’re here.’ And I think that’s powerful.”
Reddy, the first Asian American in the role of top White House speechwriter, helped Biden draft his first prime-time address to the nation last year, about the rise in attacks targeting Asian Americans.
“It was important, in an address to the nation, that he actually said it out loud, and when people hear that, they know he sees it, he understands it, and that matters a lot,” Reddy said.
The flow of paper Biden receives is managed by staff secretary Neera Tanden, who has spoken about being raised by an immigrant single mother from India. Kiran Ahuja, director of the Office of Personnel Management, helps implement Biden’s executive order on increasing diversity within the federal workforce. Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, joined the administration when she was confirmed by the Senate in September.
The growing representation means important policies from immigration to health care to human rights reflect the diverse interests of the community, said Sanjeev Joshipura, executive director of Indiaspora, a nonpartisan group of Indian American leaders.
“There is an enormous amount of attention being paid to the Indian diaspora,” he said. “Evidence of that is just the breadth of the people in the White House and in the administration who are Indian American. They cover every issue from labor to civil rights to foreign policy to economics.”
Joshipura noted that the New York City schools recently declared Diwali, a festival celebrated by more than 1 billion people, an official holiday, and that the State Department is sending an official envoy to the country’s largest Diwali celebration, in San Antonio on Saturday.
Politicians are increasingly turning to the Indian diaspora for donations as well, as the group becomes more politically active. Indian American donors gave $20 million to $30 million to political candidates from both parties in 2020 — a record for the community, Joshipura said.
In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, where some recent statewide elections have been decided by margins of less than 0.5 percent, Indian Americans account for a larger share of the population than the difference between the candidates, census records show.
Candidates up and down the ballot are coming to realize how pivotal the community can be, said Khanna, who has been asked by other politicians for help connecting with South Asian voters.
“When I go out campaigning for candidates, they’ll have me do an event with them and they’ll always ask, almost sheepishly, afterwards, ‘Can you do an event with the Indian American community as well?’ ” he said.
Khanna said he regularly obliges, viewing the requests as a sign of the rising political power of the Indian diaspora, just decades after his grandfather fought for independence in a movement that helped create the world’s most populous democracy some 70 years ago.
Indian Americans are paying attention ahead of the midterms, though it’s not clear how much the economy — the top concern for voters — will dampen turnout, Narasimhan said, pointing to polling and phone bank work his group has done. Immigration, crime and education also rank as top issues, he said.
He expressed concern that in Georgia — where the Indian American community of more than 150,000 is large enough to swing what is expected to be a close Senate race — voter enthusiasm seems to be lagging in the early vote. He said the negative campaigning in the race between Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) and his GOP challenger, Herschel Walker, is probably turning many voters off.
Republicans have attacked Biden for his handling of the economy, while also pointing out that the only two governors of Indian descent in American history — Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and South Carolina’s Nikki Haley — are both Republican.
Trump, who tapped Haley as his ambassador to the United Nations, has touted his close relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has sown religious and cultural divisions during his tenure.
Trump attacked Biden over inflation and immigration during an Oct. 21 Diwali event at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, saying his administration was run by “stupid people.”
“We love the Hindus and we love India,” Trump said, before using his new Hindi catchphrase, which translates to “India and America are best friends.” The Republican Hindu Coalition has distributed clips of Trump speaking Hindi, with the goal of boosting GOP candidates in Senate races where the margin of victory could be smaller than the size of the state’s Indian American population.
The increasingly fierce battle between the parties for Indian American voters signals that the group has become indispensable to the country’s politics, Narasimhan said.
“If you have a sufficient number of votes to move the needle in an election, and you know how to talk to the people that can deliver those votes, then you are an influencer,” he said. “And if you are an influencer, you’re powerful.”
‘It’s our time now,’ Barnes tells Wisconsin voters
5:58 PMMilwaukee election official charged with felony for fake ballots | 2022-11-04T20:18:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In a hard-fought midterm, Indian American voters are prized - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/midterms-indian-american-voters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/midterms-indian-american-voters/ |
Golf clubs, diamond earrings and a soccer ball from Putin are among the gifts that House Oversight has asked the National Archives to find.
Saudi King Salman presents President Donald Trump with the collar of Abdulaziz Al Saud in Riyadh in 2017. The collar is among the items investigators have asked the National Archives to locate. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Congressional investigators are looking for dozens of pricey mementos gifted to former president Donald Trump and his family members by foreign governments, according to three people familiar with the matter.
It’s not clear why the Oversight Committee made the request for these specific items; a spokesperson for the committee declined to comment except to say the investigation is ongoing. The Archives also declined to comment, and it’s unclear where the agency is in the process of trying to find these items and which gifts, if any, on the list were properly accounted for.
A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, nor did officials who handled gifts in the Trump administration.
The search comes as Trump faces an FBI investigation into whether he and his aides mishandled classified documents after agents recovered troves of records from his Mar-a-Lago home, including highly sensitive intelligence regarding China and Iran.
This summer, the Oversight committee launched its own probe at the behest of its chairwoman, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), into whether Trump properly followed the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act, a 1966 law that prohibits presidents and other government officials from personally keeping gifts from foreigners worth more than $415 unless they pay for them.
Under the law, there is no specific criminal penalty for someone who improperly retains the gifts. But ethics experts said that criminal action might be warranted depending on the circumstances.
“If you have a very valuable item that you are obligated by law to turn over to the federal government and you fail to do that, I don’t know that would preclude a criminal action — we’ve just never seen it done,” said Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at CREW, an ethics watchdog organization.
The Oversight committee’s request to the Archives includes items that were received by Trump’s family members but may not have been properly reported to the State Department; items that were documented as potentially in the Trumps’ executive residence in the White House, the West Wing, or other locations — for example, Trump Tower or Mar-a-Lago — near the end of the administration; and items likely gifted in 2020, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The New York Times first reported that the State Department could not fully account for gifts Trump and other White House officials received during their final year in office because the White House failed to provide the agency with a list of what officials received from foreign governments before leaving office. The office was in “total disarray,” according to testimony taken by the committee.
Now, Maloney’s committee is seeking to account for specific gifts. The sprawling request sent to the Archives also includes an antique framed signed photo of Queen Elizabeth II; a marble slab commemorating the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem; dresses from Oman; a bust of Mahatma Gandhi; an Afghan rug; a crystal ball; and various pieces of jewelry including diamond and gold earrings, according to the person familiar with the request.
Typically, the White House Gifts Unit records all domestic and foreign gifts received by the president and first family, along with the valuation of the gift, according to a 2012 congressional research report. If an official wishes to retain a gift, they have the option of paying full value.
Otherwise, the gift is transferred to the Archives where it is stored for presidential libraries. Gifts meant for the White House residence are referred to the Department of the Interior’s park service, and gifts that are not sent to the Archives or not retained by the president are sent to the General Services Administration.
Separately, the Office of Protocol in the State Department publishes an annual list of all gifts from a foreign government to a federal employee. According to information provided by the State Department, Trump “failed to comply with the law governing foreign gift reporting” during his final year in office, Maloney wrote in June in a letter requesting a review of Trump’s gifts to acting archivist Debra Steidel Wall.
“The Department of State noted that during the Trump Administration, the Office of the Chief of Protocol failed to request a listing of foreign gifts received in 2020 from the White House. The Department is no longer able to obtain the required records,” Maloney wrote to the Archives.
In that letter, Maloney requested all documents and information pertaining to gifts received by Trump or his family members from the last year of the Trump administration — including the location and value of the gifts, the identity of the donor, and any reporting of gifts — along with all communications between the Archives and Trump, his family members and White House staff related to foreign gifts.
The failure to account for gifts is part of a pattern of the Trump administration’s record keeping practices.
Numerous items identified as “gifts” were seized by the FBI during their search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence in August. It’s unclear whether the seized gifts were given to Trump by foreign governments during his time in office and improperly transferred to Mar-a-Lago.
The Washington Post has previously reported that White House officials in the waning days of the Trump presidency raised concerns that some of the gifts Trump had received as president still remained in the White House rather than being properly turned over to the National Archives.
Trump took a number of items with him when he left the White House, including a model of the Air Force One redesign he had proposed and a mini model of one of the black border-wall slats that featured an engraved plaque on top, The Post has previously reported. When the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes of materials from Mar-a-Lago in January, they recovered correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that Trump had once described as “love letters.”
“This president was very much into holding onto things,” said a former Trump White House staffer who was involved with record management and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “Mementos and gifts are a big thing with him. Throughout his whole life he has created mementos.”
Former White House chief of staff John Kelly said that when he worked for Trump, the president always wanted to keep gifts from foreign leaders. Kelly said that while he instructed staff to follow the process of recording gifts from foreign leaders, when Trump was given the opportunity to buy the gifts, he was adamantly against paying for them.
“He said, ‘They gave me these, these are my gifts,’ ” said Kelly, recounting his conversation with Trump. “But I’d say, ‘No sir, they gave these to the president of the United States. You have to look at that as an official gift from a country.’ He would be totally against that. He was adamant that they were his gifts and he couldn’t understood why he couldn’t keep these gifts.”
Fetterman, Scanlon talk abortion access in campaign’s final days | 2022-11-04T20:18:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump's gifts from foreign leaders under scrutiny from House Oversight committee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/trump-foreign-gifts-national-archives-search/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/04/trump-foreign-gifts-national-archives-search/ |
Are we up to the task of contemplating peace?
(Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
For the first time in several years in The Post, Michele L. Norris has reframed our goals out loud for the future — namely peace in all its aspects and impacts — and suggested how to get there. Her Oct. 30 op-ed, “Can’t we give ‘peace’ a chance?,” was a reassuring relief. Are we up to this more complex and harder work as a human species in this country and in the world? Maybe peace has faded away as a topic to write about because we don’t have the strength it takes to work for it.
I applaud Ms. Norris in asking us this question. Let it resound in our lives and work and media treatments.
K. M. Minardi, Columbia | 2022-11-04T20:36:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Are we up to the task of contemplating peace? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/are-we-up-task-contemplating-peace/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/are-we-up-task-contemplating-peace/ |
Netanyahu’s Israeli victory shows how not to stop Trump
President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend the Abraham Accords signing ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on Sept. 15, 2020. (Alex Brandon/AP)
“Israel is a speck on the map of the world,” Walter Russell Mead writes in his new book, “The Arc of a Covenant,” but “it occupies a continent in the American mind.” The Jewish state is a crucible for global contests over nationalism, religion and identity — and to the American liberal mind, its latest turn is a source of foreboding. But liberals are missing a point that hits closer to home.
Israelis this week voted out the centrist government headed by Prime Minister Yair Lapid, delivering a 64-seat majority (out of 120) to conservative and religious parties that support former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel’s leader from 2009 to 2021 is poised to return to power after a brief spell in the opposition — this time with the backing of a handful of hard-right lawmakers who would once have been outside the bounds of the political system’s cordon sanitaire.
But if the Israeli right’s stubborn attachment to a larger-than-life leader dismays American liberals, they can also learn from the country’s experience. The first lesson from Netanyahu’s comeback is that criminally indicting a political figure — say, Donald Trump — doesn’t necessarily knock him out of the electoral system. Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on corruption-related charges after a nearly three-year investigation.
Trump might be in legal jeopardy for his handling of classified documents or his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and Justice Department decisions are looming as he also eyes a political comeback. Bringing criminal charges against the former president would satisfy progressives, but it would not decide Trump’s political fate. Netanyahu won election even as his trial was in progress in Jerusalem. (This week’s Brazilian presidential election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was convicted on corruption charges and served time before his convictions were vacated, underscores the point.)
In fact, Netanyahu’s example shows how criminal prosecution can bind a leader more tightly to an office if retirement increases the chance that he will be convicted and punished. In electing Netanyahu, Israel’s polarized democracy effectively overrode its legal process, and something similar could happen in the United States. The tick-tock of Trump investigations dominates headlines, but it’s the political case against the former president that should be paramount.
Netanyahu’s victory also calls into question the efficacy of another media fixation — that of the morally righteous Republican who, out of personal opposition to Trump, turns ostentatiously against his or her party. In Israel, it looked briefly as if something like this model could work to end Netanyahu’s political career. Naftali Bennett, a onetime Netanyahu aide who was seen as more conservative than his former boss, joined centrist and liberal parties after the 2021 elections to oust him and become prime minister himself.
That “unity government” won accolades in the United States as a model of compromise and moderation. The participation of an Arab party was an admirable demonstration of Israeli pluralism. But the sense of betrayal among voters for Bennett’s Yamina party was predictably intense and politically devastating. Many former Bennett voters appear to have migrated to the further-right Religious Zionist Party, which surged from six seats in the last election to 14 in this one. One of that party’s prominent representatives is Itamar Ben-Gvir, a lawyer with a history of anti-Arab demagogy who might be an international liability for Israel.
In other words, Bennett’s high-minded abandonment of Netanyahu in favor of a centrist coalition might have contributed within a year and a half to the formation of the most right-wing government Netanyahu has ever led. Again, a lesson for American politics: Politicians are accountable to their voters, and the sense of betrayal by one’s own political party is one of the most volatile forces in a democracy.
It’s common to hear laments that more established Republican politicians won’t take the path of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and break decisively with a GOP in which Trump still holds significant influence. But in many cases, the result would be to forfeit any moderating influence they might have had within the conservative coalition, while radicalizing some of its voters.
The Israeli left-of-center’s ideological fastidiousness appears to have also played a role in Netanyahu’s victory. The liberal Labor Party declined entreaties to merge with the leftist Meretz party, resulting in the latter’s falling just below the 3.25 percent vote threshold to be represented in parliament and boosting Netanyahu’s bloc. Democratic leaders in the United States have suffered from a different kind of rigidity, doubling down on progressive doctrine even as they face an energized conservative coalition.
If last month’s Tory crackup in Britain was a warning to American conservatives, then this month’s collapse of the anti-Netanyahu coalition in Israel is a warning to American liberals. The pull of hard-right politics won’t be resisted by legal prosecutions or moral indignation, but by realism, triangulation and leadership. | 2022-11-04T20:36:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Netanyahu’s Israeli victory shows how not to stop Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/benjamin-netanyahu-trump-lessons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/benjamin-netanyahu-trump-lessons/ |
An attempt on the life of Imran Khan pushes Pakistan into a fresh crisis
Former prime minister Imran Khan talks with the media at a hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, on Friday, a day after an assassination attempt on his life. (Arif Ali/AFP via Getty Images)
On the evening of Nov. 3, former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan narrowly escaped death. An assailant attacked him at a political march, wounding Khan in the leg, killing one other person and injuring 14 more. Khan survived — but now Pakistan’s democracy may be facing new threats to its survival.
Khan is the third former prime minister to have faced an assassination attempt. The country’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was shot in 1951; a suicide bomber killed Benazir Bhutto in 2007. They were targeted in public rallies, but Khan was luckily only lightly injured.
In the months before the attack, Khan himself repeatedly warned that he would be targeted by an assassin, citing a conspiracy cooked up by his political opponents. They rejected those claims. On the face of things, Khan has now been proved right. Yet indications so far suggest that the would-be killer acted alone, out of religious motivation.
Khan, however, has surprised everyone by blaming an entirely different set of culprits.
In the hours after the shooting, he has accused Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) official Maj. Gen. Faisal Naseer of engineering the attack on his life. Khan offered no evidence for his claim.
These are explosive allegations. Nominating a serving ISI official in a murder conspiracy means a direct confrontation with the whole military establishment. Khan has repeatedly taunted Faisal — whom he calls “Dirty Harry” — in the recent past. He has blamed Faisal for the torture of two of his close colleagues, Sen. Azam Swati and Shahbaz Gill, an academic and politician, during their time in custody. Khan has also claimed that he told journalist Arshad Sharif to leave Pakistan because his life was under threat. When the journalist was mysteriously killed in Kenya on Oct. 23, Khan again pointed a finger at the army.
Khan’s direct attacks on the army forced ISI Director General Nadeem Ahmad Anjum to convene an unprecedented news conference in which he refuted a series of Khan’s claims about army involvement in his own removal from power. Their statements were in sync with my own reporting this year, when I wrote that that the army chief had declined Khan’s offer to keep him in his job in return for his support.
All this offers additional confirmation that the question of who will become the new chief of the army is at the center of the current chaos and political uncertainty in Pakistan. The army chief is retiring at the end of this month. A few days ago, Prime Minister Sharif claimed that Khan contacted him through a mutual friend regarding the appointment of a new army chief. Khan wanted a consensus on the issue, but Sharif refused to discuss it with him.
Khan announced a long march on the capital last week. He was hoping to demonstrate his political power just as the government was preparing to appoint the new army head. Khan’s attacks on the army leadership concerned many in his entourage. One of his close associates revolted against the party’s anti-army stance — and was quickly expelled. Khan claimed that a revolution was in the making, but there has been little evidence of a general uprising against the government. This encouraged his opponents to say that Khan was doing all of this just to push through the appointment for army leader.
Khan is blaming the political establishment for conspiring against him — as he did again in a speech Friday. But he has been conspicuously silent about the role of the provincial government, which was responsible for his security. (The attack on Khan took place in Punjab province, whose government is controlled by his own party.) What’s most striking is that the shooter’s claims contradict Khan’s allegations.
The assailant was immediately arrested, and he quickly made a confession in which he said that he wanted to kill Khan for religious reasons. Khan’s party was angry that the would-be assassin’s statement was passed along to the media. The provincial government took no action against the local police for its lapses in security but punished them for releasing the attacker’s statement. The police have since released more videos of the shooter, in which he claims to be a member of a religious organization. Perhaps someone in his own provincial government is collaborating with his opponents.
We’re still a long way from the full truth. Only an independent judicial inquiry can clear up the circumstances behind the attempt on Khan’s life. Unfortunately, Pakistan is heading toward another political crisis at a time when the country’s economy urgently needs fixing.
The consequences for the country’s democracy are likely to be disastrous. Protest rallies broke out all over Pakistan immediately after the attack on Khan. His supporters have been chanting anti-army slogans and jumping on army tanks. If law and order continue to deteriorate, the army could have an excuse to take over in the “larger national interest.” Whispers of an army takeover are already in the air. Khan also said a few days ago: “Let there be martial law, I am not scared.”
He might not be, but I certainly am. Martial law broke Pakistan in 1971. Let the politicians start negotiations and find a solution out of this crisis. The army must stay away from politics.
Opinion|The world continues to ignore the radicalization of India | 2022-11-04T20:36:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Imran Khan attack pushes Pakistan into a fresh crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/imran-khan-attack-pakistan-crisis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/imran-khan-attack-pakistan-crisis/ |
Inflation is a global problem, not a uniquely American one
People gather Nov. 3 during a protest to demand higher wages in Madrid. (Manu Fernandez/AP)
Lawrence H. Summers has been spot-on on the economy recently. But given that this is a hot-button political issue, I was disappointed that he seemed to blame the Federal Reserve and the Biden administration in his Nov. 1 op-ed, “Curbing inflation comes first, but we can’t stop there.” It would have been more useful to put inflation in a global context.
According to the Oct. 29 issue of the Economist, the latest annual increase in consumer prices in the United States was 8.2 percent. The average for the euro zone was 9.9 percent. Many countries’ leaders are struggling with the economic consequences of China’s supply chain disruptions, Saudi Arabia’s oil price increases, the COVID Pandemic, and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Robert Navin, Vienna | 2022-11-04T20:36:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Inflation is a global problem, not a uniquely American one - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/inflation-is-global-problem-not-uniquely-american-one/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/inflation-is-global-problem-not-uniquely-american-one/ |
Kyrie Irving’s ‘apology’ doesn’t cut it. He needs to go.
Nets guard Kyrie Irving addresses the crowd before a game on Oct. 19. (Frank Franklin II/AP)
NEW YORK — As a long-suffering basketball fan in the Big Apple, I was excited in June 2019 by the Brooklyn Nets signing Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, two of the best players on the planet. My anticipation only grew in January 2021 when the team added James Harden, a three-time NBA scoring champion, creating what was hailed as a “superteam.” I would still root for the Knicks — a franchise that last won the championship when Richard M. Nixon was in the White House — but now I also had a legitimate contender to support. It was a dream come true that has turned into a never-ending nightmare.
Irving refused to get vaccinated for covid-19 and missed more than half of the 2021-2022 season because New York regulations prohibited him from playing home games. Harden got fed up with the team’s lackadaisical play and got traded to Philadelphia in February. Off to an abysmal start this season, the team pushed the panic button and fired Steve Nash as coach.
The Nets can’t seem to do anything right. They got rid of the wrong guy. They should have jettisoned Irving, not Nash.
The star point guard has exquisite sense on the basketball court but no sense off the court. In 2017, he declared that “the Earth is flat” while claiming that “they lie to us.” (Who is “they”? An international conspiracy of astronomers?)
Embracing flat-earthism might seem like a harmless eccentricity, but Irving’s rejection of science became a lot less amusing when he refused to get vaccinated. He imperiled his health, his team’s health and his club’s chances of winning.
Irving claimed to be “standing for freedom.” The freedom to infect others with a deadly disease? Rolling Stone reported that he had “started following and liking Instagram posts from a conspiracy theorist who claims that ‘secret societies’ are implanting vaccines in a plot to connect Black people to a master computer for ‘a plan of Satan.’ ”
Unfortunately, Irving remains a devotee of wacky conspiracy theories. In September, he tweeted a video by Alex Jones, the notoriously dishonest radio host who has been ordered to pay a judgment of nearly $1 billion to families of the Sandy Hook victims after claiming that the mass shooting was a hoax.
Then, on Oct. 27, Irving posted a link on both Twitter (where he has 4.6 million followers) and Instagram (17.6 million) to “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” a movie full of outrageous antisemitic falsehoods. The Anti-Defamation League notes that it includes “claims of a global Jewish conspiracy to oppress and defraud Black people, allegations that Jews are in part responsible for the transatlantic slave trade and the claim that Jews falsified the history of the Holocaust to ‘conceal their nature and protect their status and power.’ ” To expose the “true” nature of the Jewish people, the film cites passages from Henry Ford’s notorious antisemitic screed “The International Jew” and two fabricated quotes from Adolf Hitler.
This is weapons-grade insanity that will endanger Jews at a time when antisemitism is already on the rise. It is all the more offensive coming from a star player for an NBA team in the New York metropolitan area, which has more Jewish residents than any city in the world next to Tel Aviv. Talk about alienating your fan base. I’m one of those Jewish NBA fans who won’t be watching Nets games — and certainly won’t be buying tickets at Barclays Center — while Irving is part of the team.
Irving only compounded his offensiveness by refusing to apologize when given multiple opportunities to do so. “I cannot be antisemitic if I know where I come from,” he said repeatedly. Apparently that’s a reference to the conspiracy theory propounded by a sect called the Black Hebrew Israelites, who claim that Black people are the true descendants of the ancient tribes of Israel and modern-day Jews are impostors with no claim to the Holy Land.
Finally, on Thursday night, after the Nets suspended him without pay for at least five games, Irving issued a belated apology on Instagram. Yet even while regretting the “pain” he had caused, he also wrote: “I want to clarify any confusion on where I stand fighting against Anti- semticism by apologizing for posting the documentary without context and a factual explanation outlining the specific beliefs in the Documentary I agreed with and disagreed with.”
That implies there are still parts of “Hebrews to Negroes” that he agrees with. Which parts, pray tell? There is not a single nugget of fact in this cesspool of bigotry and fantasy.
What on (flat) earth will Irving say next? I don’t know, and neither do the Nets. They need to cut their losses and let him go. They might win more games without all of his nonsense and distractions. Even if they don’t, they will regain a measure of self-respect and fan loyalty. Until that happens, I’m back to rooting exclusively for the Knicks. They may not win the title, but nor are they likely to shame our city. | 2022-11-04T20:36:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why the Nets need to get rid of Kyrie Irving - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/nets-release-kyrie-irving-antisemitism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/04/nets-release-kyrie-irving-antisemitism/ |
Megan Thee Stallion, Ye, more respond to Drake’s disses on ‘Her Loss’
Drake, pictured in October 2021. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
After a small covid delay and an elaborate fake press tour — complete with a pretend NPR Tiny Desk concert — Drake and 21 Savage on Friday released the joint album “Her Loss,” one of the most Drake titles to ever exist. A 16-track record is fodder for all sorts of online chatter, much of which narrowed in on the specific digs Drake appears to be making at other prominent figures.
Rap is heavy on beef, of course, and Drake in particular has a storied history of calling out people he believes have wronged him, from Pusha T to Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. Ye, who can’t seem to stay out of the news these days, is again a target on “Her Loss.” But the reference attracting the most criticism on Friday was that which Drake makes to Megan Thee Stallion, with those opposed to it arguing it minimizes the trauma she dealt with after an alleged shooting to a throwaway line.
Here is who Drake seems to be calling out on the new album, and how they have responded.
On “Circo Loco,” Drake raps, “This b---- lie 'bout getting shots, but she still a stallion.” One reading of the line would suggest a backhanded compliment about a woman’s physique, claiming that she lied about getting injections to look a certain way. But what sparked a widespread response is how the line also seems to reference Megan Thee Stallion’s allegation that she was shot in the foot two years ago by fellow rapper Tory Lanez, who was charged with felony assault and is set to stand trial at the end of the month.
Megan was ridiculed in the aftermath of the shooting, prompting her to tweet in her own defense about the traumatic incident and how “Black women are so unprotected.” As The Washington Post’s Bethonie Butler wrote at the time, Megan’s words were “especially resounding for Black women, many of whom recognize her treatment as a representation of the vitriol they often encounter when they are victims of violence.” Her fans rallied around her then, and once again on Friday after the Drake lyric was read as disrespecting her experience.
“Stop using my shooting for clout,” Megan tweeted, asking: “Since when tf is it cool to joke abt women getting shot ! … Ready to boycott bout shoes and clothes but dog pile on a black woman when she say one of y’all homeboys abused her.” She followed up with another tweet directed at people who criticized her for standing up for herself: “every time it never ends,” she wrote.
D.R.A.M.
In the hook for the song “BackOutsideBoyz,” Drake and Lil Yachty rap-sing, “Tried to bring the drama to me, he ain’t know how we cha-cha slide” — a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it diss for those not familiar with D.R.A.M.
The Virginia rapper’s 2015 debut single “Cha Cha” is sonically similar to Drake’s 2015 hit “Hotline Bling,” which was released a month after D.R.A.M.’s breakthrough song. “I feel like my record got jacked,” D.R.A.M. told Billboard later that year.
Now, seven years after the fact, Drake has something to say about it, too. D.R.A.M. took to Twitter on Friday to squash the drama — sort of. In a video, the rapper said that someone should tell Drake to shut up and move on, while also alluding to an incident five years ago in which he alleged he was beat up by Drake’s bodyguards. They “went to town on the kid,” D.R.A.M. said, but Drake “didn’t touch me.”
Alexis Ohanian, husband of Serena Williams
In the languid track “Middle of the Ocean,” which borrows heavily from the O’Jays soulful “Cry Together,” Drake spends most of his time on his usual targets: his haters. He reminisces about being underestimated when he first arrived in America from Canada. He brags about his lyrical genius, which, according to Drake, is designed for “divine ears.” There are contracts as thick as movie scripts to sign, earrings to wear, etc.
Then seemingly out of nowhere, Drake shifts gears: “Sidebar, Serena, your husband a groupie. He claim we don’t got a problem but no, boo, it is like you comin’ for sushi.”
The Serena here would be Serena Williams, the greatest of all time. Her husband? Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit. The pair have been married since 2017 and share a 5-year-old daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian. (Williams and Ohanian reportedly met in May 2015, a few months before TMZ claimed to have photos of Williams and Drake sharing a more-than-friends moment.)
On Friday, Ohanian tweeted a photo of himself and Olympia watching Williams play tennis. He wrote, “The reason I stay winning is because I’m relentless about being the absolute best at whatever I do — including being the best groupie for my wife & daughter.”
On the duet “Circo Loco,” which features an interpolation of Daft Punk’s “One More Time,” Drake not only aims an insult at Megan but also at his longtime nemesis Ye.
In reference to a hip-hop beef that has been heated and reheated for years, Drake raps, “Linking with the opps, b----, I did that s--- for J Prince / B----, I did it for the mob ties.” The lyrics point specifically to the 2021 benefit concert Ye held in Los Angeles for Larry Hoover, an ex-Chicago gang member serving six life sentences. Drake performed several of his hits at the concert, meant to raise awareness for prison reform, and called Ye his “idol” from the stage.
But this latest track suggests the hatchet between the two rappers — who’ve traded disses for years — is far from buried. Drake implies in “Circo Loco” that he did it for J Prince, the founder of the Houston hip-hop label Rap-A-Lot and industry insider who helped convince Drake to participate in the concert. (Prince’s son, J Prince Jr, is the chief executive of the fashion brand Mob Ties, also alluded to in the couplet.)
For his part, Ye, who’s been having quite the 2022, refused to take the bait.
“Enough already I done gave this man his flowers multiple times,” he tweeted. “Let’s really see who are real ops are in this music game. Imagine all the rappers on the same side and everyone cleaning up each others contracts. It’s kingdom time. Love Drake.” | 2022-11-04T20:37:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Megan Thee Stallion, Kanye West among celebs dissed on Drake's album - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/04/drake-album-megan-thee-stallion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/04/drake-album-megan-thee-stallion/ |
From Sparta to Svartalfheim
By Gene Park
The God of War series has become the PlayStation’s improbable marquee series. It’s improbable because one might assume its extreme violence wouldn’t have mass market appeal.
The original trilogy on PlayStation 2 and 3 best crystallized the angry, edgy, young adult masculinity of the early 2000s era of video games. But in 2018, “God of War” for PlayStation 4 performed the rare feat of rebooting the series while continuing its narrative, reaching an even bigger audience. That game sold 23 million copies, putting the series at the top of the Sony first-party food chain (if you don’t count “Marvel’s Spider-Man”). That’s an impressive feat for a game and story about family that isn’t exactly family friendly.
The game design pillars of the series have been spectacle, combat and puzzle solving. This remains true even in the 2018 game and its sequel, “God of War Ragnarok.” However the modern series places a much greater emphasis on emotional depth and cinematic storytelling, while still trying to achieve that sense of grand, violent spectacle.
There’s not a stinker in the series. Even the worst God of War game is a great time with plenty of reasons to love it. And the best games all have strong arguments to be considered the best in the series. The following list ranks the mainline console games and the PlayStation Portable handheld titles — eight God of War games in total.
“God of War: Chains of Olympus” almost matches the original 2005 release in size and spectacle, though it’s hampered by an awkward control scheme, resulting from squeezing the game onto a device with fewer buttons. The game’s puzzles and combat lose much of their challenge due to this constraint. Really, the game’s biggest flaw is that it was born into a mobile gaming ecosystem that had yet to mature into today’s golden era of fully-functional handheld devices, like the Nintendo Switch and Valve Steam Deck.
It’s a credit to the rest of the games on this list that they were able to iterate so successfully on this astonishing debut. The first God of War game was a bold fusion of its two main inspirations: combat from Hideki Kamiya’s Devil May Cry series and the platforming and cinematography of Fumito Ueda’s PlayStation 2 epic, “Ico.” This was among the earliest examples of Sony exclusive games tapping into a console’s full potential. The PlayStation 2 was the weakest of its generation, but this entry, directed by David Scoff Jaffe, was the strongest flex of Sony’s knack for high-fidelity gaming, displaying at a 480p resolution which was rare for any console game in 2005.
The game’s combat mechanics were nearly perfect from the start, and remained largely untouched until the 2018 PlayStation 4 reboot, and even that game is tied to the rhythms established back in 2005. The story was remarkable in its scope and scale, the “Ico” influence seen in towering level designs like the temple on the back of the Titan Cronos. The only reason this first entry is so low is because its puzzle and platforming designs were infuriating. Anyone who played this game was likely traumatized by the balance beam blade sequence as Kratos escaped from the Underworld. Its reliance on box-pushing puzzles is a relic of the early 2000s experiments into 3D video games, popularized by the Tomb Raider series. Its juvenile portrayals of sex and sexuality are another relic, a once-charming shtick that becomes an annoying routine throughout the series until its maturation in the PS4 era. Still, you couldn’t ask for a better debut.
In terms of story, this is more of a sequel to the first game than the actual sequel. This second PSP entry centers on Kratos’s brother Deimos and how he was initially thought to bring about the destruction of Mt. Olympus. Again developed by Ready at Dawn Studios, this is just a better, more streamlined experience than the first PSP title — and even the first game. It also has a far more interesting locale in Atlantis, full of life at the beginning and burning and sinking into the ocean just moments after Kratos touches down. Despite being released the same year as the stunning and gorgeous PlayStation 3 entry, this game is probably best experienced in its narrative order right after the 2005 debut. It’s how I played it, and it’s likely why I rank it higher than the first game.
This was also the first game in which series fatigue started to set in — especially considering the bombast of the PlayStation 3′s closing chapter. Still, Kratos gets a spear, and it’s probably his best weapon of the series outside of his iconic Blades of Chaos and the Leviathan Ax of the PS4 and PS5 titles.
‘God of War Ragnarok’ looks and performs beautifully on PlayStation 4
While the formula’s fatigue started to set in with “Ghost of Sparta,” this is the game that confirmed the feeling for many players. Landing three years after the story of the Greek pantheon ended, “Ascension” felt redundant upon release.
But looking back, this game probably houses the most ambitious, bold and awe-inspiring level design of the series. The beginning temple is built into the body of Aegaeon the Hecatonchires, a giant with 50 heads and 100 arms. The architecture shifts as you battle with the giant, a sight as glorious and breathtaking as any in the series. “Ascension” has a bad rap, compounded by its inclusion of an unnecessary multiplayer component, a symptom of that console generation’s tendency to shoehorn multiplayer features into games that don’t need them. But after fatigue comes rest, and in hindsight it’s clear that “Ascension” was Santa Monica Studio experimenting with the formula as one last hurrah before it would go into deep hibernation and reboot the series completely.
The first 30 minutes of “God of War 3” are to this day among the most extraordinary in any video game. Even someone with zero interest in video games can appreciate a Titan punching Poseidon’s godly form, flinging Kratos into and through its watery body to drag the god out and into a more equal playing field. The ensuing murder of Poseidon, and the resulting floods throughout the Greek world, set the stakes: Kratos is about to dismantle Greek polytheism with his bare hands.
The game was ludicrous in its attempt to outdo the previous games. This is the game that contributed most to the series fatigue, but only because it thrashed against any and all limits when constructing its monsters and play areas. Kratos climbs from the Underworld all the way to the top of Mt. Olympus for the final showdown with Zeus, all while blowing up an entire rogues gallery of Greek gods. No kill is quite as memorable as Poseidon’s, but that’s not for lack of trying. The death of Helios is a particularly gory memory. It’s the memories Kratos makes here that traumatize him later in life. Poor Kratos! But lucky for us that we got to embody his irresponsible madness with little consequence, besides getting a bit bored with the series. The next major title, and the next game on this list, would fix that.
2018′s “God of War” is the rare game in a long-running series that revitalizes and rejuvenates, bringing newfound relevance to an old character. Cory Barlog, series director since the second game and a lead animator in the first game, had to fight hard to keep the story about Kratos and his growth since his famous three- to five-game murder spree. He was right to trust his instincts in making Kratos a father, inspired by the success of Sony stablemate Naughty Dog’s “The Last of Us.”
The story is refreshingly small in scale, despite the DNA of the series: Kratos, along with his son Atreus, fulfill his wife’s final request to scatter her ashes across the tallest peak in the nine realms of Norse mythology. Against their will, they are forced into conflict with the local gods. Kratos now realizes his actions throughout the entire original trilogy amounted to nothing, and he desperately wants to avoid exposing his song to such depravity. Despite being a funeral march (or perhaps because of it) Kratos’s adventure with his son plumbs the consequences of toxic masculinity and absent fatherhood, and the work it takes to repair a broken relationship.
The novelty of the transition from the original trilogy to the reboot has faded since the 2018 game’s release, but that doesn’t take anything away from its improbable success. Among the PlayStation 4′s incredible archive of exclusive titles, this “God of War” is among the easiest to recommend to almost anyone.
No other game set the stakes higher than this one. While cliffhangers are tricky to get right, Cory Barlog’s directorial debut lays claim to having the most tantalizing cliffhanger ever written in the medium. It starts with Kratos, a small but might god, being betrayed by Zeus, and ends with him literally cutting the threads of fate that bind him so he could ride a Titan as he declares war on the Greek gods. Barlog starting out as an animator on this series is telling: Kratos’s movement distinguishes him from other action game protagonists, even as it wears its inspirations, Capcom’s Devil May Cry and Street Fighter series, on its sleeve.
It’s that fighting game mentality that locks in how tight fights feel. The game has an innate understanding of spectacle that contributes to this sense that Barlog isn’t just animating Kratos, he’s animating the entire world — and its destruction — around him. There’s a sharper focus on cinematic action, and this time, the Santa Monica Studio team has full command of the PlayStation 2′s capabilities. This second game is often called the swan song of the PlayStation 2, history’s best-selling gaming console.
Is it recency bias? Is it too early to declare this new game the best in the series? Perhaps, but once you play it, it’s hard to argue against its strengths, and how much it recalls the past trilogy while accentuating its best qualities. The improvements from 2018 are easy to spot, and the largest combat encounters rival the sequences found in the bombastic second and third games. Giant enemies fill the screen — and this time there are several emotional layers to each fight, due to Kratos’s reluctance to participate. This added tension makes every fight in this game just a bit more exciting than any other in the series.
“Ragnarok” also boasts the best puzzles in the series, working mostly with logic and lines of sight instead of the hide-and-seek frivolities of the 2018 title’s puzzles, or the rote block-and-lever puzzles of the first games. The fighting is the best ever in the series, mixing the perspective of the 2018 prequel while recalling the glory days of Sparta with a brand new moveset that will delight longtime players. And while the story has some pacing issues in its first several hours, it resolves as the most rewarding and hopeful ever seen in the series. Zeus was an easy villain to hate; the Norse All-Father Odin brings a new kind of seductive menace to the proceedings.
Instead of a cliffhanger like in the previous games, we are instead left with a sense of loss hanging over us. “Ragnarok” is a heartbreaking yet life-affirming triumph. | 2022-11-04T21:15:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Every God of War game, ranked - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/04/every-god-of-war-game-ranked/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/04/every-god-of-war-game-ranked/ |
Key in D.C.'s election: wages for tipped workers, at-large council race
Voters cast their ballots in the primary election at the Turkey Thicket Recreation Center in D.C. in June. (Julia Nikhinson/For The Washington Post)
Election Day likely won’t bring drastic change to the Washington this year, with Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) nearly assured of a third term leading the capital city. But voters will have a second chance to weigh in on whether businesses should be required to pay tipped workers the full minimum wage, and will shape the direction of the city council in an election where at least one sitting member of the legislative body is guaranteed to lose their spot.
Thanks to mail-in ballots sent to every registered voter, drop boxes dotting the city and a host of in-person early voting centers, well over 50,000 residents voted before Election Day. Many who did share a qualified optimism about the state of the District — pleased with the city’s leadership and prosperity in many cases, but often eager for solutions to persistent problems like crime and high housing costs.
“I look at some of the things that are going on in D.C., and I want to ensure that we continue in the right direction. I like the growth in the city, and I want to ensure that we bring everyone along,” said Fannie Barksdale, a retiree who lives in Ward 5. “I love the new apartment complexes going up. I love that you have shopping in your neighborhood. We’ve just got to bring along the less fortunate.”
To that end, Barksdale supported not just Bowser’s reelection, but Initiative 82, a ballot question that asks voters whether tipped workers should receive the full minimum wage paid to other workers or should continue to receive a lesser minimum wage supplemented by tips. Barksdale believes all workers should get the full minimum wage, which was the winning position when the same question was on the ballot four years ago. That time, the D.C. Council repealed the measure; Council chairman Phil Mendelson (D), who is likely to win his bid for reelection, has signaled that he won’t intervene if residents pass the initiative again, after leading a charge against it four years ago. Several other council members have made a similar promise.
“Not everybody gives a tip when you go into a restaurant, and we know that that’s their job — everybody is deserving of a minimum wage,” Barksdale said. Charlene Pierce, a retiree who lives in Ward 7, said she thought long and hard before voting in favor of Initiative 82. “It’s a Catch-22 for everybody. How are the employers going to fare if they raise the wage? And how are the workers going to fare if they can’t get a raise?”
Others struggled with the question for different reasons: Kevin Lambert, a 75-year-0ld Columbia Heights resident, intended to vote against the measure. He is concerned that it could harm businesses by raising costs. But he didn’t realize the question about the initiative was on the reverse side of his ballot. “Dang. It’s too late now,” he said with disappointment.
On her choice for mayor, Pierce said that when she has called government offices about abandoned cars and other nuisances in her neighborhood, she has found the response to be slow. She worries that government officials, including Bowser, care less about the needs of poor neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, which have been historically underserved.
“I don’t think we get the respect we deserve as voting, taxpaying citizens,” she said. Still, she voted for Bowser, noting that there were no well-known opponents on the ballot for her to choose. “She doesn’t always make me happy, but she’s doing a good job.”
The most competitive race is for two at-large seats on the D.C. Council. Three incumbent council members — two who currently hold the at-large seats, Anita Bonds (D) and Elissa Silverman (I), and one, Kenyan R. McDuffie, who has represented Ward 5 as a Democrat and is now running for the citywide seat as an independent — are competing with five additional candidates.
That contest has turned on a number of issues. Bonds, who chairs the council’s housing committee, has faced criticism in light of a searing report last month from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development on the city’s public housing. Silverman, a left-leaning council member who chairs the labor committee and has focused on workplace issues including creating the city’s paid parental leave benefit, has long been a target of business owners; many have flocked to support McDuffie, and some to independent Graham McLaughlin.
As the only Democrat on the ballot, Bonds is likely to win one seat, setting up what many see as a contest pitting Silverman against McDuffie for the remaining spot.
Both racked up new donations in the final weeks of the campaign, according to campaign finance reports due eight days before the election. Silverman, who is taking public financing — which caps the amount donors can give her but matches the money with city funds — took in just over $75,000 since Oct. 10 and spent more than $142,000 in those weeks. McDuffie — who is ineligible for public financing after using it in his aborted primary campaign for attorney general and thus can accept much larger private and corporate donations — raised more than $72,000 in the final weeks, mostly from donors who gave the $1,000 maximum, and spent more than $152,000.
In comparison, McLaughlin — who has been a strong fundraiser for a first-time candidate, raising more than $280,000 in total with public financing — took in just under $29,000 in the final weeks, and Republican Giuseppe Niosi raised $1,325. Other at-large candidates did not file their last campaign finance reports on time.
Silverman has criticized some of McDuffie and McLaughlin’s donors, arguing that the interests of wealthy developers and corporations carry too much weight in city politics. McDuffie and Niosi, meanwhile, have critiqued Silverman for a recent determination from the city’s Office of Campaign Finance that she should not have used taxpayer funds to poll a ward-level race ahead of the June primary.
She was ordered to pay back more than $6,000 she spent on the poll but has appealed the ruling, which came after a formal complaint from one of her other opponents, Karim Marshall, who touts his experience writing bills as a council staffer.
Race is also a salient factor in the contest: Silverman is White and McDuffie is Black.
“Some people are concerned about the council being majority Black, and want to support Anita and Kenyan, which would help the African American community keep a majority of the council seats,” longtime Ward 8 activist Philip Pannell said. “There has been talk about that — that’s important to political power for African Americans in the city, at least mathematically.”
The council has a Black majority, with seven out of 13 members. The most likely outcome is that the council continues to have seven Black members if Silverman wins or grows to eight Black members if McDuffie wins.
Reginald Wills, a doctor who lives in Ward 5 and voted in-person during early voting, declined to say who he picked in the at-large race, but said he was only interested in Black candidates. “The city’s becoming very gentrified. I’ve been here for 45 years,” said Wills, who believes Bowser and other Black leaders have competently supported local businesses and provided good city services.
The racial dynamic has more prominence to some observers than a left-versus-moderate split, though McDuffie is more moderate on taxation and some other issues.
“At first glance, when I said I supported Kenyan McDuffie, some people might have been shocked,” said Markus Batchelor, a former State Board of Education member known as a leader in the city’s left-leaning activist community. “We’ve got to think about our politics as more nuanced than that. The folks who very often define what ‘progressive’ means, in a very stark way in our city, don’t necessarily look like me or Kenyan … If you go into progressive spaces, they don’t match that aesthetic who clearly, at least from my perspective, would benefit the most from progressive policies.”
Bridget Reavis-Tyler, a retired city government employee, opted for Marshall, a newcomer in the at-large race. “I’m trying to get some new blood up in there, even though I’m old,” she said. She said she worries about gentrification during Bowser’s administration. “She was doing a lot of building up, letting stuff come in, and not doing for the people, forgetting who voted for her.”
Five other spots on the D.C. Council are also up for election, with winners of the Democratic primary favored to win in each race. In addition to Mendelson, incumbent Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1) expects to win reelection. Incumbent Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) is uncontested. In Ward 5, Zachary Parker — the left-leaning former school board member who won a competitive Democratic primary — faces Republican Clarence Lee Jr. In Ward 3, another left-leaning primary winner, Matthew Frumin, is running against Republican David Krucoff, who has trumpeted his endorsement from The Washington Post’s editorial board, which is separate from the news operation.
The same four wards — 1, 3, 5, and 6 — also have races on the ballot this year for their State Board of Education representatives. In the race for attorney general, Brian Schwalb, who was endorsed by outgoing Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) before winning the Democratic primary, is uncontested.
The ballot also includes elections for D.C.'s nonvoting delegate to the U.S. House (longtime delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is a heavy favorite to hold the seat), shadow representative in Congress and advisory neighborhood commissioner, a hyperlocal office.
Polls will be open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Residents can vote at any polling place in the city, regardless of their home address. A complete list of Election Day polling places can be found here. | 2022-11-04T21:19:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Key in D.C.'s election: wages for tipped workers, at-large council race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/dc-election-council-wage-initiative/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/dc-election-council-wage-initiative/ |
James M. Shellow in the early 1970s. (Family photo)
James M. Shellow, a criminal defense lawyer renowned for his sharp cross-examinations and the pleasure he took in being a highly sought-after legal ace, including expensive wine and crisp $100 bills, died Oct. 29 at his home in Milwaukee. He was 95.
The cause was covid-19, said his daughter Jill R. Shellow.
In Wisconsin courtrooms, where he defended mob members, drug offenders and anyone else facing time in a cage — his description of incarceration — Mr. Shellow was a legal legend and mentor to criminal defense attorneys who revered his tenacious advocacy and capacity for 20-hour work days.
“Jim was just at war with the universe,” said Dean Strang, one of his proteges. “He was the sort of guy who knocked the planet a couple of degrees off its axis — just an audacious and irresistible human being. And he just absolutely detested the deprivation of liberty.”
Although he wasn’t as well known as Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey or Leslie Abramson, Mr. Shellow was frequently hired by lawyers across the country to cross-examine key witnesses, especially in drug cases, a subject on which he literally wrote the book — “Cross-Examination of the Analyst in Drug Prosecutions.”
“The cross-examination must impeach the character of the witness,” he wrote in a legal journal. “He must give answers which are implausible or unreasonable. The jury must be encouraged from such responses to find that the witness is biased and untrustworthy and from this infer that his opinions are unreliable.”
One way Mr. Shellow accomplished this, Strang said, was by getting prosecution witnesses to admit they weren’t qualified for their jobs or couldn’t for certain say whether the drug in question — typically cocaine or heroin — was the chemical substance defined in the statute.
In one case Mr. Shellow cited in describing his methods, he asked a prosecution witness to name just one “recognized scientific treatise that says that what you were doing was the right way to do it.”
“No, I cannot name a book,” the witness said.
“Can you name a book in any language, English, German, French, any language at all,” Mr. Shellow continued, “that is the appropriate methodology for analyzing cocaine? One treatise in any language?”
“I cannot name a treatise,” the witness answered. “No, sir.”
James Myers Shellow was born on Oct. 31, 1926, in Milwaukee. His mother had a Ph.D. in psychology and worked as a psychologist for the Milwaukee police. His father was a labor union accountant.
Mr. Shellow nearly followed both of their career paths.
After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1950, he stayed and received a master’s degree in psychology. While there, he dated fellow psychology student Gilda Bloom, marrying her in 1950. Mr. Shellow then worked as a systems engineer for Chance Vought, a military airplane manufacturer, and also became a certified public accountant. He found all of those experiences boring and unrewarding, so he went to law school, graduating from Marquette University in 1961.
Mr. Shellow’s first foray into criminal defense came during his third year at Marquette, when he read an article in Life magazine about a conspiracy trial involving Joseph Bonanno, Paul Castellano and several other known mafia members. The key piece of evidence on which they were convicted was a meeting the men held in Upstate New York.
But Mr. Shellow, in reading the news coverage and later the trial transcripts, noticed that prosecutors had presented evidence only of a meeting, not that a conspiracy was planned during it.
“Convinced that the argument was misframed at trial, Shellow tried to convince the defense attorneys that they should push his argument on appeal,” according to Wisconsin Lawyer magazine. “When his letters proved unpersuasive, he took a train to New York and asked for a meeting with one of the attorneys.”
“After hearing Shellow’s spiel,” the magazine reported, “the lawyer told him to enjoy the sights and have a safe trip back to Milwaukee.”
Mr. Shellow persisted. He took a train to Cleveland to speak with Osmond Frankel, a civil rights lawyer working on the case.
“As the story goes, after an hour, Frankel was convinced,” Wisconsin Lawyer magazine wrote. “He immediately called the other attorneys and they changed the appellate brief to mirror Shellow’s theory. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, and all the convictions were overturned.”
Criminal defense law consumed Mr. Shellow’s life, and not just by the sheer number of hours he billed. His wife became a criminal defense lawyer and for years they practiced out of their home, where they raised two daughters who also became criminal defense lawyers.
Mr. Shellow luxuriated in his prominence. Strang, a prominent criminal defense attorney for Steven Avery, whose murder trial was chronicled on the hit Netflix show “Making a Murderer,” remembers the evening Mr. Shellow hired him.
“Let’s go have a great meal and get drunk,” Mr. Shellow told him.
Sitting at dinner, with the wine flowing, Strang said Mr. Shellow predicted his success in the courtroom and out: “You’re going to drink too much. You’re going to chase women. And you’re going to carry $100 bills.”
Mr. Shellow’s daughter Jill said that was all true.
“My father didn’t stop smoking until the day before he died,” she said. “He liked very good wine and he drank like a fish. And, frankly, he chased anything in a skirt.”
In addition to his criminal defense work, Mr. Shellow worked pro-bono for fair housing and desegregation advocates, Vietnam War protesters and civil rights activists, including Father James E. Groppi, a Catholic priest jailed for contempt after a protest in the Wisconsin State Assembly chamber. Lawyers from Mr. Shellow’s firm took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and won.
Mr. Shellow’s wife died in 2005, and their daughter Robin Shellow died last year. In addition to his daughter Jill, of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., survivors include a brother and a grandson.
Strang, in recalling Mr. Shellow’s career, said his own life as a lawyer wasn’t a complete copy of his mentor’s.
“I don’t drink that much,” he said. “I can barely manage one woman. But I carry one $100 bill in my wallet to this day. I will always have that $100 bill in my wallet to remember Jim Shellow.” | 2022-11-04T21:37:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | James M. Shellow, criminal defense lawyer and masterful cross-examiner, dies at 95 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/04/james-shellow-famous-criminal-defense-attorney-dies-at-95/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/04/james-shellow-famous-criminal-defense-attorney-dies-at-95/ |
Polling suggests Maryland voters favor naming Democrats Wes Moore and Anthony Brown as governor and attorney general, respectively, both of which would be historic wins
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore, flanked by Morgan State University President David Wilson, left, and University of Maryland law professor Larry Gibson, arrives at Morgan State's student center in Baltimore on Oct. 20, 2022. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Polls show Moore, a former chief of an anti-poverty organization, and U.S. Rep. Anthony Brown (D), who would become the state’s first Black attorney general, with commanding leads heading into Election Day.
Their victories would set up a concentration of Black state-level power unprecedented in this country.
And they would govern from Annapolis — home to a statehouse that until 2017 featured a statue of Justice Roger B. Taney, author of the 1857 Dred Scott ruling, which said Black people, enslaved or free, could not be American citizens.
Democrat Wes Moore is poised to become Maryland’s first Black governor and Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.), could become the state’s first Black attorney general. (Video: Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)
That Black leaders could hold four top statewide offices — including state treasurer and House speaker — is especially significant in Maryland, one of the most diverse states in the country and one of two to flip from majority White to majority non-White over the past decade. The full slate of statewide Democrats projected to win contains no White men.
“It’s a different day, a new day, in many respects,” said Republican Michael Steele, who made an unsuccessful bid for state comptroller in 1998 before becoming the first Black person elected statewide in Maryland, as lieutenant governor, No. 2 to Robert L. Ehrlich.
The projected wins for the Democrats would also place the home state of abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass at the vanguard of an expected nationwide trend of diversifying political representation as demographics shift. The state’s Asian and Hispanic populations grew as the share of Black residents held steady in recent years, according to 2020 U.S. Census data, which show that a majority of Marylanders now identify as people of color.
Democrats’ statewide slate includes a woman for comptroller and an immigrant and woman of color for lieutenant governor — their victories would be the first such for Maryland.
As the nation moves toward becoming predominantly non-White — projections show minorities will make up the majority by 2050 — the sea change in Maryland could signal a turning point as the people atop power structures increasingly reflect the diversity of the nation they govern.
If the polls turn out to be accurate, said Mileah Kromer, a political scientist at Goucher College, Maryland would represent “the promise of Democratic politics.”
Wilder, a grandson of enslaved people, avoided talk of race in his precedent-setting bid to lead Virginia 33 years ago. And while Moore campaigns on tackling issues that disproportionately affect people of color — childhood poverty, disinvestment in schools, career and job readiness — his identity is not a central feature of his appeals as he seeks to become Maryland’s 63rd governor.
“We’re not running to make history,” Moore, a best-selling author, recently told several dozen students gathered at Morgan State University, Maryland’s largest historical Black college.
“That’s not the assignment,” Moore said. “The assignment is — in this moment, we have a unique opportunity to make child poverty history. We have a unique opportunity to make the racial wealth gap history.”
Barriers to elected leadership
On the campaign trail, however, the historic significance of a potential Moore victory remains front and center for many supporters, including those who most recently made unsuccessful bids to be the state’s first Black governor.
A 90-year-old woman at an NAACP event wrote Moore a poem. Students tell him they see a future they were skeptical would ever arrive. Veteran politicians who deftly navigated racial dynamics to pave the way for Moore admire that he built a strong coalition of people across racial and economic lines.
Standing on the edge of an expansive brick patio at the home of former Montgomery County executive Isiah Leggett recently, Sen. Susan C. Lee (D-Montgomery) shouted Moore’s introduction to the crowd, largely composed of immigrants:
“He is the embodiment of our own personal experience, hopes and dreams,” Lee said, noting Moore’s Jamaican heritage. “It is our time, right?”
The crowd cheered. A couple of Black women shouted “amen.”
Leggett, who spent decades mentoring other Black candidates, said Maryland has made enormous strides since his first run for an at-large seat on the Montgomery County Council 40 years ago.
Leggett, who like Moore is a veteran and a White House fellow, kept his face off campaign literature for the first six months of that contest.
A lawyer teaching at Howard University Law School at the time, Leggett was a political newcomer who “wanted [voters] to look carefully at my background and my experience,” not his race. “We may have overreacted, but who knows,” he said.
In more than a dozen interviews, Democratic and Republican leaders, political strategists and analysts detailed how Maryland has reached what U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) described as the impending “constellation of power” of Black political leadership.
They detailed the complex nature of running as a Black candidate in a state along the Mason-Dixon Line, long referred to as “America in miniature” for its geographic and demographic diversity and voters who span the political spectrum.
Some say candidates of color are held to a different standard by the voters, the media and party leaders, required to run near-perfect races. Others fault the state Democratic Party’s structure, saying it has failed to fully embrace Black candidates in a state where Democrats hold a 2-to-1 registration advantage over Republicans.
Despite having faced a popular Republican incumbent with significantly more money and a moderate message, former NAACP president and 2018 Democratic nominee Ben Jealous does not lay the blame for his loss on his liberal message, as many Democratic leaders and analysts have. Instead, he largely faults former Senate president Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., who was the de facto head of the state Democratic Party, and a political machine that he said never fully rallied behind his candidacy. It’s an explanation that resonates with other Black leaders, too.
Then-Rep. Donna F. Edwards, who is Black and ran for U.S. Senate in 2016, criticized Miller during her campaign for describing her opponent, then-Rep. Chris Van Hollen, as being “born to the job.”
“The fact is, our country’s systems and institutions have largely been led by people who have always looked like that senior elected official, not like me,” Edwards wrote in a fundraising email. “I don’t believe anyone in this country was born to anything.”
Miller, the nation’s longest-serving state Senate president, died in January 2021. He was a country-boy Democrat who rose to become the kingmaker of Annapolis, an unmatched tactician with an uncanny ability to predict political outcomes. Miller, who led the Maryland Senate for 33 years, was known for ruling with an iron grip and at times sparring with Black leaders who pushed for more progress on issues important to Black people.
Alvin Thornton, retired chairman of the political science department at Howard University, said many Black statewide candidates faced resistance from Miller and others.
“A Wes Moore phenomenon would never have emerged during the period of vibrancy of Mike Miller. That, I think, would never have even gotten off the ground,” Thornton said. “Call it machine politics, call it the Breakfast Club politics, call it whatever, [it] certainly hurt and held back not only the Black community … it hurt the state.”
Jealous said that when he looks back on his race and Moore’s ascension, he often thinks about his grandmother and how she was harassed by Maryland State House police in the early 1960s while working as a social worker. They didn’t think she had the right to park in Annapolis where she did. The governor intervened and put her name on a parking space.
“I think of all the micro-steps along the way to build a state where this was possible,” he said.
Georgetown University government professor Nadia E. Brown, who chairs the women’s and gender studies program, said implicit and explicit racism lead voters to reject candidates of color in statewide races and party power structures to undermine or sideline them.
“Anyone who comes from a marginalized, historically marginalized background has a harder time convincing a larger population that they have the leadership skills and qualities and bring something worthwhile to the table. And so that’s why we see so few,” she said.
Earlier this year, a prolific Democratic donor who served as the state party’s deputy treasurer stepped down amid criticism after she emailed party insiders questioning whether voters would elect a Black candidate for governor.
“Consider this: Three African American males have run statewide for Governor and have lost. Maryland is not a Blue state. It’s a purple one. This is a fact we must not ignore,” the email read.
Former Prince George’s County executive Rushern L. Baker III, who is Black and whose two attempts to run for governor were unsuccessful despite being backed by a lot of the state establishment, said at the time that “such comments merely serve to excuse and legitimize acts of institutional racism, whether at the voting booth, in our corridors of government or our institutions of business and civic life.”
House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, an early supporter of Moore, recently recalled hearing that a member of a trade group hesitated to support him during the primary “because he’s Black.”
After the person met Moore, “the guy was blown away,” Jones (D-Baltimore County) said she was told. “And I thought to myself, what did you expect? But I did not say that.”
State Treasurer Dereck E. Davis, who served 26 years as a delegate in the General Assembly, said that Maryland has been plagued by “old thinking and stereotypes” but that this year’s election appears to be proving that the state’s residents “are making a conscious decision on who they believe is the best candidate.”
“There’s always sort of been, I believe, this belief that, you know, we can always be lieutenant this, deputy that, always be the number two but never the number one,” he said.
Brown, who lost a bid for governor in 2014 and leads Republican Michael Peroutka by 32 percentage points in the race for attorney general, said the state’s changing demographics alone cannot account for the barrier-breaking elections on the horizon.
There is also a change in people’s thinking in general, he said.
“We’re seeing a greater diversity, and a greater diversity of people’s views around who is competent, who is capable and who can lead this state,” he told The Washington Post. “It’s not just Black and Brown people who are going to elect Wes Moore and Anthony Brown. We’re going to have support across the board, among all Marylanders.”
A vision and ‘dual responsibility’
Earlier this fall, Moore recalled, a union leader told him about how she was getting ready for his campaign event while chatting with her young grandson, a Black boy of kindergarten age, whom Moore had met once.
“She said her grandson said, ‘So, is that the one that looks like me?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, that’s the one who looks like you,’ ” he recounted in an interview with The Post.
Moore said having four Black people occupy some of the most influential positions in state government allows many people to feel as though their leaders know what their lives and struggles are like.
“To see people who understand our journeys, understand our past, there is a power to that,” he said.
Moore and Brown said that while they see themselves as leaders for all people in the state, they recognize what the state’s Black constituents see in them.
“As African American elected leaders, we have a unique, if not dual, responsibility,” Brown said. “We understand that we have to represent and fight for and govern on behalf of all Marylanders. But we have a unique responsibility to the African American community.”
Brown said that duality drives decision-making.
“This is a watershed moment in Maryland where having so many African Americans in key leadership positions is going to result in a greater emphasis on equity and inclusion throughout everything we do in the public sector, and, hopefully, it translates into the private sector,” he said.
The agenda pushed by Moore, Brown and other Democrats dovetails with the party’s broad national goals: child-care tax credits, advancing income equity and promoting social justice, taking aggressive action on climate change and child poverty. The slate hopes to quickly propel policies that moved incrementally under eight years of Republican governorship, enhancing funding of historically black colleges and universities, accelerating a hike in the minimum wage and implementing a statewide paid family leave program that squeaked into law after a gubernatorial veto.
The ticket is potentially a rare bright spot for the Democratic Party in a year in which the political head winds nationally favor Republicans, Democrats could lose control of Congress and President Biden has low job approval ratings.
National Democrats have rallied around Moore. Former president Barack Obama starred in a campaign ad for him. Vice President Harris recently headlined a get-out-the-vote event in Moore’s home city of Baltimore. Biden will hold an election-eve rally.
While Maryland Democrats have elevated a historically diverse slate, however, Maryland Republicans have selected candidates at the fringe of their party.
Peroutka, the Republican candidate for attorney general, is a former member of the League of the South, which the Southern Poverty Law Center labels a hate group. Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox, who has called the 2020 presidential election stolen, has not publicly committed to accepting the outcome of the gubernatorial election, which polling projects Moore will win by more than 30 percentage points.
But Democratic figures keep emphasizing: History is made only if voters show up.
Amari Jangha, 20, a senior at Morgan State University, was aware that Moore could make history and acknowledged his charisma.
But Jangha still wasn’t sold as he and a few dozen of his peers recently waited in the student center to hear Moore speak, as part of the candidate’s tour of the state’s historically black colleges and universities.
“It’s inspiring, it’s motivational and encouraging to see this kind of milestone be achieved, but it’s for naught if it doesn’t lead to the result that he’s promising,” Jangha said before the event.
Minutes later, as Moore talked about ending child poverty and addressing the disproportionate incarceration rates for Black men, Jangha nodded in agreement.
After the event, Jangha was all in, holding a Wes Moore button and plastic wristbands.
“It just makes me proud to be here,” he said. “Not necessarily at Morgan, but here in this moment.”
Erin Cox contributed to this report. | 2022-11-04T21:50:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland voters favor Wes Moore, Anthony Brown in likely historic wins - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/maryland-black-candidates-historic-races/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/maryland-black-candidates-historic-races/ |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.