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FILE - Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley watches during an NCAA college basketball game against Stanford, Saturday, March 5, 2022, in Tempe, Ariz. Hurley had built Arizona State into a contender, taking the program to the cusp of a third straight NCAA Tournament in 2020. The pandemic cut that bid short and the Sun Devils haven’t been the same since. That could change this season, a pivotal one for Hurley’s tenure in the desert.(AP Photo/Darryl Webb, File) | 2022-11-06T19:35:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Plan for chaos': Roster upheaval dominates college hoops - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/plan-for-chaos-roster-upheaval-dominates-college-hoops/2022/11/06/27e24590-5e00-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/plan-for-chaos-roster-upheaval-dominates-college-hoops/2022/11/06/27e24590-5e00-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
U.S. gymnasts Jade Carey, Brody Malone cap worlds with gold medals
U.S. gymnast Jade Carey (right) celebrates winning the gold medal with silver medalist Jordan Chiles at the 2022 Gymnastics World Championships. (Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
American gymnasts Jade Carey and Brody Malone capped their world championships with gold medals in the apparatus finals, highlighting the U.S. squad’s strong run through the last two days of competition. In addition to the golds from Carey on vault and Malone on high bar, the U.S. team won four other medals this weekend during the final stage of the event in Liverpool, England.
Shilese Jones, the silver medalist at nationals this summer, had a standout showing in her world championships debut. She won a silver in the all-around and another silver on bars to go along with her gold in the team competition. In the bars final Saturday, she delivered an excellent routine to score a 14.766, behind only China’s Wei Xiaoyuan and ahead of Olympic gold medalist Nina Derwael of Belgium. Consistency had been an issue for Jones in the past, but her clean performances in Liverpool affirmed her status as one of the country’s top gymnasts.
Jordan Chiles and Carey each added two individual medals to their team gold, with Carey taking the gold on vault, and Chiles winning the silver. Carey had been projected to win an Olympic medal on this apparatus last summer, but she slipped on the runway in the final and had to bail out of her difficult vault.
At the world championships, all-around champion Rebeca Andrade of Brazil would have been the gold medal favorite on vault, but she didn’t advance to the final after a fluke, similar to Carey’s trouble in Tokyo, in the qualifying round. Carey and Andrade on Sunday tied for the bronze on floor, with Britain’s Jessica Gadirova winning the gold.
Chiles, a Tokyo Olympian, had a strong performance in the team final as the only American to contribute on all four apparatuses. She then won silver medals on vault and floor.
Skye Blakely, a 17-year-old, has a difficult beam routine and fell in the final, finishing fifth with a 13.300. Without the one-point deduction for the fall, Blakely would have had the top score ahead of gold medalist Hazuki Watanabe of Japan.
Malone earned the only medal for the American men with his gold on high bar, the first for the United States on the apparatus since Kurt Thomas in 1979. Malone’s score of 14.800 edged Japanese star Daiki Hashimoto (14.700), the Olympic all-around and high bar champion.
Malone, the 2021 world bronze medalist on high bar, is the two-time defending U.S. all-around champion and will lead this team for years to come. The 22-year-old finished fourth in the all-around in Liverpool, narrowly missing a spot on the podium.
Behind Malone, 18-year-old Asher Hong had a strong debut at his first worlds, placing sixth in the all-around. It was the first time two American men have finished in the top 10 at world championships since 2003.
The U.S. men had a disappointing showing in the team final, finishing fifth despite medal hopes entering the competition. With Russia banned because of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, the Americans had a better chance than usual to win a medal, but they had a handful of major mistakes in the final.
The other U.S. men in the apparatus finals did not medal. Stephen Nedoroscik, the pommel horse world champion in 2021, placed fifth on that apparatus, and Donnell Whittenburg finished eighth on rings. | 2022-11-06T19:35:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. gymnasts Jade Carey, Brody Malone win gold at world championships - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/11/06/jade-carey-brody-malone-gold-worlds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/11/06/jade-carey-brody-malone-gold-worlds/ |
The senator is drawing sharp rebukes for how he invokes race when talking about his Black opponent
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson speaks at a rally in Racine on Saturday. Johnson was campaigning with GOP gubernatorial nominee Tim Michels. (Alex Wroblewski for The Washington Post)
BLACK RIVER FALLS, Wis. — As he made his final pitch to voters in western Wisconsin last week, Sen. Ron Johnson told a story about a truck driver who got stuck while navigating a tricky road.
The senator said he was driving through Portage when he encountered a traffic snarl caused by the immobile truck. Johnson said he is typically impatient but was not in this case because he witnessed something “heartwarming”: The people of the small community in central Wisconsin sprang into action to help the truck driver get going again.
He ended the story with this reveal: “You know, one little point really — really doesn’t factor in the story at all. But the driver was an African American gentleman. So now why would I add that little detail? I happen to be running against Mandela Barnes,” Johnson said.
Barnes, currently Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor, is Black, and has criticized the impact of systemic racism on society in blunt terms. Johnson has called attention to those remarks in recent days, along with the anecdote about the truck driver, which took place in a town that is nearly 90 percent White. His campaign did not respond to questions about what message Johnson hopes to convey with the story, but critics think it is intended to assure White voters that Barnes is wrong about systemic racism being a concern in Wisconsin.
Race has played a central role in the Wisconsin senatorial election, which is among the closest in the country and could determine the partisan balance of the Senate. Supporters of both candidates have accused the other side of unfairly injecting race into the campaign. For weeks, outside GOP groups have financed an onslaught of ads, including a spot that showed Barnes’s name styled in graffiti, and others that have labeled him as “dangerously liberal” and “different.” In some advertisements Barnes’s skin has been darkened.
At a campaign stop Saturday in Racine, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers criticized Johnson and the GOP for playing up race in the Senate campaign. “I think they’ve gone out of their way to make him look like a mean and angry man — making his face look darker. That’s baloney, frankly,” Evers, who is in a tight reelection race, told reporters after a rally with supporters.
“I think it’s racism when you’re — when you take a candidate who happens to be Black — and try to make him look blacker and angrier.” Evers said.
In his stump speech during the past several days, Johnson has repeated some of Barnes’s past comments about systemic racism and said the Democratic nominee has shown “contempt” for America. “That’s what he thinks about you. Literally, do you want him representing you?” Johnson asked a crowd in Black River Falls.
“No!” several people yelled.
Johnson continued: “Why does he want to represent people that he views are just systemically racist?”
A spokesman for Johnson’s campaign argued that Barnes’s past comments about systemic racism have made the subject fair game. “Sadly, Lt. Gov. Barnes is the candidate that inserted race into the campaign,” said Johnson spokesman Ben Voelkel.
Voelkel added: “Lt. Gov. Barnes wants to talk about anything other than his record as a career politician that supports President Biden’s inflationary policies that crush the economy and wants to defund the police and let violent criminals walk free.”
For the most part, Barnes has hesitated to engage on questions about whether Johnson and the Republicans are leveling racist attacks. When asked directly about Johnson’s attacks Friday, he compared him to the state’s infamous red-baiting former senator. Barnes said Johnson is “the worst senator in Wisconsin since Joe McCarthy” and that the current senator is “doing his best to emulate him.”
Actor LeVar Burton, of “Star Trek” fame, who campaigned with Barnes in Madison on Friday, said Johnson “is one of my least favorite human beings. He’s arrogant. He’s racist. Just look at the ads he runs.”
Earlier last week at an event at the Rotary Club in Milwaukee, Barnes was asked about Johnson’s comments questioning why he wanted to represent people he thought were racist. “I wouldn’t run for the U.S. Senate, I wouldn’t be here today, if any of these things that he said were true,” Barnes said.
Should he prevail, Barnes would be Wisconsin’s first Black senator. The state is 87 percent White, according to 2022 census data. It’s become one of the country’s key swing states, with most major elections in recent years decided by exceedingly slim margins.
Voters here backed Barack Obama twice in presidential elections, then helped send Donald Trump to the White House in 2016. Some political observers, including supporters of Barnes, say that focusing on race, especially on comments that Barnes has made on the topic, is intended to make some voters uncomfortable with Barnes’s views and uneasy with voting for him.
At the beginning of the year, Wisconsin was considered among the top Democratic opportunities to flip a Republican Senate seat, largely because Johnson, 67, was not popular in his home state. In February, just 33 percent of Wisconsin voters reported having a favorable view of Johnson, while 45 percent reported an unfavorable view, according to a Marquette Law School Poll. But in recent weeks, Johnson has appeared to gain an edge.
In a wide-ranging July 2021 interview on Black Oxygen, a podcast, Barnes said that national parks “weren’t made for the enjoyment of people who weren’t White” and added that some of them are carved from Indigenous land. In the interview he also says the parks have “many positive benefits.”
In a 2018 radio interview, he said racism in Wisconsin is “a little more scary” because it’s “much more concealed” than in the Deep South and “can be institutionalized.” He quipped that the dynamic could be called “concealed-carry racism.”
Johnson has pointed out both those remarks in recent speeches, saying that Democrats — and Barnes in particular — want to fundamentally change the state and that Barnes’s discussion of racism in society is off-base.
The senator has his own history of comments that have drawn scrutiny. A few months after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Johnson made a comment that was widely condemned as racist, with some even calling for him to resign. In an interview on a conservative news radio program, Johnson, who was in the Capitol when rioters broke in and ransacked the building, said he “wasn’t concerned” about his safety. “I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law,” he said, referring to the mostly White, pro-Trump rioters. But, he continued, “had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”
Johnson supporters downplay racism in the campaign. “Mandela Barnes’ inability to win over voters in Wisconsin, like his lack of achievements as our Lt. Governor is his fault, not the result of racism,” state Sen. Julian Bradley, a Republican, said in a statement. Bradley, who is the first Black Republican elected to the state Senate, said that Barnes would have more traction with voters if he spent more time focused on rising crime, which he said is “an issue which disproportionately impacts black families.”
Johnson’s strategy of amplifying race on the trail is an attempt to appeal to GOP base voters, said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll. “We are in that very last push to mobilize every last possible partisan voter,” Franklin said.
The state’s western communities, where Johnson has unspooled his latest stump speech, are mostly White. There, race resonates even in a reference to Milwaukee, where most of the state’s Black population lives, and which can be painted to some voters as a “scary place, far away,” he said.
“When you’re as evenly divided a state as we are, turnout could make the difference,” Franklin said. “Maybe base appeals at this point are what the campaigns have decided to focus on.”
As he campaigned last week, Johnson told the story about the truck driver at least twice. Both times, he didn’t mention the driver’s race at first and instead led with the driver’s predicament: He had struggled to navigate a difficult turn and was causing a traffic delay.
“It had to be so embarrassing for this guy,” Johnson said at a Tuesday afternoon stop in Onalaska, a town of about 6,000 where 96 percent are White, according to census data. “He was in a horrible predicament.”
But locals stopped to help the man, Johnson explained. Some directed traffic. Others offered advice on how to best maneuver the truck. Finally, the man was able to drive away. “It’s just one of those moments of just sort of joy, right?” Johnson said, explaining how those who helped gave him a thumbs up and honked to cheer him.
Reggie Jackson, a historian based in Milwaukee, said it’s clear to him what Johnson is trying to do. “He’s trying to pander to White people’s idea that America isn’t racist,” said Jackson, who said he has not offered a public endorsement in the campaign.
The story about the Black truck driver aided by the White residents of the community is a “tried and true trope to get White people to feel good about themselves,” Jackson said. It’s a kind of sophistic logic, suggesting that a White person can’t be racist if they have once helped a Black person, he said.
Jackson also took issue with Johnson’s comments suggesting that Barnes is unpatriotic. “It’s just completely at odds with where Wisconsinites are. We love this country,” Johnson told reporters after the Onalaska rally.
That type of rhetoric comes from a long history of White people questioning the loyalty of Black citizens who complain about discrimination in the United States, Jackson said. “They used to say, ‘if you don’t like it, find another place to live.’”
“It’s another shameful attempt to placate White people. Because there’s been so much conversation about systemic racism,” Jackson said.
Johnson told the story about the truck driver while on a 10-day “get out the vote” tour of the state with more than 60 stops.
On Saturday, the GOP candidate stopped in Racine, about 30 minutes south of Milwaukee, where he gave an abbreviated version of his stump speech. The truck driver section was gone, but he continued to amplify race. He invoked Martin Luther King Jr. “Almost all of us — virtually all of us — didn’t we embrace, in the ’60s, Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision?” He added: “Why can’t we celebrate that success and work toward further healing?”
But, he argued, that’s not the approach that’s been taken by Barnes and by former president Barack Obama, who was in Wisconsin recently stumping for the Democratic candidate. “Why would he want to represent a bunch of people who have institutionalized racism?” Johnson asked.
Some voters at Johnson’s Racine event agreed with his framing.
“Does racism still exist? Yes,” said Taylor Wishau, 33, of Burlington after listening to Johnson speak Saturday. “But I don’t think it’s as prevalent as it was.”
Wishau, who is White, said that if Barnes wins the Senate race he hopes that he “retracts” some of his comments about systemic racism. “If there’s so much racism in this state, how did he get elected lieutenant governor? Just stop with the divisive politics.”
8:29 PMAt Trump rally in Miami, only scattered shows of support for DeSantis
8:00 PMTim Ryan rules out 2024 presidential run if he wins Senate race | 2022-11-06T21:22:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In campaign between Ron Johnson and Mandela Barnes, race is a central issue - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/06/johnson-barnes-racism-senate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/06/johnson-barnes-racism-senate/ |
FILE - Leola One Feather, left, of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, observes as John Willis photographs Native American artifacts on July 19, 2022, at the Founders Museum in Barre, Mass. A two hour ceremony was held in Massachusetts on Saturday, Nov. 5, 2022, to mark the symbolic return of about 150 items considered sacred by the Sioux peoples that had been stored at a small Massachusetts museum for more than a century. (AP Photo/Philip Marcelo, File) (Phil Marcelo/AP) | 2022-11-06T22:02:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Massachusetts museum returns sacred items to Sioux tribes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/massachusetts-museum-returns-sacred-items-to-sioux-tribes/2022/11/06/e7f06466-5e0f-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/massachusetts-museum-returns-sacred-items-to-sioux-tribes/2022/11/06/e7f06466-5e0f-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
MADRID — Another setback, another round of boos for Atlético Madrid.
Some of Atlético’s fans appear to be running out of patience with Diego Simeone’s team and expressed their disapproval after a 1-1 home draw against 10-man Espanyol in the Spanish league on Sunday. The result extended Atlético’s winless streak to four matches in all competitions.
The most radical group of Atlético fans had protested by not taking their seats behind one of the goals during the first half, leaving a large empty gap, and they were mostly quiet after coming in for the second half. They were booed by some of the other fans when they took their seats.
The draw came after Atlético lost at Porto on Tuesday in the Champions League to finish last in its group. It was only the second time in 10 seasons that Simeone’s team failed to advance to the knockout stage of the Champions League.
The draw with Espanyol left Atlético 10 points behind league leader Barcelona — which beat Almería 2-0 at home on Saturday — and eight points behind Real Madrid, which visits Rayo Vallecano on Monday.
Atlético can drop out of third place depending on the result of the Seville derby between fourth-place Real Betis and Sevilla later Sunday. Betis is one point behind Atlético.
Sociedad, winless in three consecutive league games, had opened the scoring a few minutes earlier with an own-goal by Valencia defender Hugo Guillamón. The visitors, winless in five league matches, equalized through Samuel Lino in the 25th.
SETIÉN’S STRUGGLES
Eighth-place Villarreal lost 2-0 to Mallorca at home as new coach Quique Setién remained winless in four matches in all competitions since replacing Unai Emery. | 2022-11-06T22:04:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | More boos for Atlético Madrid after another setback - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/more-boos-for-atletico-madrid-after-another-setback/2022/11/06/8a8bb22e-5df3-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/more-boos-for-atletico-madrid-after-another-setback/2022/11/06/8a8bb22e-5df3-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Protesters block 14th Street bridge complex
Traffic is snarled as protesters mass on the George Mason Memorial Bridge (14th St Bridge Complex) on Interstate 395 southbound from the District to Virginia, the Virginia Department of Transportation says on Twitter.
The nature of the protest is unclear. Travelers have been told to expect delays.
D.C. police officers are responding to the bridge. An initial call informing police about the protest came in at 3:44 p.m., according to a police department spokeswoman.
“We have our units responding,” said Officer Makhetha Watson. “We have units going up there to see what’s going on at the scene.” | 2022-11-06T22:32:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Protesters block 14th Street bridge complex - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/06/protesters-block-traffic-interstate-delays/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/06/protesters-block-traffic-interstate-delays/ |
Commanders fans cheer during Sunday's game between Washington and the Minnesota Vikings at FedEx Field. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
In the parking lots and in the stands at FedEx Field on Sunday, Washington Commanders fans saw the familiar “Sell the Team” signs and T-shirts and banners in a new light. The slogan for years had been a cry of frustration and of exasperation, the only recourse for those who had stuck around as a once-proud franchise lost games on the field and fans in the stands. But now, some said they felt a sense of hope.
Though there was skepticism, too — some said they will refuse to believe Daniel and Tanya Snyder would sell the Commanders until it actually happens — there were more signs, more banners and a buzz among the tailgaters. One fan improvised by sticking two sheets of paper below the windshield wipers of his Ford that read “BYE DAN.”
“It’s what this fan base needs to bring back people who have left us over the last [25] years,” said Justin Lake, a season ticket holder, adding: “It’s been tough as fans to stick through it. We’ve done our best. But this is a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel for us. It gives us hope.”
Back in Week 7, fans had chanted “Sell the team!” But this week, only one section of the crowd did — and it was just before kickoff. For the rest of the 20-17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, fans were more engaged by the players on the field than the owner in his luxury box. They contended with a sizable contingent of opposing fans, as usual, but cheered their team loudly and passionately as it battled to extend its winning streak against one of the best teams in the NFC.
During the game, the video boards didn’t show Tanya Snyder — her appearance had prompted boos in Week 7 — and the crowd’s energy was saved for the biggest moments: the heroics of quarterback Taylor Heinicke, the appearance of team dog Mando and the misfortune of Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins, who once played for Washington.
“You like that!” the crowd yelled, trolling him with an old catchphrase. “You like that! You like that!”
In and around FedEx Field on Sunday, fans remembered the shock and disbelief they felt after hearing Wednesday morning that the Snyders had retained an investment bank to “consider potential transactions.” Many learned of the news from sports radio, cellphone notifications or calls from friends and family members. Chris Handon did a double take when a broadcaster said it on Fox 5, and Miles Fang had to see several posts on Twitter before he believed it.
Lake called his father, Jeff, screaming with joy, and then picked up his 8-month-old son and said, with what he called genuine joy, “You’re not going to have to live through Dan Snyder!”
“We thought we were stuck,” Jeff Lake said, grinning.
Before the game, Tim Manley, a 47-year-old fan who owns a screen-printing business, set up his tailgate and hung on it some of the shirts he’d made over the years to chronicle the pains of rooting for Washington.
Once, he had created a shirt that read “WANTED” over a cartoon drawing of Snyder’s face. In 2016, he had made “Make the Redskins Great Again,” with “Fire Bruce” (referring to former team president Bruce Allen) and “Impeach Dan” on the back. In 2021, when Snyder bought out his minority partners, including FedEx founder Fred Smith, Manley photoshopped the old logo with the text “FedUp.”
Two weeks ago, after Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay said there was “merit” to remove Snyder as owner, Manley devised a new shirt. This one was inspired by Barack Obama’s iconic 2008 campaign poster and included a picture of Irsay’s face, tinted burgundy and gold, above the slogan “HOPE.” On the back, it read “SELL THE TEAM.”
“The only parade Dan Snyder would bring to D.C. is when he’s on his way out,” he added.
One fan, Nelita Stauffer, recently bought a “Sell the Team” shirt after she saw an ad on Instagram. Another, Walt Dowling, was in the club section during the Green Bay game last month when he saw fans in the stands below holding a sign with the same slogan. The next day, he read that stadium staffers forced the fans to take the signs down, and he resolved to support the cause himself.
“I decided to get the shirt to see if they tried to make me take it off,” he said.
In the afterglow of Wednesday’s announcement, fans dreamed of what that could mean. Some suggested it could mean a new culture, a new name and a new stadium — maybe even in D.C. But most just hoped that somehow, some way, it would give them back the winning team they once had.
“I’m not even talking about winning a Super Bowl,” Ryan Pinkston said. “[It’s] just feeling good again.”
Pinkston said he recently spent time with a friend who once had season tickets but eventually gave up on the team. The friend said he was trying to pick a new team to support.
“I said, ‘I will not accept your resignation,’ ” Pinkston remembered. “It’s going to make it so much better when we’re back.”
During the game, Coach Ron Rivera said he noticed a difference in the crowd. Commanders fans had battled Vikings supporters and tried to give his team a home-field advantage it so often lacks. In the end, even though the Commanders lost, some of the same fans who have made the bleak walk out of FedEx Field many times over the years didn’t seem so dejected anymore.
“Sell the team!” they chanted. “Sell the team! Sell the team! Sell the team!” | 2022-11-06T23:46:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commanders fans who have stuck out the Daniel Snyder era feel hope again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/06/commanders-fans-snyder-sell-team/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/06/commanders-fans-snyder-sell-team/ |
Coy Gibbs, son of Joe Gibbs and NASCAR team executive, dies at 49
Coy Gibbs, left, and wife Heather Gibbs posed with their son Ty Gibbs after he won the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship Saturday at Phoenix Raceway. (Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)
Coy Gibbs, the younger son of Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs who was an executive with his father’s auto racing team, died at 49.
Joe Gibbs Racing confirmed Gibbs’s death Sunday, saying Coy Gibbs died “in his sleep last night.”
“The family appreciates all the thoughts and prayers,” Joe Gibbs Racing said in a statement on Twitter, “and asks for privacy at this time.”
A cause of death was not immediately announced.
Joe Gibbs, a three-time Super Bowl-winning coach with Washington who went on to lead a top-tier NASCAR organization with the help of his two sons, has now lost them both. J.D. Gibbs died in 2019, also at the age of 49, after a long battle with a degenerative neurological disease.
The vice chairman and chief operating officer of Joe Gibbs Racing, Coy Gibbs was in the Phoenix area Saturday night to watch his 20-year-old son Ty Gibbs win the Xfinity Series title at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Ariz.
Ty Gibbs had incurred criticism after wrecking teammate Brandon Jones at a race last week, in the process costing the latter a shot at the season title. Coy Gibbs said after Saturday’s race that his son made “a huge mistake last week” but then “doubled down and did his job” in the Xfinity Series finale.
“It was fun to watch,” Coy Gibbs said then of seeing his son, one of four children with his wife Heather, get the win.
Ty Gibbs was slated to drive a car for 23XI Racing, a team co-owned by Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan, in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series finale at Phoenix Raceway. He pulled out of that assignment in the wake of his father’s death and was replaced by Daniel Hemric.
NASCAR held a moment of silence in Coy Gibbs’s honor Sunday before the Cup Series race. A member of the Joe Gibbs Racing team, Christopher Bell, was among the four drivers Sunday with a chance to win the season crown.
“Today we will do what we don’t want to do,” Hamlin said in a tweet before the Cup Series race began, “but we will unite as a family and race for the name on our chest.”
Several current and former NASCAR drivers also shared messages online of support for the Gibbs family, including Kyle Busch, who was set to start his final race for Joe Gibbs Racing.
“Words can’t describe this day,” Busch tweeted. “Today was already going to be tough enough but it’s even more gut wrenching now. Heartbroken.”
Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder, who hired Joe Gibbs for a second stint as coach of the franchise from 2004 to 2007, said Sunday that he and his wife Tanya were “devastated” at the news.
“Our hearts go out to Coach Gibbs and his wife, Pat,” the Snyders said in a statement. “Coy was a part of our Washington football family, having served on our coaching staff from 2004 to 2006. We extend our deepest sympathies from the entire Washington Commanders family to his wife Heather and their four children.”
After playing college football as a linebacker at Stanford, Coy Gibbs spent several years as a driver on circuits including NASCAR’s Xfinity and Truck Series. He then joined his father’s NFL staff in Washington as an offensive quality control assistant before he was tabbed in 2007 to head up Joe Gibbs Racing Motocross. When J.D. Gibbs, then the president of the parent company, began suffering from neurological issues in 2014, Coy Gibbs took on greater duties.
“Racing is a family and the relationships within the entire garage go so much deeper than on-track competition,” Toyota Racing Development President David Wilson, whose company has been a years-long partner of JGR, said in a statement (via nascar.com). “Today, we lost a dear part of our family. The loss of Coy Gibbs is devastating to everyone at Toyota and TRD. Our deepest condolences and prayers are with Joe, Pat, Heather, Ty, Case, Jett and Elle and the entire Gibbs family and Joe Gibbs Racing family.” | 2022-11-06T23:46:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Coy Gibbs, son of Joe Gibbs and NASCAR team executive, dies at 49 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/06/coy-gibbs-death-joe-gibbs-racing-nascar/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/06/coy-gibbs-death-joe-gibbs-racing-nascar/ |
BALTIMORE — A Baltimore police officer fatally shot a knife-wielding assailant who was attacking a woman, city officials said Sunday night.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott appeared with Harrison at Sunday’s news conference. He expressed regret for the loss of life, as well as appreciation for the responding officers, who he said “acted quickly to come to the aid of this woman, who was clearly in distress.” | 2022-11-07T00:21:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police: Baltimore officer fatally shoots attacker with knife - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/police-baltimore-officer-fatally-shoots-attacker-with-knife/2022/11/06/5ee4b5a0-5e2d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/police-baltimore-officer-fatally-shoots-attacker-with-knife/2022/11/06/5ee4b5a0-5e2d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Kathy Hochul’s campaign to prove her place in New York
The state’s first female governor has been quietly ‘hard at work’ in Albany, but the Democrat finds herself in a surprisingly tight race in a reliably blue state at a time that rewards big political personalities.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is facing a surprisingly close race for election against Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin. (Anna Watts)
NEW YORK — Through the crowd of a Brooklyn farmers market, below the heads of shoppers, passing by a tent selling branches of lavender, a young mother spotted the small, trim frame of Kathy Hochul.
The woman leaned down to her two sons. “Say hi! Say hi!” she told them. The boys looked up, distracted by the noises of a Saturday afternoon in New York, unsure of where to direct their attention.
“She’s gonna be our next …”
Their mother paused. She corrected herself.
“She’s our governor! And she's gonna win. And she’s gonna be the governor … again!”
The boys smiled. The governor smiled.
“Thank you,” Hochul said politely.
Kathleen C. Hochul, who began her career in Democratic politics 30 years ago with a seat on the town board in Hamburg, N.Y., 370 miles northwest of New York City, had been their governor for the past 14 months, sworn in at the stroke of midnight on Aug. 24, 2021, out of view from the public, one minute after the resignation of Andrew M. Cuomo, who left office amid claims of bullying and repeated sexual harassment.
At the Brooklyn farmers market, two young women drinking iced coffee saw the staff and cameras and campaign leaflets — and the woman at the center of the crush. “Oh,” one of them said to the other. “It’s, like, a famous person.” They kept walking.
Hochul is the first woman to serve as governor of New York. On Tuesday, as she tries to keep the job she inherited, she hopes to become the first woman elected governor of New York.
It should be a historic moment by any measure. But the sell to elect Hochul, to make her “the governor … again,” hasn’t inspired the urgency from voters she now needs in the final days of the midterm election. Suddenly, her Republican opponent, Rep. Lee Zeldin, who represents the eastern sweep of Long Island, had a possible, if not quite probable path to victory. He surged in the polls to within a few percentage points of Hochul, thanks to his near-absolute focus on crime as a campaign issue. Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin flew in from Florida and Virginia, respectively, last week to help propel him higher. Upstate, Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking Republican in the House, drew a crowd of more than 3,000 people to rally for him.
Suddenly, anxious Democrats turned their eyes to New York — deep-blue New York — to help push Hochul over the line. Suddenly, Vice President Harris was here. Suddenly, Bill and Hillary Clinton were back on the campaign trail. Suddenly, President Biden was spending his Sunday evening — his valuable final weekend before Election Day, when races in states such as Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona will decide control of the Senate — at a rally in Westchester County.
Onstage at these events, Democrats praised Hochul as a governor who “gets things done,” signing more than 400 bills into law, tightening gun laws and lobbying for new investment in climate, child care and affordable housing. But Democratic stars descended on New York looking unprepared not only to counter Republican gains in a reliably blue state, but to speak with a single voice in defense of their party.
At a rally Thursday night at Barnard College in Manhattan, Hochul and an all-woman lineup of speakers, with the exception of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), tried to rally the women’s college crowd around the history Hochul would make with her election. When Harris took the stage, in one of the vice president’s few appearances as a campaign surrogate this fall, she spoke at length about her own experiences meeting with world leaders and the “nature of democracy.” She mentioned Hochul by name just four times, confusing Democratic campaign aides backstage, one said. Three days later, at a rally in Brooklyn, former president Bill Clinton used part of his remarks to defend his 1994 crime bill — which is deeply unpopular with today’s progressives, many of whom live in Brooklyn, and many of whose votes Hochul needs on Tuesday — before turning back to the topic at hand. “But the point is,” he said of Republican efforts to highlight concern about crime, “Kathy Hochul has tried to do something about it.”
In a state of brutal machine politics and big, strange, beguiling personalities, Kathy Hochul keeps an understated profile, making the governor an unlikely fit for 2022. Across the country this year, candidates rose to the top of the ticket with a modern set of political qualities: pugilistic loyalty, polarizing rhetoric, the skills to command a television camera and commandeer a room. Hochul is a politician carved from a previous era. At the farmers market, she moved with the crowd but did not take it over. She has climbed the ranks of local, state and federal government and, in turn, hoped to be rewarded for competence and diligence. In her television ads in these final days of the race, Hochul presents New Yorkers with the image of the governor’s mansion in Albany, illuminated in the small hours of the morning: “It’s late at night and the light is on in the governor’s office,” a man’s voice says. “Kathy Hochul is hard at work, and it shows.”
Hochul, 64, made it to Albany via the unseen political back roads of regional politics. A lawyer and former legislative assistant to state lawmakers, she moved home to the Buffalo area when she had children, and started attending local civic meetings. When a spot opened on the town board in Hamburg in 1994, Hochul was appointed to fill the seat. She was 35 years old. Hochul served on the board for another 13 years, winning reelection three times and using the small perch to immerse herself in the concerns of the region. In 2007, Gov. Eliot Spitzer appointed her to the vacant role of Erie County clerk. Four years later, in 2011, she ran in a special election to fill an open congressional seat in a Republican-leaning district, New York’s 26th. No one thought she could win. She did, by a margin of 5 percentage points, and served in Washington for 19 months before losing her reelection bid. A few years after that, in 2014, Cuomo picked Hochul to be his lieutenant governor.
For seven years, as Cuomo bent the state to his will with brute force and a penchant for the spotlight, Hochul assumed the relatively invisible role of his No. 2, working long days in the background of his administration. It was only with his alleged harassment and subsequent resignation that Hochul ended up at the top of the ticket. She had 14 months to govern, and to persuade voters to let her stay in the job. It was not the first time Hochul was asked to prove and keep her place in politics.
“The recollection is that I’m always underestimated,” Hochul told reporters outside the farmers market, reflecting on her tenure in elected office.
“True story. Always.”
Those voices, the governor said, have been rattling around her head for 30 years: “ ‘Well, she’s gonna lose the primary.’ … ‘She’s not gonna make that.’ … ‘She’s not gonna win that.’ They don’t understand me.”
“I think a lot of women feel that,” she added.
It was only in the last few weeks that Hochul started adding more retail stops to her schedule — events that put her face-to-face with voters, asking for their support. For months, her race was considered a lock. New York hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 2002, when, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, voters kept moderate George E. Pataki in office. As she started to govern, Hochul also started to run a campaign in the style of an incumbent: She raised $45 million. She ran television ads. She kept a light campaign schedule, preferring to hold official events in her capacity as governor instead — even as Zeldin inched closer in the polls and Republicans, eager to seize a victory that would generate a national shock, raised alarm about inflation and several high-profile crimes, including the shooting on a Q train traveling between Brooklyn and Manhattan this spring, leaving one subway rider dead.
“In New York, you have to be vicious. You have to be ruthless,” said Garrett Ventry, a Republican consultant who advises Stefanik. “She’s not a powerful, strong candidate. She only just started campaigning.”
Democrats in the state looked at Hochul and her operation with concern and confusion, wondering why she wasn’t a more visible presence in neighborhoods still unfamiliar with the new governor, particularly in New York City, which has about two in five registered voters in the state.
“They ran the ‘Rose Garden’ strategy of an incumbent, except for the fact that she was never elected governor,” said Melissa DeRosa, a Democratic strategist and longtime Cuomo aide who exited Albany entangled in his administration’s scandals. “After the Dobbs decision came out, she followed the path of a lot of Democratic campaigns and leaned into making the race about abortion and Trump and ignored the very real problems on the ground.”
New York hasn’t elected a governor from Upstate New York since Nathan Miller, from Cortland County, in 1920.
When Hochul is in the city, she lives out of a hotel in midtown Manhattan. It is not unusual to encounter people in the city who mispronounce her name. (The correct pronunciation is HO-kul.)
“The model that people are accustomed to is male, it’s New York City — of which I am neither,” Hochul said in an interview over the weekend. “So those are just some of the inherent challenges. But I’ve never let them be a deterrent. I don’t focus on them. I always break through that — every single time.”
As governor, Hochul has appointed a record number of women to senior leadership positions. When she started her career on the town board in Hamburg, she was “the only woman, until I made sure the next opening went to a women — over a lot of objection,” she said. When she made her way to Erie County, she found herself yet again alone in rooms full of men. “So I’ve been trying to infiltrate the male-dominated world of politics since 1994,” Hochul said. “People are not accustomed to seeing women in executive positions.”
At the farmers market, Hochul carried a large tote bag bearing the names of the different regions of New York: NYC, Adirondacks, Utica, Syracuse, Long Island, Binghamton, Hudson Valley. She said she wanted to fill it up “with a lot of snacks,” though she never managed to buy any. As she greeted passersby, Democratic state Assembly member Jo Anne Simon stepped in to help take photos. “See,” said a campaign supporter hovering nearby, “that’s a good assembly member when she takes a picture, right?”
“I’m a former staffer, too,” Hochul said. “I’m usually takin’ the photo.”
Her husband, William J. Hochul Jr., stood silently on the edge of the crowd, eating from a plastic foam to-go tray. In the crowded market, the first gentleman of New York was an anonymous figure to most of the voters passing by. When approached by a reporter to talk about his wife, he ducked away to the other side of a produce stand, pointing to her. “She’s the person you need to talk to,” he said. “I think you need to speak to the governor, right? So, why don’t you go talk to her?”
Hochul kept moving through the crowd. She met a man concerned about a crackdown on crime, and the governor said she is open to tightening bail laws, but he acknowledged that he thought Zeldin’s policies would be even harsher.
“We’re not going back to the old days,” he said. Hochul nodded.
She met a woman who chastised her for not making more time for progressive activists. Hochul held the woman’s hand and nodded. “I think you can understand the intensity of having to start up a government and at the same time run a campaign statewide,” she said.
Hochul kept moving, past a stand for dog treats, past a stand for succulent plants. Often, voters didn’t recognize the woman running their state. Staffers and surrogates corralled passersby in the crowd, facilitating a photo here, and a brief exchange there.
“Let’s run up the score,” Hochul said to one voter.
“Get your friends and family out, too!” she said to another.
On the outskirts of the Brooklyn crowd, Kathryn Garcia, Hochul’s director of state operations, handed out campaign leaflets on the sidewalk. Garcia ran for mayor of New York and lost to Eric Adams by 7,000 votes. When you run as a woman in New York, she said, “the question isn’t can you do the job — it’s like, ‘Can you do the job and then how are you actually gonna get people to vote for you.’ ”
“That doesn’t happen with men,” she added.
Did national politics still have a place for people like Hochul?
Garcia phrased the question differently: “For people who do the work?”
Hochul left the farmers market and stepped into the back seat of her black Chevrolet Suburban, on to the next event a few blocks away. When she took the stage at the rally, she had an applause line for the crowd.
“You know what I love the most?” she asked. “I love being underestimated.” | 2022-11-07T00:21:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kathy Hochul tries to prove her place as New York governor in close race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/06/kathy-hochul-new-york-governor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/06/kathy-hochul-new-york-governor/ |
Gonzaga 1, Bishop McNamara 0 (OT)
Gonzaga won the WCAC boys' soccer championship Sunday afternoon at Catholic University. (Kyle Melnick/The Washington Post)
In the final seconds of overtime Sunday afternoon, Gonzaga’s soccer coaches yelled a cereal name from the sideline to guide their players: “Special K!” Assistant coach Mike Formant turned to a videographer and said: “Record this. It may not go in, but it’ll be pretty.”
On a free kick from outside the box, Gonzaga completed a pair of quick passes before midfielder Kevin Coffey attacked the goal. Bishop McNamara goalkeeper Owen Allegro blocked his shot, but the rebound arrived at midfielder Daniel Bollman’s feet. The junior struck the ball into the bottom left corner of the net, stripped off his jersey and sprinted to Gonzaga’s student section to celebrate the Eagles’ 1-0 win for the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference championship at Catholic University.
The Northwest Washington program notched a WCAC record 13th championship but its first since 2019.
“I just know I’m going to get a chance — at least one — throughout the game. If I finish that chance, then I know we can win,” Bollman said. “I’ve scored a game-winner [in club soccer], but it’s nothing like this with all the fans and everything. It’s just so hype.”
On Oct. 11, Gonzaga (22-0-1) and McNamara (17-2-1) drew at 1 in a game between the top teams in The Washington Post’s midseason rankings. The squads were evenly matched Sunday, too, but a winner had to be crowned.
Seeking a fresh scoring play, Gonzaga’s players designed one at practice Saturday. They named it after a nickname of a teammate, whom they want to remain unidentified until the season ends. The players continued trying the play for an hour after their two-hour practice ended.
Coffey, the facilitator Sunday, hadn’t practiced the sequence. He began coughing Tuesday and awoke Wednesday with a 104-degree fever. The senior visited an urgent care location, where he was told he would be contagious until Saturday.
Coffey struggled to watch Gonzaga’s semifinal win over St. John’s on a stream from his home Thursday. But his teammates were relieved when he texted them Saturday that he would be healthy for his final WCAC game.
“I haven’t touched the ball in five days,” he said. “So I was surprised I did that. But, man, I thought I had that goal. And when I saw it pop out to [Bollman] and he was open, I just started celebrating immediately. It was unbelievable.”
Gonzaga is the conference powerhouse, but McNamara developed into a contender last year during its surprise run to its first WCAC tournament title game, in which it lost to Good Counsel. The Forestville program faced stiff competition in Gonzaga, which is having a historically strong season. If the Eagles win this week’s D.C. State Athletic Association tournament, they will finish undefeated for the first time since 2001.
“I always hoped that we would go undefeated,” Bollman said. “But I never knew that we could make that a reality.” | 2022-11-07T00:21:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A dose of overtime magic gives Gonzaga the WCAC boys’ soccer championship - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/06/wcac-boys-soccer-gonzaga-bishop-mcnamara/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/06/wcac-boys-soccer-gonzaga-bishop-mcnamara/ |
CHICAGO — Tua Tagovailoa threw for three touchdowns, Tyreek Hill had 143 yards receiving and Miami overcame a record-setting rushing effort by Justin Fields to beat Chicago.
DETROIT — Aaron Rodgers matched a career high with three interceptions and threw an incomplete pass on fourth down from the Detroit 17 in the final minute of Green Bay’s loss.
LANDOVER, Md. — Kirk Cousins threw two touchdown passes, Harrison Smith picked off Taylor Heinicke to set up the tying score and Minnesota rallied to beat Washington and extend its winning streak to six.
ATLANTA — Cameron Dicker kicked a game-ending 37-yard field goal three days after being signed as a free agent, lifting Los Angeles over Atlanta.
CINCINNATI — Joe Mixon rushed for 153 yards and scored five touchdowns as Cincinnati built a 35-0 halftime lead and cruised past Carolina.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Travis Etienne ran for two touchdowns and Jacksonville finally won a close game, rallying from a 17-point deficit to beat Las Vegas.
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Mac Jones threw a touchdown pass, Nick Folk kicked four field goals and New England had nine sacks in a dominant win over Indianapolis. | 2022-11-07T00:23:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jets shut down Josh Allen in 20-17 win over rival Bills - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/jets-shut-down-josh-allen-in-20-17-win-over-rival-bills/2022/11/06/bc45f0b4-5e1f-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/jets-shut-down-josh-allen-in-20-17-win-over-rival-bills/2022/11/06/bc45f0b4-5e1f-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
This combination of photos provided by the North Korean government, shows what they say military operation held during Nov. 2-5, 2022, in North Korea. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: “KCNA” which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) (Uncredited/KCNA via KNS)
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s military said Monday its recent barrage of missile tests were practices to “mercilessly” strike key South Korean and U.S. targets such as air bases and operation command systems with a variety of missiles that are likely nuclear-capable. | 2022-11-07T04:29:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | North Korea: Missile tests were practice to attack South, US - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/north-korea-missile-tests-were-practice-to-attack-south-us/2022/11/06/ae5a466a-5e44-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/north-korea-missile-tests-were-practice-to-attack-south-us/2022/11/06/ae5a466a-5e44-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
A fugitive was wanted for a year. An off-duty agent saw him at Disney.
Quashon Burton is accused of fraudulently obtaining pandemic-era small-business relief loans
(John Raoux/AP)
U.S. Postal Inspection Service inspector Jeff Andre had been investigating an alleged identity theft scheme that had netted nearly $150,000 in fraudulent coronavirus relief loans. And though he’d narrowed in on a suspect and signed a criminal complaint in November 2021, it would take a chance encounter almost a year later to arrest the alleged mastermind.
Of all places, it happened late last month at Disney World’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, according to an Orange County Sheriff’s Office arrest report.
Quashon Burton, 31, had been facing federal charges — two counts of stealing government funds and one count of identity theft — since Nov. 29, 2021. But when officials tried to execute an arrest warrant in December, Burton was nowhere to be seen. His mother told agents that Burton wouldn’t be self-surrendering, Ashley C. Nicolas, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, wrote in a letter to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.
Where did the covid aid money go?
Prosecutors say the 31-year-old New York City resident was on the lam for nearly a year — until he was spotted by Andre in Disney’s largest theme park in the United States, home to about 2,000 animals, an Everest expedition simulation and an area inspired by the “Avatar” film.
While on a leisure trip at Animal Kingdom on Oct. 20, Andre spotted Burton — whose neck has a distinctive tattoo of a cursive “H” — and notified Disney World security, arrest records show. Orange County Sheriff’s Office officials were then called to the scene. After confirming Burton’s federal warrant and obtaining a photo of him from Andre, deputies found Burton exiting the park at a bus stop with two family members.
According to the arrest report, Burton “questioned why he needed to provide his identification” and initially gave officials a false name. He was asked “multiple times” to place his hands behind his back but refused, the report states. Ultimately, an official took Burton “to the ground to safely secure him,” the report adds, leading to another charge: resisting an officer without violence.
Burton was then placed in local custody before being transferred to a federal prison. In her Oct. 26 letter to the judge, Nicolas, the prosecutor, said “law enforcement later learned that Burton had been using a false identity while at Disney World.”
“He has clearly demonstrated an ability to mask his true identity to evade law enforcement,” Nicolas wrote. “So too has he demonstrated a willingness to lie about this identity to avoid arrest.”
As a member of the House Small Business Committee, Rep. Chu also said the Small Business Administration did not collect important demographic information about business they funded during the pandemic “There definitely need to be greater oversight. One very, very disappointing thing was that the SBA did not require that the institutions say whether the business was a business of color, a minority-owned business.. a woman or a veteran. And since that was not implemented… we have lost very valuable information as to whether we are really serving the small business of need.” (Video: Washington Post Live)
Prosecutors allege that Burton managed to secure Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans — which were intended to support small businesses during the pandemic but have been riddled with cases of fraud and deception — by using a “complex web” of names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of at least four victims throughout the summer of 2020.
Harvey Fishbein, Burton’s attorney, declined to comment on the allegations.
According to court records, on July 17, 2020, Burton filed PPP loan applications for two Texas-based businesses: a day care facility and a flooring company. But investigators alleged that such businesses didn’t exist and accused Burton of using other people’s personal information and bank cards.
On July 20, 2020, a total of $149,800 in loans was deposited by the government to two bank accounts Burton had access to, court records state. A week later, officials say, he transferred some $10,000 to another account he had created and tried to buy over $6,000 worth of money orders at a New York City postal facility, according to a complaint.
SBA approved loans with signs of fraud early in pandemic, House report says
It would take investigators over a year to compile enough evidence to seek an indictment. Yet, by the time Burton’s arrest warrant was served, authorities weren’t able to find him — that is, until the two men crossed paths at the “kingdom of animals … real, ancient, and imagined,” as Animal Kingdom’s dedication plate from 1998 reads.
After Burton’s arrest at the park, Judge David A. Baker of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida approved his release, under the condition that he was monitored by GPS. But prosecutors in the Southern District of New York — where his federal case is being litigated — said he was “an extreme flight risk” and urged for him to remain in custody. Kaplan, the judge presiding over the case in New York, ultimately agreed, citing Burton’s prior failures to make court-ordered appearances and attempts to evade law enforcement, court records show.
On Friday, Baker vacated the conditions of Burton’s release and ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to transport Burton some 1,079 miles north to New York — where he’s facing “a serious sentence that includes a two-year mandatory minimum,” prosecutors said. | 2022-11-07T08:11:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Federal agent spots fugitive at Disney World, has him arrested - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/07/disney-animal-kingdom-fugitive-arrest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/07/disney-animal-kingdom-fugitive-arrest/ |
Europe Must Protect Its Electricity Market From Putin
It would be truly ironic if the totalitarian leader of a former Soviet state managed to convince Western nations to give up on the free market. Yet that’s a risk now looming over Europe’s electricity sector, as officials struggle to respond to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s weaponization of energy supply. Hopefully enlightened self-interest will prevail.
Over the past few decades, Europe has undertaken a monumental transformation of its electricity sector, dismantling national monopolies and rearranging the pieces into a common market. This has been profoundly challenging, because electricity isn’t like other goods and services: To avoid cascading blackouts, supply must meet demand perfectly every minute of every day. The result is a mind-bogglingly complex system that determines prices and allocates transmission capacity across countries and over time horizons ranging from years to seconds, with the overarching goal of allowing any and all producers — including wind, solar, nuclear and gas — to compete for consumers wherever they may be.
Amazingly, it mostly works — an achievement that has played an underappreciated role in European unification. Risks and resources are increasingly shared: German turbines, for example, can feed the grid when there’s no wind in France, and countries can rely on one another for emergency capacity rather than maintaining their own reserves. Price differences indicate what kind of investment is needed, how much and where. Cross-border integration produced about 34 billion euros in benefits in 2021 alone, and has helped cushion the shock of Russia’s reduction in gas exports.
Nonetheless, Putin’s war is testing Europe’s commitment to the market. As with any fungible commodity, the price of electricity is set by the marginal supplier, which in Europe’s case is gas-fired generators. In normal times, this works fine. But as Russia has cut gas supplies to a trickle, prices have soared to extreme levels, leaving Europe’s leaders scrambling to mitigate the economic and political repercussions.
In principle, the best response would be to let the market do its job. Allow high prices to curb demand and encourage new supply; ease the pain with emergency aid payments to the most vulnerable consumers.
In practice, the reaction has been messier. Often lacking the capacity to quickly identify and reach the hardest-hit consumers, governments have settled for second-best, nationalizing energy companies and sending out scattershot relief payments. Worse, they’ve imposed price controls, which have undermined efforts to reduce consumption and effectively confiscated the profits of renewable energy producers. They’re even considering a more radical market split, “decoupling” renewables from gas and more permanently capping their price — an idea that threatens to deal a long-term blow to investment in greener energy.
No doubt, getting through the immediate crisis will require some suboptimal policies, out of sheer expediency. But this doesn’t mean the broader reform was misguided. On the contrary, Europe’s leaders should stick with it. They should restore a unified market as soon as possible, to foster competition and preserve desirable investment incentives. They should refine pricing mechanisms and remove remaining obstacles to cross-border trade. They should also develop better hedging instruments, to protect consumers from volatility, and improve fiscal transfer systems, so they can deliver well-targeted aid quickly when the next shock hits.
Europe has created a market where none existed, for an extremely idiosyncratic commodity. This is an accomplishment that makes all Europeans better off. Don’t let a Russian dictator destroy it. | 2022-11-07T08:11:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Europe Must Protect Its Electricity Market From Putin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/europe-must-protect-its-electricity-market-from-putin/2022/11/07/4923b334-5e72-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/europe-must-protect-its-electricity-market-from-putin/2022/11/07/4923b334-5e72-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
“Folks, I spent a lot of time — more time with Xi Jinping than any other head of state. … I’ve traveled 17,000 miles with him.”
— remarks at a political event in San Diego, Nov. 3
This is an old claim we had debunked shortly after Biden took office, giving him Three Pinocchios. There is no evidence Biden traveled that much with Xi, the president of China — and even if we added up the miles Biden flew to see Xi, it still did not add up to 17,000 miles. The White House could not offer an explanation for that number either.
But it’s noteworthy because, despite our fact check and a White House admission that Biden’s line of “traveling with” Xi was not accurate, with this comment Biden had made this claim 20 times during his presidency. (He then said it a 21st time a few hours later, in another speech, with a slight twist: “ … when I traveled 17-, 18,000 miles with him.”) Biden is so fond of this bogus statistic that he even mentioned it during high-profile speeches such as a joint session of Congress and a commencement address.
Despite extensive meetings and multiple diplomatic, President Biden’s claim he “traveled 17,000 miles with” President Xi can’t be verified. (Video: Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
“Today, the most common price of gas in America is $3.39 — down from over $5 when I took office.”
— remarks at a community college in Syracuse, N.Y., Oct. 27
Many readers complained about his comment, given that average gas prices were about $2.48 the week Biden took office, according to the Energy Information Administration. Soaring gas prices over the course of Biden’s presidency have been a drag on his approval ratings. (The White House in fact has preferred to refer the “most common price,” which comes from the GasBuddy app and tends to be lower than the average price because California, with its superhigh gas prices, tends to raise the average.)
Biden was basically correct on the “most common price” at the time he made this comment but appears to have misspoke about the price when he took office. Generally, his speeches have referenced prices over the summer, not when he took office, as that tells a better story. For instance, a few days later, on Oct. 31, Biden said: “In June, the average price — not the most common price, but the average price — nationwide was — was over $5 a gallon. Today, the average price for a gallon of gas is $3.76.”
“On my watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks.”
— remarks at a community center in Hallandale Beach, Fla., Nov. 1
A version of this line ended up in a White House tweet that same day — “Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership” — which officials deleted after Twitter labeled it as lacking context.
The problem? The reason Social Security payments are going up is because Social Security benefits, under a law passed in 1972, are adjusted every year to keep pace with inflation.
Next year, benefits will increase 8.7 percent — but that’s because inflation has soared at that level. Biden and the Federal Reserve have been trying to fight inflation, but without much success so far.
“You are probably aware that I just signed a law that is being challenged by my Republican colleagues. … What we’ve provided for is, if you went to school, if you qualified for a Pell Grant … you qualify for $20,000 in debt forgiveness. Secondly, if you don’t have one of those loans, you just get $10,000 written off. It’s passed. I got it passed by a vote or two.”
— remarks at a forum with NowThis, Oct. 23
In describing his plan for student loan forgiveness, Biden oddly said he had “just signed a law” that was approved in Congress by a “a vote or two.”
Instead, Biden relied on new authority granted by the Justice Department — a fresh interpretation of a law passed almost two decades ago, the 2003 Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, often dubbed the Heroes Act. In a legal opinion, the Justice Department concluded that the law authorizes the education secretary to relieve borrowers of the obligation to repay federal student loans. Thus the president could announce a plan canceling student loans.
Previously, both the Trump and Biden administrations used the law to pause student loan payments during the coronavirus pandemic. But the Trump administration concluded that it could not use the law for cancellation or forgiveness of student loans. The Biden Justice Department arrived at the opposite interpretation.
Ultimately the issue will be settled in the courts. An appeals court has already frozen Biden’s program in response to a lawsuit filed by Republican state attorneys general.
The White House said Biden misspoke and meant to refer the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill mostly focused on climate change and raising tax revenue. That law passed on a party-line vote, with a tiebreaking vote in the Senate cast by Vice President Harris.
But the Inflation Reduction Act has nothing to do with student loans — and analysts have said that whatever deficit reduction is achieved by the law will be quickly exceeded by the cost of the student loan program, if it survives legal challenges. | 2022-11-07T08:12:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Bottomless Pinocchio for Biden — and other recent gaffes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/bottomless-pinocchio-biden-other-recent-gaffes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/bottomless-pinocchio-biden-other-recent-gaffes/ |
Tenia Hill begged her mom to rescue her and her McDonald’s coworkers as they cowered inside a walk-in freezer
Veteran 911 operator Teri Clark handled an Oct. 17 call from her daughter, Tenia Hill, who was being held up in an armed robbery at a New Orleans McDonald's. (Video: Orleans Parish Communication District)
Teri Clark immediately recognized her daughter’s phone number when it popped up on her 911 dispatch screen last month.
Clark, a veteran emergency dispatcher in New Orleans, long ago taught her daughter, now 16, that she couldn’t call 911 to talk to mom. Before picking up, she peeked at her cellphone to see whether she’d missed a call from her. She hadn’t.
And so Clark answered her daughter’s 911 call the same way she had answered thousands of others over more than two decades.
“New Orleans 911, what’s the location of the emergency?”
It would be unlike any other crisis Clark had dealt with in her 24-year career — her teenage daughter begging to be rescued from an armed robber as she cowered in a walk-in freezer with her McDonald’s co-workers.
Tenia Hill, a junior in high school, attended classes at Eleanor McMain Secondary School on Oct. 17, a Monday. Then, she put on her uniform and at 5 p.m. went to the McDonald’s where she worked part-time as a cashier.
“I was seeing her number pop up, and in my mind, I’m like, ‘What’s she calling for?’ ”
“Mama, can you please send a police officer right now to McDonald’s?” Tenia asked, according to an audio recording obtained by The Washington Post.
“Where at?” Clark asked her.
“At my job, Mama!”
A daughter worried when her 80-year-old mom didn’t text her Wordle score. A man was holding her hostage, police say.
Clark knew where her daughter was. Tenia had started working there a week earlier — her first “real” job, not counting her stints as a counselor at summer camp. It had been, at least in part, Clark’s idea. Tenia wanted to go to driving school. Her mother agreed but, wanting to teach her daughter how to earn and save money to achieve a personal goal, told her to work for it.
“I was trying to show her a little responsibility,” Clark said.
The communication district’s computer system also informed Clark of where her daughter was calling from. Still, protocol required her to coax the caller into confirming their location. Clark had done it with thousands of others struck by panic, and she did the same with her daughter.
That doesn’t mean she felt the same way.
“I processed the call like I normally do with any other citizen that’s calling,” Clark said, “but I knew it was my child. I was trying to remain calm.”
It was an unexpected blessing for Tenia. Thinking her mother had already gotten off work, Tenia said she didn’t think she’d get her when she called 911 but immediately recognized her voice. “I felt relieved, and I felt calm because of the comfort of my mama’s voice,” she said.
During the call, Tenia told her mother that a woman entered the McDonald’s and forced the roughly half-dozen employees into the restaurant’s walk-in freezer. Clark said she would later learn that the robber initially ordered Tenia and her co-workers to get on the ground. Looking at each other, they initially thought she was pranking them. Then she pulled a gun and said something like, “You think I’m playing?” before herding them to the back, Tenia said.
“When my child told me that they was locked up in the freezer, I guess the mama part of me panicked, but the operator in me knew, ‘Hell, I’ve got to get help to my child,’ ” Clark said.
“I had tears coming down my face, but I still had to do the job,” she added.
On the night of Oct. 17, Clark found herself doing double duty — trying to calm her daughter while keeping her own terror in check.
After Clark dispatched police and hung up, she went to her shift manager. She told her that the caller who’d just reported the robbery was her daughter and that she needed to leave. Clark rushed to the McDonald’s, where police were investigating. Officers recognized Clark, told her that her daughter was okay and let her know that Tenia would come out as soon as detectives were done interviewing her.
“But I could see my child inside — hysterical, crying hard,” Clark said.
Twenty to 30 minutes later, police cut her loose. Tenia came out, and Clark held her daughter. That night, the high school student struggled to sleep and, when she nodded off, nightmares tormented her, Clark said. Tenia said she’s scared to go back to work, and Clark said she worried about letting her do so. She hasn’t been back since the robbery and doesn’t like going places generally.
“They took that innocence away from her,” Clark said.
The New Orleans Police Department did not respond to an email asking for updates on the case, but Clark said they haven’t notified her of any arrests.
Most importantly, she said, mother and daughter have taken solace in each other. They’ve wept together, held each other. Tenia said they’re closer now, that’s she’s found sanctuary in the safety of the person she trusts the most.
“We really just have had each other’s backs throughout the whole situation,” Tenia said.
Her mom said much the same. They’re struggling, but they’re struggling together.
“When she cries, I cry,” she said, adding, “I’m not doing good, but we’re surviving.” | 2022-11-07T09:56:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dispatcher answers teen daughter's 911 call during McDonald's robbery - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/07/911-call-mother-daughter-robbery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/07/911-call-mother-daughter-robbery/ |
NEW YORK — Georgia tightened its hold on No. 1 in The Associated Press college football poll Sunday, with TCU climbing up to No. 4 and Alabama dropping all the way to No. 10.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Patrick Mahomes ran for the tying touchdown and 2-point conversion late in the fourth quarter, Harrison Butker atoned for two earlier misses by kicking the go-ahead 28-yard field goal with 4:04 left in overtime, and the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Tennessee Titans 20-17.
TAMPA, Fla. — Tom Brady tossed a 1-yard touchdown pass to Cade Otton with 9 seconds remaining, giving the Tampa Bay Buccaneers a 16-13 victory over the Los Angeles Rams in a sloppy matchup of the past two Super Bowl champions.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The Jets’ defense shut down Josh Allen, Zach Wilson threw a touchdown pass and Greg Zuerlein kicked a go-ahead 28-yard field goal with 1:43 remaining to lift New York to a stunning 20-17 victory over the Buffalo Bills.
LOS ANGELES — Jordan Clarkson scored 23 points, reserve Collin Sexton added 22 and the Utah Jazz beat the Los Angeles Clippers 110-102.
LOS ANGELES — Donovan Mitchell scored 33 points and Darius Garland added 24 in the dynamic Cleveland backcourt’s return from injury absences, and the Cavaliers rolled past LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers 114-100 for their eighth consecutive victory.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Aryna Sabalenka ended top-ranked Iga Swiatek’s 15-match winning streak against top-10 opponents, winning 6-2, 2-6, 6-1 for a spot in the championship of the WTA Finals. | 2022-11-07T09:56:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Weekend Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/11/07/28dadfc2-5e76-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/11/07/28dadfc2-5e76-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
The private sector is being pressured to play leading role in climate action, amid global political paralysis
John F. Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, speaks during a briefing at the State Department on Wednesday. (Susan Walsh/AP)
With war, inflation and electoral chaos preoccupying world leaders, the Biden administration is looking for corporations to take center stage as the world’s biggest annual climate change event gets underway in Egypt.
While government action typically dominates the talks, political paralysis and public pressure are pushing companies to step up with their own emission pledges — and money to help poorer countries bearing the brunt of climate change — at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, known as COP27.
Government funding alone can’t cover most of what vulnerable countries need, said John D. Podesta, senior adviser to President Biden on climate change, in an interview. Some $3.8 trillion in annual investment is needed in the next three years to meet the world’s climate goals, including reducing emissions and helping nations adapt to the impacts of climate change. Only 16 percent of that money is now flowing, according to a new report from the Rockefeller Foundation and BCG Research.
“Private-sector capital flows … that’s where the real money is,” said Podesta, who will be one of the first White House officials to arrive at the negotiations. “We’re talking billions when the need is trillions. We’ve got to unlock that [private-sector] capacity for people to make investments in building a clean-energy future or else we’ll miss both the development goals and the climate goals.”
There are few expectations for a breakthrough governmental climate deal at this year’s summit, one reason corporations are in the spotlight.
“Anything this hard does not get resolved with a global diplomatic committee,” said David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California at San Diego. “It gets resolved with a small group of highly motivated actors who go off and do stuff and drag everyone else along.”
COP27, under U.N. guidelines, is designated to focus on “implementation” — executing past promises to cut emissions. That means that sweeping deals between governments are expected to be harder to come by, as discussions over financing clean-energy and climate-adaptation projects come to the forefront.
Many environmentalists are alarmed that the conference will not showcase bolder governmental commitments to slash emissions, and includes so much corporate underwriting.
Some administration aides have been warning that this financing debate could be politically disastrous for U.S. leaders, according to a person familiar with the planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity. To counter criticism, the U.S. delegation is expected to stress the seed money it has provided to clean energy projects around the world and make commitments to help incubate more such innovations in the global south in partnership with business.
In recent weeks, U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry has doubled-down on his long-standing efforts to raise private capital, which administration officials see as one of the summit’s few potential breakthroughs. His last visits have included London this week and Seattle late last month for a conference backed by Bill Gates that is a big draw for major corporate and finance executives. At the Egypt summit, the U.S. will host a “call to action” event during which private companies announce plans for mobilizing capital and technology to help developing nations adapt to climate change.
Biden’s announced visit to COP27 will be just a four-hour stopover on Nov. 11, illustrative of how governments view this summit.
The president might be expected to use this world stage to brag about U.S. passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, but this new law was crafted to be domestically focused, aimed at addressing climate change through hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate tax breaks, grants and loans. It includes few new mandates, and no taxes or other broad-based requirements to guide companies on reducing carbon-dioxide emissions.
Following COP27, the White House plans to make international aid money a top priority in upcoming budget talks, Podesta said. But for now it sees reforms to boost climate funding from multilateral development banks and efforts to get private-sector financing as more promising ways to raise the needed capital, he added.
That may set the stage for friction in Egypt. Leaders in the developing world are frustrated that Biden and other leaders of rich countries have yet to follow through on promises of major government aid, and they have struck a skeptical tone about private-sector financing ahead of the conference.
At COP27, negotiators are specifically focused on pushing the wealthiest nations to provide help to developing countries, and companies will face renewed pressure to focus their efforts on the global south.
“Are we really delivering on climate change, or are we delivering on guarantees to insure profits for the private sector?” Egypt’s lead climate negotiator, Mohamed Nasr, said to journalists during a preview of the summit. “The thinking has to change. Investors should be thinking of their climate positive impacts as part of their assessment of projects and delivery for investors.”
One big target is the financial sector and the coalition it formed ahead of Glasgow of banks and investment firms pledging that they will invest their assets, now totaling $150 million, in alignment with the world’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
But some of the firms in the group, called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, chafed at a requirement that they phase out financing new fossil fuel projects, in alignment with the U.N. guidelines for curbing warming. The requirement was scrapped, drawing ire from climate organizations that are increasingly focusing their pressure campaigns on companies.
“Companies are stepping up on climate action because of how existential this is for them, but we are going to need to see a much bigger global plan,” said Peter Lacy, global sustainable services lead at the consulting firm Accenture.
About a third of the world’s top 2,000 public and private companies have committed to zeroing out their emissions by 2050, according to the Accenture’s research. But the firm found that 93 percent of them are on track to miss their targets unless they start moving faster.
The outlook was similar from Climate Action 100+, a network of investment groups that tracks the progress of 166 of the world’s biggest corporate emitters of greenhouse gas. When the group formed in late 2017, only five of those companies had net zero targets. Now, more than 120 do. But few of those companies right now have credible plans for achieving that goal, according to a new report from Climate 100+.
“This is a critical climate summit for these companies,” said Elizabeth Sturcken, a managing director at the Environmental Defense Fund focused on corporate partnerships. “We need to see some progress this year and what companies have done with these commitments. They are in the messy part of doing the hard work. I predict we will see some failures, and we will also see some real successes, too.”
Morten Bo Christiansen knows how messy the work can be. He leads the decarbonization effort at Maersk, the giant shipping and logistic company that burns through 80 to 90 million barrels of oil per year. The firm has set a goal of zeroing out its emissions by 2040, making it a favorite point of reference for Kerry and earning it a measure of prestige among the corporations participating at the summit.
But making progress on the commitment is complicated amid the lack of clear decarbonization rules from international regulators. The task, Christiansen argues, would be far fairer if there were a carbon tax that gave all companies a uniform incentive to cut emissions by making the kid of investments Maersk is in nascent technologies such as barges that run on clean burning methanol made with renewable energy and biomass. “We need a global solution,” he said. | 2022-11-07T12:33:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Corporations in the hot seat at U.N. climate summit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/climate-cop27-biden-companies-un/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/climate-cop27-biden-companies-un/ |
A McDonald’s All-American and USC recruit, Aaliyah Gayles’s budding basketball career was torn apart by gun violence. Now comes the painful fight to reclaim it.
By David Gardner
Aaliyah Gayles was shot 10 times in her legs and arms at a house party in Las Vegas in April, just days before signing on to play for USC. (Alisha Jucevic/For The Washington Post)
LOS ANGELES — Dwight Gayles wanted his daughter Aaliyah to be tough. So he gave her a rule: No crying in defeat or failure. Tears, he said, were for victories.
Dwight wanted to demonstrate toughness, too. So he established a second rule, which they shared: No crying in front of each other — ever.
For Dwight, that meant slipping on a pair of sunglasses when he let go of Aaliyah’s bicycle seat and watched her wobble down the street on her own for the first time or when she moved across the stage at her high school graduation.
For Aaliyah, it meant gulping down the frustration when Dwight backed her down in their driveway, dominating her in one-on-one games when she was only in middle school. It meant biting her lip when she suffered from turf toe or a pulled calf or a fractured ankle. It made her so equanimous that even as she rose to become a top-10 basketball recruit in the country, even as she committed to her dream college, even as she became the first Las Vegas prospect in more than a decade to be selected for the McDonald’s All-American game, she never shed a tear. She didn’t want to cry until she’d achieved that ultimate victory: Playing in the WNBA.
The rule did make Aaliyah tough, too. So tough that in April of this year, when nine bullets ripped 18 holes through her arms and legs, fracturing bones and wrecking blood vessels, she didn’t scream, or shout, or cry. As the blood drained from her body, she fought the urge to fall asleep and slip away. And when the paramedics arrived and cut away her clothes, exposing her in front of friends and strangers, she even managed to let out a laugh.
The next morning, at the hospital, after the pain medicine and donated blood had coursed through her veins, and the splints had stabilized every extremity she has, after the vascular surgery stopped her from losing her left leg, she saw Dwight for the first time.
“Dad,” she said, her voice a weak whisper beneath the breathing tube and the beeps of the machines monitoring her vital signs. “I didn’t cry.”
A party, a problem
Aaliyah doesn’t remember much from those first few days in the hospital. She knows she talked to reporters from ESPN but can’t remember what she said. She knows teammates, coaches, family and friends streamed in, but she can’t remember who.
“Whenever I had a free moment during those first few days, I was thinking: ‘How did I end up here?’” Gayles says. “And then: ‘How do I get out of here and go to college?’”
Eventually, though, the memories of that night came flooding back.
It was Easter weekend, and she’d just returned home from the Jordan Brand Classic, an elite high-school basketball showcase in Chicago, where she’d scored 6 points in 10 minutes and then started an impromptu dance party with her teammates at an afterparty. A high-energy point guard known for her acrobatic dribbling, deep shooting range and downhill drives to the basket, she had offers from more than a dozen D-I schools, including Duke, UCLA, Arizona and Louisville. But she committed to USC, her dream school ever since she watched “Love & Basketball” in fifth grade. She planned to graduate this spring before moving to L.A. in the summer.
She spent that Saturday playing video games at home before her girlfriend, Janaye Jackson, convinced her to go to a North Las Vegas house party that she’d seen posts about on Instagram. With double the violent crime rate of the U.S. average, North Las Vegas is statistically the most dangerous city in Nevada. Right away it felt suspicious, with some people wearing ski masks, but they felt it was teenagers wanting to look tough rather than a real threat. Still, they got ready to leave after less than an hour. On her way out, Jackson remembers two of those boys in ski masks bumping into her. She asked them to excuse themselves, she says, and they responded by punching her in the face.
Gayles jumped in to protect Jackson. Then, according to Jackson and a police report, they saw one of the boys reach for a gun. They grabbed each other and ran for the door. As the first shots ran out, Jackson jumped outside, but Gayles didn’t make it across the threshold of the door. Jackson scrambled back inside to help. Bullets ricocheted off the floor and the doorframe. Jackson dove on top of Gayles, who’d been protecting her torso and head with her arms and legs.
The shooting stopped. They stumbled outside to assess their wounds as people streamed from the house. Gayles wasn’t moving.
“I thought she was gone, to be honest,” Jackson says. “When I picked her up, she started talking. I said, ‘I love you,’ and she didn’t have the breath to say anything back.”
Paramedics arrived and rushed Gayles to University Medical Center, where a trauma team used X-Rays and CT scans to search for the bullets and fragments that were swimming beneath her skin. They wanted to make sure she didn’t suffer from any internal bleeding or blockages that could kill her. She underwent two emergency surgeries that night to repair damaged blood vessels.
Her injuries were not considered life-threatening, said Dr. Allison McNickle, the trauma surgeon who led her treatment team that night. (Gayles gave McNickle permission to speak to The Washington Post). “But she had multiple injuries that were limb-threatening,” McNickle said.
Initially, doctors thought the damage was so extensive that it could take six to eight months for her to walk again. Because she couldn’t move, the days dragged by slowly. And because she didn’t have many distractions, her mind returned regularly to what she and her family now call “the incident.” When she couldn’t keep the memories at bay, she waited for the timed pain medication to kick in and wash them away.
But what bothered Gayles more than anything were the people who couldn’t control their emotions around her. “I didn’t have a problem with people seeing me like that,” she says. “But I did have a problem if they came in crying or looking at me like they pitied me. If they were crying, I would just send them right back out of the room.”
Gayles wanted to be surrounded by people who shared her vision of getting back to the basketball court. When USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb came to see Gayles in the hospital, Gottlieb was hesitant to broach the subject. But on the way out, she held Gayles’s hand and asked if there was anything she could do for her.
Gayles squeezed Gottlieb’s hand and said, “Get me to USC.”
Gayles has never been one to back down from a challenge. When she was 5, her father took her to a gym to watch him play in a pickup basketball game, and she kept trying to get onto the court. That week, she made her dad take her to the gym every day until she could shoot a men’s ball into a 10-foot hoop without help.
When she was in elementary school, she asked her dad to let her play tackle football; he demurred, so they settled on flag football. She was a star on a team that included current USC wide receiver Michael Jackson III. And when she shifted her focus to basketball, she sought out the best competition, playing up in age groups for her AAU team and often against boys. For high school, she chose to play for Spring Valley instead of the perennial powerhouse Centennial Bulldogs.
“She never wanted to play with the best,” Dwight says. “She wanted to play against the best.”
As she recovered, she channeled that competitive energy into her rehabilitation. At first, even lifting a finger was a challenge. But she leaned on a cliché that coaches instill in their athletes from preps to the pros: she focused only on what she could accomplish each day. At times, the thought of playing competitive basketball again was overwhelming, so she would instead put all her energy into the next intermediate step, like pulling herself up unassisted.
But basketball was never far from her mind.
“Her dad got her a miniature hoop and basketball,” her friend and former teammate Janiyah Davis says. “Whenever I visited her in the hospital, which was almost every day, she would ask me to get it for her. It was supposed to hang on the door, but she couldn’t get the ball that far, so I just held it in my arms for her. That always made her happy.”
By the time Gayles was discharged, she was able to pull herself out of bed and put herself into a wheelchair with minimal assistance. She was transferred to a rehabilitation center where her friends could visit her more freely. They even threw a prom for her. She wore a blue suit and danced all night in her wheelchair. “I was more tired that night,” she says, “than at any other point in my rehab.”
In June, less than two months after the shooting, Gayles was wheeled across the stage for her high school graduation, holding her diploma above her head to thunderous applause. When she saw her dad afterward, she could tell he’d been crying and teased him about it. At the end of June, she pulled herself up from her wheelchair, gripped onto some bars and, with the help of two physical therapists, was able to take her first step. She made it all the way to the end of the bar before sitting back down.
Another milestone for incoming freshman @IsthatAg3!
Congratulations on graduating high school! 🎓 pic.twitter.com/7iWGEaxvHB
— USC Women's Basketball (@USCWBB) June 1, 2022
“I had to learn how to do everything again: stand up, walk, dribble, shoot,” she says. “I did it once, so why wouldn’t I be able to do it again? I’m a basketball player. I’m a competitor. I don’t like to lose. How was I going to let this beat me?”
Her parents bought her a wheelchair and crutches when she was discharged from the rehab center. They’re collecting cobwebs in a corner of her grandmother’s house in Los Angeles.
In July, she recruited an assistant coach at USC to help her out with a surprise. In the middle of one of the Trojans’ summer workouts, Gayles popped open the double doors and limped onto the practice court under her own power. Her teammates erupted into a mosh pit around her in celebration. Gottlieb, her coach, had to excuse herself.
“I was boohoo crying,” she says. “I was expecting her to come in with her wheelchair and maybe stand up for a minute. Instead, she walked right through the doors. One thing I’ve learned about Aaliyah is: You can’t count her out of anything.”
‘It’s coming back!’
At a USC practice in early September, Gayles walked through those double doors again. Banners celebrating USC’s back-to-back national championships hung in the rafters behind her. A clear brace on her left calf was the only visible artifact of her summer of rehab. She wore the scars on her legs and the bullet fragments still in her body like badges of honor.
Earlier in the week, an orthopedic doctor at USC had officially confirmed that she’d be able to play basketball again. Earlier in the day, on a specialized rehab treadmill, she’d run for the first time. Now, she moved from teammate to teammate, a slight bounce in her step, as she shared the good news.
As the team took the practice court, she remained on the sidelines, doing a specialized stretching routine with a trainer. Later, she worked with one of the team’s centers on inbounds passes and entry passes to the low post. She wrapped up the day with an around-the-world shooting drill, frustrating herself with too-frequent misses.
“Maybe it’s this ball,” she said after a five-footer rimmed out.
“No, it’s your shot. It’s flat,” her dad said. “But it’s coming back!”
Her family is in the process of relocating from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. The experience, and the police response, has poisoned a place that Dwight had called home for more than two decades. Dwight says the family has only heard from detectives three times in six months and that he was treated dismissively when he tried to present them with possible leads.
The North Las Vegas Police Department declined to make the detectives available for an interview for this story but said that the investigation is ongoing. The case makes Gayles uncomfortable. She doesn’t know what justice looks like. She doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt, but she also doesn’t want to see anyone locked up. More than anything, she doesn’t want to constantly revisit that night. “I feel like it’s a waste of time to talk about it,” she says. “It’s over with — I mean, it’s not over, I still feel it — but it didn’t stop me. I took a shot, but it didn’t stop me. Why dwell on it?”
When the painful memories of that night do pop up now, she likes to focus instead on a night she’s been dreaming about in the not-too-distant future. This season, she’ll take a redshirt, but she hopes to start practicing at full speed with the team in the spring. That way she’ll be ready to take the court again next fall.
When she’s feeling low, that’s the night she likes to conjure. She imagines slipping into her USC uniform and lacing her Nikes. She sees herself walking to the edge of the tunnel in the Galen Center, hearing the buzz of the crowd hush as the PA announcer begins reeling off the names on the roster.
Then she hears her name. The lights are still low in the arena, so she can’t discern any faces, but she can hear the crowd as they cheer on the woman whose story they all know — the one who survived the bullets, the one who had to learn to walk again, the one who had to build her game from the ground up again — and introduce them to another Aaliyah Gayles. The Aaliyah Gayles who sends defenders spinning with the flick of her wrist, the one who causes assistant coaches to crack clipboards over their knees, the one who earned her way here twice.
When the PA announcer calls her name that night, the night of her first game of her college basketball career, Aaliyah will allow herself to cry. “But only for like three seconds,” she says. “Then it’s all ball.”
Virginia’s Kihei Clark returns with hopes for one more tournament run | 2022-11-07T12:41:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Aaliyah Gayles, USC basketball player and gunshot victim, fights back - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/aaliyah-gayles-usc-basketball/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/aaliyah-gayles-usc-basketball/ |
Comedian Eddie Izzard campaigns for Britain's Labour Party in Wales in 2017. (Matthew Horwood/Getty Images)
LONDON — Comedian Eddie Izzard says she has been punched and verbally abused by street gangs because of the way she looks. Since she announced her run for British Parliament, politicians — including members of her own Labour Party — are also launching attacks.
While Izzard has not taken a particularly vocal stance on trans issues, her critics have been sharply personal about her identity — making unlikely bedfellows of politicians from the governing Conservative Party and the opposition Labour Party who have called her “that” or “not a woman.”
The focus on Izzard’s identity — and even the possibility that she may benefit from initiatives designed to boost women’s participation in political life — has shown the divides on trans rights within both major political parties in the United Kingdom and how Labour, which sees itself as more progressive on social issues, is especially vulnerable to infighting.
Izzard, 60, said she has found the fixation frustrating. “I happen to be trans. It isn’t the central part of me. I also happen to play the piano. I also happen to have blue eyes,” Izzard said in a telephone interview, adding that she would prefer to be defined by her politics rather than by her gender identity.
The two-time Emmy-winning comedian and Broadway performer is campaigning to be Labour’s candidate for Sheffield Central, in northern England. If she is selected, she could be the first openly transgender person to win an election in the U.K.; Sheffield Central is considered a safe Labour seat.
The Labour Party will soon have to decide whether to limit some primaries to female candidates, adhering to a measure known as the “all-women shortlist” that was introduced decades ago to boost representation in Parliament. While the decision is generally opaque until the announcement — and Labour leaders have appeared reluctant to wade into the debate in this race — much media coverage has focused on whether Izzard, who identifies as a trans woman and describes herself as gender-fluid, would qualify.
Labour lawmaker Rosie Duffield, who has argued that allowing transgender people to self-identify puts female-only spaces at risk, has turned this prospect into a line of attack. Insisting that Izzard’s inclusion would hurt the political chances of other women, Duffield has pledged to leave the party if Izzard is included. At an event hosted by party activists advocating for what they termed women’s sex-based rights in September, Duffield said: “I won’t lie, and I won’t say that a man is a woman. Eddie Izzard is not a woman.”
Izzard’s campaign issued a statement saying the candidate is not seeking to be elected on the all-women shortlist. “The people who were pushing the misinformation and disinformation about all-women shortlists — there was no fight there,” Izzard, who has asked to be addressed using female pronouns since 2020, said in the interview.
This debate echoes similar ones taking place in the U.K. and across the world, including in sports and other traditionally sex-segregated spaces. More than a dozen U.S. states have banned transgender women and girls from competing on female sports teams. This past summer, Triathlon became the first sport in the U.K. to ban transgender women from racing in the female category.
Duffield has previously said she is not transphobic and simply insists on sex-based protections for women, including female-only spaces such as hospital wards, refuges and prisons — and she argues that politics should be no exception. Other party members, including many younger activists, have accused Duffield and other lawmakers of thinly disguising transphobia under the banner of women’s rights.
LGBT Labour, which officially represents Labour’s grass-roots LGBT members, called on the party to take disciplinary action against Duffield, adopt a formal definition of transphobia and enact a “zero tolerance approach” at “all levels of the party.”
The Labour Party has tried to manage the rift by appealing for compassion — but has been criticized for a lack of clarity. Labour leader Keir Starmer would not say whether the party was considering an all-women shortlist in Izzard’s race, or whether she would qualify. “For 99.9 percent of women, it’s a matter of biology. I completely support that,” Starmer said last month. “There is a small percentage who struggle with their gender, and I’m not going to simply put that on one side and ignore that.”
Starmer, while declining to comment on individual cases including Izzard’s, also suggested that there is an argument for getting rid of all-women shortlists, given that more than half of his party’s members are now women.
Izzard has also been a target of some in the Conservative Party. Lawmaker Lee Anderson misgendered Izzard and suggested she may pose a safety risk when using the bathroom facilities in Parliament. Anderson added that he thought working-class Labour voters would look at Izzard and think “really? Is that what’s coming to Parliament?”
Conservatives have not been immune to intraparty rifts over trans issues. A senior member of the party, Suella Braverman, said in August that the government would never compel British teachers and children to use the pronouns or names preferred by their trans classmates in schools. Conservative lawmaker Jamie Wallis — who came out as transgender this year, becoming the first openly trans member of Parliament — criticized her comments and accused members of his party of exploiting the debate on transgender rights “to score cheap political points.”
The Labour and Conservative parties, along with Duffield and Anderson individually, did not respond to requests for comment. Duffield and her camp say they have received online abuse and threats to their safety for expressing their views.
Izzard said that the vast majority of people she has encountered on the campaign trail in Sheffield have been supportive — and that she is unaffected by the latest barrage of personal attacks that she prefers to ignore.
“People have shouted at me in the street. People have fought me with their fists in the street. And I will keep going forward. I am resilient,” she said. “It’s wrong that they should be doing it, but it’s not going to affect me.”
She added: “Trans people have been around for thousands of years, but we have been scared to stand up and say that we exist. … I say to all the people who are transphobic: Join the 21st century — we are moving on.” | 2022-11-07T12:46:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trans comedian Eddie Izzard’s U.K. parliamentary bid attacked on all sides - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/07/eddie-izzard-labour-parliament-transgender/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/07/eddie-izzard-labour-parliament-transgender/ |
We know him as Lord Grantham, but Hugh Bonneville is a humbler sort
In his memoir ‘Playing Under the Piano,’ the British actor best-known for his role on ‘Downton Abbey,’ traces his slow rise to fame and dishes (a little) about the show that got him there
Review by Louis Bayard
“Learn to labor and to wait,” counseled Longfellow, and he might have been speaking to another long fellow, Hugh Bonneville. The 6-foot-2 actor was well into his 40s when he became, by quirk of fate, Lord Robert Grantham, the center of a Tory fantasy vessel called “Downton Abbey” that sailed across the Atlantic and around the world, claiming in the name of entertainment whatever territories the British Empire had relinquished.
What a lovely home, we post-colonialists thought. What a lovely lord, with his complicated English daughters and uncomplicated American wife. The kind of stalwart, dinner-jacketed gent who, rather than sack his cook for going blind, subsidizes her eye surgery and who only troubles his dining room’s table settings when he has a gastric ulcer to disgorge. Wouldn’t we like him to be the head of our household? Wouldn’t things run a good bit better?
A novel to cure your ‘Downton Abbey’ withdrawal
With that, Hugh Bonneville stepped out from the shadows and became the man we needed without knowing we needed him. One might forgive him a victory lap or three, but the bulk of his winning and becomingly modest memoir, “Playing Under the Piano” (the title a reference to his favorite childhood hiding place) is about the struggle that got him there.
To be sure, Bonneville, now 58, grew up in comfort. Born Hugh Williams, he was a “little posh boy” from London who, with no great fuss, matriculated into Cambridge, then the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. But from an early age he was also a big-boned lad in “sturdy fit shorts” whose weight went “up and down like a pair of bellows, usually coming to rest on the inflated side of things.” And he was entering a world where the first response was usually “No.”
During his first summer as a professional actor, Bonneville played the bass drum in “Romeo and Juliet,” the cymbal in “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and an officer in Shaw’s “Arms and the Man.” “Grand total of lines uttered: five,” he remembers. More lines followed, but sometimes they deserted him onstage. The first time it happened, he writes, “time slowed, the cosmos shifted and the space-time continuum took on an entirely new form; embryos were formed, born, grew up, grew old and died; empires rose and fell, entire civilizations came into being and disintegrated, dinosaurs took over the world again before a comet wiped them out.” At long last came the assistant stage manager, speaking “painfully loudly from the prompt corner.”
Best known for her role on ‘Downton Abbey,’ Catherine Steadman is making a splash as an author
Bonneville made his film debut in Kenneth Branagh’s “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (1994), where his character, after dying of cholera, had his leg sawed-off and sewn on to Robert De Niro’s Creature. But the actor persevered, “learning by osmosis,” winning bigger roles on the London stage, supporting another Hugh in “Notting Hill” (1999) and gaining real attention as Kate Winslet’s co-star in “Iris” (2001). Even here, his name ran below the title, and the awards rained down on Jim Broadbent, who played the older version of Bonneville’s character.
He labored on nonetheless, making a stab at a U.S. fan base with a misbegotten Jenna Elfman sitcom but reserving his heart for independent films, “delicately put together by a coalition of the willing.” And if true stardom eluded him, he could take pride in being the dependable bloke who stood up with Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi, Ralph Fiennes and even, for a brief moment there in “Notting Hill,” Julia Roberts.
“Most actors,” he writes, “are wise enough to know that you’re often second, third or even eightieth choice for the role.” Yet when “Downton” creator Julian Fellowes went looking for the ideal Earl, Bonneville seems to have been the first choice. No one was expecting much from another period drama, and the show’s publicists struggled to get advance press. But in the second week, ratings actually climbed — and kept climbing.
“By the time it came to filming season two,” Bonneville writes, “security became an issue, burly blokes in hi-viz vests having to pull paparazzi out of trees when we filmed on private property, or perform vigorous interpretive dances to block their lenses when on public land.”
For Bonneville, the show’s success was an airlift to the Zeitgeist — at one juncture he ferries a note from his 10-year-old son directly to President Barack Obama — but even now he seems reluctant to crawl out from under that piano. “Downton” may have won its cast three Screen Actors Guild awards for ensemble work, but, Bonneville insists, “we all knew that Highclere Castle was really the lead character. And we all knew that Maggie Smith ran a pretty close second.” (His cautious verdict on that particular co-star: “There were good Maggie days and not so good ones.”)
It seems fitting then, in his book’s affecting final pages, the Abbey’s patriarch should step away from his make-believe home and see off his own father (who was, intriguingly, a piano player as well as a urologist; his mother, he learned after her death, was employed by MI6). From his bedside seat in the dementia-care home, Bonneville finds, against odds, a consoling metaphor for the old man’s final moments: “It’s as if he’s in a glider, high up there, silently, elegantly, effortlessly circling, peeking out of cottonwool clouds for a moment before disappearing out of view.”
Louis Bayard is the author of “Jackie & Me” and “The Pale Blue Eye.”
Playing Under the Piano
From Downton to Darkest Peru
By Hugh Bonneville
Other Press. 384 pp. $27.99 | 2022-11-07T13:16:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review: Playing Under the Piano, by Hugh Bonneville - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/07/hugh-bonneville-memoir/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/07/hugh-bonneville-memoir/ |
Pennsylvania’s Demographics Are Changing Faster Than Its Politics
HAZLETON, PA - MARCH 14: Cars move through downtown Hazleton March 14, 2007 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. A new city ordinance in Hazleton has caused members of the large Latino community to fear discrimination and to have concern for their future in the town.The city of Hazleton and its aggressive policy on illegal immigration is the subject of a federal trial that is being viewed nationally as a landmark case on immigration. In a move that caused outrage among Latino residents this past summer, city officials in Hazleton adopted ordinances that target illegal immigrants in housing, language use and employment. The ordinance, called the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, has been put on hold while the case is challenged in federal court in Scranton by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. At least 80 towns and cities across the nation have adopted similar measures against illegal immigrants. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) (Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America)
After the 2012 election, when Barack Obama won the presidency for a second time, the late right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh seemed ready to throw in the towel. “We are outnumbered and we are losing ground,” he said.
Limbaugh’s listeners, like everyone else in increasingly polyglot America, understood exactly who “we” was. Political analyst Ronald Brownstein dubbed Limbaugh’s cohort the “coalition of restoration,” the overwhelmingly White, Christian, exurban conservatives who considered Obama an alien figure who had upended the natural order of the nation.
In the US, however, who outnumbers whom is not a question of math. It’s a question of politics. Political power flows not to those who are here but to those who vote here.
In the years since 2012, Obama’s coalition has proved a shaky foundation for power. It can be thwarted — by demographic concentration, gerrymandering, filibusters or lopsided courts, even when it produces superior raw numbers. And when it doesn’t, it can be overwhelmed.
Yesenia Rodriguez is a recent addition to the numbers game. Like the Irish of old Boston, or Italians in New York City before Fiorella LaGuardia became mayor, she is a member of a rising immigrant group that is strong in number yet weak in political power.
A 44-year-old bakery owner who immigrated to Brooklyn from the Dominican Republic when she was 14, Rodriguez moved to Pennsylvania in her 20s. She is now the Democratic nominee for the state House of Representatives in Pennsylvania’s 116th district, spending the final days of the 2022 election knocking on doors in her hometown of Hazleton, about 90 miles north of Philadelphia.
Hazleton was an industrial town that fell, like so many others, on post-industrial hard times. A large influx of Hispanics moved to Hazleton over the past two decades, including large numbers of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, many of whom work in the city’s warehouses and logistics companies. The city is now majority Hispanic. The mayor, city council and school board, however, are all non-Hispanic White.
“I’ve been here 19 years and I haven’t seen any political changes when it comes to city hall, mayor, school board,” Rodriguez said. “They’re holding on to their power. They don’t want to let go.”
The newly drawn 116th district, population 64,000, is 57.4% White. Because it includes heavily Hispanic Hazleton, along with its overwhelmingly White rural areas, it’s 36.8% Hispanic. That’s a promising base for a Dominican politician — if that base votes.
Sitting in her bakery in Hazleton, surrounded by campaign paraphernalia, Rodriguez talked about voter apathy. “If you look at the numbers, most Dominicans vote only for president,” Rodriguez said. “So that was part of our job. From the beginning of the summer we started knocking on doors and telling people, ‘You know, it’s very important. We have a local election this year.’”
Her Republican opponent, a former small-town mayor and school district employee named Dane Watro, appears to have standard conservative GOP positions (neither candidate offers much detail) along with mentions of bipartisanship and the endorsement of Gun Owners of America, an organization for people who think the National Rifle Association is insufficiently extreme. Watro is also endorsed by Lou Barletta, the former Hazleton mayor and, later, member of Congress, whose anti-immigrant crusade became a national cause after Hazleton passed a 2006 law to penalize landlords and employers for housing or employing undocumented immigrants. (The law failed to survive a court challenge.)
Barletta’s us-vs.-them politics helped to poison Hazleton for years. Some of the local animosity has abated. But Donald Trump tapped a similar vein of anxiety nationally and rode it to the White House. In this year’s American Values Survey, a PRRI poll of more than 2,500 American adults, two-thirds of Republicans and 71% of White Evangelical Protestants agreed that America’s “culture and way of life has mostly changed for the worse” since the 1950s.
It’s a revealing data point. Surely most respondents realize that opportunities for women were severely restricted in the 1950s; that gays, lesbians and trans people had no rights deemed worthy of respect; and that most Black Americans lived under apartheid authoritarian state governments.
Of course, the 1950s also preceded the waves of Hispanic immigrants entering the US, and ultimately becoming citizens. Nostalgia for some represents oblivion for others.
Rodriguez says that some of the White voters she meets, in Hazleton and in rural parts of the district, understand that political equity requires greater representation for Hispanics. But without votes, it’s impossible to realize the goal.
Rodriguez ran twice for school board, losing each time. Short of campaign funds, facing an uphill battle in a conservative district, she does not sound confident of victory on Tuesday, either. “Even if we don’t win the seat on the 8th, we still did a hell of a job because I know people now are more educated when it comes to local elections. I know that turnout is going to be totally different than it was years before, even when I ran for school board last year,” she said. “I think we’re making a difference.”
There’s something quintessentially American about Rodriguez’s campaign, even outside the context of contemporary Republican efforts to enshrine minority rule. Now that her name has been on a ballot three times, Rodriguez is more than a local small business owner. She is a politician. When you’re trying to gain power, running for office is no guarantee that you’ll obtain it. But it’s a start.
• In Pennsylvania, the Big Lie Spreads Its Roots: Francis Wilkinson | 2022-11-07T13:17:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pennsylvania’s Demographics Are Changing Faster Than Its Politics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pennsylvanias-demographics-arechanging-faster-thanits-politics/2022/11/07/b684c08c-5e98-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pennsylvanias-demographics-arechanging-faster-thanits-politics/2022/11/07/b684c08c-5e98-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
By Washington Post Staff, Mariana Alfaro and Amy Wang | Nov 7, 2022
In the final sprint before Tuesday’s election, all eyes are on the swing states that may decide who will get control of the Senate, as well as those with tight gubernatorial races. More attention is being given to the power of state legislatures following the end of Roe v. Wade’s abortion rights protections and the contentious 2020 election.
The Pennsylvania Senate race is one of the closest, most-watched matchups this election season. Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is hoping to help his party gain a seat in the Senate by defeating Republican Mehmet Oz in the race to replace retiring Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R). Polling has consistently shown Fetterman slightly ahead of Oz in the election.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) takes a selfie with state House Minority Leader Joanna McClinton (D) at a rally in Blue Bell, Pa., on Sept. 11.
Rachel Wisniewski for the Washington Post
Fetterman, who suffered a stroke ahead of the primary election this year, has remained optimistic about his odds Tuesday, has sought to depict Oz as an outsider — a New Jersey resident who dropped in on the Pennsylvania race in an attempt to win political power.
Oz, the doctor turned TV host turned politician, jumped into the race with the backing of former president Donald Trump, who rallied with him this weekend.
Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, speaks at a campaign rally in Wexford, Pa on Nov. 4.
The Pennsylvania gubernatorial race is also one to watch.
State Attorney General Josh Shapiro is running to keep the governor’s mansion in Democratic hands, battling Republican opponent Doug Mastriano — a Trump endorsee.
Polls have consistently shown Shapiro ahead of Mastriano in the race.
Josh Shapiro, Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania governor, speaks with reporters on his campaign bus on Nov. 1 in Beaver, Pa.
Justin Merriman for The Washington Post
Doug Mastriano, Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, speaks at a rally at the Kimberton Fairgrounds on Oct. 1 in Phoenixville, Pa.
Mark Makela for The Washington Post
Despite running in Pennsylvania, a purple state, Mastriano has largely shaped his campaign to appeal to the GOP’s more right-wing base, echoing some of the former president’s most extremist views — including his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election.
Trump wasn’t the only political leader who descended upon Pennsylvania during the final days of the campaign — former president Barack Obama and President Biden rallied with the Democratic ticket on Saturday.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, former president Barack Obama, President Biden and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman rally in Philadelphia on Nov. 5.
Caroline Gutman for The Washington Post
Obama, during his appearance alongside Fetterman on Saturday, took aim at Trump and other deniers of the 2020 presidential election.
“If you don’t get your way, don’t throw a tantrum; don’t pick up your ball and go home,” Obama told a crowd in Pittsburgh as he made the case that “democracy is on the ballot” in Tuesday’s midterms.
Former president Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Latrobe, Pa., on Nov. 5.
Trump, meanwhile, appeared alongside Oz in Latrobe, Pa., where he predicted a Republican sweep of the U.S. House and Senate — and foreshadowed his potential 2024 presidential run.
Friday marked the last day of early voting in the battleground state of Arizona, where the Republican Party’s ticket is rife with election deniers.
Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake talks to news media on Nov. 1 in Chandler, Ariz., as children of supporters hold campaign signs in the background
Caitlin O’Hara for The Washington Post
Chief among them is Kari Lake, a former newscaster who is running for governor and made her way to the top of the Republican ticket by espousing Trump’s false claims of election fraud and embracing hard-right politics, including a strong opposition to abortion rights, Biden’s immigration policies and the measures taken to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
Lake talks to reporters on Nov. 1 in Chandler, Ariz.
Lake is running against Katie Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state who oversaw the contentious 2020 election and who served as minority leader in the state Senate.
Polls have found Hobbs and Lake nearly dead-even but, over the past few weeks, support for Hobbs has softened.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs attends a canvas launch at a polling location on Nov. 4 in Phoenix.
Hobbs also drew some criticism from Republicans for refusing to debate Lake; she said that she would not share a stage with Lake because she doesn’t want to take part in her opponent’s “spectacle.”
Volunteers supporting Hobbs rally outside the Arizona Capitol on Nov. 4 in Phoenix.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), meanwhile, is fending off a challenge from Blake Masters, a venture capitalist and Trump endorsee who, like Lake, has refused to acknowledge Trump’s 2020 defeat.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) speaks to seniors at housing community in Phoenix on Oct. 12.
While Kelly — a former astronaut and Navy pilot — is known as a moderate Democrat in the Senate, Masters has sought to paint him as a liberal extremist. Kelly is struggling to maintain his seat as Masters continues to describe him as a rubber stamp on Biden’s agenda.
Blake Masters, Republican candidate for Senate, speaks during a campaign event on Oct. 11 in Phoenix.
Masters, who has funded his race with substantial support from Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, came out of the primary earlier this year with unfavorable ratings, but the national GOP has rallied around him as the campaign comes to a close.
The U.S. Senate race for Georgia’s seats has, perhaps, been the most dramatic this election season.
Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) is seeking to defend his seat from former NFL player Herschel Walker (R), whose campaign has drawn multiple scandals.
Vanessa Manley waves the U.S. flag during a Souls to the Polls event for Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) at Victory Outreach Church in Atlanta on Oct. 23.
Warnock speaks at a campaign rally on Oct. 8 in Columbus, Ga.
Elijah Nouvelage for The Washington Post
While polls throughout the campaign generally showed Warnock ahead of Walker, there is a likelihood this race could head to a runoff. If neither candidate clears 50 percent of the vote, the runoff election would occur in December.
Herschel Walker, Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Georgia, deliver remarks with Nikki Haley during a rally for his Unite Georgia bus tour in Hiram, Ga on Nov. 6.
Walker, who opposes abortion rights, drew national headlines after two women alleged that he paid for abortions.
Still, Republicans did not abandon the former NFL player and instead coalesced around him in their attempt to regain one of the two Georgia Senate seats they lost two years ago, when Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) won.
People attend a Herschel Walker rally in Hiram, Ga., on Nov. 6.
In Georgia, the governor’s race is a 2018 rematch. Democrat Stacey Abrams is again challenging Republican Brian Kemp, the incumbent, in her effort to become the first Black female governor in U.S. history.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) speaks at a campaign event in Ringgold, Ga., on Nov. 6.
Kemp is one of the few major GOP candidates this year running without Trump’s support. He is, after all, the governor who refused to accept Trump’s false claims of election fraud and aid his efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
In the Republican primary earlier this year, Kemp soundly defeated former senator David Perdue, a Trump-endorsed challenger, to win their party’s nomination.
Barbecue is served at a campaign event held by Kemp in Ringgold, Ga., on Nov. 6.
Polls have shown that Abrams, who has built a national brand by advocating for voter rights and fighting voter suppression, is running behind Kemp by 4 to 5 percentage points.
Early voting in the state hit a record for a midterm election.
Stacey Abrams, Democratic candidate for Georgia governor, speaks during a rally on Nov. 4 in Atlanta.
Kevin D. Liles for the Washington Post
Attendees listen during a rally for Abrams on Nov. 4 in Atlanta.
Democrats see the Wisconsin race as one of their best opportunities to pick up a Senate seat. The state’s lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes (D), is challenging incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R), who has held the seat since 2011.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul speaks at a canvassing event with Senate candidate Mandela Barnes (D), Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson and NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju on Nov. 6.
Barnes holds a baby after a roundtable event on black maternal health in Milwaukee on Oct. 19.
While Wisconsin still trends red, polls have shown that the race remains competitive. If elected, Barnes would be the state’s first Black senator.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) poses for photographs with supporters during a campaign rally on Nov. 6 in Madison, Wis.
While Johnson’s popularity in the state had dropped, Republicans have sought to improve his chances by depicting Barnes as a radical who is soft on crime.
Meanwhile, Democrats — specifically, Biden — have long warned voters that Johnson is seeking to sharply curtail social spending programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Seventeen-month-old Primrose is carried by her mother, Saritah, while waiting for the arrival of Johnson at a campaign rally in Madison on Nov. 6.
And in the gubernatorial race, GOP nominee Tim Michels, a Trump endorsee, has drawn criticism for some of his extremist views, including echoing false allegations of voter fraud and promising to replace the state’s bipartisan election commission with a new body. He has, however, provided few details on this plan.
Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels (R) attends a rally in Menomonee Falls, Wis., on Nov. 6.
Michels is challenging incumbent Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who has sought to protect abortion access in the state. The issue became a top concern for Democrats this election after a total ban on abortion — which dates to 1849 — came into effect in Wisconsin after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Volunteers and supporters listen to Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) during a canvassing launch with U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Nov. 6 in Madison, Wis.
In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) is fending off a challenge from Republican Tudor Dixon.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) greets attendees during a rally in Detroit on Oct. 30.
Emily Elconin for The Washington Post
Whitmer has been among the most vocal Democrats about the importance of protecting abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Also on the Michigan ballot this year is a measure that would codify abortion rights in the state’s constitution.
Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon (R) speaks at a rally in a Sterling Heights, Mich., strip mall parking lot on Nov. 6.
Nick Hagen for The Washington Post
Dixon, meanwhile, is a business executive endorsed by Trump who emerged as a surprise front-runner from a crowded field of GOP candidates after half of them were disqualified over fraudulent petitions.
In Florida, all eyes are on Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Republican leader who many see as a potential 2024 presidential candidate.
DeSantis — once a close ally to Trump — has long sought a position of leadership within the party and has traveled nationwide for other Republican candidates this season.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), seen on the screen of a television news camera, holds a news conference at Anna Maria Oyster Bar Landside in Bradenton, Fla., on Sept. 20.
DeSantis greets supporters following a speech in Clearwater, Fla. on Nov. 5.
Still, he faces a challenge at home — from former governor Charlie Crist, a former Republican turned Democrat.
While the polls suggest DeSantis will hold on to his seat, Crist’s candidacy has brought national attention to many of the battles DeSantis and Florida’s GOP-led legislature have mounted against the Biden administration and its coronavirus guidelines, entertainment giant Disney, and members of the LGBTQ community.
Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist (D) campaigns in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Sept. 19.
Crist shakes hands with precinct worker Patrice Perry before casting his vote on primary day, Aug. 23, in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Notably, during a debate against Crist, DeSantis did not say whether he would commit to serving a full, four-year term as governor if reelected.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) celebrates after his speech at a rally in West Miami, Fla., on Oct. 19.
Bryan Cereijo for The Washington Post
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is also favored to hold on to his seat against Democratic Rep. Val Demings (Fla). Polls show Rubio comfortably ahead of Demings by as much as 10 points.
Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), nominee for the U.S. Senate, speaks to supporters in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Oct. 26.
Saul Martinez for The Washington Post
North Carolina is another state where Democrats see an opportunity to capture a Senate seat from Republicans. There, Cheri Beasley (D) is facing Trump-endorsed Republican Rep. Ted Budd in the race to replace Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who is retiring.
Senate candidate Cheri Beasley (D) hugs parade-goer Emoni Hicks, 6, who ran out to greet her during the NCCU Homecoming Parade on Nov. 5 in Durham, N.C.
If elected, Beasley, who was the first Black woman to serve as chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, would become North Carolina’s first Black senator.
Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), candidate for U.S. Senate, speaks to supporters during a rally at Illuminating Technologies in Greensboro, N.C. on Oct. 13.
Allison Lee Isley for The Washington Post
Budd, who was endorsed by Trump, voted against certifying the electoral college results on Jan. 6, 2021, and continued to embrace the former president’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Unlike other swing-state GOP candidates who tried to moderate their positions for the general election, Budd welcomed Trump’s support and campaigned with him in the weeks leading up to Election Day.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) is fighting a challenge from Republican Adam Laxalt in what the GOP see as one of their top opportunities to take a Democratic seat.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) waves to voters during the Nevada Day Parade in Carson City, Nev., on Oct. 29.
Cortez Masto, who was the first Latina elected to the Senate in Nevada, was a co-sponsor of the Senate bill to codify abortion rights and campaigned on protecting women’s rights.
Masto and her husband, Paul Masto, talk backstage after attending an AFL-CIO union rally in Las Vegas on Nov. 6.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Adam Laxalt shakes the hands of supporters after speaking at a campaign event on Nov. 5 in Las Vegas.
David Becker for The Washington Post
Laxalt, meanwhile, is the grandson of former Nevada governor and U.S. senator Paul Laxalt, though his family ties weren’t necessarily a boon: 14 members of Laxalt’s family issued a letter last month endorsing Cortez Masto.
Laxalt speaks at an event during the start of early voting in Las Vegas on Oct. 22. | 2022-11-07T13:17:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Candidates rally voters in swing states as midterm election nears - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/interactive/2022/campaign-midterms-swing-state-photos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/interactive/2022/campaign-midterms-swing-state-photos/ |
Here’s what to expect on Day 1 of Kevin McCarthy’s Republican-led House
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks at a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on June 9. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg News)
Barring some extraordinary turn of events, Republicans will win a majority of House seats on Tuesday. The 118th Congress will commence on Jan. 3, 2023, with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) almost a certainty as House speaker. Here’s what Day 1 of a GOP-controlled House will look like.
Before diving in to roll back Biden administration policies — such as an immediate attack on an expansion of Internal Revenue Service personnel — House Republicans will overhaul how the chamber operates. They’ll make three notable changes, attempting to dispel what GOP leaders see as a toxic environment on Capitol Hill, where they believe members have fallen into habits of barely interacting with each other, never mind trusting each other.
The first change will be the removal of metal detectors outside the House chamber, put in place about a week after the violence of Jan. 6, 2021. Republicans have argued that the detectors tie up resources, unnecessarily delay members entering for votes and amount to pointless “security theater.” It is more sensible, they say, for representatives go through a metal detector when entering the Capitol itself, just as visitors do. (Some Republicans, such as Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, maintain that they are legally permitted to carry firearms within the Capitol complex.)
The second change will be to open House members’ office buildings to the public and no longer require visitors to be escorted by a staffer, a reversal of current policies. McCarthy believes these modifications were an overreaction to Jan. 6 that limit the public’s right to contact and interact with their representatives.
The third change is ending the use of proxy voting (having another member vote on one’s behalf) and voting in committees from remote locations, two practices enacted in response to the pandemic. McCarthy has griped about such absenteeism for “eroding the public’s trust in the People’s House.”
Beyond procedural moves, Day 1 will feature the introduction of legislation to rescind the permanent appropriation for 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service employees. House Republicans are under no illusion that Senate Democrats or President Biden will be eager to play ball with them on that issue, but eliminating the IRS expansion ranks among their top priorities.
Do not expect, though, that the McCarthy-led House Republicans will throw themselves into full-on battle from the first hour of the new Congress the way the Newt Gingrich-led House Republicans did when they took over in 1995.
Yes, McCarthy has emulated Gingrich ahead of the midterms by issuing the “Commitment to America” — a wide-ranging menu of policy proposals that was light on details — modeled on the GOP’s “Contract with America” for the 1994 midterms.
But the Republicans will be returning to power after four years in the wilderness, not 40. No need for a Gingrichesque marathon first day full of pomp and bombast, and cameo appearance by the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. McCarthy and other leaders don’t see themselves as sprinting to meet an artificial 100-day deadline such as the one Gingrich imposed.
On Day 1, House Republicans will start laying the groundwork for a multitude of initiatives, but a few weeks of settling in will also be needed. (Unresolved business from the lame-duck session might also require attention.)
The “Commitment to America” is the road map. Its energy initiatives are likely to be at the front of the line. House Republicans pledged to “cut the permitting process time in half to reduce reliance on foreign countries, prevent rolling blackouts, and lower the cost of gas and utilities” and “maximize the production of reliable, cleaner, American-made energy.” GOP House leaders feel the legislation for these proposals is closest to being ready for prime time.
Right behind that will be the Republicans’ border security pledge to “fully fund effective border enforcement strategies, infrastructure, and advanced technology to prevent illegal crossings and trafficking by cartels” and “end catch-and-release loopholes.”
It won’t be a matter for Day 1, but one big issue looms: a nearly inevitable and time-consuming fight over raising the debt ceiling. That’s most likely to consume a big chunk of February for the Biden administration and Congress.
Well before Day 1, House Republicans began preparing the way to grill Biden administration officials. Ranking members of House committees have been licking their chops in anticipation of running oversight hearings, and have already put in more than 500 preservation requests for documents across the administration. Life will soon get more complicated for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, regarding border policy, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, regarding, well, the list is long.
Whether Republican-backed House bills become law will depend upon a lot — the size of the GOP majority, the balance in the Senate — and whether Biden feels the need to tack to the center after the midterm results.
Midterm voters rebuked George W. Bush in 2006, Barack Obama in 2010 and 2014, and Donald Trump in 2018. And yet, those presidents didn’t change much; the last president who dramatically altered his approach post-midterm was Bill Clinton after 1994. Just as Clinton and Gingrich were stuck with each other, Biden and McCarthy will be stuck with each other, and like their predecessors, both will likely want to have some tangible results to show for their time in leadership. | 2022-11-07T13:17:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Here's what House Repubicans will do if Kevin McCarthy becomes speaker - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/day-one-republican-majority-house-mccarthy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/day-one-republican-majority-house-mccarthy/ |
Messaging isn’t the Democrats’ problem with the midterms. Reality is.
Rocks with messages about voting and democracy line the walkway at the Catawba County Democratic headquarters in Hickory, N.C., on Oct. 13. (Logan Cyrus/for The Washington Post)
In a presidential campaign, voters really do care about your larger vision. The most successful presidential candidates — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama — are those who embark on their campaigns with an argument so well synthesized that we can still remember it many years later. (Putting people first, compassionate conservatism, purple America.)
But no focus-grouped slogan or silly listicle of priorities — I’m old enough to remember the awesome power of “Six for ’06” — was ever going to eclipse the voters’ daily reality. Democrats promised to make things normal again, and yet somehow, in an unfortunate convergence of malady and cure, both inflation and interest rates are rising to levels we haven’t seen since the 1980s, and gas prices remain historically high. That’s not anyone’s definition of normal.
There were reasons for the ominous trends, of course, that had nothing to do with Democratic policies — lingering effects of the pandemic on supply chains, the war in Ukraine and its impact on oil. But that’s always the case with economies. Those are excuses, not arguments. | 2022-11-07T13:18:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Actually, the Democratic message during the midterms was totally fine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/democrats-midterms-message-does-not-matter-matt-bai/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/democrats-midterms-message-does-not-matter-matt-bai/ |
Claudia Zapata, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House in Texas's 21st Congressional District, in Kerrville, Tex., on Thursday. (Paul Waldman/Paul Waldman/The Washington Post)
KERR COUNTY, Tex. — At a house in Kerrville, Tex., that had seen better days, congressional candidate Claudia Zapata came with a couple of 20-something helpers to clean out the house and yard, taking multiple loads of debris to the dump. The elderly woman who lives there with her three dogs — whose minuscule size did not quite match the ferocity of their unceasing barking — needed the help and couldn’t do it herself.
The 28-year-old Zapata had rolled up driving her white 2004 Toyota Avalon, with a piñata in the back seat that serves as her campaign mascot. Helping out people like the woman in Kerrville is something Zapata has been doing a lot of in her quest to unseat Rep. Chip Roy, the Republican incumbent in Texas’s 21st Congressional District, a race whose outcome isn’t really in doubt. Zapata told me that she and her campaign have done cleanups and home repairs for hundreds of people, in an enterprise that no political consultant would say is an efficient way for a candidate to use their time to garner votes.
When she and her team go canvassing in underserved neighborhoods like this one, they ask what people need help with. Clean out the trash? Fix a broken water heater? If they can’t do it, they’ll try to find a local contractor to donate time. Sometimes, Zapata said, she has paid for repairs out of her modest campaign funds.
“We don’t skip doors,” she told me, explaining why they go to every house in a neighborhood, even in her heavily Republican district. “Even if it takes us one month to finish a precinct, we are going to do that because we need to build these relationships.”
She also stressed that it’s something she can do right now to help people, before taking office. And in a brutally gerrymandered district, taking office is likely not in the cards, at least this election cycle.
Few benefited more than her rival from the redistricting that Texas Republicans undertook after the 2020 Census. Legislators adjusted the 21st District’s boundaries so instead of the partisanship rating of R+10 it had under the old map (meaning it leans Republican by 10 percentage points), the new shape of the district earns it a rating of R+24.
The district has fingers that reach north to the Austin suburbs and south to San Antonio, but most of its area is a giant rectangle stretching 150 miles to the west, incorporating multiple rural counties that are mostly White and conservative.
Which gives Zapata a difficult challenge. Asked whether she has gotten support from the state Democratic Party in Austin, let alone the national party in Washington, Zapata was emphatic. “Nope. Never,” she said. “We’re out on our own. We try calling them, they don’t get back to us for six to eight weeks.
“The Democratic Party loves to recruit candidates who are young, which I am, brown, which I am, queer, which I am, to run in hard races, which I am,” she said. Ticking off the names of a few Democrats running in more competitive districts who have received more party support, Zapata asked, “What about the rest of us?”
“At this point, it’s not about me or my race,” she went on. “The Democratic Party is in the position that they are in because they’re failing to play the long game. Republicans play the long game very well. It’s all about those baby steps.”
When talk turned to her opponent, Zapata insisted that Roy ignores the district just as much as Democrats do. “Chip only ever comes out here during election season,” she said, arguing that he talks to donors and influential groups but doesn’t walk the same streets she does. “One of his offices is here in Kerrville,” she said, “and the lights are always off.” As it happens, I called Roy’s district office a half-dozen times that day to get an update on his campaign events; no one answered the phone.
I did see the congressman the next day, a half-hour away at a meet-and-greet in the tiny unincorporated rural town of Hunt. His campaign is amply funded (as of mid-October, Roy had raised a healthy $2.2 million for his campaign, compared with Zapata’s $118,000), and he walked in with the confidence of a candidate who knows that unless he bites the head off a puppy on live TV, he can’t lose (and maybe not even then).
Wearing jeans and a custom embroidered Chip Roy shirt with an American flag between the shoulders (his staffers were wearing them, too), the congressman told the 75 or so supporters at a restaurant that his race wasn’t going to be close, but they still needed to get out the vote.
After noting that his district got more Republican after redistricting, he said, “Honestly, the bigger margin we win by, the cheaper the next race is,” since he won’t “invite a challenge.”
When I asked him afterward whether the fact that there are so many uncompetitive districts like his is bad for democracy, he got philosophical, or at least historical. “James Madison was gerrymandered out of a district in Virginia,” he said. “There’s nothing new, and it will always be this, right?” But “things shift,” Roy argued. “Things that are your assumptions when you draw a map aren’t always the assumptions that stay true.”
Which is accurate as far as it goes, but Roy knows that in 10 years, Republicans will still probably hold the Texas state legislature (thanks to their current gerrymanders) and can do for him what they did after the suburbs shifted left in recent years: rejigger the districts yet again so they can hold on to power.
When I asked Roy what he can do in Washington specifically for the rural parts of his district, he cited the issues Republicans everywhere are mad about — immigration, inflation, energy — and then noted that he votes against farm bills because they always include money for food stamps, and he objects to the way the program is run.
One way to interpret that is that as long as Roy hits the right notes on national issues such as the border and “woke” leftists, he doesn’t actually have to bring home the bacon. He’s secure.
Which put me back in mind of something Claudia Zapata told me the day before. Zapata never claimed she was going to beat Roy. But if she does lose and Democrats use that as a justification for not investing in heavily Republican districts? “I’m just going to run again,” she said. “I’m going to run again, and I’m going to do it again and again until we win, until we bring proper representation and proper fight for this area.” | 2022-11-07T13:18:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Partisan politics in the age of gerrymandering - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/partisan-politics-age-gerrymandering/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/partisan-politics-age-gerrymandering/ |
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! We hope you had a good weekend despite the unseasonably warm weather. Below we have several updates on the COP27 climate talks underway in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. But first:
The U.S. and China might resume climate talks soon, according to former California governor Jerry Brown
As world leaders gather in Egypt this week for the annual United Nations climate summit, known as COP27, China and the United States are no longer talking about their mutual efforts to slow Earth’s catastrophic warming, creating yet another obstacle for the already strained negotiations.
But former California governor Jerry Brown (D), who founded the California-China Climate Institute at the University of California at Berkeley, remains optimistic that the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters will resume their cooperation on climate change soon.
“I think it’s only temporary,” Brown said in a phone interview with The Climate 202 on Friday, referring to Beijing’s decision to suspend climate talks with the United States in retaliation for the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Taiwan.
“I assume that China has a level of rationality among its leadership elite,” he added. “And it's totally irrational not to cooperate with America on climate. It is — no matter what you think about Taiwan.”
Despite the breakdown in communications at the national level, Brown said leaders of the California-China Climate Institute have continued to engage with their peers at Chinese universities and research institutions.
“At the subnational level, China is still open for discussion,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that we’ve had some robust dialogue, but we’re still planning meetings, and there’s still an exchange of emails and information.”
Brown said he is not attending COP27, although he will be closely monitoring the talks from his ranch in Colusa County, Calif. But he predicted that Mary Nichols, vice chair of the institute and former chair of the California Air Resources Board, will probably try to meet with Chinese officials at the summit.
Asked whether it was a mistake for Pelosi to visit Taipei, Brown demurred.
“Some people blame China,” he said. “Some people say America was provocative unduly. Look, there are multiple perspectives. My one big perspective is that climate has to occupy a much bigger place … in the minds of most political leaders.”
Kerry’s conundrum
At last year’s COP26 climate negotiations in Scotland, the United States and China issued a joint pledge to take “enhanced climate actions” to meet the more ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris agreement: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
The announcement came after nearly 30 meetings between U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry and veteran Chinese climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua. The men have known each other for years, and in 2014, they helped broker an agreement that paved the way for the Paris accord.
Since Beijing broke off talks with Washington, Kerry and Xie have not scheduled additional meetings, according to a State Department spokeswoman. But Brown predicted that Kerry would try to reconnect with his Chinese counterpart in person during the COP27 talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
The State Department spokeswoman, Whitney Smith, declined to comment on the matter. But Kerry recently told the New York Times of Xie: “We’ve sent each other a few messages trying to figure out how to resume.”
Still, Kerry emphasized that the decision ultimately rests with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is skipping the climate conference.
Biden’s absence
Meanwhile, President Biden will not attend the world leaders’ summit on Monday and Tuesday that kicks off the conference, given a scheduling conflict with Tuesday’s midterm elections, in which Democrats are projected to fare poorly.
Instead, Biden will travel to Sharm el-Sheikh on Friday before heading to Bali, Indonesia, for the Group of 20 summit, the White House confirmed last week.
Some observers have expressed concern that Biden’s initial absence could create a leadership vacuum. But Brown praised the president for attending the summit at all, citing the expected absence of Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“He’s showing up; he’s taking the plane ride,” Brown said. “That’s showing goodwill. So I wouldn’t argue about the calendar date.”
It’s imperative, Brown added, that Biden and Xi “find a way to talk” at the G-20.
“They can’t just talk about little things,” he said. “They need to talk about how China can coexist with America. … Maybe both are going to have to change to make enough room for their being on the same planet together.”
In a first, COP27 agenda includes ‘loss and damage’
The official agenda at COP27 includes a discussion about whether rich nations should compensate poor countries for mounting damages linked to climate change, marking the first time the controversial topic will be formally negotiated, Gloria Dickie and Kate Abnett report for Reuters.
Delegates from nearly 200 countries agreed to debate the issue, known as “loss and damage” in the parlance of international climate talks, despite long-standing resistance from the United States and the European Union.
Pressure to address the issue has grown amid intensifying weather events in vulnerable countries, including this year's floods in Pakistan that displaced hundreds of thousands of people and caused about $30 billion in damage, The Washington Post’s Sarah Kaplan and Susannah George report. Pakistan is leading a bloc of more than 100 developing nations calling for a dedicated loss-and-damage fund that hard-hit countries can rely on for immediate assistance after a disaster.
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres on Monday pushed for the creation of a “historic pact” between wealthier and developing countries to meet global climate goals, emphasizing that the United States and China have “a particular responsibility to join efforts to make this pact a reality,” The Post’s Allyson Chiu reports.
“We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing,” Guterres said during the opening ceremony of the world leaders’ summit, adding, “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”
Britain’s Sunak to announce climate investments at COP27
Britain’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will unveil several climate investments at COP27 in an effort to reassert the United Kingdom’s leadership on climate change one year after hosting COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.
Sunak will pledge that under the U.K. commitment to spend $13.1 billion on international climate finance, the country will triple funding for climate adaptation as part of that budget, from $565.4 million in 2019 to $1.6 billion in 2025.
In addition, Britain will launch the Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership, a group that initially will include 20 countries and will meet twice a year to prevent loss of the world’s forests.
“By honoring the pledges we made in Glasgow, we can turn our struggle against climate change into a global mission for new jobs and clean growth,” Sunak will tell other world leaders on Monday.
The fresh commitments come after Sunak faced backlash from environmentalists and some world leaders for his initial decision not to attend COP27 because of other pressing domestic duties. In a reversal, Sunak said last week that he would attend the summit after all and that “there is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change.”
The Biden administration is pushing for corporations to strengthen their climate commitments during COP27 and pony up more money to help poor countries cope with climate disasters, reflecting a shift in the U.S. approach to international climate negotiations, The Post’s Evan Halper and Timothy Puko report.
While government action typically dominates the talks, this year corporations are in the spotlight as nations grapple with how to finance and implement previously made commitments amid the war in Ukraine and other global crises.
John D. Podesta, a senior adviser to President Biden on climate change, said in an interview that government funding alone cannot cover most of what vulnerable countries actually need to cope with the ravages of global warming.
“We’re talking billions when the need is trillions,” he said. “We’ve got to unlock that [private-sector] capacity for people to make investments in building a clean-energy future or else we’ll miss both the development goals and the climate goals.”
Manchin slams Biden’s comments on shutting down coal plants
The White House spent Saturday trying to tamp down criticism from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) of President Biden’s comments suggesting coal plants across the country should be shut down, The Post’s Eugene Scott and John Wagner report.
While speaking at an event Friday in Carlsbad, Calif., to highlight the Democratic Party’s achievements heading into the midterm elections, Biden championed clean energy and suggested that coal plants should be a thing of the past. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar,” he said.
Those remarks prompted a rebuke from Manchin, who represents a coal-producing state and has long-standing financial ties to the coal industry.
“Comments like these are the reason the American people are losing trust in President Biden,” Manchin said, adding that the remarks were “outrageous and divorced from reality.”
Manchin’s family’s business has made millions by taking waste coal from long-abandoned mines and selling it to a power plant in West Virginia. The public spat between the two prominent Democrats comes days before the midterms, in which the party risks losing control of both chambers of Congress.
Republicans on House panel issue report on ‘war on domestic energy’
Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday released a report on what they described as “Democrats’ war on domestic energy production.”
The 32-page document illustrates how GOP lawmakers on the panel would seek to scrutinize President Biden’s energy policies if their party takes control of the House in the midterm elections.
The report alleges that Biden and Democrats have “waged war on America’s energy producers, causing energy prices to skyrocket for the American people, killing good paying jobs in the energy sector, and jeopardizing our nation’s security.”
It urges the administration to take several steps to boost fossil fuel production and exports, despite calls from leading scientists to swiftly phase out fossil fuel use to avert a climate catastrophe.
“Instead of demonizing an industry that provides good-paying jobs and affordable energy for all Americans, Republicans are committed to promoting policy solutions that unleash domestic energy production and put the interests of the American people first,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement.
The U.N. holds a climate summit every year. Is it actually working? — Shannon Osaka for The Post
Delta and other firms are struggling to meet sky-high climate pledges — Steven Mufson for The Post
As climate change worsens, Egypt is begging families to have fewer kids — Siobhán O'Grady and Heba Farouk Mahfouz for The Post
Simple, effective message on Pakistan pavilion at #COP27. pic.twitter.com/RM7YtqMwVY
— Ed King (@edking_I) November 6, 2022 | 2022-11-07T13:18:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The U.S. and China might resume climate talks soon, Jerry Brown says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/us-china-might-resume-climate-talks-soon-jerry-brown-says/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/us-china-might-resume-climate-talks-soon-jerry-brown-says/ |
Tanzania investigating plane crash into Lake Victoria that killed 19
Rescuers search for survivors after a Precision Air flight that was carrying 43 people plunged into Lake Victoria as it attempted to land. (Sitide Protase/AFP/Getty Images)
Tanzanian officials are investigating how a passenger jet crash landed into Lake Victoria, killing 19 people near the northwestern city of Bukoba as it attempted to land at a nearby airport.
A total of 43 people, including 39 passengers and four crew members, had been on board the flight when it crashed, the airline said, adding that one of the passengers was an infant.
Hillary Mremi, a spokesman for the airline, told The Washington Post Monday morning that rescue efforts were now complete, but said there were no further updates yet on the investigation that had begun into how the accident happened.
The number of crash survivors was lowered from a figure provided in an earlier statement issued by the airline, which said there had been 26 survivors.
In a tweet, Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan expressed her condolences to the families of the victims and thanked those who had been involved in the emergency rescue operation.
“Precision Air extends its deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the passenger and crew involved in this tragic accident,” the airline said in a statement Sunday, adding that the flight had been traveling from Dar es Salaam to Bukoba.
Tanzania’s Minister of Construction and Transport Makame Mbarawa said that information about the accident’s cause would be released when the investigation into the crash is complete and insisted that air travel in the country was safe, according to local media.
The airline identified the downed aircraft as an ATR42-500. In a statement posted to Facebook, the manufacturer of the model, French-Italian firm ATR Aircraft, said that its officials were supporting the investigation into the crash in line with “established international protocols.” “Our first thoughts are with the families and individuals affected by this accident,” the aircraft manufacturer said.
Photographs from the scene of the crash show emergency workers using small boats to rescue stranded survivors and ropes to pull the passenger jet to Lake Victoria’s shore, where it had been almost fully submerged.
“We were then informed that we would be landing shortly, but there was heavy turbulence. We later found ourselves in the lake,” survivor Richard Komba told BBC News. “Water then entered the plane and those sitting near the front were covered by it. I was in the back seat and most of us in the back of the plane struggled to get out.” | 2022-11-07T13:19:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tanzania investigating Lake Victoria plane crash that killed 19 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/07/tanzania-lake-victoria-crash-investigation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/07/tanzania-lake-victoria-crash-investigation/ |
In Ohio, two millennial women face off in a battleground House race
No matter who wins, the outcome will usher in a shift from from Rep. Tim Ryan (D)
Democrat Emilia Sykes, left, and Republican Madison Gesiotto Gilbert are running to represent Ohio's 13th Congressional District. (Paul Vernon/AP; Joe Maiorana/AP)
AKRON, Ohio — Emilia Sykes was the first Black woman under 30 to serve in the Ohio legislature. At 36, she has followed in her parents’ footsteps and climbed the ranks of Democratic leadership, experience she emphasizes on the campaign trail.
Madison Gesiotto Gilbert was crowned Miss Ohio USA in 2014 — where she first met Donald Trump. Gesiotto Gilbert, 30, later served on the Trump campaign and on his inaugural committee. An attorney and new mom, she is pitching herself as an “independent voice.”
The race in Ohio’s newly drawn 13th Congressional District, one of the country’s most competitive U.S. House contests, features two millennial women pitching starkly contrasting ideas for the future and hailing from very different backgrounds. While the campaign has featured disagreements over abortion, crime, the economy and other issues that have been in the spotlight across the country, the candidates stand out from those in dozens of other House battlegrounds.
No natter who wins, the outcome will usher in a shift from Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, the 49-year-old man who vacated the current 13th District seat to run for the U.S. Senate. Sykes and Gesiotto Gilbert are running to join a legislative body where, according to the Congressional Research Service, the average representative is a 54-year-old man.
Yet Sykes is running less as a change candidate than as a trusted and experienced legislator. For almost 40 years, her state House seat has been held by Sykes or one of her parents, Vernon and Barbara. Her father still serves in the state Senate and sits on the committee that drafted the new congressional districts as part of the decennial redistricting process.
“I really learned a lot about this community, and how to work for this community more effectively, and it shows in the bills that I’ve been able to pass the resources I’ve been able to bring back to the community,” Sykes said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. “With additional time and service, I can continue to do more.”
When asked about being a millennial running against another millennial, she said, “I’m running to represent my community and no matter who I was running against, I would be running the same kind of race.”
Gesiotto Gilbert, whose campaign declined to make her available for an interview, citing scheduling conflicts, is advocating a new, conservative direction, and underscoring her pageant and political commentator work as well as her legal career and new motherhood. She is largely running on a platform of vowing to lower costs and government spending.
“The Republican Party is starting to look and feel like America. More younger candidates are running for office, more women are running for office,” Gesiotto Gilbert said recently on the Fox Across America podcast. “People are excited about that.”
Gesiotto Gilbert gave birth to a boy in mid-September, and she has highlighted him and her husband — former NFL player Marcus Gilbert — on social media. Like many millennials, she posts vertical video updates online. The clips summarize the campaign stop or event where she was filming.
When Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), traveled to Ohio in October, Gesiotto Gilbert posted a video of her unpacking a gift basket with a gas gift card meant to represent high costs, baby formula meant to point to the shortage, Monopoly money meant to signify irresponsible spending, and a map showing San Francisco, which is Pelosi’s district.
The new 13th Congressional District seat is centered on Akron and no longer contains Youngstown or Warren, which are in the current 13th, represented by Ryan, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio. The district is slightly more Republican after redistricting, but was drawn to be a near-even competitive matchup.
Sykes has adopted a similar strategy to the one Ryan is using in the Senate race, aiming to portray her opponent as an extremist out of touch with the area. Gesiotto Gilbert originally filed to run in the 9th District against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, before announcing her bid here.
“I think the biggest difference is the extremism that she brings with her and so much of it being connected to the former president and not really being considerate of the district,” Sykes said of Gesiotto Gilbert. She added: “You can’t make decisions with the former president because that’s who you owe your loyalty to. My loyalty is to the people in this community.”
Asked for comment on Sykes’s criticism, Gesiotto Gilbert’s campaign provided a statement from the Republican candidate saying, “My opponent has failed to solve problems and deliver real results for Ohio throughout her long career in elected office. She will be a rubber stamp for President Biden’s and Nancy Pelosi’s failed policies that have led to record price increases and a national crime wave.”
In the interview, Sykes declined to say whether Biden should run for reelection or if she would support Pelosi to lead House Democrats.
Gesiotto Gilbert said in the statement that she is running to lower costs and help manufacturers and small businesses. “Ohioans deserve an independent voice in Washington who is truly focused on solving our most pressing problems,” she added.
The Republican nominee displays a photo of her and Trump on the main page of her campaign website, and spoke — days before giving birth — at a Trump rally in Youngstown in September. She brings up criticisms of Democrats in her rare media interviews more than she does Trump, but has not shied away from pointing out their ties.
“We’re all united in one fight: the fight to save Ohio, to save America,” she said at the rally. “I refuse to let the radical Democrats determine his fate,” she said of her son, who was due the week of the rally.
Supporters said they see Gesiotto Gilbert as a new and necessary voice for the party. “Madison brings this new energy, this new revival that kind of like takes over and inspires people to create more change,” said Hannah Petersen, a sophomore at Walsh University who cited her own pageant background.
Supporters of Sykes said they see her as a proven leader with a style that is different from Ryan’s. “She doesn’t do her screaming and yelling and pounding her fist on the table,” said Mark Derrig, the legislative chair of UAW Local 4302 in Firestone Park.
Sykes has spoken out about facing extra scrutiny from statehouse security personnel she said were skeptical that she was a lawmaker. She later launched the We Belong Here PAC to support Black women in Ohio politics. In the days before the election, her campaign held a “Divine Nine Weekend of Action,” aimed at members of the group of historically Black sororities and fraternities.
Republican voters in the district who spoke to The Washington Post cited inflation and crime as the top issues in the race, while Democrats listed inflation and abortion access.
A recent ad from the National Republican Congressional Committee attacking Sykes says that “no one is safe with liberal Emilia Sykes,” and a recent ad from the GOP group Congressional Leadership Fund suggests that Sykes backs releasing domestic violence offenders, referring to her support of Ohio House Bill 315, a bipartisan bill to change cash bail.
Democrats have sought to rebut the attacks. House Majority PAC has run an ad crediting Sykes for adding more money to fight violent crimes. In the state House, Sykes championed efforts to strengthen protections against domestic violence and pushed back against the notion that she is not aggressive enough when it comes to violent crime.
“It’s laughable. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious, because one of the things that I have been awarded for and have gotten the most praise and bipartisan support is my work on protecting victims of domestic violence,” said Sykes, responding to the attacks.
Sykes and Democrats have accused Gesiotto Gilbert of being too extreme on abortion, saying in an ad last month that she’d push an agenda to ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest.
Gesiotto Gilbert supported the overturning of Roe v. Wade and a 2016 bill that would ban abortion starting around six weeks of pregnancy. In a September interview, she told Spectrum News that exceptions for rape or incest should be left to the states. | 2022-11-07T14:04:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Ohio, two millennial women face off in a battleground House race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/07/ohio-sykes-gesiotto-gilbert-congress-millennials/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/07/ohio-sykes-gesiotto-gilbert-congress-millennials/ |
Results are not official on Election Day. States often take weeks to announce the final results.
Christopher Robinson looks at ballots with Portia Cramer during ballot canvassing at Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on October 29. Canvassing is a process of reviewing that ballots are properly cast and counted. The process sometimes begins before Election Day when people vote by mail or in-person ahead of time. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Tuesday is Election Day. Although this year, voters aren’t choosing a president, they are electing some members of Congress, state and local officials. So it’s a big day for the United States’ democratic system.
You may see stories or social media posts Tuesday evening that declare winners. But even in this time of powerful computers and other speedy technology, the election process isn’t completed in a few hours or the next day.
Gretchen Macht, a professor of industrial engineering at the University of Rhode Island, talked to KidsPost about why that is. Industrial engineers work on systems and processes. Macht has learned a lot about how election processes work since 2016, when she was asked to help Rhode Island eliminate long voting lines.
“When we count the votes, that takes time because we want it to be right,” Macht said. She said kids could think about it like turning in homework. “When you rush through that homework, you get it done, but will it be right? Isn’t it better to go through it, to take your time?”
There has been a long tradition of releasing ballot tallies on election night, but those results are unofficial. “They are not double- and triple-checked,” Macht said. Part of the reason is that in the United States, there are many ways to vote and to count the votes.
States make the rules
When the Founding Fathers set up the election process, they didn’t include many details. They left the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections of Senators and Representatives” up to state lawmakers, according to the United States Constitution. As the nation has grown and technology has developed, the process has become more complicated.
“We have 50 different ways of doing things,” Macht said.
Each state figures out what it thinks will work for its residents, whether they live in big cities, small towns or remote areas.
Voting times may include casting votes days or weeks in advance and on Election Day. The places may be a mailbox, a drop box or assigned polling place in neighborhoods. And the “manner” could be using paper ballots marked by hand and then scanned; machines that put marks on paper (often from votes marked on a display screen); or machines that feed votes directly into a vote-counting computer system. The hand-marked ballot system is the most widely used.
After voters have finished casting ballots Tuesday, election officials and volunteers have a lot of work to do. Each voting location, or precinct, needs to secure the ballots then transfer them to the local elections office. After they do that, the city or county will often post those results on its website. But those results are not official, even if all the precincts have finished reporting.
Layers of review
What comes next is called canvassing. A group of people who may be election officials or members of each major political party canvasses, or reviews the ballots for possible problems. They make sure poll workers and voters have followed the rules.
“What if I voted by mail, and I forgot to sign my envelope? I guess my vote doesn’t count,” Macht said some voters might think.
But the system is designed to catch that error. Many states will allow voters to “cure,” or fix that kind of problem so their vote can be counted. But election officials need to contact those people and voters may need to appear in person.
Once the local canvass board is satisfied that all the ballots have been counted properly, local officials review one more time and then certify, or make those results official. Most states give counties or cities 1 to 3 weeks to complete this process. California, which has nearly 22 million registered voters, allows up to 30 days.
They send local results to the state elections office, which has its own review procedure. After that happens, officials certify the results for the entire state.
Sometimes this long process verifies those unofficial results from election night, but in very close elections a different candidate may end up the winner. There’s nothing wrong or suspicious about that. It’s just election officials and volunteers making sure their version of homework is as accurate as possible.
Macht admits the wait can be frustrating, and she encourages kids to ask questions.
“It’s exciting and you want to know the results,” she said. “Be patient. And if you don’t like the process, you can talk to election officials. They want to share that information with you.” | 2022-11-07T14:43:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In U.S. elections, why does it take so long to count votes? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/07/us-elections-vote-counting-process/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/07/us-elections-vote-counting-process/ |
I mask at the gym. It’s the smart thing to do. Why do I feel so dumb?
I don’t know the kid’s name. Let’s call him “Brandon.” He just started showing up to Monday evening pick-up a few weeks ago. He’s short (5-6 maybe), a southpaw, approximately 22 years old and can’t drive right. Easy scout. Easy guard. Indistinguishable, except for his mouth. The words flow the moment he walks in the gym. “Y’all bout to get it today! Y’all’s some lunchmeat! Roast beef! Chipped ham! Salami!” It’s fun. He’s fun.
He’s also the first person, in my two years of masking everywhere indoors, to question why I still do it.
“ ’Sup with the mask?”
“We’re in a pandemic.”
“Yeah, but your breath must be hot under there.”
Now, he calls me Bane.
I’ve read and heard the stories about people on trains and airplanes, in restaurants and department stores, who’ve been questioned, teased, mocked, harassed, threatened and even assaulted for wearing a mask. I have theories for why this sort of confrontation has never happened to me. (There are some privileges to being 6-2, 210 pounds and Black. One is that random people generally don’t mess with you.) But mostly I think that people just don’t care enough about what other people are doing to say anything, even if they disagree with it.
I do not enjoy wearing masks. But I’m immunocompromised, so it’s a necessity. I’ve had to make negotiations and concessions with myself to return to some pre-pandemic activities, and going to the gym is a nonnegotiable. If you happen to be at an LA Fitness or a YMCA in the greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area, you just might see me, playing ball or doing curls with a mask. And you will know that it’s me, because I am the only person younger than Methuselah with one on.
It’s actually not much of a hindrance. Breathing can be a challenge when fatigued, but like any other accessory, I eventually forget that I’m even wearing one. But then sometimes I do remember, and I’ll look around the gym floor and see dozens of mask-less people of all ages, doing their thing and then I’ll feel so damn … dumb.
Yes. Dumb. I feel dumb. Dumb because I start calculating: If 77-year-old Ethel on the StairMaster ain’t masked, why am I? The county positivity rate is low. If even three people out of 100 here have it — which would be very high — the chances of it spreading to me in this warehouse-size gym is very low.
Dumb because I start questioning the efficiency (Am I really getting a full workout with an N95 mask swallowing my face?) and the effectiveness (This hoop court is a shoebox. There are 10 of us in proximity, breathing and sweating on each other like brolic pigs. Is the mask actually doing anything?).
And then, dumb because I start questioning my motive. Is wearing a mask, at the gym, conscientiousness signaling? Am I doing this just to communicate my righteousness? This question is the messiest, because it pits my brain against itself. We’re still in an active pandemic, with steady infection and death rates, and variants that develop and evolve quicker than the vaccines. But if this is true, why does no one else here seem to care? Am I doing this to show that I still care? Or because I sincerely believe it’s keeping me safe?
A predictable outcome of the pandemic is the gradual erosion of my concern about whether other people mask. In the spring of 2021, after I got the vaccines and started doing things indoors around strangers again, masks were a necessity. If I walked into a place and the majority of people did not have them, I walked out. Now, with few exceptions — I still ask my barber and Uber drivers to mask — I just don’t care as much about what everyone else does. If I allowed other people’s feelings about masks to dictate my activity now, I’d never leave the house.
Of course, there are some people who’ve never masked. But I know people who did, and now just don’t. Maybe the worry is still there with them, and maybe that feeling has been overwhelmed by the desire to return to some semblance of normalcy. Either way, expecting that level of mindfulness, from everyone, today, feels like peeing in a cyclone.
Dumb because I start calculating: If 77-year-old Ethel on the StairMaster ain’t masked, why am I?
The last time I hooped with Brandon, he asked me about the mask again, as if we hadn’t had the same conversation twice before.
“So, you’re just gonna keep wearing that mask?”
I had some fun with him. “Why do you care? Do you just want to see my face? My teeth? I know I look good.”
He laughed. “Whatever, man. I know you old. Just don’t want you to faint out here.”
He took a beat and came back, “The pandemic is over though.”
“People still catching it and dying though.”
He took another beat and responded, “You right, I guess.”
The game started soon after. And I watched the rest of the guys freely communicating, with directions (“Screen left, screen left”), affirmations (“Good look!”) and taunts (“He ain’t making that”) — the standard discourse of a basketball game — while my voice was mostly obscured by my mask. Being right never felt so wrong. | 2022-11-07T14:44:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Damon Young: I mask at the gym. Why do I feel so ... dumb? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/07/damon-young-i-mask-gym-why-do-i-feel-so-dumb/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/07/damon-young-i-mask-gym-why-do-i-feel-so-dumb/ |
NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 19: Vaping and e-cigarette products are displayed in a store on December 19, 2019 in New York City. Congress raised the legal age to smoke or vape to 21. According to the FDA, in 2018, more than 3.6 million middle and high school students across the US used e-cigarettes. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images) (Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images North America)
Once you win over Elliott Management Corp. in your attempt to buy a company, your work is pretty much done. Philip Morris International Inc.’s $16 billion bid for nicotine-pouch maker Swedish Match AB didn’t clear the 90% shareholder acceptance threshold the tobacco giant initially set. But it secured the support of the US hedge fund — and that’s unlocked the deal.
Sure, Philip Morris had to raise its offer, first launched in May, by 9% to seduce Elliott and other potential holdouts. That’s a relatively big sweetener. But the target company generates most of its revenue in dollars and the buyer is paying in Swedish kronor. The strengthening greenback helped pay for the uplift.
The US tobacco firm has gotten 83% acceptances and, on Monday, said it was happy to proceed on that basis. Shareholders who snubbed the offer may now change their mind, getting Philip Morris past its original target. It’s a critical level, given that’s where the US company says it will move to de-list Swedish Match stock. With the bidder so close to 90%, the incentives for naysayers to cave in are strong.
It could have played out differently. Suppose Elliott and others had sat on their hands. Philip Morris might only just have scraped past 50%. It would then have had to decide whether to abandon its quest, or take the simple majority holding with a view to buying out minority shareholders later. The holdouts could have held Philip Morris to ransom by threatening to disrupt the integration of Swedish Match. Elliott, as the biggest shareholder with 11%, would be been well placed to lead negotiations in this second round of fighting.
But this would have meant playing a long game in the still emerging industry of smokeless tobacco and vaping products, where it remains unclear quite how tough US health regulators are going to be, and at a time when the equity market backdrop is fragile.
Moreover, Philip Morris’ ability to fund a super-generous buyout bid for minorities may have been constrained. Last month, it agreed to pay $2.7 billion to Altria Group Inc. for exclusive rights to sell its IQOS heated-tobacco products in the US, ending an existing distribution accord with its former parent. While the combined value of Philip Morris and Swedish Match rose $11 billion when the transaction was first agreed upon — a good proxy for the anticipated value creation — the Altria settlement gobbles up a good chunk of what the buyer can afford to pay away in a takeover premium. As is, the offer is worth nearly $6 billion more than Swedish Match’s undisturbed market value.
Philip Morris has played a good tactical game. But it’s also gotten lucky. A strengthening dollar and weakening equity market have helped its hand. Swedish Match is of huge strategic value, giving the buyer its own US distribution platform and accelerating its journey to having the majority of its revenue come from smoke-free businesses. Investors may have gotten a price bump, but it’s hard to believe that in different times, they wouldn’t have dug in for even more.
• Merger Arbs Play Chicken With a Smoking Giant: Chris Hughes | 2022-11-07T14:57:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hedge Funds Forego Round Two in Philip Morris Takeover Fight - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hedge-funds-forego-round-two-inphilip-morris-takeover-fight/2022/11/07/cbfc6d80-5ea1-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hedge-funds-forego-round-two-inphilip-morris-takeover-fight/2022/11/07/cbfc6d80-5ea1-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Analysis by Sarah Kaplan
(Washington Post illustrations; Yves Herman/Reuters; iStock)
Last year’s United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, had the same optimistic energy as the first day of a new school year. The United States — a truant since the nation withdrew from the Paris agreement under President Donald Trump — was back at the table. The cool kids (Leonardo DiCaprio, Prince William, Greta Thunberg) brushed shoulders with the nerds (everyone else). A parade of presidents and prime ministers pledged renewed climate efforts with all the fervor of students promising their parents that this semester would be different.
But that back-to-school energy never lasts. Some of the splashiest COP26 pledges have been derailed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and upheavals in the global economy. Catastrophic climate disasters hampered countries’ abilities to invest in renewable energy and resilient infrastructure, even as they exposed the urgency of preparing for a warmer world.
There are also some glimmerings of hope on the horizon: The United States finally passed significant climate legislation to speed the transition away from fossil fuels. Global renewable energy investments are starting to outpace fossil fuel spending.
But climate change doesn’t grade on a curve.
As leaders head to Egypt for another climate summit, The Washington Post worked with experts to craft a report card for the world. It reveals the areas where nations have managed to make some progress, as well as the ways in which we’re dangerously close to failure.
Updating climate pledges: F
One of the main outcomes of the Glasgow conference was a call for countries to arrive in Egypt this year with stronger emissions-cutting commitments, known in United Nations lingo as “Nationally Determined Contributions,” or NDCs.
But according to the independent research group Climate Action Tracker, only one large emitter — Australia — has submitted a substantially more ambitious NDC this year. Before giving the country too much credit, it’s worth noting that Australia’s climate targets hadn’t previously been updated since the Paris agreement in 2015.
“Australia only did the homework of last year, but not this year’s,” said climate scientist Niklas Höhne, whose NewClimate Institute created the tracker.
India, Brazil and Egypt have also made new proposals, but Climate Action Tracker found that those are no more ambitious than their previous targets.
Countries vowed to ramp up their climate goals for COP27. Very few have.
According to the latest U.N. emissions gap report, the current national commitments put the world on track to warm between 2.4 and 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.3 and 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. Scientists say this would lead to a hellish future marked by unbearable heat, escalating disasters and widespread hunger and disease.
Top of the class: No one
According to Climate Action Tracker, not a single major polluter has adopted an NDC compatible with the most ambitious goal of the Paris climate agreement: limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
Underachievers: Russia
The world’s fifth-biggest greenhouse-gas emitter has not offered a meaningful update to its NDC since 2015. Climate Action Tracker rates the nation’s pledge as “critically insufficient.”
The missing $100 billion: C-
The Glasgow pact demanded that wealthy nations “make significant progress” to fulfill an overdue promise to provide at least $100 billion per year in financial aid to developing countries as they cope with the devastating impacts of climate change. Importantly, these funds are supposed to be “new and additional” to nations’ existing aid budgets — ensuring that support for climate doesn’t take away from education, public health and other development concerns.
Two years after the initial deadline, the industrialized world is still falling short, according to a progress report co-published by the governments of Germany and Canada. There have been some new funding announcements this year — an additional $2 billion per year from Japan, along with a new climate investment fund from Norway. But the promised $100 billion won’t be delivered before 2023, the report said.
Rich countries have also been criticized for spending too much of their money overseas on curbing emissions, rather than helping vulnerable nations adapt to changes that are already wreaking havoc. Because adaptation measures such as sea walls and drought readiness are potentially less profitable than wind farms and solar panels, they don’t attract as much private investment — making communities especially dependent on public funds. In Glasgow, rich nations committed to double funding for adaptation by 2025.
Some 11 countries and the European Commission have committed to spend at least half of their climate finance on adaptation. President Biden has vowed to significantly increase the United States’ funding for adaptation.
But several major development banks have yet to announce any plans on this topic. And leaders from low-income countries remain concerned that too much finance is coming in the form of loans, rather than grants — leaving them and their descendants to deal with long-term debt as they confront an increasingly dangerous climate that they did little to create.
Top of the class: Norway
According to a June report from the humanitarian agency CARE International, the Scandinavian nation is the largest per capita supplier of climate finance, and one of just three wealthy countries to make good on the promise of providing “new and additional” funds. Norway has committed to doubling the amount of climate finance it provides by 2026.
Underachievers: The United States
Despite being the richest country in the world, the United States has provided less climate finance per capita than any other wealthy nation, according to the CARE report. Congress this year appropriated $1 billion to help developing countries deal with climate change — just a fraction of the $11.4 billion Biden promised at last year’s COP.
Curbing methane: C+
In addition to the main “Glasgow climate pact” — which all 193 countries had to agree on — COP26 produced several side pledges, or voluntary commitments made by smaller groups of countries. The biggest was the Global Methane Pledge, an initiative spearheaded by the United States and the United Kingdom to reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas by 30 percent by 2030.
Experts say that tackling methane, which mostly comes from fossil fuel facilities, landfills and livestock, can stave off short-term warming while the world transitions to a cleaner economy.
This year, several countries adopted policies to curb the pollutant. The United States passed its first-ever charge on methane as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to strengthen its proposed rule clamping down on these emissions from oil and gas operations. Signs of progress are also coming from the European Union, Nigeria and Colombia, among other nations, said Antoine Halff, co-founder of the satellite analysis firm Kayrros. And many signatories to the methane pledge are expected to publish their plans for following through at the meeting in Egypt.
At the same time, the International Energy Agency warns that actual methane emissions are 70 percent higher than what countries are reporting. And new research from the World Meteorological Organization shows that atmospheric concentrations of the gas are rising faster than ever. Scientists say the increases bear a chemical fingerprint of coming from biological sources, such as burping cattle or decomposing wetlands. This could be evidence of a “climate feedback” in which rising temperatures cause ecosystems to release more methane, which then fuels even greater temperature rise.
Top of the class: The United States
Halff said the United States’ new charge on methane is the most potentially powerful of the policies announced so far. By 2026, oil and gas companies will be required to pay up to $1,500 for each metric ton of methane they release beyond a certain threshold, and the analysis group Energy Innovation estimates that it will cut the equivalent of 29 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030. However, loopholes in the law mean that won’t be as effective without stronger regulations from the EPA.
Underachievers: China
The world’s largest methane producer has not signed on to the Global Methane Pledge. Nor has China released the “ambitious plan” to cut methane that it promised in a joint announcement with the United States at last year’s climate talks.
Reversing deforestation: D-
More than 100 nations representing over 85 percent of the world’s forests — including Brazil, Canada, Norway, Indonesia and the United States — pledged to halt and reverse deforestation by the end of the decade. Natural ecosystems like forests are critical for sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but almost a quarter of all greenhouse gas pollution currently comes from farming, forestry and other land uses.
Achieving this goal would require nations to curb deforestation by 10 percent each year — a target the world is nowhere close to meeting. A recent assessment found that global forest losses have exceeded the gains from replanting efforts the last two years. Meanwhile, the first half of this year saw record deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
The degradation of primary forests — ecosystems that have never been cut down — is especially worrying, said Wayne Walker, carbon program director at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. That’s because existing old growth forests store huge amounts of carbon, as well as serve as habitat for animals, clean the air and water, prevent erosion and provide medicine and food for people. Protecting these trees will always be the more “climate-smart option,” compared to trying to reforest a degraded landscape.
Top of the class: Indonesia
While other forests see worrying declines, tropical Asia is the only region on track to halt deforestation by the end of the decade. At the head of the pack is Indonesia, which curbed forest loss by 25 percent from 2020 to 2021 and has reduced deforestation each of the past five years.
Underachievers: Brazil
Under outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro, who campaigned for president on promises to open up the Amazon to business, rates of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon have reached record highs. Satellite images reveal the ecosystem has shrunk by about 17 percent, and parts of the forest now emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb.
But the incoming president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has pledged to “fight for zero deforestation.” To the extent that he can boost enforcement and deliver on that promise, Brazil may be able to protect one of the most valuable rainforests on Earth.
Public finance promises: C
Nearly three dozen countries pledged to end public financial support — such as development aid, loans and export subsidies — for fossil fuel projects in other countries. According to the nonprofit Oil Change International, this promise would directly shift $28 billion a year out of oil, gas and other fossil fuels — if countries stuck to it.
To some degree, they have. Despite fears that the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would send nations scurrying for additional oil and gas, the majority of signatories have published policies that will end overseas fossil fuel financing by the end of this year, according to Oil Change International.
The latest World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency shows that total investments in renewable energy this year have outstripped global spending on fossil fuels.
Top of the class: The United Kingdom
Britain excludes all finance for both overseas oil and gas projects, setting it apart from other industrialized nations. Only seven of the 17 major financing nations who signed an agreement in Glasgow to end all support for international fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022 have published policies ruling out this kind of financing. In addition to the U.K., that group includes Denmark, Sweden, the European Investment Bank, France, Belgium and Finland.
Underachievers: Canada
Canada ranks as one of the top public funders of international fossil fuel development, according to Oil Change International. Between 2019 and 2021, it provided an average of $8.5 billion annually, the group reports, with most of that money supporting oil and gas projects. Export credit agency Export Development Canada has said that ending “new direct financing to international fossil fuel companies and projects by the end of 2022” will meet the goals of the agreement in Glasgow. But that would still allow the government to give money to its own fossil fuel firms, which finance many of these operations overseas. | 2022-11-07T14:57:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As COP27 starts, here’s a climate change report card for the world - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/cop27-climate-pledges-methane-deforestation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/cop27-climate-pledges-methane-deforestation/ |
FILE - Carolina Panthers cornerbacks coach Evan Cooper looks on during an NFL football game against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022, in Charlotte, N.C. Carolina Panthers interim coach Steve Wilks fired two of his assistant coaches Monday, Nov. 7, 2022, less than 24 hours after the team’s embarrassing 42-21 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in which they allowed a franchise-record 35 points in the first half. Wilks fired cornerbacks coach Evan Cooper and defensive line coach Paul Pasqualoni. (AP Photo/Jacob Kupferman, File) | 2022-11-07T14:58:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Panthers fire 2 coaches after embarrassing loss to Bengals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/panthers-fire-2-coaches-after-embarrassing-loss-to-bengals/2022/11/07/a6a752ec-5e9d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/panthers-fire-2-coaches-after-embarrassing-loss-to-bengals/2022/11/07/a6a752ec-5e9d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
FILE - Chinese children pose with a replica of the World Cup trophy on the Great Wall of China at Jinshanling during an event to show their support for the Chinese national soccer team Saturday, May 25, 2002. China is missing out on the World Cup again despite spending millions — probably billions — to develop the game, a reported priority of Xi Jinping, the all-powerful general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. (AP Photo/str, File) (Anonymous/AP) | 2022-11-07T14:59:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China, a country of 1.4 billion, again misses World Cup - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/china-a-country-of-14-billion-again-misses-world-cup/2022/11/07/20e4565c-5ea0-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/china-a-country-of-14-billion-again-misses-world-cup/2022/11/07/20e4565c-5ea0-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Two young females, a gift from the Rotterdam Zoo, are expected to be bred with the zoo’s male, Spike
Nhi Linh, 9, on the right, by the tree, and her mother, Trong Nhi, 19, on the left, are coming to the National Zoo from the Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands. (Rotterdam Zoo)
The ladies traveled 4,000 miles by truck and plane before they pulled up to 3001 Connecticut Avenue, in northwest Washington, Sunday night, where the staff of the National Zoo waited to greet them.
The object is for Spike to breed with both newcomers. “He’s a really nice bull,” she said. “I think they’re going to like him a lot.”
“It would be nice if both [females] had a couple of calves on the ground in a couple years,” she said. “The best enrichment we can give an elephant is more elephants.”
Elephants have a long gestation period — 20½ to 22 months.
The acquisition “is part of the vision for [the zoo’s] Elephant Trails [exhibit] when it was renovated a decade ago, to have a multigenerational herd, and produce babies and have a normal herd of elephants like you would see if you were watching the Smithsonian channel,” said Bryan Amaral, senior zoo curator. | 2022-11-07T15:31:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After the deaths of two elephants, National Zoo gets two new ones. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/07/national-zoo-elephants-rotterdam/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/07/national-zoo-elephants-rotterdam/ |
Bruins rescind offer to player convicted as juvenile of bullying classmate
Boston Bruins President Cam Neely said the team had obtained “new information” but didn't say what the information was. (Steven Senne/Associated Press)
The Boston Bruins have rescinded an entry-level contract offer to Mitchell Miller, who was convicted as a juvenile of bullying a Black developmentally disabled classmate in 2016, after Bruins players criticized the move and Commissioner Gary Bettman said Miller is “not coming into the NHL.”
Miller, a 20-year-old defenseman, signed the contract Friday, to which Bettman responded the next day that Miller would not be eligible. Bruins President Cam Neely said in a statement on Sunday that the team had considered what it knew of the situation and determined “that at 14-years-old [Miller] made a poor decision that led to a juvenile conviction.”
“We understood this to be an isolated incident and that he had taken meaningful action to reform and was committed to ongoing personal development. Based on that understanding we offered him a contract,” Neely’s statement said.
However, “[b]ased on new information, we believe it is the best decision at this time to rescind the opportunity for Mitchell Miller to represent the Boston Bruins. We hope that he continues to work with professionals and programs to further his education and personal growth.”
Neely did not say what the new information was and apologized to Isaiah Meyers-Crothers (the classmate Miller bullied) and his family as well as to members of the organization, fans, partners and the community.
“To Isaiah and his family, my deepest apologies if this signing made you and other victims feel unseen and unheard. We apologize for the deep hurt and impact we have caused,” Neely said. “We will continue to stand against bullying and racism in all of its forms.” He added that the team would be “reevaluating our internal processes for vetting individuals.”
Bruins players criticized the offer, with team captain Patrice Bergeron saying it went against the team’s culture of “inclusion, diversity, respect” although Bergeron said he had been consulted and was “on the fence.”
“The culture that we built here goes against that type of behavior,” Bergeron, who is in his 19th season with Boston, said via the Associated Press. “In this locker room, we’re all about inclusion, diversity, respect.”
Nick Foligno, a veteran forward, said the signing was “hard to swallow” and a “tough thing to hear for our group. I’m not gonna lie to you. I don’t think any guy was too happy.”
Bettman told reporters Saturday that the Bruins had not consulted with the league and called Miller’s actions at 14 “reprehensible” and “unacceptable.”
“He’s not coming into the NHL. He’s not eligible at this point to come into the NHL. I can’t tell you that he’ll ever be eligible to come into the NHL,” Bettman said at the NHL Global Series in Tampere, Finland.
When the Bruins signed Miller, he said in a statement provided by the team that, “When I was in eighth grade, I made an extremely poor decision and acted very immaturely.”
Archives: Coyotes renounce draft rights to player who admitted to horrific bullying incident
The mother of Isaiah Meyer-Crothers told the Athletic that if the team had reached out, it would have learned that the incident was not isolated.
“It should have never happened, number one,” Joni Meyer-Crothers said when asked how she felt about the rescinded offer. “But this is what needs to happen. Mitchell needs to get help for what he’s done to our son. It could be a blessing in disguise. Get the help that you need. We want Mitchell to get help. That’s the most important thing. But maybe you need to rehabilitate first. Then get your hockey career back.”
When the Arizona Coyotes drafted Miller out of the University of North Dakota in October 2020, team president and chief executive Xavier Gutierrez said in a statement that officials were aware of the bullying incident but “embraced” the situation “as a teachable moment to work with Mitchell to make him accountable for his actions and provide him with an opportunity to be a leader on anti-bullying and anti-racism efforts.”
The Arizona Republic reported at that time that Miller and another classmate admitted in juvenile court to bullying Meyer-Crothers while all three lived in suburban Toledo. Meyer-Crothers said Miller had taunted him for years, calling him “Brownie” and using the n-word, and that Miller and another boy had tricked him into licking candy that they had wiped in a bathroom urinal before assaulting him in an attack that was caught on surveillance cameras.
Miller and the other boy were charged in an Ohio court with assault, admitted to the bullying in juvenile court, were sentenced to 25 hours of community service and ordered to write an apology to Meyer-Crothers.
Gutierrez apologized to Meyer-Crothers and his family when the team renounced the rights to Miller shortly after that draft, saying it was “building a model franchise on and off the ice.” | 2022-11-07T15:49:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mitchell Miller contract offer rescinded by Bruins - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/mitchell-miller-bruins/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/mitchell-miller-bruins/ |
Kansas beat North Carolina to win the NCAA tournament in April. Both schools should be in the title hunt again this season. (David J. Phillip/AP)
West Region (Las Vegas)
Midwest Region (Kansas City, Mo.)
South Region (Louisville)
East Region (New York)
Is it Gonzaga’s turn (at long last)? Or North Carolina’s (again)?
Does John Calipari win a second championship and sate the ceaseless demands of Kentucky’s Big Blue Nation? Or does Houston’s Kelvin Sampson (age 67) or Tennessee’s Rick Barnes (age 68) finally secure a national title near the tail end of their respective careers?
Can Kansas go back-to-back, joining 1991-92 Duke and 2006-07 Florida as the only programs to claim consecutive titles since the tournament expanded to 64 in 1985?
And maybe the most pressing concern concerning college basketball’s postseason: How long does the field remain at 68 teams, as it’s been since 2011?
All those questions listed above would still be some of the primary storylines entering this season if the field had 72 teams, or 80 or (shudder) 96. But would a bigger pot at the end of a season stimulate more interest in the sport in November, December and January? Doubtful.
The on-court stuff will get sorted out soon enough. The logistics of the postseason could drag out for a while, though anyone paying attention to college sports knows something that brings short-term financial benefits is usually a winner, regardless of long-term costs.
For this year, at least, it will be a 68-team event. And with the season tipping off Monday, it’s worth an attempt to guess how things will shake out in the coming months.
The usual early November caveat applies: This is mere spitballing, based on potential and conjecture rather than actual data. Some of this will look good come early March. Some of it … not so much.
Just look back at last year’s preseason attempt; the projected No. 1 seeds were Gonzaga (which ended up as a No. 1 seed), Kansas (No. 1), Villanova (No. 2) and Purdue (No. 3). The projected No. 2 seeds were UCLA (an eventual No. 4 seed), Alabama (No. 6), Michigan (No. 11) and Florida State (missed the tournament).
So this won’t be perfect. But at least it’s 68 teams … at least at the moment, anyway.
Conference call: Big Ten (9), ACC (7), Big 12 (7), SEC (6), Big East (5), Pac-12 (4), American Athletic (2), Atlantic 10 (2), Mountain West (2), West Coast (2)
Ten other teams to monitor: Boise State, Cincinnati, Florida, Iowa State, LSU, Maryland, Stanford, St. John’s, VCU, Western Kentucky
West vs. Midwest, South vs. East
(1) WEST COAST/Gonzaga vs. (16) BIG SKY/Northern Colorado
(8) Texas Tech vs. (9) Southern California
(5) Virginia vs. (12) Oklahoma/Providence winner
(4) Michigan State vs. (13) AMERICA EAST/Vermont
(3) BIG EAST/Creighton vs. (14) IVY/Penn
(6) TCU vs. (11) Ohio State
(7) Purdue vs. (10) Wyoming
(2) Tennessee vs. (15) MID-EASTERN ATHLETIC/Norfolk State
Is Gonzaga the best team in the country? It’s one of several viable options for the honor. But the Zags probably have as good a shot at claiming the No. 1 overall seed as anyone. They’re talented, and they’re just not going to trip up much (if at all) in the West Coast Conference. … Virginia has an older team again, which means the Cavaliers are going to reemerge as an NCAA tournament team after a one-year hiatus.
Virginia will have something rare in college basketball — experience
A name to tuck away for March: Jordan Dingle of Penn. The junior averaged 20.9 points last season for the Quakers, who were in fine shape before dropping four of their last five. Penn will have to fend off Princeton and Yale atop a competitive Ivy League. … No matter the valid questions about Tennessee in the postseason, the Volunteers’ elite defense will win them a lot of games.
(1) AMERICAN ATHLETIC/Houston vs. (16) NORTHEAST/Sacred Heart-SOUTHLAND/Texas A&M-Corpus Christi winner
(8) Saint Louis vs. (9) Virginia Tech
(5) Alabama vs. (12) COLONIAL/Towson
(4) Michigan vs. (13) SUN BELT/Louisiana-Lafayette
(3) Duke vs. (14) ATLANTIC SUN/Liberty
(6) Arizona vs. (11) Iowa
(7) Auburn vs. (10) Connecticut
(2) BIG 12/Kansas vs. (15) SUMMIT/Oral Roberts
Houston is loaded heading into its final season in the American Athletic. With Final Four (2021) and Elite Eight (2022) appearances the last two years, Marcus Sasser and the Cougars are well-positioned for another memorable year. … Towson has three players on the Colonial’s preseason all-conference first team. The time is now for the Tigers to make their first NCAA trip since 1991. …
New roster? Business as usual at Duke. New coach? That’s a different story. Expectations aren’t lacking for Jon Scheyer as he succeeds Mike Krzyzewski, but the Blue Devils did snag a loaded recruiting class like they normally do. … The bottom half of the draw features a lot of teams that probably won’t be quite as good as last year but nonetheless have the potential for strong years: Duke, Arizona, Auburn, Connecticut, Iowa and defending national champion Kansas.
(1) SEC/Kentucky vs. (16) HORIZON/Northern Kentucky
(8) Miami vs. (9) Oklahoma State
(5) MOUNTAIN WEST/San Diego State vs. (12) MID-AMERICAN/Toledo
(4) Oregon vs. (13) WESTERN ATHLETIC/Seattle
(3) BIG TEN/Illinois vs. (14) METRO ATLANTIC/Iona
(6) Villanova vs. (11) Notre Dame
(7) Texas A&M vs. (10) CONFERENCE USA/UAB
(2) Baylor vs. (15) BIG SOUTH/Longwood
As potential postseason paths go as far as wear and tear, Kentucky enjoys one of the smoothest. In this scenario, the Wildcats would get weekends in Columbus (189 miles from Lexington, Ky.) and Louisville (78 miles) on their road to the Final Four. … If San Diego State improves from middling to above average on offense, it’s going to do better than a No. 5 seed. …
Who’s going to win the Big Ten? The longer you look, the less it seems like a clear-cut choice exists. The pick here is Illinois, but any of Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State and even Purdue seem plausible. … Texas A&M shouldn’t be left grumbling on Selection Sunday this year — and enduring another eight-game losing streak in the middle of league play seems especially unlikely.
Feinstein: Every NCAA tournament Cinderella owes a debt to Pete Carril
(1) ACC/North Carolina vs. (16) OHIO VALLEY/Morehead State-SOUTHWESTERN/Texas Southern winner
(8) Wisconsin vs. (9) Memphis
(5) Xavier vs. (12) Florida State/Rutgers winner
(4) Texas vs. (13) SOUTHERN/Samford
(3) Arkansas vs. (14) PATRIOT/Colgate
(6) Indiana vs. (11) MISSOURI VALLEY/Drake
(7) ATLANTIC 10/Dayton vs. (10) Saint Mary’s
(2) PAC-12/UCLA vs. (15) BIG WEST/Hawaii
It’s hard to argue with North Carolina’s core group of Armando Bacot, RJ Davis and Caleb Love. A veteran team running it back after losing on the final weekend of the season is often a good formula. Just ask the last Tar Heels team to snip the nets in early April. … Few first-year coaches step into a better situation than Sean Miller at Xavier. The Musketeers won the NIT last season and didn’t seem too far away from extended success the last few seasons. Miller should be able to deliver that, and in a hurry.
In the first post-Loyola Chicago season in the Missouri Valley, Drake (25-11 last season) is the team to beat. Remember, the Bulldogs won a play-in game in the 2021 tournament and have stitched together four consecutive 20-win seasons. … Led by sophomore DaRon Holmes II, Dayton arguably has one of the 10 best frontcourts in the country. A No. 7 seed is more likely underestimating the Flyers than giving them too much credit. | 2022-11-07T15:49:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NCAA tournament bracketology: Early look at March Madness - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/ncaa-tournament-bracketology-preseason/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/ncaa-tournament-bracketology-preseason/ |
Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson will be without a few of his offensive weapons against the Saints on Monday night. (Washington Post illustration/Peter Joneleit/AP)
The Baltimore Ravens and New Orleans Saints will limp into Monday night’s game at the Superdome.
Ravens tight end Mark Andrews, who has a team-high 42 receptions, did not practice all week because of knee and shoulder injuries and is doubtful to play, and Baltimore placed wide receiver Rashod Bateman on injured reserve because he needs surgery on his injured foot. Bateman is third on the team with 285 receiving yards and has scored twice but played sparingly in the Ravens’ most recent game, a 27-22 win at Tampa Bay on Oct. 27.
The Saints will be without wide receiver Michael Thomas after putting him on season-ending injured reserve last week because his dislocated toe has not responded well to rehab. Thomas had not played since Week 3, so New Orleans is already used to his absence and has ranked in the NFL’s top 10 in yards per game and scoring in the games played without him. Saints running back Mark Ingram (knee), cornerback Marshon Lattimore (abdomen), wide receiver Jarvis Landry (ankle) and tight end Adam Troutman (ankle), among others, also have been limited or held out of practice in recent days. Ingram and Lattimore won’t play, while Landry and Troutman are questionable.
As of Monday morning, the Ravens were favored by one or one-and-a-half points, but with so many key injuries it is difficult to determine which side is the better angle. In any case, taking the Saints as a one-point underdog doesn’t make much sense, with a three-point margin of victory the most likely outcome in the sport; a moneyline bet would be more compelling.
Taking the under for the points total, which is set at 46½, is intriguing. Baltimore is averaging 1.2 points per drive with Andrews off the field and one point per drive without Andrews and Bateman. That’s less than half the team’s average this season (2.3 points per drive).
Here are a few other wagers to consider.
Baltimore Ravens, team total under 24½, playable to 24
As noted above, Baltimore’s offensive efficiency is very different without Andrews and Bateman on the field. A loss of 1.3 points per drive over 10 or 11 drives works out to two fewer touchdowns scored. Plus, the Saints’ defense ranks 12th overall, per Football Outsiders, and 13th according to Pro Football Focus.
Baltimore’s offensive outlook is so pessimistic that it’s also worth considering a wager on the Ravens scoring from 11 to 20 points for +230 odds at DraftKings, or under 21½ points at +146 odds at Caesars, bets I have made myself.
Lamar Jackson, longest passing completion under 34½
We know the Ravens’ offense should be hampered without Andrews and Bateman, and this wasn’t a long-distance passing game to begin with. Jackson has no completions longer than 35 yards with neither of those weapons on the field this season and just three 35-plus yard completions, all to Bateman.
Kamara’s receiving stats have gotten a huge boost since Andy Dalton took over at quarterback for the Saints. Over the past four games, the running back is averaging seven catches and 67 receiving yards per game after pulling in only five catches for 19 yards in the two games he played with Jameis Winston at quarterback. The Ravens haven’t allowed any huge pass-yardage games to opposing running backs this season, but those backs certainly have had their chances. The Bucs’ Leonard Fournette and Rachaad White combined for six catches in Week 8, the Bengals’ Joe Mixon and Samaje Perine had seven in Week 5 and Jets running back Breece Hall had six catches against Baltimore in the season opener. Kamara doesn’t need many opportunities to bust out a big gain on a catch, and I think he’ll get plenty of chances on Monday night. | 2022-11-07T15:49:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ravens-Saints best bets and picks for Monday Night Football - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/ravens-saints-picks-monday-night-fooball-odds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/ravens-saints-picks-monday-night-fooball-odds/ |
Naomi Nix
A visitor takes photographs of Meta Platforms signage outside the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. (Nick Otto/Bloomberg)
Facebook’s parent is poised to begin large scale layoffs this week after months of warnings from executives that cutbacks were coming, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Meta cuts, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, could begin as soon as Wednesday and would be the first wide-scale job cuts of the company’s 18-year history. Meta representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move would add to a string of layoffs and hiring slowdowns within the tech sector, most notably Twitter, which slashed roughly half its head count last week after Tesla billionaire Elon Musk acquired the platform in October.
Meanwhile, ride-hailing service Lyft announced plans to cut 13 percent of its staff. The online payment company Stripe will cut 14 percent of its workforce. Chime, a private fin tech firm, will cut 12 percent. Real estate marketplace Zillow and crowdfunding platform GoFundMe both announced layoffs in October of 5 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
As the Federal Reserve raises interest rates — it approved a fourth 0.75 basis point hike on Wednesday — the tech sector is hit especially hard, said Josh White, an assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University.
“For them to make money, sometimes it takes years. I think we’re seeing an unwinding now that’s typical of cost cutting measures when we see a slowing economy. Their value comes from their intellectual property which is patents, trade secrets or people. You can’t cut costs on patents. Trade secrets are what they are. That just leaves people. That’s where you have to cut costs.”
For Meta in particular, Zuckerberg has used the past 13 months to pivot the company he co-founded in his Harvard University dorm room to a leader in the metaverse.
Zuckerberg has signaled that the company has outgrown its Facebook first mentality, particularly in the wake of damaging scandals over its privacy protections, algorithm infrastructure and user safety.
But the layoffs could also be an indication that the transition is moving slower than anticipated, White said, as users eschew movement to the metaverse and Meta’s new metaverse products fall short of consumers’ expectations.
“Companies often try to reinvent themselves or push themselves back toward the high growth stage, and that’s what Zuckerberg was trying to do with Facebook and Instagram,” White said. “That pivot toward the metaverse was his attempt to pivot back to a high-growth stage. But sometimes those pivots don’t always pay off.” | 2022-11-07T16:15:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Meta expected to lay off thousands in broader tech slowdown, report says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/07/meta-tech-layoffs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/07/meta-tech-layoffs/ |
Taylor Heinicke scrambles for nine yards during the third quarter. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
A look at the good (Hail!) and bad (Fail!) from the Washington Commanders’ 20-17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday.
Hail: Taylor Heinicke’s elusiveness
It’s thrilling to watch Heinicke when he’s making things happen with his legs, whether he’s scrambling out of the pocket and waiting for a receiver to get open downfield like he’s playing backyard football or tucking the ball and running. On a designed QB run during Washington’s 10-play touchdown drive in the second half, Heinicke sprinted to his right, where he found linebacker Eric Kendricks waiting for him. As Kendricks lowered his shoulders and went in for the tackle, Heinicke got even lower, stuck his right foot in the ground and spun away, leaving Kendricks grasping at air. The result was a nine-yard gain that had the FedEx Field crowd chanting Heinicke’s name.
Fail: Heinicke’s accuracy
It’s maddening to watch Heinicke when he’s making ill-advised and inaccurate throws, a tendency that’s plagued him throughout his two years as a starter in Washington. Heinicke, who has thrown at least one interception in eight of his last nine games, completed only 15 of 28 passes against the Vikings. In the third quarter, he got lucky when his throw into triple coverage resulted in a wacky 49-yard touchdown pass to Curtis Samuel after Vikings safety Camryn Bynum collided with an official.
Midway through the fourth quarter, with Washington clinging to a seven-point lead, Heinicke badly overthrew 6-foot-6 tight end Logan Thomas. Harrison Smith intercepted the pass and returned it to the Commanders’ 12-yard line, setting up Minnesota’s game-tying touchdown.
Hail: Benjamin St-Juste
Washington’s second-year cornerback had the unenviable task of covering wide receiver Justin Jefferson for most of the game, and managed to hold his own. Jefferson finished with seven catches for 115 yards and a touchdown, but that had more to do with his immense talent than poor technique on the part of St-Juste, who was all over Jefferson on his first-quarter score. One play after St-Juste had an interception return for a touchdown negated by a questionable pass interference penalty in the fourth quarter, he sacked former Washington quarterback Kirk Cousins on a blitz. He also had a key third-down pass-breakup in the end zone on Minnesota’s go-ahead drive.
Fail: You like that!
The crowd taunted Cousins with chants of “You like that!” after his interception at the end of the first half and when Heinicke gave the Commanders a 17-7 lead with a touchdown pass to Dax Milne early in the fourth quarter. Cousins, who said before the game that he had “a lot of good memories” of his six years in Washington, would have the last laugh.
After completing 22 of 40 passes for 265 yards and two touchdowns, Cousins celebrated in the Vikings’ locker room by leading his team in a familiar chant. “You like that on three!” he said. “One! Two! Three! YOU LIKE THAT!” The celebration continued on the team flight home, where a shirtless Cousins rocked a diamond-encrusted chain and danced. Being 7-1 looks like fun.
He said the thing! @KirkCousins8
(via @Vikings) pic.twitter.com/Sq41vqvdh4
Hail: Bowling
The Commanders’ sideline couldn’t have enjoyed it, but the Vikings’ celebration after Smith’s interception was objectively great. About a dozen Minnesota players assembled like bowling pins in the end zone and toppled over in unison after Smith rolled the football in their direction. Linebacker Jordan Hicks played the part of the stubborn pin, wobbling … and wobbling … and wobbling before finally falling over to complete Smith’s strike.
Fail: Ron Rivera’s challenge and timeout usage
The Commanders sure could’ve used a couple more timeouts to stop the clock during the Vikings’ six-minute go-ahead scoring drive. Too bad they wasted them in the third quarter. Washington called its first timeout of the second half before its failed fourth-and-one play. Rivera would burn a second timeout minutes later, when his challenge of the spot on Heinicke’s nine-yard scramble failed. A challenge in that situation would’ve been more justifiable had Heinicke’s run come on third or fourth down, but instead it set up third and one.
Rivera made another questionable decision when he opted not to use his final timeout after a Vikings running play before the two-minute warning. “That’s all about the analytics,” Rivera said after the game. “I have a guy that’s got the chart, going through the numbers and using the numbers and that’s what happened.”
Hail: Washington’s defensive line
Daron Payne registered a sack for the second straight week, giving him 5.5 for the season, a new career high. The Commanders’ defensive line, which helped fuel the team’s three-game winning streak, pressured Cousins throughout the game and shut down the Vikings’ running game, limiting Dalvin Cook to 2.8 yards per carry. The unit should only improve with Chase Young’s return from the knee injury that has sidelined him for the past year. That could come on “Monday Night Football” against the Eagles.
There's 'no doing it alone' for Kirk Cousins, Vikings in win over the Commanders
Fail: Third- and fourth-down efficiency
Washington was 3 for 10 on third down and 0 for 1 on fourth down. The latter statistic was especially frustrating. Leading 10-7 and facing fourth and one at the Minnesota 38-yard line in the third quarter, the Commanders kept their offense on the field. Rather than handing the ball off to rookie Brian Robinson Jr., who had picked up a tough yard on the previous play, Washington decided to get cute. Heinicke rolled to his right on a bootleg before throwing incomplete for Terry McLaurin, and the Vikings took over on downs. | 2022-11-07T16:24:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Highlights and lowlights from the Commanders' loss to the Vikings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/commanders-vikings-highlights-and-lowlights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/commanders-vikings-highlights-and-lowlights/ |
WASHINGTON — Qatar has said the upcoming soccer World Cup will be the first to be ‘carbon-neutral.’ In theory, that means the monthlong tournament hosted by the small Gulf Arab nation will have a trivial effect on the climate. It’s a bold claim for a country that spent the past 12 years building seven new stadiums, hotels, high-rises and roads for the event. | 2022-11-07T16:32:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EXPLAINER: Carbon 'offsets' for World Cup in Qatar - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/explainer-carbon-offsets-for-world-cup-in-qatar/2022/11/07/818b9ec4-5eb0-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/explainer-carbon-offsets-for-world-cup-in-qatar/2022/11/07/818b9ec4-5eb0-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
MESA, ARIZONA - OCTOBER 09: Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake takes part in a campaign rally attended by former U.S. President Donald Trump at Legacy Sports USA on October 09, 2022 in Mesa, Arizona. Trump was stumping for Arizona GOP candidates ahead of the midterm election on November 8. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) (Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images North America)
It’s never been easier for Americans to learn about the policy positions and personal character of the men and women seeking their vote. And never have these attributes mattered less: For most voters, the most important fact about a candidate is which party they belong to.
When the Information Age coincides with the Age of Polarization, such paradoxes are inevitable.
The proliferation of coverage on cable television, the explosion of campaign advertising and the easy access to content provided by social media and other digital sources have revolutionized the political information universe. Candidates’ biographies and policy stances are a quick Google search away. Even people who don’t make a special effort to inform themselves are still exposed to news headlines and advertising from candidates, parties and super PACs on both sides, some of which are informed by aggressive opposition research that is often unflattering or unreliable.
Americans are also becoming increasingly aware of candidates beyond their local jurisdictions. As recently as the 1980s and 1990s, it was rare for a challenger to a member of Congress or state-level office-seeker to become a national political figure. Now gubernatorial candidates can gain national visibility, such as Kari Lake of Arizona and Stacey Abrams of Georgia.
But the rising power of partisanship in the US electorate, fueled largely by increasingly negative views of the partisan opposition, has left a shrinking pool of voters who are willing to deviate from their customary electoral habits to support an individual candidate with especially attractive personal traits — or to reject a particularly unappealing option at the ballot box. The share of House districts that delivered a split outcome, simultaneously supporting candidates of opposite parties in presidential and congressional voting, declined from 33% in 1980, to 20% in 2000, to just 4% in 2020. With Americans now very likely to prefer a single party’s nominees up and down the ballot, the influence of individual candidates on electoral outcomes has never been lower.
Because both congressional chambers are narrowly divided between the parties, it’s only natural — and even logical — for voters to treat individual House and Senate races as proxy battles for majority control of the institution, reasoning that their own representatives should be treated as votes for or against polarizing national party leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But party-line voting is on the rise even in state and local elections, where these considerations don’t apply. At every level of government, politicians are marking territories as red or blue.
This year, many Democrats took comfort in the belief that the normal disadvantage they faced as the president’s party in a congressional midterm election could be effectively blunted by a countervailing mismatch in candidate quality. They hoped that the flawed or untested candidates that emerged as Republican nominees in a number of Senate races — including Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Blake Masters in Arizona, Don Bolduc in New Hampshire and Herschel Walker in Georgia — would self-destruct under the bright lights of national politics. Democratic-aligned groups even intervened in Republican primaries on behalf of candidates judged to be weak general-election opponents, assuming that voters in swing districts would punish these candidates’ perceived ideological extremism or lack of qualification.
Many of the candidates Democrats scorned have indeed encountered rocky terrain on the campaign trail. Oz has been criticized for moving into Pennsylvania simply to run for office. Masters and Bolduc have been attacked for their willingness to consider the privatization of Social Security and Medicare, respectively. Walker has faced a series of challenges, including accusations from two women that he funded their abortions.
These developments have received extensive media coverage and served as fodder for volleys of Democratic attack ads. But as the Republican Party’s position in the polls remains highly competitive in the final days of the campaign, Democrats are learning to their dismay that most Americans today vote for the party label — no matter who happens to be wearing it.
• Maybe Partisanship Isn’t Everything in US Politics: Jonathan Bernstein
• Conspiracy Theories Are Not a Partisan Phenomenon: Matthew Yglesias
• Brett Kavanaugh and Partisanship on the Supreme Court: The Editors | 2022-11-07T16:33:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Party Label Is What Matters Most to Voters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-party-label-is-what-matters-most-to-voters/2022/11/07/ab7eb39a-5ead-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-party-label-is-what-matters-most-to-voters/2022/11/07/ab7eb39a-5ead-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Tropical Storm Nicole forms, hurricane watch issued for Florida’s east coast
The late-season storm, which could reach hurricane strength, will bring heavy rain, coastal and inland flooding, strong winds and a tornado risk
Updated November 7, 2022 at 10:11 a.m. EST|Published November 7, 2022 at 9:54 a.m. EST
Simulations for the path of Tropical Storm Nicole from the American modeling system. The dark blue line is the average of all simulations. (StormVistaWxModels.com)
We’re not quite two weeks from Thanksgiving and still the 2022 hurricane season, with all its plot twists, charges on. Subtropical Storm Nicole was named early Monday and could near hurricane strength as it gets set to hit Florida on Thursday before scraping along the southeastern U.S. coast.
Hurricane watches have been posted for the northwestern Bahamas and the east coast of Florida from the Volusia-Brevard county line, which is near Titusville on the Space Coast, to Hallandale Beach, which is just north of Miami. Tropical storm watches cover the rest of Florida’s east coast and the southern part of the Georgia coast.
High astronomical tides, elevated by this week’s full moon, will bolster the risk of problematic coastal flooding, which will be further exacerbated by the unusually expansive nature of Nicole’s wind field.
“A dangerous storm surge is possible across portions of the northwestern Bahamas, much of the east coast of Florida and portions of coastal Georgia,” the Hurricane Center wrote. “A Storm Surge Watch has been issued for most of the east coast of Florida and portions of coastal Georgia.”
Heavy rain will be an issue, too, particularly in spots still grappling with saturated soils left from Hurricane Ian’s prolific rains in late September.
If Nicole does come ashore at hurricane strength, it would be a highly unusual event: The Lower 48 has only recorded five landfalling November hurricanes since the mid-1850s. That would make it a once in roughly 30- to 40-year event.
Nicole will not be done after blasting Florida. It will then get drawn northward, bringing the potential for heavy rain along much of the East Coast late in the week and into the weekend.
Hurricane season doesn’t technically end until Nov. 30, although late-season storms are often confined to the Caribbean; rarely do they churn toward the United States. But unusual steering currents and unusually warm sea surface temperatures — which fuel tropical weather systems — are both at play with Nicole.
The hurricane season to date has actually come in slightly below average for activity, running about 22 percent shy. That’s despite preseason predictions of an extra-active season. Approximately half of this season’s ACE, or Accumulated Cyclone Energy, was churned through by just two storms — Fiona, which socked Puerto Rico and then Atlantic Canada as that country’s strongest storm on record, and Ian, which lay siege to southwest Florida.
Subtropical Storm Nicole was named in the predawn hours Monday. Over the weekend, an area of thunderstorms had begun to flare up north of Puerto Rico within a broader low pressure system. Those thunderstorms helped consolidate a pocket of spin, and now a subtropical storm is organizing around it.
Subtropical storms differ from purely tropical storms because they possess some tropical characteristics while retaining a few traits of mid-latitude cyclones. They’re usually not as wet as full-blown tropical systems, and they can be a bit asymmetric, with the heaviest precipitation east of the center. Subtropical storms also possess a larger wind field, and the strongest winds aren’t necessarily found near the storm’s center — they may be removed by 100 miles or more.
Nicole is currently 495 miles east of the northwest Bahamas and moving northwest at 9 mph. It’s situated beneath a large upper-level low pressure system, which is spinning counterclockwise. That will swing Nicole to the west on a crash course with Florida. Picture a merry-go-round; Nicole is a horse, and the upper-level low is the actual spinning platform.
Nicole will intensify over the exceptionally warm waters between the Bahamas and the east coast of the Florida Peninsula. It may become fully tropical as thunderstorm activity near its core increases toward midweek. By the time it makes landfall, probably somewhere between Miami and Volusia County on Thursday, it could be near hurricane strength.
Nicole’s large wind shield will mean an extended period of 35 to 55 mph onshore winds from the South Carolina border all the way to the Miami-Dade metro area between late Wednesday and early Friday. Coupled with high astronomical tides, that will make coastal flooding a significant concern.
In addition, a general 4 to 6 inches of rain is likely on Florida’s east coast, with 2 to 5 inches likely farther inland. There are some models that suggest Nicole could track all the way across the peninsula toward Tampa before curving north on Friday morning. It’s unclear when Nicole will make its right turn to the north.
A few tornadoes are likely, too, especially near and north of the storm’s center in the hours leading up to landfall. That could be an issue for the Space Coast north toward Jacksonville.
Eventually, Nicole will be tugged north ahead of an approaching trough, or dip in the jet stream. It should accelerate northeastward, potentially skimming the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas before being drawn into a cold front along the East Coast. It could deliver heavy rains in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, where a cold front helps focus tropical moisture. | 2022-11-07T16:33:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tropical Storm Nicole forms, could become hurricane near Florida - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/tropical-storm-nicole-florida-flooding/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/tropical-storm-nicole-florida-flooding/ |
(Diego Patiño for The Washington Post)
A guide to contemporary doomsday scenarios — from the threats you know about to the ones you never think of
A few days before NASA tried to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid as part of what it called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, I talked to Lindley Johnson, the agency’s planetary defense officer. I think we can all agree that this sounds like an important job.
The planetary defense officer focuses on the detection of dangerous asteroids and comets that might threaten the Earth (as in the movies “Don’t Look Up” and “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact”), and explores technologies for preventing such a thing from happening. This job is not to be confused with the NASA planetary protection officer, who is supposed to keep Earth’s microbes from contaminating other worlds or hypothetical alien microbes from coming to Earth, as in “The Andromeda Strain.”
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was conceived as NASA’s first planetary defense mission. A golf-cart-size spacecraft was launched in November 2021 from California. If all went precisely as planned, its 10-month journey would end at precisely 7:14 p.m. Eastern on Monday, Sept. 26, when it would collide with an asteroid named Dimorphos.
The asteroid posed no threat. This mission was just a test of a possible technique of asteroid deflection: a “kinetic impactor.” No hydrogen bombs needed. The collision, if successful, would help refine existing models for what it would take to keep an asteroid from striking Earth.
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My question to Johnson: How worried should we be, really, about killer rocks from space? He said a major asteroid impact is rare but potentially catastrophic. He cited the Tunguska event of 1908, when either an asteroid or comet exploded over a remote region of Siberia and flattened 800 square miles of forest. It was, he said, “probably a once-every-200-years or so event, on average. But it’s entirely random. These can impact any time.”
Johnson explained that there are many asteroids lurking out there, still unidentified, that are bigger than the Tunguska object, and they “would devastate a multistate area — a natural disaster of a scale we’ve never had to deal with. That includes all the earthquakes and hurricanes that have ever happened in the past. It could be an existential threat to national well-being — an economic disaster as well as an environmental disaster.” He paused a beat and said, calmly, “So it’s not something you want to happen.”
And here we are at the crux of our existential predicament as a species: There are just so many things we don’t want to happen. There are so many potential doomsdays.
This is not the cheeriest topic, to be sure, but it’s endlessly fascinating if you can stomach it. What are our biggest existential risks? Should we feel more threatened by low-probability but high-consequence risks, such as asteroid impacts and runaway artificial intelligence (robot overlords and whatnot), or should we focus on less exotic, here-and-now threats such as climate change, viral pandemics and weapons of mass destruction? And should we even worry about low-probability risks when hundreds of millions of people right now lack adequate food, water, and shelter and are living off less than $2 a day?
We are not being paranoid when we recognize that human civilization has become increasingly complex and simultaneously armed with techniques for self-destruction. There are bad omens everywhere, and not just the melting glaciers and dying polar bears. We’re all still unnerved by the pandemic. Meanwhile, there’s this ancient threat called war. Vladimir Putin and his advisers keep rattling the nuclear saber. A nuclear holocaust is the classic apocalyptic scenario that never went away.
Not every doomsday scenario is a full-blown extinction event. There are extremely suboptimal futures in which our species straggles onward in a brutish, Hobbesian nightmare — back to the Stone Age. People who think about “existential risk” are focused on the collapse of civilization as we know it. One of their recurring themes is that there has never been a moment as pivotal as this one. “We see a species precariously close to self-destruction, with a future of immense promise hanging in the balance,” declares Oxford University philosopher Toby Ord in his book “The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity.” He gives us a 1 in 6 chance of “existential catastrophe” in the next 100 years.
Ord is part of a new intellectual movement called “longtermism.” Proponents of the long view say we have moral obligations to the welfare of the trillions of people who might potentially follow us here on Earth, and on worlds across the universe. Highest among those obligations, of course, is to avoid destroying ourselves and our planet before those future people are born.
To be transparent here: I skew cautiously optimistic. In theory, I would argue, we should be able to leverage our science and technology — and the evolutionary miracle of our capacity for empathy, kindness and thoughtfulness — to survive and even thrive into the future. But one’s view of human destiny seems to split along generational lines, at least in my circles, where young people have grown up under the cloud of the climate crisis and the failure of leaders to respond adequately to it. They may not find it persuasive when some privileged boomer like me tells them that, sure, we’ve made a total mess of the world and civilization is imperiled, but don’t worry — we’ve got our best people working on it.
This anti-doomsday sales job becomes even harder when we acknowledge that the climate crisis, pandemic viruses and the threat of nuclear war are only a few items on the long list of things that informed people should be fretting about. Optimism may prove delusional — a fatal flaw, in fact. But how you come down on existential risks may pivot on whether you think human ingenuity will outpace human folly. Do you believe, fundamentally, in the human race?
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has roots dating to World War II but remains a remarkably low-profile operation. It’s a 24-mile drive southwest of the main Hopkins campus in Baltimore. The mailing address is “Laurel, MD,” but visitors will notice that it’s not anywhere near Laurel, almost as if the address is trying to confuse anyone hoping to find the place. “Below the radar” is how one of the media relations people described APL. It has some 7,000 full-time employees and a campus the size of a small university. It does a lot of classified research with military applications.
The lab handled the DART mission under a NASA contract, and the assigned task was very much in its wheelhouse. It once landed a spacecraft on the asteroid Eros. It put a spacecraft in orbit around Mercury. And in 2015 it managed to fly the New Horizons spacecraft by Pluto, snapping the first close-up images of the dwarf planet. Among its future missions: sending an “octocopter” to explore the surface of Titan, Saturn’s giant moon. Titan’s atmosphere is four times as dense as our own. “If you put on wings,” Ralph Semmel, director of the laboratory, told me, “you could literally flap your wings and fly.”
Semmel spoke with me in his office a few days before the scheduled collision, and the conversation bounced from one existential risk to another. Naturally we talked about the pandemic. “Think about the impact that covid had on the world and the nation. Consider that a body blow. How many body blows like that can the nation or the world sustain before the social fabric of societies begins to crumble?” he asked.
The laboratory has studied four existential risks: asteroids, solar storms, climate change and what he called “biothreats” — which could be anything from a natural pathogen to an engineered bioweapon. The DART mission focused on the first, and although this is exactly the kind of thing at which his engineers are brilliant, there was a real chance of failure. No one had ever knocked a celestial object off course.
Semmel wanted a success not just for the reputation of his laboratory. The world needs it, he said. “We’re just emerging” from the pandemic, he noted. “We’re in a pretty sad place right now from a global and national standpoint. I think some really positive results and news could really bolster folks.” He paused. “We can save life on Earth from extinction. Wouldn’t it be cool to know that?”
I’m actually not all that worried about an asteroid impact. Asteroids are way down at No. 8 on my list of Top 10 Existential Worries (a list I just typed up at the urging of an editor, and which I present simply as a discussion tool):
10. Solar storm or gamma-ray burst.
9. Supervolcano eruption.
8. Asteroid impact.
7. Naturally emergent, or maliciously engineered, pandemic plant pathogen affecting staple crops.
6. Naturally emergent, or maliciously engineered, pandemic human pathogen.
5. Orwellian dystopia. Totalitarianism. Endless war paraded as peace. The human spirit crushed. Not a world you’d want to live in.
4. Cascading technological failures due to cyberattack, reckless development of artificial intelligence and/or some other example of complex systems failing in complex ways.
3. Nuclear war (may jump soon to No. 1).
2. Environmental catastrophe from climate change and other desecrations of the natural world.
1. Threat X. The unknown unknown. Something dreadful but not even imagined. The creature that lives under the bed.
Your apocalypse may vary. Toby Ord, for example, ranks “unaligned artificial intelligence” as the top risk, while another Oxford scholar, Anders Sandberg, puts nuclear war first, followed by an engineered pandemic.
A risk can be described by its probability times its consequence. The probability of significant climate change and other environmental damage is 100 percent, as we can see with our own eyes. The ultimate severity of the consequences at the global level depends on what we do about it. It’s certainly the top existential crisis for those species that are on the verge of going extinct, and for those cities that may run out of sandbags as the seas rise. We’re witnessing a mass extinction event, and we’re the cause. If we can’t solve the climate crisis and protect the environment of our beautiful blue marble, we probably can’t solve any of the other existential threats either. (Please don’t count on escaping to some other world. That is science fiction. Realistically there is no Planet B.)
An asteroid impact, in contrast with the climate crisis, is an example of a low-probability hazard with an unusually wide range of potential consequences. Asteroids are detritus from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. Most are far away, orbiting the sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But some asteroids have orbits that cross the orbital path of Earth.
The impact of a mountain-size rock like the one that struck the Earth 66 million years ago and ended the reign of the dinosaurs would potentially put the final period on the human story. But the probability of such an impact happening is very low; an event like this occurs about once every 100 million years, according to Cathy Plesko, who works on planetary defense at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Far more likely is an impact from a smaller but still dangerous rock, and exactly what would happen remains a subject of intensive research, Plesko told me. “We’re trying to understand how hard of a punch can we take,” she said.
Scientists and engineers talk about “risk matrices.” One risk matrix used by NASA has green squares and yellow squares and red squares. The dark green square in the lower left part of the matrix is good: low probability combined with low consequence. Dark red in the upper right part of the matrix is bad: high probability, high consequence. Yellow squares are in between.
The problem is, we don’t actually know the hue of many of the risks under discussion. For example, there’s much talk these days about “superintelligence” — some kind of artificial intelligence program that achieves consciousness, escapes human control and runs amok. Humans are enslaved. Or turned into batteries.
A Hollywood fantasy? Artificial intelligence is already filtering through our daily lives, but no program has yet developed the common sense of a human toddler, and self-driving cars still struggle to understand that a snowman by the side of the road isn’t going to try to cross the street.
Humans are remarkably adaptable. Coping with changing circumstances, modeling the future, coming up with strategies and workarounds, mending our ways: This is kind of what we do — our evolutionary niche. But we do not function like a beehive (and by the way, bees are in trouble). We tend to be competitive, selfish, greedy, favoring individual happiness over that of the collective.
Sailing merrily against the prevailing winds of pessimism is Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker, probably the world’s most prominent champion of the idea of progress in human affairs. He insists that he’s neither an optimist nor a pessimist and is just laying out the facts — including the positive things that don’t make the front page. “Headlines give you a misleading view of the state of the world because they’re a nonrandom sample of what’s happening. They’re the most sudden, the most lurid, the newsworthy events, so they’re probably going to be bad,” he told me recently. “Human psychology is attuned to the negative. It’s called the negativity bias. We dread bad things more than we savor good things.”
Fear is a protective evolutionary adaptation. We need to be aware of worst-case scenarios. Fear, anger and outrage fuel action, and action lowers risk. But fear can also be exploited by charlatans and demagogues as a sales technique. Let the record reflect that many of the most unnerving doomsday scenarios of the past century have not come true. The “population bomb” that incited apocalyptic predictions in the 1960s did not lead to rising global death rates from famine. Since 1945, nuclear weapons have somehow stayed in their bomber bays, silos and submarines (at least, as this story goes to press). The Y2K computer bug didn’t shatter the economy or cause planes to plunge to Earth.
I recall that one of my elementary school teachers in the late 1960s declared that the world was going to be blown up and destroyed by atomic bombs within five years. She attributed this startling fact to “the experts.” Arguably this was too heavy a thing to lay on kids who were just trying to learn the multiplication table, but that was the spirit of the time.
The world, of course, hasn’t blown up. Still, it’s “100 seconds to midnight,” according to the Doomsday Clock, the metaphor of our vulnerability as determined by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In this year’s update, the atomic scientists, who have branched out beyond nuclear weapons to incorporate existential risks like artificial intelligence and bioweapons, described humanity’s current position as “doom’s doorstep” and added, “the Clock remains the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse because the world remains stuck in an extremely dangerous moment.”
Also worth remembering: There’s no reason to think that multiple existential risks can’t happen simultaneously. Like a supervolcano erupting just when the killer robots announce they’re taking over (good, let them handle it).
The point is, the Menu of Doom is even longer than the one they give you at the Cheesecake Factory. Historian Niall Ferguson, author of “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe,” told me, “Future historians will find it ironic that we had so many debates about climate change when something else was about to smash us.”
He is not particularly concerned about human extinction — “The human species is incredibly hard to kill off” — but he worries about the danger of “totalitarianism 2.0.” “If history has anything to tell us, it is that totalitarianism is the most dangerous thing that we’ve ever come up with,” Ferguson said. “The most destructive things of the 20th century were the result of totalitarian regimes: Hitler’s and Stalin’s and Mao’s.”
Any such list of potential doomsdays should be written in pencil, since the future is reliably unpredictable. If we were able to identify today what our most pressing problem will definitely be in, say, 50 years, much less a century from now, we’d be the first generation to possess such awesome clairvoyance.
No one in the year 1900 was worried about nuclear war. The idea of splitting the atom for military purposes had not yet entered the minds of even the most visionary scientists because physicists had only the sketchiest understanding of what an atom is, and no inkling that vast energies were bound up in the (still undiscovered) nucleus. Forty-five years later, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed with massive loss of life.
So you want to avoid the blind-side hit. Don’t assume you know more than you do. Stay nimble. And do look up.
Also worth remembering: There’s no reason to think that multiple existential risks can’t happen simultaneously.
After the past 2½ years, pandemics — once a relative afterthought for most of us — have resumed their historic position as a scourge of humankind. Yet again we find ourselves living through plague years. The good news: Vaccines, antibiotics, antivirals, monoclonal antibodies and genome sequencing have given us tools to fight pathogens. The bad news: The microbes adapt. Antibiotic resistance is on the rise. Evolution is true.
Pandemics may become more frequent as we invade new habitats and intensify interaction with wildlife carrying viruses potentially capable of spilling into the human population. Recently I emailed Ian Lipkin, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, and asked how many animal viruses are lurking out there, yet undiscovered. He answered that he and his colleagues estimate there are at least “320,000 viruses awaiting discovery.”
What about a potentially catastrophic misuse of genetic engineering, including the revolutionary CRISPR gene-editing technique? I posed that question to Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel laureate who co-invented CRISPR and who has been outspoken in warning against misuse of the technology. By email, she pointed out that researchers are using the technology to help humanity on multiple fronts, including health, agriculture and climate strategies. As for existential risks, “currently there are significant technical as well as knowledge barriers to using genetic engineering in ways that could threaten our society at scale.”
What about volcanoes? They somehow get ignored amid the existential risk conversation. When Mount Tambora in present-day Indonesia erupted in 1815 it led to “the year without a summer.” And what about Yellowstone — a “supervolcano”? The national park sits atop a hot spot in the Earth’s mantle and had massive eruptions 2 million, 1.3 million and 630,000 years ago.
The impeccable source on that is Robert Smith, a University of Utah professor emeritus who has studied the Yellowstone volcanic and hydrothermal system for 66 years and is known as Mr. Yellowstone. He assured me Yellowstone is not about to have a catastrophic eruption. Smaller eruptions happen more often than the big, caldera-forming eruptions. He has calculated the probability of a full-blown eruption at Yellowstone at 0.00014 percent per year. “The chances of having a super-eruption in the lifetime of a person is exceedingly low. There are much higher risks,” he said.
Then there are gamma-ray bursts. These are powerful jets of radiation from deep space, produced by exploding or colliding stars, and theoretically a threat to Earthlife. To get a handle on this, I emailed Sara Seager, a professor of physics and planetary science at MIT and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. Her response was brief and to the point: “I’m not worried about getting zapped by gamma rays from deep space. The objects that explode are nowhere near us.” I’m with her.
Far more likely, and therefore worrisome, is a dangerous solar storm, particularly of the type called a “coronal mass ejection.” The sun can hurl a massive quantity of magnetically charged particles at Earth, throwing our own protective magnetic field for a loop and potentially disabling the electrical grid for weeks, months or longer.
There’s an expert on this at the Applied Physics Laboratory: James P. Mason, a research scientist and engineer who is the principal investigator for a planned NASA mission that will use a small satellite to scrutinize the solar corona in regions not currently observed. We’ve had some near-misses from ejected solar material, he says. In 2012 a plume missed Earth but zapped a sun-observing scientific spacecraft.
He is dismayed that we haven’t done more as a society to get ready for when the sun gives us trouble. The grid needs backup hardware. We need transformers on standby. “Eventually they will hit. It’s only a matter of time, basically,” Mason says. “It’s a known known.”
Anxiety over existential risks is heightened when we decide our societal leaders can’t be trusted. We do not trust “the experts.” We do not trust the government, the mainstream news media, the corporations, the pharmaceutical industry, Wall Street, the capitalists (or communists), the United Nations, the Gates Foundation or the owners of National Football League franchises.
The problem with all this distrust is that, in a crisis, societies need collective action. This has become harder because we no longer have a “common media culture,” as Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, puts it. “We now have a media culture where creating distrust of any of those [expert] voices is profitable.”
There is, however, one federal agency that seems to have retained widespread respect for its competence: NASA. The asteroid whackers!
A few days before the DART collision, Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead, and engineer Elena Adams walked me through the ingenious concept of the mission. This was called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test because there were two asteroids, a binary pair, involved. Dimorphos, the target, orbited a larger rock, Didymos, every 11 hours and 55 minutes.
By focusing on twin asteroids, the mission simplified a lot of the technical challenges. It would be relatively easy to detect with telescopes any DART-inflicted change in the orbit of Dimorphos around its larger companion. That kept the budget for the mission at a relatively modest $330 million. And Dimorphos was a great target in part because it was the right size. Chabot explained that the major goal of asteroid hunters is to identify the ones between 140 meters (460 feet) and 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in diameter. Dimorphos was estimated to be 160 meters (525 feet) across.
There were uncertainties about this rock, though. Chabot and Adams had been working on the mission for years but still didn’t know what Dimorphos looked like. They also couldn’t be entirely sure that DART would hit the target. If DART missed, it would keep going around the sun; in theory it could get another shot at ramming into Dimorphos in about two years. But the DART team wouldn’t even discuss that. Success was the only acceptable result. Close wouldn’t count.
By late Monday afternoon, the 26th, the Applied Physics Laboratory was abuzz. Reporters on the space beat were stationed in a building nowhere near the mission operations center, but NASA and laboratory officials circulated through to brief us on the progress of the spacecraft as it neared the asteroid. “The level of certainty is not 100 percent on these missions,” Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for science at NASA, told us. “We cannot talk our way into it.”
Robert Braun, head of space exploration missions for the laboratory, floated one theoretically possible but unlikely scenario: “If we were right on course and it was shaped like a doughnut, we’d fly right through it.”
As day turned to dusk, the show was on. About an hour before impact, Dimorphos appeared as a tiny, barely perceptible dot near the much brighter asteroid. The dot got bigger very slowly. Only in the last few minutes did we all get a good look at the target: a gray, harsh, lifeless rock pile. By this point everyone in the mission operations center was standing. Dimorphos grew larger in the frame. Closer, closer … and one final image. Then nothing. A blank screen. Loss of signal. Spacecraft destroyed. Success!
Forty-five minutes later the scientists and engineers held their news conference, giddy with excitement. A TV reporter asked: Should earthlings sleep better now? Adams, the engineer, offered the desired sound bite: “I think that earthlings should sleep better. Definitely I will.”
NASA held a sparsely attended but live-streamed news conference Oct. 11 at agency headquarters in Washington and revealed what scientists had learned about the collision. DART, Chabot said, delivered a powerful punch, at the high end of what had been expected. NASA had defined mission “success” as altering Dimorphos’s orbit by at least 73 seconds. But the rock’s orbit around its larger companion was shortened by a full 32 minutes.
The scientists at the briefing did not claim to have saved the world. They understand the work that remains to be done. They need to find more asteroids and chart their orbits. They need to study other potential asteroid-deflection technologies. And at some point a system has to be put in place.
But even though scientists are not prone to bluster, the head of NASA, Bill Nelson, the 80-year-old former U.S. senator with a stentorian voice, did not hold back. “We conducted humanity’s first planetary defense test and we showed the world NASA is serious as a defender of this planet,” he said. A few moments later, he added, “This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us.”
Conceivably I could have peppered Nelson with a series of cynical and annoying questions. Is this alleged technology really practical? What if you had a big rock coming in fast — how many golf carts would you have to fling at it? How can you keep the rock-deflection system operational for centuries even if the global economy has collapsed? And, by the way, what can NASA do about solar storms, gamma-ray bursts, rogue black holes or other things the universe might throw at us?
No one asked anything like that. Sometimes you just celebrate the win — and get ready to fight another doomsday.
Joel Achenbach writes about science and health for The Washington Post. | 2022-11-07T16:33:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Asteroids, climate change, killer robots: A handy guide to doomsday scenarios - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/07/doomsday-scenarios-asteroids/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/07/doomsday-scenarios-asteroids/ |
Don’t think the election will be over when the polls close
Susan Blankenship, assistant election administrator, left, and Hannah Taylor, Washington secretary of state results audit specialist, during an accuracy test in Shelton, Wash., on Oct. 13. At right is Mason County Auditor Paddy McGuire. (John Froschauer/AP)
When the polls close Tuesday night, don’t imagine we will have definitive results within hours or even days. The polls’ close is likely to be the starting gun on a prolonged, contentious fight to determine the winners. Gird yourself for Republicans’ now familiar attempt to discredit elections they lose and sow doubt about the security and accuracy of the vote count. Three sorts of post-election antics will likely feature prominently in the MAGA forces’ playbook.
Stop the count. In 2020, President Donald Trump and his supporters demanded to stop the count when Republicans were enjoying early evening leads in vote totals — well before all early, absentee, mail-in and military ballots had been received and counted. The obvious purpose was to shed doubt on the eventual tally, convincing his supporters that the election was won — and then stolen.
Be prepared for exactly the same scenario Tuesday night when total votes will not have been tabulated. The drumbeat has already begun, with MAGA trolls insisting that we used to be able to count all the votes on election night. Balderdash. David Becker, head of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, reminded us that “we have never, in the history of our nation, come close to counting all the votes on election night.” He noted, “Every state takes weeks to count all the ballots” — including military ballots — “and officially certify the results. Every state. Always.”
In some states, all the eligible ballots won’t even be received for seven days after the election. In California, for example, with a handful of competitive House races, “ballots may be counted even if they arrive after Election Day, as long as they are received by mail no later than 7 days after the election and are postmarked on or before Election Day,” the state says. Likewise, in Pennsylvania, “You must affirm that you mailed your ballot no later than 11:59 pm on the day before Election Day. The County Election Office must receive your ballot no later than 7 days after Election Day by 5 pm.”
In other words, when the polls close, we will be at the beginning, not the end, of the battle over the legitimacy, accuracy and fairness of the midterms. Premature demands to stop counting won’t be the only GOP ploy.
False reports of fraud. However specious and far-fetched, Republicans will seek to sow doubt, lure the mainstream media into reporting “disputes” and “controversies” and pave the way to repudiate the results they don’t like. The release of a flood of shoddy, partisan polling from GOP firms in the final weeks of the election pumped up the base, but also raised expectations so that final results for Republicans that don’t match the partisan poll predictions would seem suspect and further fuel the “rigged” election accusations.
Responsible outlets should remind their readers and viewers that every tall tale Trump advanced in 2020 about election fraud was debunked by, among other people, his own attorney general, campaign staff and lawyers. Unless there is some factual predicate, confirmed by nonpartisan sources, there is no reason to lend the benefit of the doubt to MAGA partisans and right-wing media accusations of misconduct. The onus must be on Republicans to put forth evidence that withstands court scrutiny. Until objective and verifiable evidence is present, there is no basis to question the reported vote totals. Instead, it would be appropriate to say, “There is no basis to credit GOP allegations of ballot stuffing [or voting machine manipulation or ballot destruction], the sort of bogus complaint raised and thoroughly debunked in 2020.”
Pointless litigation and recounts. Contrary to MAGA claims and some mainstream reporting, a margin of, say, 10,000 votes in a sizable statewide race or a 1,000-vote difference in a congressional race does not represent a “close” contest in terms of determining a definitive winner (provided the jurisdiction does not fall prey to GOP demands to use hand-counting, which is notoriously unreliable).
As NPR reported, “just 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin separated [President] Biden and Trump from a tie in the Electoral College,” while Trump won by a margin of about 80,000 votes in three states in 2016. No matter how many court challenges and recounts are undertaken, margins of this magnitude simply do not get reversed.
In the 2008 Minnesota Senate race, after 2.9 million votes were counted, Republican Norm Coleman led by 206 votes. Thanks to the mandatory recount, a smattering of errors were found, leading to Al Franken’s victory, by a margin of 312 votes. That’s a close election.
A study by the group FairVote found, “In the 5,778 statewide elections over the last 20 years, there have been 31 completed statewide recounts. Only three of those 31 recounts overturned the outcome of the race. In all three, the original margin of victory was less than 0.05%.” In other words, when all the counting is done, “we should not expect outcome reversals unless the margin of victory is within 0.1% at most.”
In short, simply because Republicans insist on pursuing frivolous claims and refuse to concede, there is no reason to deprive voters and candidates of a sense of finality, especially when the difference is far beyond the Coleman-Franken margin. | 2022-11-07T16:33:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Election night is the beginning, not the end of the midterms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/election-night-no-finality/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/election-night-no-finality/ |
Ukraine live briefing: Millions without power in Kyiv; Zelensky warns of mo...
Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, already under sanctions for interfering in U.S. elections in 2016 and 2018, boasted on Nov. 7 that he had interfered in this year's midterms. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)
Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, an ally of President Vladimir Putin and head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, which is fighting in Ukraine, boasted on Monday that he was interfering in the United States midterm congressional elections and planned to continue doing so.
Prigozhin gained infamy as an operator of internet “troll farms” and was placed under sanction by the U.S. Treasury Department for his role in meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, using a company he owned, then called the Internet Research Agency, to spread misinformation and sow discord, especially on social media platforms.
His comments were published by his press service on Russian social media platform VKontakte.
“During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once,” Prigozhin said.
Prighozin’s provocative remarks, on the day before Election Day in the United States, were impossible to verify. U.S. government cyber agencies have said they largely neutralized the Russian troll farms in subsequent election cycles.
Major social media platforms also have become far more vigilant about policing suspicious content, though Elon Musk’s recent large-scale staff cuts at Twitter have raised questions about whether the company could maintain properly monitor content ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
Whether Prigozhin’s remarks were true, or merely disinformation intended to raise alarm in the United States, they nonetheless reflected how Putin and his supporters view Russia as fighting a multifront war against the U.S.-dominated, allegedly hegemonic West. Putin and his allies have said that Russia is fighting the U.S. and other NATO nations in Ukraine, and blamed the West for prolonging the war Putin started.
Russia has also used disinformation, its muscle in energy markets and its control over Ukrainian food exports in an effort to shatter Western unity over support for Ukraine. A key objective of the Kremlin involves weakening Western democracies, by promoting far-right candidates, targeting centrists and spreading divisive online rhetoric.
Influencing the overall outcome of a midterm congressional election, given hundreds of candidates on the ballot in all 50 states, is more complicated than a head-to-head presidential race. But individual congressional races, in small districts or individual states, can be prone to outside interference.
The Treasury Department brought sanctions against Prigozhin in March 2018 for his role in interfering in the 2016 elections, and again in 2019 for meddling in the 2018 congressional elections. In each case, the department citied his role in financing the Internet Research Agency troll farm in St. Petersburg.
The United Kingdom and the European Union have also brought sanctions against Prigozhin.
The oligarch, who made his fortune through Russian government catering contracts, including for kindergartens, schools and the military, is known as “Putin’s chef.”
He also runs FAN news agency, which pushes his agenda, including attacks on his political enemies and praise for his own projects, such as his push into Africa in recent years, offering security services and advice on political manipulation to autocrats on the continent in return for access to resources.
After years of denying any link to the Wagner mercenary group, Prigozhin in recent months has openly admitted his association with the private militia, even personally recruiting fighters in Russian prisons, despite the fact that mercenary groups are illegal under Russian law.
Wagner mercenaries for months have tried unsuccessfully to push Ukrainian forces out of Bakhmut, Ukraine, a battle that has taken a heavy toll on each side and left the city in ruins, even though Western military analysts have said there is no strategic military logic to push to take the city.
Bloomberg News reported that Graphika social media analysis firm had found a Russian political interference network associated with the Internet Research Agency has been engaged in new political interference, promoting right-wing conspiracy theories, aiming to swing midterm election races against Democrat candidates.
The latest United States sanctions on Prigozhin came in July, related to Prigozhin’s “Project Lakhta,” a disinformation campaign that he financed targeting audiences in the United States, Europe, and Ukraine. According to the Treasury Department, Project Lakhta spends tens of millions of dollars to fund troll farms “and other mechanisms of malign influence.”
“Since at least 2014, Project Lakhta has used, among other things, fictitious online personas that posed as U.S. persons in an effort to interfere in U.S. elections,” according to the Treasury Department.
Graphika reported that the Russian network made “direct attempts to undermine support for Democratic candidates in Pennsylvania, Georgia, New York, and Ohio,” from August and September. A prime vehicle was the release of political cartoons, “almost certainly intended to go viral.”
“The network comprises a series of fake personas on alt-tech platforms popular with far-right online audiences in the U.S., including Gab, Parler, Gettr, and the discussion forum patriots.win. These personas routinely spread inflammatory narratives about sensitive cultural and political issues in the U.S., including vaccines, gun control, racial injustice, and allegations of child sexual abuse. The actors are consistently critical of the Biden-Harris administration,” the Graphika report said.
The figures in the network also shared articles from right-wing media and screenshots of social media posts accompanied by incendiary political commentary, the report found.
According to the report, online trolls from Internet Research Agency targeted Democratic candidates — including Sen. Raphael G. Warnock and gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams in Georgia, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senate candidate John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Senate candidate Tim Ryan in Ohio — with racist or inflammatory material.
In a new development, the accounts also weighed in on Russia’s war against Ukraine, promoting the false Kremlin narrative that Ukraine is a Nazi state, and suggesting that the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine had hurt American standards of living.
But Graphika reported that the latest campaign had achieved minimal online traction.
Prigozhin’s political currency has risen in the Kremlin because of his role in the war, not only sending Wagner into battle but also setting up people’s defense groups on Russian territory near the border of Ukraine.
At the same time, Prigozhin has emerged as one of the loudest critics of the Russian military over its failures and retreats in Ukraine. He recently vented angrily to Putin about the subject, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The exchange was included in the daily intelligence briefing provided to President Biden. Prigozhin denied speaking to Putin. | 2022-11-07T17:51:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Yevgeniy Prigozhin, Putin ally, boasts he ‘interfered’ in U.S. elections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/07/yevgeniy-prigozhin-election-interference-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/07/yevgeniy-prigozhin-election-interference-russia/ |
Amazon still selling antisemitic content that led to Kyrie Irving suspension
Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving was suspended by his team for promoting antisemitic material on social media. (Jessie Alcheh/AP)
The Brooklyn Nets last week suspended star Kyrie Irving for promoting an antisemitic documentary and book on social media, and Irving has apologized. Now the team and the Anti-Defamation League want Amazon to be held accountable as well.
The ADL sent a letter to Amazon on Friday on behalf of itself and the Nets, asking that the “virulently antisemitic book and related-video” either be removed from the platform’s marketplace or come attached with context that explains why these works are problematic.
“The book and the film are designed to inflame hatred and, now that it was popularized by Mr. Irving, will lead directly to the harm of Jews,” said the letter, a copy of which was seen by The Washington Post.
The American Jewish Committee also asked its supporters to help them “urge Amazon to reaffirm its commitment to fight antisemitism by removing this anti-Jewish swill.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to The Washington Post about the future of the book and documentary on its website. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The 2014 book “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” and 2018 documentary by the same name are still available on Amazon, and they are each listed as a “Best Seller.” Neither currently comes with a disclaimer about harmful content.
Two weeks ago, Irving tweeted about the film to his 4.6 million followers. He deleted the tweet, but refused to apologize for it for a week before relenting and posting an apology on Instagram on Thursday. The Nets suspended him for at least five games, and Nike ended its relationship with the NBA star. The ADL turned down his offered donation of $500,000 to be used in anti-hate causes.
“The book has become hot because of the news. All the sellers, including Amazon, have cashed in,” said Alvin H. Rosenfeld, director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and a professor at Indiana University. “It’s very ugly.”
Rosenfeld said banning books is not a solution.
He believes Amazon could continue selling the book with a disclaimer that clearly outlines the nature of the book. He added that Amazon should donate its profits from the book and the documentary to organizations that fight hate speech.
“It’s irresponsible to make money from such a toxic book,” he said.
The book is not the only antisemitic book being sold by Amazon, said Matt Boxer, an assistant research professor in the Hornstein Program in Jewish Professional Leadership at Brandeis University.
The website still sells copies of “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler. “I am not talking about the scholarly edition, but the original version,” Boxer said.
Rosenfeld is teaching Hitler’s book as well as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to his students this semester. He believes it is important to study selected chapters from these texts and discuss them responsibly.
However, Rosenfeld noted that the book Irving promoted was “simply a recycling of old hateful ideas.” The book is full of antisemitic accusations that have been disproven many times, he said.
The ADL tabulated 2,717 antisemitic incidents throughout the U.S. in 2021, it said in its letter. This was a 34 percent increase from 2020. The FBI hate crime reports has also confirmed increased violence and bigotry against Jews, said the letter.
Last year, a few days after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Amazon removed “The Turner Diaries” from its virtual shelves. It was a 1978 novel in which a group of white supremacists attack the Capitol to overthrow the U.S. government.
Even before “The Turner Diaries” was removed, Amazon was selling it with a disclaimer about its racist content.
“While it is important to defend private companies’ right to sell products that they see fit, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences,” Boxer said, adding that book sellers would have to deal with the consequences of the contents of their books.
“There is a lot more antisemitism in the public sphere in recent times because people with such beliefs are less afraid of sharing them,” he said.
Boxer believes that the vetting process for books and documentaries at Amazon is heavily automated and fails to recognize products that contain hate speech. “Amazon doesn’t seem to have the knowledge or the engineers in place to understand if a book is toxic,” he said. “To them all books are just products meant to be sold.”
On its website, Amazon Studios outlines that they encourage free speech and that “all titles undergo manual and automated reviews before a licensing decision is made.”
The guidelines outline that “movies or scripts shouldn’t be bigoted or hateful when taken as a whole and we don’t permit movies, scripts, reviews or other content that are nothing but hate speech. | 2022-11-07T18:08:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amazon faces pressure for selling antisemitic film Kyrie Irving promoted - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/07/amazon-kyrie-irving-book-documentary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/07/amazon-kyrie-irving-book-documentary/ |
The storm will bring heavy rain and feet of snow, affecting much of the state as people get out to vote on Tuesday
The first snowfall at Mammoth Mountain in California is seen Nov. 1. (Christian Pondella/Mammoth Mountain/AP)
A winter storm is bringing heavy rain and snow to California, affecting much of the state as people get out to vote on Election Day on Tuesday. The storm could be one of the state’s most significant November storms in recent years, which is part of an active weather pattern that could help replenish mountain snowpack and effectively end fire season across California.
Between 1 and 4 feet of snow is expected in the Sierra Nevada, and the highest elevations could see up to 6 feet. The winter storm will bring winds over 50 mph and could cause road closures. Weather offices warn travel could be difficult to impossible.
“If you must travel, carry tire chains, plenty of food, a good deal of water, warm clothing, and a flashlight in your vehicle,” the National Weather Service office in Hanford, Calif., wrote in a warning message.
On Tuesday, the system will dive south, where an atmospheric river could drop between 1 and 5 inches of rain on Southern California and up to 7 inches along some coastal mountain slopes. Flash flood watches have been issued for many areas recently burned by wildfires.
The precipitation comes as the state enters a potentially fourth consecutive year of drought, which has rendered reservoirs well below average for this time of year. Some cities are expected to run out of water in upcoming months, causing people to desperately conserve and search for water. The storm could help restock mountain snowpack, which melts in the spring and summer and refills human-made reservoirs. While the storm will not solve the state’s water problems, it provides a promising head start for the wet season to come.
California is supposed to enter a wet season. More drought is forecast.
California is staring down what could be one of the more significant November storms in recent years.
High-resolution models are forecasting up to 7 feet of snow in the next 48 hours across the Sierra, with over 6" of rain across the SoCal mountains.
A fire season-ending storm. pic.twitter.com/7URm9tqHsY
In addition to delivering much-needed mountain snow, November’s parade of storms heralds the end of fire season for most of the state.
The drought has left forests increasingly stressed and prone to severe wildfires. Roughly 360,000 acres has burned in the state this year. Several wildfires were intense and destructive, killing nine and destroying more than 770 homes this year so far.
Weather models had hinted that November could be wet. With shorter days and lower sun angles, it takes much longer to dry out the landscape in winter than it does during summer heat.
“This is the pattern we have been looking for,” said Brent Wachter, a fire meteorologist with the Northern California Geographic Area Coordination Center in Redding. “Significant large fires are not likely for quite a while now,” though there could still be ignitions and smaller fires during drier periods in the coming months.
The same holds true for Southern California, where parts of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties had received only sparse, light rainfall so far this autumn.
“With this system, even those areas that had been missed should get a good dose of rain and bring an end to the significant portion of the fire season,” said Jonathan O’Brien, a meteorologist with the Southern California Geographic Area Coordination Center in Riverside.
The November rain is a welcome change to recent years, which have seen devastating fires well into autumn due to dry and warm conditions. Rain was largely absent in autumn from 2017 through 2020, which featured a string of destructive and deadly wind-driven blazes, including the Wine Country fires in October 2017, the Thomas Fire near Santa Barbara in December 2017, the Camp Fire in November 2018, and the Glass Fire in Napa and Sonoma in September 2020.
Research has also shown that the autumn months in California are becoming both warmer and drier due to human-caused climate change, making vegetation more prone to burn intensely later in the season.
Although destructive, this year’s fire season has burned a below-average number of acres compared with the past three decades, according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection data.
Wachter and O’Brien pointed to several factors that helped to temper wildfire activity this year: an overall lack of wind, wet monsoon storms this summer, fewer extended heat waves, and wetting rains in spring and in fall.
“I think in a lot of ways, we kind of got lucky because we were primed for a big fire year,” O’Brien said. “We also benefited from a lack of Santa Ana winds — we just haven’t had any notable wind events so far this year, which is a little unusual.”
Some of the year’s most challenging fires erupted during a historic September heat wave, which also left conditions highly flammable heading into October, when dry offshore winds often bring treacherous fire weather.
But shortly after, unusual early-season precipitation doused much of the state, including the remnants of Hurricane Kay in Southern California, calming fire activity for several weeks.
The September moisture, combined with the current stormy pattern, illustrates how autumn rain is crucial to mitigating the most dangerous stretch of California’s fire season.
“It’s not especially common for us to be getting significant precipitation this early in the season for Southern California,” O’Brien said. “We are getting off to a good start this year.” | 2022-11-07T18:09:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Election week storm in California to bring rain, snow to end fire season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/california-storm-snow-fire/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/california-storm-snow-fire/ |
This combination of photos shows promotional art for the cooking competition series “The Big Brunch,” left, the series “Pawn Stars Do America,” center, and the film “Is That Black Enough for You?” (HBO Max/History/Netflix via AP) (Uncredited/HBO Max/History/Netflix)
— Film critic and historian Elvis Mitchell looks at the history of Black cinema and “a group of artists who changed the culture forever” with the landmark films of the 1970s in a new Netflix documentary, “Is That Black Enough For You?!?” streaming Friday. Using clips from over 100 films and new interviews from the likes of Harry Belafonte, Samuel L. Jackson, Laurence Fishburne, Whoopi Goldberg and Zendaya, Mitchell looks at the impact of Black voices, creators and actors on cinema and makes the case that blaxploitation wasn’t just a niche moment, but as influential and important as what the new generation of white, male filmmakers were making in the ‘70s. Also arriving on Netflix on Saturday is the adaptation of “Where the Crawdads Sing” and, on Thursday, the Lindsay Lohan rom-com “Falling for Christmas.” | 2022-11-07T18:09:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New this week: Bruce Springsteen, 'The Big Brunch' and Sonic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/new-this-week-bruce-springsteen-the-big-brunch-and-sonic/2022/11/04/c4097f52-5c7e-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/new-this-week-bruce-springsteen-the-big-brunch-and-sonic/2022/11/04/c4097f52-5c7e-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
FILE - Mimi Parker, left, and her husband, Alan Sparhawk, right, jam with bassist Matt Livingston, after an interview with the musical group Low at Sparhawk and Parker’s Duluth, Minn., home basement studio, Jan. 24, 2007. Parker, whose soothing vocals helped propel the Minnesota indie band Low to critical acclaim, has died at age 55, nearly two years after revealing that she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her husband and bandmate Alan Sparhawk announced her death on Twitter Sunday, Nov. 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File) | 2022-11-07T18:09:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mimi Parker, co-founder of Minnesota indie band Low has died - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/mimi-parker-co-founder-of-minnesota-indie-band-low-has-died/2022/11/07/9a0d3b2a-5ebe-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/mimi-parker-co-founder-of-minnesota-indie-band-low-has-died/2022/11/07/9a0d3b2a-5ebe-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Oct. 13. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev/AP)
Vladimir Putin’s power rests on the impression that he is invincible and implacable — that the Russian president can’t be defeated and will stop at nothing to achieve his objectives.
The first myth has already been dispelled in Ukraine, where the Russian military has suffered heavy losses without coming close to achieving his ultimate objective of destroying Ukrainian independence. But the second myth lives on: It is leading some in the West to argue that the United States should use its leverage to force Kyiv to the bargaining table, because the Ukrainians will never succeed in regaining all of their lost territory. This pessimistic argument is premised on the assumption that Putin will just keep escalating indefinitely with more troops and more weapons — even nuclear weapons if necessary.
But in recent weeks we have seen evidence that suggest Putin is a rational actor who is perfectly capable of backtracking if it’s in his interest to do so. On Oct. 29, Putin announced he was suspending a deal with Turkey and the United Nations to allow ships full of Ukrainian grain to transit the Black Sea. Putin has long been unhappy with this arrangement because it throws a lifeline to Ukraine, which has been able to export more than 9 million tons of food since Aug. 1. As his excuse to leave the deal, he cited a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian Black Sea fleet.
Yet, on Wednesday, Putin basically said never mind — Russia will abide by the grain deal after all. His transparent excuse was that he had received assurances that Ukraine will not use the humanitarian corridors for food shipments to attack Russian forces — something it wasn’t doing anyway.
The real reason? It looks as though Putin buckled to pressure from Turkey and, more broadly, from developing nations that rely on Ukrainian grain to feed their people. Putin didn’t want to risk the opprobrium that he would face from sinking cargo ships carrying grain to feed some of the world’s poorest people.
Putin has also backtracked on his threats to use nuclear weapons. After months of threatening that Russia would use every weapon at its disposal, Putin on Oct. 27 denied having any intention of going nuclear. “We see no need for that,” Putin said. “There is no point in that, neither political, nor military.”
We shouldn’t attach too much significance to his words since he often says one thing and does another. (Recall his repeated denials that he was planning to invade Ukraine.) But it is nevertheless telling that he would feel compelled to say something that relaxes the pressure on Ukraine and its allies.
It is probably no coincidence that Chinese President Xi Jinping has been increasingly vocal in his opposition to the Russian use of nuclear weapons. On Friday, during a meeting in Beijing with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Xi said, “The international community should ... jointly oppose the use or threats to use nuclear weapons, advocate that nuclear weapons must not be used and nuclear wars must not be fought, in order to prevent a nuclear crisis in Eurasia.” Xi did not mention Russia, but his message to Putin was clear: Back off the nukes, tovarishch.
There’s no secret as to why Putin would be sensitive to the views of Ankara and Beijing: Just follow the money! The New York Times just ran some very helpful charts showing how Russia’s international trade flows have changed since the invasion.
Russian trade with the United States and most European nations is way down, but Russian trade with China is up 64 percent and with Turkey 198 percent, because those countries are not enforcing sanctions. Trade with India — another nation trying to triangulate between Russia and the West — is up 310 percent. That means those countries have a lot of leverage with Russia. Putin is so wary of offending them he is willing to backtrack on his Black Sea grain embargo and his threats of nuclear force.
In short, Putin is not some Slavic Terminator who will keep advancing no matter what. That doesn’t mean that Ukraine can strike a deal with him now, because he clearly has not given up hopes of achieving his objectives by force — at a minimum, the annexation of four Ukrainian provinces. But it does suggest that the war won’t last forever, and that a more acceptable settlement might be achievable if Russia suffers more battlefield defeats.
Putting pressure on the Ukrainians to make concessions is not only morally offensive — they are victims of unprovoked aggression — but also pointless, because only Putin can end the war. Premature Ukrainian concessions would just embolden the Russian dictator.
Instead of squeezing Kyiv, the Biden administration should be doing its utmost to persuade New Delhi, Ankara and Beijing to influence Putin to end his unprovoked invasion. That could mean relaxing some U.S. pressure on China — for example, lifting the tariffs imposed by former president Donald Trump — as a reward for Xi’s help. We need to prioritize our foreign policy objectives, and, while China is the greater long-term danger, Russia is the more immediate threat. | 2022-11-07T18:10:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Putin's backtracking is a hopeful sign for Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/putin-backs-down-ukraine-turkey-china-india/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/putin-backs-down-ukraine-turkey-china-india/ |
Elon Musk’s confused, self-serving vision of journalism on Twitter
(Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)
For some of you — not many, I’d assume — it’s because you want to be mad about this subject. You don’t read The Post normally and are reading these words now because you’re looking for something to elevate and complain about. For most of you, though, I suspect the motivation is different. You’re reading The Post because you are confident in what it presents, having come to trust the institution over months or years.
Perhaps that’s not true of me personally, which is certainly fair. But you assume that if The Post is allowing me to write under its masthead that I deserve some of that accrued trust. I hope I do. I try to demonstrate that I deserve it.
And that, really, is what sets The Post and other traditional journalism outlets apart: a commitment to try to represent what’s happening honestly and fairly, to hold ourselves accountable when we make mistakes and to use our platforms to hold power to account. This is hard to do and the very process of trying to do it makes our jobs harder. When we announce and correct our mistakes, that becomes fodder for sowing distrust about all of the things we get correct. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson is more trusted than The Post by many Americans in part because he never admits the myriad things he gets wrong.
The effort to sow distrust in outlets like The Post often derives from the third focus of our work, the interest in demanding accountability from people given political or economic power. It is also that focus, almost certainly, that has led to Elon Musk’s effort to uproot the way in which news is shared and consumed on Twitter.
As I wrote last month, soon after Musk took over ownership of the platform, Twitter is unique in the social media space. It is centered on news (and particularly political news) in a way that other outlets are not. That’s in part because it is a place that many journalists have come to rely on for sourcing and community. I can attest to the utility of the platform as a place where information very quickly trickles up, where a person who stumbles onto a newsworthy event can quickly present it to reporters to be vetted and expanded upon. There’s already a stereotype centered on this quality: the news producer who jumps into the replies to a newsworthy event and seeks permission to use footage or a photo. Twitter is useful for this kind of information filtration.
When Musk assumed control of the platform, though, he almost immediately announced a change that would upend how information flows on Twitter. Verification — the little check mark on Twitter that identifies a user as being who they say they are — would change. The murky process that allowed people to become verified would be cracked open, with anyone who wanted to get the little check mark able to do so, for a price. Pay Musk $8 a month and you can become verified, just like me or The Washington Post.
But then there’s the flip side: to remain verified, you also have to pay the $8.
This aspect of the change prompted head-scratching within the media universe, since the point of verification wasn’t to aid us immediately; it was to aid Twitter. Verification emerged after a flood of fake accounts made it difficult to determine which account was the real Post. Was it @washingtonpost or @thewashingtonpost? Was Donald Trump’s account @donaldtrump or @realdonaldtrump — the former president’s effort to inject his own verification into his username, however futilely. Yes, it’s good for me that people know @pbump is me, but it’s more useful for Twitter. It’s Twitter, in essence, leveraging The Post’s reputation by establishing that when the paper and I create content for Twitter, we are doing so with similar expectations as we might for washingtonpost.com.
It was baffling, then, that Musk not only would strip verification from members of the media granted that status by Twitter for Twitter’s benefit but that he also framed his decision to do so as striking out against entitled elites. This was obviously in part a function of his views of worldview and his politics, but as he made clear over the weekend, it was also very simply an effort to disrupt the institutional power of traditional media.
This makes no sense. Musk has pledged that verified users will enjoy more reach for their posts and content, meaning that nonverified users won’t. But that anonymous people could provide insight to what was happening in the world — could represent what was happening in a way that aided journalists tasked with reporting on events — was a central reason Twitter became both big and useful. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, there were numerous posts on social media about where and how Russia was building up its military presence, democratized, on-the-ground reporting that aided major media outlets to inform more people about what was happening. Burying information from casual users will obscure, not improve, information-sharing.
We can’t ignore the broader context here. Musk, as one of the richest people in the world and one who is assertive about ginning up attention, has been a target of a great deal of critical reporting. That’s been particularly true as he’s become more deliberate about inserting himself into America’s political conversation. Musk, like so many powerful people, would like to smash competing power centers, be they competitors, worker unions or the traditional press. Seizing Twitter and upending it is a good way to do that.
Musk’s concept of how journalism will work on Twitter in his new era is that the toolset created as “Birdwatch” — rebranded to “Community Notes” under Musk — will allow claims on the site to be challenged and contextualized. You can see it at work on this tweet of Musk’s about the “Community Notes” branding itself.
This is a good idea! In 2016, I created a tool that would do that for Trump’s tweets. Unlike my iteration, which was focused on one user and written by me, this is a sort of Wikipedia-ification of contextualizing that began before Musk took over. But it is necessarily slow and, like Wikipedia, dependent on the community of moderators. It also doesn’t demonstrably affect the tweet itself, meaning that a claim that, say, “the election was stolen” would simply be countered with “there’s no evidence of that,” as was the case with similar tweets in 2020.
There’s also the question of how Community Notes will themselves be moderated. One appeared on a tweet from Musk focused on advertisers bailing from the platform. But then it vanished. Was this Musk playing by a different set of rules? How democratized can “journalism” be when it’s happening on Musk’s playing field? The Washington Post is owned by a billionaire and we have retained our independence, covering him and his businesses critically. In part that’s because Jeff Bezos understood what The Post was when he bought it. Will Twitter under Musk work the same way?
Again, Musk’s war on the journalists who use media started not with the amplification of Community Notes but with the revision of verification. He seems to believe that journalists view it as a mark of esteem and will suffer from losing it. Then, later, he wrapped this into a vision of how the new journalism will work.
That’s the order in which he wants things to happen. Further gut the traditional media as a place granted respect and then figure out something that can replace it — something ultimately under his control.
It’s no wonder that the political right is very enthusiastic about this plan. It is also not a surprise that Musk on Monday tweeted out an endorsement of the GOP in this year’s midterm elections. | 2022-11-07T18:10:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elon Musk’s confused, self-serving vision of journalism on Twitter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/elon-musk-twitter-journalism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/elon-musk-twitter-journalism/ |
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem planned a Monday reelection rally featuring a video message from former President Donald Trump in a final push to turn out voters in the heavily-Republican western part of the state, while her Democratic challenger, state lawmaker Jamie Smith, focused on the state’s largest city in a bid to make the race competitive by winning big in his hometown of Sioux Falls. | 2022-11-07T18:10:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | South Dakota candidates rally base ahead of Election Day - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/south-dakota-candidates-rally-base-ahead-of-election-day/2022/11/07/c9ab6120-5ec5-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/south-dakota-candidates-rally-base-ahead-of-election-day/2022/11/07/c9ab6120-5ec5-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Frank Reich coaches during a Colts' loss to the Commanders last month in Indianapolis. (Darron Cummings/AP)
The Indianapolis Colts’ ever-more-desperate search for answers in a highly disappointing season continued Monday, as they fired their coach, Frank Reich, after previously benching their quarterback and dismissing their offensive coordinator.
The Colts made Reich the second NFL head coach ousted this season, after the Carolina Panthers fired Matt Rhule last month following their 1-4 start. The Colts’ move came on the heels of a 26-3 defeat Sunday to the New England Patriots in Foxborough, Mass., which dropped their record to 3-5-1.
The Colts announced they had “parted ways” with Reich, without immediately naming an interim head coach. They said they would hold a news conference at their training facility later Monday.
The team is two games behind the first-place Tennessee Titans in the AFC South.
Reich had a record of 40-33-1 in 4 ½ seasons as the Colts’ coach. He took the team to the playoffs twice, going 1-2 in postseason play.
The Colts had a revolving door of quarterbacks during Reich’s head coaching tenure, never finding a long-term solution after Andrew Luck retired abruptly just before the 2019 season. Reich and the Colts shuffled through a series of starters that included Jacoby Brissett in 2019, Philip Rivers in 2020, Carson Wentz last season and Matt Ryan to open this season.
Rivers retired after the 2020 season, leading the Colts to trade for Wentz. That didn’t work, and the team traded Wentz to the Washington Commanders after only one season. The Colts added Ryan, a former league MVP for the Atlanta Falcons, in a trade with Atlanta in March after the Falcons tried but failed to trade for Deshaun Watson.
But the offense struggled. Late last month, Reich sat down Ryan, who had a shoulder injury at the time, and said he intended for Sam Ehlinger to be the starter at quarterback for the rest of the season, even after Ryan was healthy. Against the Patriots Sunday, Ehlinger was sacked nine times and threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown.
Last week, the Colts fired Marcus Brady as their offensive coordinator. It didn’t help, as they managed only 121 yards of total offense against the Patriots. | 2022-11-07T18:11:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Indianapolis Colts fire Frank Reich as their coach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/frank-reich-fired-colts-coach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/frank-reich-fired-colts-coach/ |
By Alexander Chatziioannou
(Washington Post illustration; Sony Interactive entertainment; iStock)
VR games are funny. Why aren't they pitched that way?
“We have the Guinness World Record for the longest adventure game screenplay but it’s based on my annoyed b------- in an interview. Somebody asked me and I was like ‘I don’t know, 10,000 pages!’ but, in all honesty, it was between five and ten thousand,” Reznick said. | 2022-11-07T18:13:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Quarry and Until Dawn may herald the return of interactive movies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/07/interactive-horror-movie-the-quarry-until-dawn/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/07/interactive-horror-movie-the-quarry-until-dawn/ |
Chris Krebs joins Washington Post Live on Monday, Nov. 7. (Video: The Washington Post)
In the run-up to the midterm elections, officials are warning disinformation is on the rise and violent extremists are posing a heightened threat. On Monday, Nov. 7 at 1:00 p.m. ET, The Post’s David Ignatius speaks with Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, about threats to the nation’s election infrastructure and the state of American democracy.
Former Director, Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency
Partner, Krebs Stamos Group | 2022-11-07T18:13:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chris Krebs on midterm elections security and state of American democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/11/07/chris-krebs-midterm-elections-security-state-american-democracy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/11/07/chris-krebs-midterm-elections-security-state-american-democracy/ |
On Monday morning, Tropical Storm Nicole formed in the North Atlantic Ocean. After spinning through the Bahamas later in the week, the storm is expected to turn toward Florida Thursday.
Nicole emerges just over a month after Hurricane Ian made landfall along the gulf coast of Florida. Residents are still recovering from that storm, which became Florida’s deadliest hurricane since 1935.
More on the Atlantic hurricane season
How to prepare for a hurricane and stay safe after it hits
What is storm surge? | 2022-11-07T18:30:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tracking Tropical Storm Nicole: Map and projected path - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/11/07/nicole-storm-tracker-map/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/11/07/nicole-storm-tracker-map/ |
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday. (Yao Dawei/Xinhua News Agency/AP)
Germany’s economic success in the 21st century has relied on the effort and talent of its own people, plus three ingredients: cheap energy from Russia, growing exports to China and security from the United States-led NATO alliance. The war in Ukraine exposed the geopolitical contradictions of this arrangement. Berlin was forced to abandon a natural gas pipeline connection to Russia, scramble for energy from elsewhere and promise to boost its anemic defense spending. Yet there are only so many transitions Germany can manage at once. Or so Chancellor Olaf Scholz seems to believe, based on his understandable but ultimately dubious decision to be the first major Western leader to visit Beijing since the covid-19 pandemic began in 2020.
Accompanied by a phalanx of top German business executives, Mr. Scholz telegraphed that commerce remains Berlin’s main interest in China. In an op-ed published before the visit, the chancellor voiced a need to diversify German supply chains from China but — in the sentence that no doubt made the most impact in Beijing — declared: “We don’t want to decouple from it.” His government sent a similar signal by permitting a Chinese shipping company to take a 24.9 percent stake in a terminal at the port of Hamburg, Germany’s largest. Berlin scaled back the investment from 35 percent, which would have given the company, Cosco, a legal right to veto strategic business or personnel decisions. Still, this compromise harked back to the hairsplitting Mr. Scholz’s predecessor, Angela Merkel, offered in defense of Germany’s now-suspended Russian gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2. Neither the United States nor — significantly — the two political parties with whom Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats co-govern are happy about anything that could deepen Germany’s interdependence with China, a nation that has, so far, passively supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, by anointing Mr. Xi, rededicated itself to one-party Marxist-Leninist rule.
To be sure, Mr. Scholz is right that Germany must continue talking with China, including direct contacts between him and Mr. Xi; President Biden is said to be planning a summit at the scheduled Group of 20 meetings in Bali later this month. The German leader even produced an arguably beneficial outcome: a statement with Mr. Xi saying the two “jointly oppose the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.” The implicit admonition to Russian President Vladimir Putin was clear. It’s asking a lot for a country as dependent on business with China as Germany to cut it off altogether, especially when it is already facing an economic slump due to its sudden shift away from Russian energy. On the other hand, Germany is asking a lot of the Biden administration when it makes moves such as the Hamburg port deal while continuing to shelter under a U.S. security umbrella.
Not too much to ask would have been for Mr. Scholz to at least pause engagement with Beijing until after he and his coalition partners, the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party, have completed a policy review they promised by 2023. Even after its calamitous miscalculation with Russia, it appears, Germany’s old habits die hard. | 2022-11-07T19:09:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Lessons from Germany Chancellor Olaf Scholz's visit to China - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/olaf-scholz-germany-visit-china-business-relations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/olaf-scholz-germany-visit-china-business-relations/ |
Man arrested in Fairfax County homicide, police say
A man was arrested and charged in a fatal shooting late last month at a high-rise apartment complex in the Baileys Crossroads area.
Phil Asare Darkwah, 28, was arrested Saturday in the Oct. 30 killing of Ahmed Hemoh, 26, in a Skyline Towers apartment in the 5500 block of Seminary Road, Fairfax County police said in a news release. Darkwah was charged with second-degree murder, felony use of a firearm and a felon in possession of a firearm.
Officers were dispatched at about 3:45 p.m. to the Seminary Road address in response to a report someone had been shot, police said. Authorities said the victim was found dead with upper body gunshot wounds.
Residents were instructed to shelter in place while officers searched the building, police said. Authorities said they identified Darkwah through surveillance video as one of the three men seen running from the apartment where Hemoh was shot.
Police said later that they had identified Darkwah as the shooter in the case. He turned himself in Saturday night and was taken to the Fairfax County jail, where he is being held without bond. An attorney for Darkwah was not listed in court records.
Authorities said they identified all three men and believed they are known to one another. Investigators do not think this was a random act of violence, police said. | 2022-11-07T19:14:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man arrested in Fairfax County homicide, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/07/arrest-baileys-crossroads-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/07/arrest-baileys-crossroads-shooting/ |
The U.S.-China relationship is seen as increasingly crucial in making rapid cuts to emissions heating the planet
President Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping meet virtually in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on Nov. 15, 2021. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Biden administration officials are working to make climate change part of potential discussions between the president and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit scheduled in Bali, Indonesia, this month, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks have not been formally announced.
U.S. officials have publicly said they are working on such a meeting. It would aim to ease friction between the two world powers that have been increasingly at odds over trade, the pandemic, human rights and the future of Taiwan.
Administration officials are looking for areas of common interest that could lead to cordial and productive discussions, and climate change is one of the few candidates, the people said. Both administrations have pledged to work to stop global warming and green lighting new talks between the heads of state could open the door for dialogue between the two countries at the ongoing U.N. Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, known as COP27.
Beijing had suspended climate talks with the United States in retaliation for the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Taiwan in August. That has raised doubts about the potential for success at COP in Egypt where the United States and China are typically the two biggest dealmakers.
An announcement on Biden-Xi climate talks at the G-20 could come within days to help resolve that issue, one of the people said. Biden is scheduled to arrive in Bali on Nov. 13 and could meet with Xi as soon as Nov. 14, after a brief stop of his own in Egypt for COP27.
The U.S.-China dynamic has reemerged as a key dynamic in finding the money to help other countries deal with climate change, central to success in Egypt, John D. Podesta, a top climate adviser at the White House, said as an interview. Progress has stalled since China struck deals and pledged at last year’s COP to collaborate with the United States and others, he added.
“Nothing much has happened, and there’s relatively little dialogue,” he said. “I think the whole world is going to be asking the question, what’s going on with China? … They’re a little bit M.I.A.” | 2022-11-07T19:44:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden hopes to meet with China's Xi Jinping on climate change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/biden-climate-change-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/biden-climate-change-china/ |
Man running from police struck by a car in Herndon area, officials say
A person who authorities allege had been running from Fairfax County police officers responding to a report of shots fired at Hutchison Elementary School Sunday was struck by a car on the Dulles Toll Road, police said.
The person, whom police have not identified, was transported to a hospital with serious injuries, though police said Monday those injuries were no longer considered life-threatening.
Officers were dispatched at about 4:09 p.m. to the Herndon-area elementary school in response to a complaint that a man had fired shots into the air, Lt. Dan Spital said Sunday. Spital said a group of men were behind the school when officers responded to the scene. One man fled through the woods and then onto Dulles Toll Road, where he was struck by a vehicle, Spital said.
Spital said the driver of the vehicle remained on the scene after the collision. Police recovered a firearm in the woods along the path that the man took as he fled from police, he said. Detectives continue to investigate the case. | 2022-11-07T19:44:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man running from police struck in Herndon area crash, officials say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/07/man-running-from-police-struck/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/07/man-running-from-police-struck/ |
What to know about collagen supplements for your skin and joints
By Sally Wadyka
Collagen is the most abundant protein in our bodies. It’s used to make all our connective tissues — including skin, bones, blood vessels, cartilage, ligaments, muscles and tendons. That has led scientists to look into whether consuming collagen supplements can keep skin and joints youthful as we age. The answer is maybe.
Meanwhile, collagen supplements are already popular. In a recent Consumer Reports’ nationally representative survey of more than 3,000 U.S. adults, 7 percent of men and 19 percent of women said they’ve used collagen. And among the 27 percent of Americans who said they’ve ever taken any type of supplements for nail, skin or hair health, 3 in 10 have used collagen for that reason.
Here’s what you need to know if you’re considering taking a collagen supplement.
“Collagen is like the frame of your mattress, providing necessary structure and support to tissues in the skin and other areas of the body,” says Joshua Zeichner, associate professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
When you’re young, the body continually produces new collagen and degrades the old — meaning there’s always a plentiful supply to feed those connective tissues. But as with many things, production of it slows down as we age. Lifestyle factors can also affect your supply.
“Sun exposure, smoking, excessive alcohol or sugar intake, lack of sleep and being sedentary can accelerate the loss of collagen,” says Jamie I. Baum, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Before you know it, you’re losing collagen faster than you can replace it.
Without the structure that collagen fibers provide, skin starts to sag and wrinkle. Without enough fresh, spongy collagen in your cartilage, tendons, ligaments and joints can be less flexible.
Collagen supplements show early promise for skin and joints, but don’t stock up yet
What about the science?
The research is far from definitive, but “some data suggests that collagen supplementation does have a beneficial effect on collagen turnover rates in older adults,” says Keith Baar, professor of molecular exercise physiology at the University of California at Davis.
A 2017 review of several small studies of people with osteoarthritis concluded that daily collagen supplements (between 10 milligrams and 40 mg) decreased reported joint pain by 26 to 33 percent. And a 2018 study, published in the journal Nutrients, looked at the effect of collagen on bone density in postmenopausal women. Those who took a 5-gram collagen supplement had significant increases in the spine and neck vs. those who got a placebo. (The study was partly funded by a supplement manufacturer.)
“I do think that future research will show more positive effects,” Baar says. “But the quality of the current data isn’t super-high, and we need evidence from large, long-term trials.”
And supplements have a downside: They aren’t regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, so there’s no guarantee that you’re getting exactly what the package claims.
Heavy metal contamination is also a concern. In 2020, the Organic Consumers Association and the Clean Label Project tested 28 brands of collagen supplements and found that many contained arsenic, lead, mercury and cadmium.
Will collagen ingredients, supplements really make you look and feel younger?
Best ways to get this protein
For now, you can enhance collagen production by following a healthy diet.
Collagen is found naturally in animal protein, such as meat and fish.
“Bone broth and tough cuts of meat, like brisket or pot roast, contain lots of connective tissue, which is made up of collagen,” Baum says. But you don’t need to eat collagen to make collagen. “When you eat any type of protein [animal- or plant-based], your body breaks it down into individual amino acids,” Baum says. These are reassembled to make proteins your body needs, including collagen.
“The type of protein doesn’t matter as much as making sure you’re getting adequate amounts of essential amino acids in your diet,” she says. For older adults, that’s about 25 to 30 grams of protein per meal.
We know that vitamin C, zinc and copper help with collagen production, and other dietary factors may also play a role. Researchers in Baar’s lab are looking at micronutrients (such as phytoestrogens in soy and polyphenols in dark chocolate) that may increase the body’s ability to make more collagen even as we age.
“I have a feeling we’re going to find that groups who traditionally eat those foods will show lower rates of musculoskeletal problems,” he says. | 2022-11-07T19:44:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to know about collagen supplements for your skin and joints - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/07/collagen-skin-care-joint-health/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/07/collagen-skin-care-joint-health/ |
FILE - This photo provided by the New York State Department of Corrections shows Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon outside his Manhattan apartment building in 1980, Jan. 31, 2018. Chapman told a parole board that he knew it was wrong to kill the beloved former Beatle, but that he was seeking fame and had “evil in his heart.” He made the comments in August 2022 to a board that denied him parole for an 12th time, citing his “selfish disregard for human life of global consequence.” (New York State Department of Corrections via AP, File) (Uncredited/New York State Department of Corrections) | 2022-11-07T19:45:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | John Lennon's killer says there was "evil in my heart" - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/john-lennons-killer-says-there-was-evil-in-my-heart/2022/11/07/378913d8-5ec9-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/john-lennons-killer-says-there-was-evil-in-my-heart/2022/11/07/378913d8-5ec9-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Autonomous vehicles are not yet ready for the road
A member of the media test drives a Tesla Model S car equipped with autopilot on Oct. 14, 2015, in Palo Alto, Calif. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)
Regarding Megan McArdle’s Nov. 3 op-ed, “The weirdest thing about being in a self-driving car”:
Autonomous vehicles are paving the way for the future. However, the fact that Ms. McArdle could get into a self-driving car such as the Waymo One without a human driver behind the wheel should be a point of concern. Although in the future every car on the road might be self-driving, at this stage in their development, they pose a risk to unaware pedestrians and other drivers.
Despite being able to process their surroundings quickly, robots still can’t decipher or anticipate human actions and intent as well as humans themselves can. The time it took the Waymo One to decide to call a “human specialist” during Ms. McArdle’s ride was alarming, especially because driving often requires split-second decisions. Artificial intelligence is not yet sophisticated enough to determine whom to save in scenarios such as the popular trolley problem or to intuit what should be done in a human vs. robot standoff such as the one Ms. McArdle faced. Until the technology behind these cars improves, every autonomous vehicle should require a licensed human to be directly behind the wheel.
Ishara Shanmugasundaram, South Riding | 2022-11-07T19:45:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Autonomous vehicles are not yet ready for the road - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/autonomous-vehicles-are-not-yet-ready-road/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/autonomous-vehicles-are-not-yet-ready-road/ |
Hope won’t avert a climate crisis
A glacier on July 4 that collapsed on Marmolada, the highest mountain in the Dolomites. (Pierre Teyssot/AFP via Getty Images)
The Oct. 30 editorial regarding the global campaign to address climate change, “We cannot lose hope,” was high-minded — indeed, overly so. Hope will not lead us to success in this struggle.
We are losing the campaign, and there is no hope of “winning.” At the end of the day, nature will suffer grievous losses, as will the millions of species that will disappear and the quadrillions of living things that will perish needlessly because of climate change.
Here’s the good news: The range of foreseeable outcomes is well within our collective grasp. The choices we make today will determine whether this epic struggle will end catastrophically — or merely badly. I’m inspired by the opportunity to do what little I can to prevent a global catastrophe and achieve a merely bad outcome. All nations and societies should similarly be inspired. This is the noblest challenge that has ever been faced.
Jim Dougherty, Washington
The writer is a member of the D.C. Climate Commission. | 2022-11-07T19:45:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Hope won’t avert a climate crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/hope-wont-avert-climate-crisis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/hope-wont-avert-climate-crisis/ |
Technology has helped fuse disparate radical ideologies
Having spent the majority of my active-duty Navy career immersed in the global war on terrorism, I read with great interest the Nov. 1 news article “Accused Pelosi attacker’s history shows the blurry lines of radicalization.” The blurring of ideologies leading to the radicalization of Paul Pelosi’s alleged attacker is a product of advances in technology, which I began to notice in 2016, whereby, through social media, an individual can take fragments of various ideologies, some of which are contradictory, to form their own atomized, individualized extremist ideology tailored specifically to them.
My French military counterparts in the war on terrorism explained it to me as the real and the virtual blending in a person’s mind to synthesize an individualized extremist ideology. The crosspollination of extremist ideas from jihadism to racially motivated biases residing in the same individual is not a surprise to those in the business of countering terrorism. It is a function of advances in technology, the virtual effects of the extremists’ ecosystem, the reality they live and the complexity of human psychology that gives rise to the extremist views that motivates appalling violence.
Youssef Aboul-Enein, Gaithersburg
The writer is the author of “Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat.” | 2022-11-07T19:45:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Technology has helped fuse disparate radical ideologies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/technology-has-helped-fuse-disparate-radical-ideologies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/technology-has-helped-fuse-disparate-radical-ideologies/ |
Where humanity shined on Jan. 6
Police in riot gear at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
After reading the Oct. 28 Metro article regarding the sentencing of D.C. police officer Michael Fanone’s attacker, “Fanone attacker gets 7½ years,” instead of feeling any sort of satisfaction about the sentencing, my feelings were focused on Mr. Fanone and the many officers protecting the Capitol.
Humanity was not respected and civility was nowhere to be found on Jan. 6, 2021. However, and though it might not have been in the forefront of their thoughts, Mr. Fanone and the other officers did their best to defend humanity and prevent civility from vanishing altogether during that unbelievable day. They showed us what courage is all about.
Thank you, Mr. Fanone and all your fellow officers for your service during that sad display of inhumanity and incivility.
Peg O’Brien, Takoma Park | 2022-11-07T19:45:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Where humanity shined on Jan. 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/where-humanity-shined-jan-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/where-humanity-shined-jan-6/ |
Gaithersburg nabs first playoff victory in a decade; Centreville rolls into postseason
The Gaithersburg Trojans upset Walter Johnson in the first round of the Maryland state playoffs Friday. (Courtesy photo/Ron Diehl)
When things were bad, they were really bad for the Gaithersburg Trojans.
The trouble started with the program’s much-publicized brawl against Northwest in September. In the wake of the incident, as investigations were held and punishments determined, the Trojans were forced to put their season on pause and forfeit two games. Their first game back from that hiatus, a 38-0 loss at Urbana, dropped the team to 1-4 and did its best to knock the wheels off this season.
But on Friday, the Trojans emerged from the first round of the playoffs with a surprising 44-28 victory over Walter Johnson.
Coming into this year, fourth-year coach Tyler Bierly was excited by his senior-laden group. These were his kids; he had watched them grow and knew the team had the talent to compete this fall. But in the first week of October, that excitement had been bruised.
“We went to Urbana and got our butts handed to us, yeah,” Bierly said. “But in that next week I told the guys that we were only at the halfway point of our season and we couldn’t let that bad stretch define the year. It would have been easy for them to give up and say it wasn’t our year. But all the credit goes to our kids for staying on the path.”
Gaithersburg won its next game, 28-0, and has competed well in every contest since. The Trojans entered the playoffs as the seven seed in the Maryland 4A West bracket, an underdog with plenty to motivate them.
Early in Friday’s game, the Trojans appeared a few steps behind No. 2 seed Walter Johnson. The Wildcats led by 14 points early in the second half, a deficit large enough to make many high school teams pack it in. Bierly knew that would not be the case with his Trojans.
Gaithersburg gave up one more touchdown after the break but turned a corner from there. Across the final quarter and a half, it outscored Walter Johnson 30-0 to earn its first playoff win since 2010.
The team’s 44-point output was its second highest total of the season, a well-timed offensive outburst powered by 193 yards rushing and five touchdowns from running back Gideon Ituka.
Gaithersburg will face Churchill on Friday in the region semifinal. It’s expected to be a close game: the two teams faced each other Oct. 28, and Churchill emerged, 33-32. Before Gaithersburg could start preparing for the rematch, they stopped to appreciate the work that went into last week’s win.
“Last night was not just about building this season,” Bierly said Saturday. “I truly believe it’s been four years in the making to get a big statement win like this for Gaithersburg.”
St. John’s wins rivalry game
With St. John’s possessing a slim lead Saturday afternoon, junior Da’Jaun Riggs ran nine yards into the end zone. A holding penalty erased the score and pushed the Cadets to the 21-yard line.
On the ensuing play, Riggs sprinted into the end zone again. Another holding penalty expunged that score. The third time Riggs rushed into the end zone from 21 yards out with 1:33 remaining, there were no penalties flags.
St. John’s players and fans could begin to celebrate their 22-13 home win over rival Gonzaga.
“It was exhilaration,” St. John’s Coach Pat Ward said. “We’re both very proud programs and [there’s] great coaching on both sides. Both teams played their hearts out.”
Everyone involved with the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference rivalry says matchups between St. John’s (6-4, 2-2 WCAC Capital) and Gonzaga (5-5, 1-3) will usually be competitive regardless of their records. Last year, the gap was large between the Cadets, who finished undefeated, and Gonzaga, which was the league’s fourth seed.
Saturday’s game presented higher stakes. The winner claimed the third seed entering this week’s WCAC semifinals.
With a victory in the Northwest Washington teams’ 100th regular season meeting, St. John’s will face Good Counsel in Olney on Friday night in a rematch of the past two WCAC finals. On Oct. 28, the Falcons beat the Cadets, 28-0, in a rare blowout between the perennial contenders.
Decarlos Young, Wise: The sophomore running back’s 311 rushing yards and four touchdowns, on just 17 carries, powered the Pumas to a 49-0 victory over Parkdale in the first round of the Maryland 4A playoffs.
Tony Cammarota, Woodgrove: The senior running back helped his team clinch a postseason spot with two touchdowns on the ground and one more on a 90-yard kickoff return.
Matthew Berry, Leonardtown: The two-way senior rushed for 147 yards and a touchdown and added five tackles as the Lightning earned the first playoff win in program history.
Tad Tan, Episcopal: The senior kicked game-winning field goals the past two games, including one against Bullis on Saturday that delivered the Maroon the outright Interstate Athletic Conference championship.
St. John’s at Good Counsel, Friday, 7 p.m.
Northwest at Quince Orchard, Friday, 7 p.m.
Robinson at Lake Braddock, Friday, 7 p.m.
Northeast at Potomac, Friday, 7 p.m.
Centreville rolling into the postseason
Centreville Coach Jon Shields sets three benchmarks for his team: a winning record, a district title and a region title.
In October, the team lost its shot at its second goal, the Concorde District title, with a loss to Madison. And yet it was a defeat that senior running back and Villanova commit Isaiah Ragland said is the exact kind of adversity they welcome. A 35-7 victory over Westfield (6-4) in the season finale has the Wildcats (8-2) riding a high they hope will build into the region final and beyond.
“That game definitely taught us to never give up,” Ragland said of the Madison loss. “We fight for each other, no matter the circumstance.”
A rematch against top-seeded Madison in the region final appears likely if both teams take care of business at home over the next two weeks. But even after Centreville’s last four postseason runs — all of which began with promise and ended with an elimination at the hands of the Warhawks, including in last year’s region final — the Wildcats claim each playoff opponent is a nameless one.
Though Centreville views its punishing defense and ground game as the pillars of its postseason aspirations, Ragland said the execution of their scheme is as much an out-of-practice endeavor as it is a weight room or an in-practice one. He believes much of his personal growth stems from the relationships he built with the offensive linemen.
“I mean, I couldn’t score without them — but it’s more than just football, they’re just such good and genuine people,” Ragland said. “We’ve got to make the most of our time here.”
On Thursday nights he, junior quarterback Bryan Resto and the linemen head to Texas Roadhouse. Trust, he said, is built from conversations over steak, chicken and apple pie.
“It doesn’t mean you’re going to win the state championship,” Shields said of the team’s behind-the-scenes work and camaraderie. “But it gives you a chance.”
Coolidge caps undefeated Stripes run
Since Coach Kevin Nesbitt arrived at Coolidge in 2019, the Colts had accomplished most feats available to teams in the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association Stripes division. They had a player selected First Team All-Met, they made consecutive Gravy Bowl championships, and they won one in 2019.
But there was one item on the to-do list that was left unchecked. Until Friday.
With a 20-15 come-from-behind win on senior night against Anacostia, Coolidge completed an undefeated sweep of the Stripes division in the regular season.
“When we got here, we had a list of the things we wanted to do,” Nesbitt said. “Get our kids into college, win the Gravy Bowl, go undefeated and get Coolidge into the Stars [division]. Four years in and we’ve already finished three of the four off.”
To advance to the Stars division, teams must win back-to-back Gravy Bowl championships, a feat the Colts nearly accomplished. After winning the Gravy Bowl in 2019, Coolidge returned in 2021, following a one-year layoff due to because of the pandemic, but it fell to Bell, 10-0.
“That loss hurt,” Nesbitt said. “Kind of felt like it was our destiny to win, but we came up short.”
Both Bell (9-1, 5-1 Stripes) and Coolidge (8-2, 6-0) figure to meet in the Gravy Bowl again, on Nov. 19. But before the Colts can entertain those thoughts, they’ll have to knock off a tough McKinley Tech team in the DCIAA playoffs Thursday night.
“We want to win another Gravy Bowl more than anything,” Nesbitt said. “But I’ve learned that the moment you start looking ahead, the game has a way of humbling you. So right now, we haven’t even thought about Bell yet. Got to go one step at a time.” | 2022-11-07T19:46:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gaithersburg nabs first playoff victory in a decade; Centreville rolls into postseason - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/gaithersburg-nabs-first-playoff-victory-decade-centreville-rolls-into-postseason/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/gaithersburg-nabs-first-playoff-victory-decade-centreville-rolls-into-postseason/ |
An amplified pattern with strong high pressure in the east. (Pivotal Weather)
On Monday, a tool from the Southeast Regional Climate Center revealed Washington’s weather more closely resembled what is normally seen in Tampa at this time of year, while Raleigh, N.C., mimicked Miami.
The warmth by the numbers
Tallahassee: A scorcher of 88 equaled the Nov. 6 record from 2015, as hot as it’s been this late in the year. In Fort Myers, Fla., it hit 90-plus for the fourth time this month.
While Sunday’s afternoon highs were exceptionally high, the low temperatures — early in the day — were even more anomalous in many instances.
In the D.C.-Baltimore area, record-high lows in the mid-60s were set at all three official observing locations Sunday. Washington (Reagan National) and Dulles both dipped to only 66, their highest low on record so late in the year. Baltimore’s low of 64 was also its warmest so late.
Monday’s records
Monday’s record list was again featuring locations from Maine to the Deep South, with a focus on the East Coast.
At least four dozen locations had set Nov. 7 record highs Monday through midafternoon, including Washington and Islip, N.Y., reaching at least 80 and 78, respectively. Washington’s temperature was an astonishing 75 degrees at 9 a.m., the warmest ever observed so early in the day this late in the year (since at least 1936).
Monday’s warmth closed out a first week of unusual November weather. Washington hit 70 or above every day for the first time on record, and it was the second-warmest first November week on record in Richmond.
Over the past several days, the heat dome has been flanked by a big dip in the jet stream to the west and a developing subtropical storm north of the Caribbean. These features have helped amplify the pattern, increasing the heat dome’s intensity.
Given a setup more common of late summer, temperatures have remained persistently high overnight, in part thanks to extraordinary levels of moisture for November. Precipitable water values, a measure of moisture in the air, were as high as 350 percent above normal in the D.C. area Sunday morning. | 2022-11-07T21:16:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | November feels like September as warm weather shatters records in East - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/record-warmth-east-coast/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/record-warmth-east-coast/ |
Monumental Sports & Entertainment and HeadCount, a nonpartisan, nonprofit voter registration organization, partnered to encourage sports and entertainment fans to register to vote at Capital One Arena during sporting events and concerts. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Washington-region voters will head to the polls Tuesday to elect members of Congress, Maryland’s governor and the District’s mayor in midterm elections that will double as a referendum on President Biden’s first two years in office in an increasingly charged national political climate.
At stake is whether Democrats can hold on to three competitive House seats in Virginia as Republicans aim for a red wave to sweep the districts. In Maryland, voters could elect the state’s first Black governor and first Black attorney general, while in the District, Muriel E. Bowser (D) is poised to become the first mayor to serve a third term since Marion Barry, the legendary “mayor for life.”
“The elections in the region can have a very big impact on what happens nationally,” said Mark J. Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “There’s no more subtle way to put it than to say: Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s agenda for the next two years rides on what happens in this election.”
Polls will be open Tuesday between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. in Virginia and between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. in Maryland and the District.
Virginia’s three tight congressional races have garnered the most national attention. There, Democrats Elaine Luria, Abigail Spanberger and Jennifer Wexton are fighting to hold on to their seats against hard-charging Republican challengers in contests that reflected frustrations over the nation’s wobbly economy and anger over the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and the loss of abortion rights after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Republicans in those races worked to make the elections a referendum on Biden’s agenda, blaming Democrats for record-high inflation rates driven in part by the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Democrats accused their GOP challengers of aligning themselves with former president Donald Trump and of wanting to ban abortion and gut Social Security and Medicare.
Luria in District 2 is considered to be one of the state’s most vulnerable Democratic incumbents. In her Virginia Beach-area race against state Sen. Jen A. Kiggans (R-Virginia Beach), Luria, the two-term congresswoman who served on the House committee investigating Jan. 6, hammered Kiggans for refusing to say whether she believed Biden was legitimately elected. Kiggans attacked Luria on the economy while tying her to Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Spanberger in District 7 waged a bitter fight against Prince William Board of County Supervisors member Yesli Vega (R-Coles), who has a chance to become Virginia’s first Latina congresswoman in a redrawn district now anchored in her increasingly diverse county.
Spanberger, also in her second term, focused on a leaked audio of Vega casting doubt on whether rape could lead to pregnancy and highlighted an endorsement Vega recently received from Trump. Vega, whose campaign played to the Trump base, downplayed the significance of the former president’s backing. She argued that the recorded remarks about abortion were misconstrued, saying she supports the procedure in cases involving rape, incest and the life of the mother.
Vega highlighted her background as the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants and as a former police officer who still serves as an auxiliary county sheriff’s deputy. Spanberger is a former CIA officer focusing on counterterrorism and an ex-federal law enforcement officer with the U.S. Postal Service.
How Wexton fares against retired Navy captain Hung Cao in her Loudoun County area race in District 10 will depend on how much of a red wave there is on Tuesday, political analysts say.
Wexton flipped the district blue in 2018 and easily beat her last opponent. But the area that includes Fauquier County has shown signs of flipping back into the GOP column after Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) only narrowly lost there last year.
In the race, the two candidates argued over the nation’s economy and abortion rights. Wexton, a former prosecutor, highlighted her role on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Cao has tried to appeal to voters with his story: a Vietnamese refugee whose family fled before the fall of Saigon before he went on to serve 25 years in the Navy.
In Maryland, Democrat Wes Moore hopes to become the state’s first Black governor in elections that could also usher in U.S. Rep. (D) as the state’s first Black attorney general in his race against Michael Anthony Peroutka, a retired lawyer and one-term Anne Arundel County Council member.
Former state delegate Aruna Miller (D) has a chance to become the first immigrant and woman of color to serve as lieutenant governor. Del. Brooke E. Lierman (D-Baltimore) is vying to become the first female state comptroller in her race against Harford County Executive Barry Glassman (R).
Political analysts say the state is poised to become a bright spot for Democrats amid Republican victories elsewhere, but added that Maryland voters tend to be more centrist, having elected Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to two four-year terms.
Moore, an author and former CEO of an anti-poverty nonprofit, is considered a heavy favorite over conservative Del. Dan Cox. Moore has campaigned on a “leave no one behind” slogan, promising to work to overhaul the state’s criminal justice system and close the poverty and racial wealth gap.
Cox, whose running mate is Gordana Schifanelli, vigorously fought against the certification of Biden’s victory. Before that, he launched a failed attempt to impeach Hogan. During the campaign, he tried to stop election workers from counting mail-in ballots early, suggesting that it was a route to election fraud.
The two gubernatorial candidates clashed over abortion, crime, election integrity, LGBTQ rights and the existence of a racial wealth gap.
In the District, which is heavily Democratic, Bowser is expected to coast to victory. The city’s elections also include eight candidates — including three sitting council members — vying for two at-large council seats, and a measure that would eliminate the tipped minimum wage. | 2022-11-07T21:16:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington-region voters will soon head to the polls - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/07/elections-district-maryland-virginia-polls/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/07/elections-district-maryland-virginia-polls/ |
Bethesda, Md., mansion on market for $12.5 million
By Sophia Solano | Nov 3, 2022
This 1972 house in Bethesda, Md., recently completed a lengthy renovation. Many features of the house come in pairs: two saunas, two primary bedrooms, two swimming pools (indoor and outdoor) and two kitchens (indoor and outdoor). Take a look inside.
The house has an inlaid patchwork driveway.
There is a 19-foot ceiling in the greeting hall, which leads to glass staircases on either side.
One of several living areas has a sleek, modern design.
This kitchen has heated floors and Miele appliances.
Several sitting rooms feature floor-to-ceiling windows.
The indoor pool room has a built-in bar and exposed cedar walls.
One of two primary bedroom suites.
A spa-inspired main bathroom features twin floating vanities, a free-standing tub, a walk-in shower and heated floors.
The walk-in closet attached to a primary bedroom has floor-to-ceiling storage.
The manicured grounds include a gazebo and a pool with an automated retractable cover.
The property is almost three acres and includes a tennis court.
The property as captured by a drone camera.
Historic farmhouse in NW D.C. on the market for $5 million
Photos by Craig Westerman | 2022-11-07T21:17:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 8801 Fernwood Rd on market for $12.5 million - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/bethesda-md-mansion-market-125-million/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/bethesda-md-mansion-market-125-million/ |
Transcript: Safeguarding U.S. Elections
MR. IGNATIUS: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m David Ignatius, a columnist for The Post.
Our guest today is Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, under the Department of Homeland Security, the person who was primarily responsible for safeguarding the security of our elections in 2020.
Chris, welcome to Washington Post Live.
MR. KREBS: Hey, David. Great to see you. Thanks for having me.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, just to situate our audience, Chris in his role as head of CISA was called on to guarantee the security of the elections and said after the elections of 2020 that they were‑‑and I'm using the words of the release that was issued‑‑"the most secure in American history and that there was no evidence that any votes were deleted, lost, or compromised." And for that statement of the security and reliability of the elections, Chris Krebs was fired by the Trump administration for standing up for the validity of our elections.
Chris, I want to ask you, one day before our midterm elections, why is this threat to our democracy that was so evident in 2020 from President Trump continuing, and what do you tell your Republican friends when they spread what we've taken to calling the "big lie," this argument that the 2020 election was stolen?
MR. KREBS: David, so just to provide some additional context around that statement on November 12th of 2020, not that date is seared in my brain at all, but that was an assessment by the election administration, election security community, state and local election officials, vendors, other folks that are involved in the actual administration of elections, and that was their assessment. And so CISA as a part of a coordinating group issued that statement and amplified the statement, and not only was it deemed to be a safe and secure election, I think the statistics behind that statement stand up.
It was certainly the most scrutinized election. We've seen, you know, the intelligence community investigated, reported, secured that, secured the election.
It was the most litigated, both pre and post election, you know, 8‑plus lawsuits before the election, 60‑plus after, and it was the most audited election. So, by the time 2020 rolled around, there were 43 states plus the District of Columbia that had some form of post‑election audit.
So the number of eyeballs that were on that election, with no appreciable fraud, as Attorney General Barr pointed out in the wake of the 2020 election, I think supports the statement, supports the assessment of the group.
Now, to the point of why does it persist to today, two years later, well, because it pays, frankly. I mean, both financially, it's a great fundraising mechanism for the former president and a number of political officials and candidates for office as well as elites and influencers, which leads to the second reason of why it persists, because it's a great clout‑chasing mechanism. We continue to see sitting officials as well as former administration officials from the last administration push narratives and push themes and push lies about the election when they should know better. If not, they certainly could find out how elections are actually administered.
But it gets them engagement, and there are a number of studies that show when influencers, elites, or candidates post about normal, mundane issues that we should be talking about, like inflation, like the border, instead, they post about these election lies, and it gets them additional engagement. So it's a benefit to them from an incentive perspective, and I think the real harm is that it is shifting the Overton window. It's shifting what's politically acceptable in American political discourse into something that's much more dangerous and much more violent.
So, when I go out there and I talk to folks‑‑and I talk to a number of current GOP officials in the House and the Senate, and I encourage them to speak up and debunk. And you do see some of them doing it. I think Dan Crenshaw from Texas is a great example, just recently on a podcast talked about how it's all lies, and we need more of that. We need leaders to step up and speak truth to the American people about how our elections are working, because there's no good way out of this based on our current trajectory in this downward spiral of lack of confidence in American elections.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, Chris, let me put it to you straight up at the outset of our conversation. Do you think that our democracy is at risk because of the behavior you just described?
MR. KREBS: Well, I think, you know, if you really want to talk about the tactical aspects of democracy at risk, it's more the fact that we have a number of candidates for secretary of State in Arizona and in Nevada, Michigan, and even the governor in Pennsylvania that selects the secretary of state. Those candidates have the ability to determine the certification of the 2024 election. So we're actually seeing election denialists on the ballot across the country, and that's the real tactical risk to democracy.
But, more broadly, look, if leaders, if our political leaders continue to push these lies about democracy, then I think the American people, the voting base, and citizens in general will lose confidence, will lose faith, and that manifests in a couple different ways, including reduced turnout. It leads to legislation at the state and federal level, that that changes the way that elections are administered and not for the better. So, yeah, I think there's both a tactical and strategic risk to American democracy.
MR. IGNATIUS: In tomorrow's midterms, some candidates, the Republican candidates, are already saying they won't commit to the election results. President Biden in a speech last week called this move "unprecedented and unlawful." Give us your assessment of the situation in which, seemingly, emulating former President Trump, Republicans are saying, "I may not accept this outcome."
What are we seeing here?
MR. KREBS: You know, I think it's a sad state of affairs and a bit of an indictment of Republican candidates right now where it's become fashionable to be vague or ambiguous and not be able to commit to the will of the people.
When, you know, there is no evidence whatsoever that the government has been able to find, they're not aware of any, right now, threats, or other risks to the process of administering elections, that would upend an otherwise free and fair election. So, again, the fact that it is a mainstream, almost platform issue for a number of Republican candidates, I think it's a real crisis.
And one of the issues that frustrates me a great deal is that we see some bothsidesism, right? We see this equivocating between what Stacey Abrams has done in the past, what Hillary Clinton has done in the past.
But let's be very, very clear that those individuals did not incite an insurrection, an attack on the Capitol of the United States in an effort to upend and interrupt the electoral counting process. We did not see a behind‑the‑scenes conspiracy to lodge false and fake electoral college, you know, from the individual states, from the various states.
And so, you know, one thing is claiming that election was stolen and actually doing something behind it, and I think that's a key lesson learned and certainly should be taken to heart by everyone involved in the political process right now is you do not mess around with the overall‑‑you know, the trust behind the electoral process and the confidence behind it. It is not a game. You do not claim that an election was stolen, and if you do, you better follow through, and you better bring up some stats, and you better have some litigation behind it that means something rather than what we've seen in the past.
So I think that, you know, in an era where previously it required two good‑faith actors in an election, where really what you're doing in the election is proving to the loser that they lost, when you lose the second good‑faith actor and they're acting then in bad faith, I think that's where this trust in the American political process starts unwinding.
MR. IGNATIUS: Let's talk about an ominous new development in this election democracy story, and that's the growing evidence of efforts to intimidate voters. Across the country, teams of poll watchers and other observers in far greater numbers than in the past seem to be dispatched, and I wonder if you see an organized movement underway to make Americans suspicious of their democratic election process, so as to achieve their ends.
MR. KREBS: Well, I think what we tend to lose sight of, particularly here inside the beltway and at the national level, is that all politics are national, when, in fact, most politics are actually at the retail local level. And what I think we've seen over the last couple years, is a distillation of these broader national concepts of the stolen or rigged election actually start trickling down into the local communities, and we've seen over the last couple years, like the "fraudit" by the Cyber Ninjas team in Arizona. We've seen groups spring up like Clean Elections USA, which was organized in Arizona and elsewhere.
But, specifically, to some of those poll watchers or, rather, the ballot drop‑box watchers showing up in tactical gear, as we saw in the intro video, those sorts of actions are entirely based on these themes of the stolen election and fraud where, once again, we have not had any sort of‑‑there's no evidence to support these allegations, whether it's "2000 Mules," which has been steadily debunked by‑‑including Philip Bump from The Washington Post. But it leads to these mainstreaming of the lies, and it's activating a base that then is turning out in these performative and, you know, not just performative, but also, quite likely, very dangerous, at least the possibility for political violence out there across the country.
So it is‑‑this is not just free radicals. This is not ad hoc. There is a coordination, and there's a broader sort of orchestrated activity here that we need to be very mindful of. And I think that this is where the Department of Justice, this is where the FBI, and this is where state and local law enforcement really need to step up and understand what's happening here and protect the voters.
But the key takeaway, David‑‑and I'll wrap this piece up here now‑‑is that it is overwhelmingly safe for American voters to vote whether you voted in advance through early or absentee voting or to vote tomorrow. So do not let these people deter you from getting out there and voting. That is, in part, what they're trying to accomplish here. So speak your voice. Get out there and participate in democracy.
MR. IGNATIUS: I'm glad you said that because those images of self‑appointed election cops and tactical gear are scary, and you make the right point. Don't be backed off. Let's talk‑‑
MR. KREBS: Well, David, one last‑‑one last element on this is that I do think that kind of due to the clumsiness of these groups getting out there and watching ballots, they actually tipped their hand early, which allowed for law enforcement to understand what was happening and then have the right interventions. And you actually saw the courts in Arizona intervene and restrict or move them back even further from the ballot drop boxes. So, you know, to a certain extent, I think the rule of law prevailed here, and once again, the law enforcement community is doing what's necessary to ensure a safe and secure election.
MR. IGNATIUS: Chris, let's talk about a particular aspect of the process that was very important in 2020 and is likely to be again, and that's vote counting, as we have growing numbers of absentee voters, early voters whose balance may take a while to count. The outcome, let's say, of the battle to control the Senate where we'll be waiting for vote counts from Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, that may take a few days. What advice would you give to members of the public about this process of delay, and what's your fear that in the days after Election Day, when the results are not yet announced, we could have threats of violence and actual violence?
MR. KREBS: David, this is‑‑this is one of my favorite emerging conspiracy theories, which I'll touch on in just a second.
But the message here is the same as it was in 2020, is have patience. It takes time to count‑‑to count these votes, and in part, state legislatures have actually made it harder and made it take longer. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, for mail-in and absentee ballots, they actually cannot start processing those ballots until the morning of the election. So states could change this. The state legislature should‑‑could get involved.
In the meantime, once again, you have political figures that are coming in and making claims of something of the sort of "all of a sudden we're being told that it takes a long time to decide elections," when that's always been the case. Think back to 2000, Bush v. Gore. That was not decided until December. Mail‑in ballots are part of the political process, and as my friend, David Becker with the Center for Elections and Innovation Research, has said, mail‑in ballots date back at least until‑‑to the Civil War.
So it takes time. Statutes at the state level dictate how long. In fact, the quickest certification in the country is about eight to nine days after the election, so it does take time.
So my recommendation, again, is just be patient. Look to authoritative sources of information, and those are going to be your state and local election officials.
Stephen Richer out in Arizona, in Maricopa County, is one of my kind of favorites to point to as an example of radical election transparency. But what good election officials do is they tell you where they are in the process and what to expect next. They proactively engage in the information ecosystem to take away any opportunity space or attack surface really for disinformation brokers and those that just want to sow chaos.
So let's keep our wits about us, stay patient, look to your state and local election officials for the latest on what's going on with the count and what the plan is and the expected timeline is for wrapping up that vote count.
MR. IGNATIUS: Useful, sensible advice. Thank you for that.
MR. KREBS: [Laughs]
MR. IGNATIUS: I want to ask you a question from our audience. Cheryl Graeve of Washington, D.C., asks, "What can everyday Americans do to help safeguard our democracy in these times of disinformation and distrust? What are your top ideas for building trust in our democracy?"
MR. KREBS: So, first and foremost, participate, right? And not just‑‑make sure you've got a voting plan.
Make sure you understand. Check your registration, which you should have been doing weeks ago, but make sure you know are you, in fact, registered, you didn't get bumped off the rolls. Know you're supposed to go vote. Make sure if there's any ID requirements that you had the ability‑‑you know, that you have that with you when you show up at the polls. But vote and have a plan for voting.
Also, I think any discerning consumer of information should have multiple sources of information, not just the random person you saw on TikTok. No‑‑you know, it's no different than walking down the street and there's somebody screaming something on the corner that you would take that as the gospel, right? You want to have a diverse set of information sources that can allow you to understand what's going on there more broadly. But, again, look to your trusted sources of information in elections, and that's going to be your state and local election officials.
But, you know, most importantly, like we just have to just calm it down a little bit. Let's take‑‑let's take our time, have a little bit of patience, maybe put down the phone for a little bit with social media. But we're going to‑‑I think I have a lot of confidence in the American people. We can get through this, but the last thing we need is we need to put pressure on our political leaders to lead, to stand up, to talk specifically about election lies, how it's not acceptable in American democracy. We have to hold them accountable, and part of that is, once again, it's getting out there and voting. If we're not seeing the sort of leadership we need out of our political leaders, then we need new leaders.
MR. IGNATIUS: I want to turn from the subject of intimidation to the subject of actual violence. We saw in recent week, the terrible attack on Paul Pelosi, Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, by an attacker demanding, "Where is Nancy?" I want to ask you how you, as a former DHS official, assess the threat of actual violence against our elected officials, Republicans and Democrats alike.
MR. KREBS: You know, David, this is something that has really exploded over the last couple years. 2020, you had a number of secretaries, state officials, you know, Jocelyn Benson up in Michigan. I personally received a number of threats. I had people show up at my house. I received all sorts of threats. You name the platform online. I had people sending me emails. I had people using LinkedIn from their professional profiles sending me threats. This is not a rational group of folks sometimes, but it is‑‑there's no question that the lies of 2020, they continue through today and will continue to push through '22 and into '24, are activating‑‑they're radicalizing and activating. I think, in part, that's what we saw in in California, and then just over the weekend, we saw white powder being mailed to the campaign headquarters of Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for governor. This is, across the board, unacceptable behavior, and once again, we need leaders to step up and talk about this.
Now, this, in part, is also an area, I think, for the Department of Justice, for law enforcement, as I've already mentioned, to get involved and provide tools for election officials to protect themselves, and we saw Georgia just a couple weeks ago that Brad Raffensperger's office released a tool for reporting of violence. We saw CISA also provide training on de‑escalation techniques at polls. So we're seeing an acknowledgement of these threats. We're trying to counter the ones that come in from the foreign space, and we are seeing‑‑you know, continuing to see active engagement from our foreign adversaries. But from a domestic perspective, again, this is where we need to clean up our own house and we need our leaders to step up and call this stuff out as unacceptable, and we need to investigate and hold accountable those that continue to participate in political violence.
MR. IGNATIUS: Chris, we know from looking at foreign extremist groups that there's a process of radicalization that takes place. You've spoken to the radicalization of some actors on the domestic political scene. How do you de‑radicalize people who've been swept up in a movement, who have been churned by social media and peer pressure into these extreme groups and positions?
How does that process start?
MR. KREBS: I think this is an area where many professional experts are struggling. I personally have a very difficult time with this subject and how you de‑radicalize people, because it requires a great deal of empathy, and right now, I'm in a little short supply of empathy, given just the prevalence of election denials and given my experience and kind of the crucible that I and others went through in 2020.
But it starts with empathy. We need to engage the people that are promoting, that continue to push these lies, and understand where they're coming from, and then to the extent you can have a conversation, you can understand, you can educate, it's difficult. I get that. It takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. There's no‑‑you know, there's no instant solution here, and it may not actually scale particularly well. But we‑‑that doesn't mean that we walk away and we just forget about it, because it will only get worse. It will only calcify and metastasize further, and that ultimately, as we've talked about for the last 20 or so minutes‑‑that's just not a good endpoint for democracy.
But, again, I just‑‑I want to take it back to that leadership piece. Those that are continuing to‑‑at least in the masses, in the base that continue to push these lies, they're not coming up with this on their own. They're being fed. They're being conned. And that is actually one technique that I think historically works quite well is if you can expose the people that are leading this con for power, influence, and money, you know, humans just fundamentally do not like being grifted. They do not like being conned.
Now, there is a degree of embarrassment with it, but they also react quite negatively. So we've got to be able to call out and hold these people accountable that continue to push the lies, and there are a number of different mechanisms for that, that are underway right now, including, I'd point out, Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit‑‑ lawsuits against a number of defendants. That's one. Second is, again‑‑the second is holding them accountable, these folks accountable at the ballot box, but there are other mechanisms as well.
MR. IGNATIUS: So it's a new plan, anti‑grifting. We'll think about that.
So, last week, Chris, the head of the U.S. Capitol Police said that his agency, responsible for protecting our members of Congress, needs more resources to do the job. Just for some background, startling numbers, in 2021, the Capitol Police reported 9,600 direct or indirect threats against members. That's more than 10 times the number that were reported in 2016. The question is, what kind of resources does the Capitol Police, does law enforcement in general need to protect politicians?
We don't want to live in an armed camp, in a police state protecting‑‑protecting political officials, but we're going to need more. What's your sense of how significant the additional resources should be?
MR. KREBS: Well, you know, my hope is that we can actually make the right interventions upstream where we can, you know, de‑radicalize people, where we can also start hitting at some of the mechanisms by which threats are being‑‑which they're being relayed and conveyed, and you start holding people accountable.
And you are seeing through the January 6th investigations by the Department of Justice that some of these folks that have made threats are being held accountable. So, to the extent we can move upstream, I think that's probably the best solution.
I don't have a specific understanding of what the particular resource requirements of the Capitol Police is, but it makes sense to me that from a leadership perspective, that you‑‑that they require enough‑‑enough bodies, enough officers to help protect the leaders of House, Senate, congressional‑‑the various parties in Congress.
And it's not going to be one of those things where I think you can protect every member of Congress, unfortunately. So we do need to, you know, continue to invest in the capabilities of the Capitol Police to work with local law enforcement as well, and I think that's something that gets left out a little bit of this conversation is that Capitol Police can work with state and local law enforcement back in the home districts. And those are some of the ways that you can get a little bit more scale, I think, on the protection of the higher‑value protectees.
MR. IGNATIUS: Speaking of upstream, one of the leading incubators, if you will, of political violence, of the threats to democracy that we've been discussing for this half hour, social media and Twitter has been at the top of the list. Twitter is under new management, as you and all of our viewers know.
And the new head of Twitter, Elon Musk, has just gutted the teams that were responsible for monitoring election disinformation. What sort of risk does that pose, and do you think the new owner is acting wisely in this regard?
MR. KREBS: Well, I think we actually don't have a really good understanding of where the staff cuts hit within Twitter. My understanding of talking to folks inside Twitter is that the trust and safety teams actually retained about 85 percent of their staffing and headcount. There was some temporary suspension of access to moderation tools across the teams, except to the key leaders, which I think from an insider threat perspective, anytime you have a change of management and potential reduction in force that's happening, you would want to manage the opportunities for disgruntled, outgoing employees. But those‑‑as I understand it, those tools are being provided access to.
You know, it's not as much, frankly, the internal content moderation piece that I'm worried about right now. It's the change in features, particularly what we've heard about with verification for $8 or $7.99 a month that is happening at a very contentious time in American politics, where you've got a very‑‑you know, a very important midterm. And the original plan, I think, was to open up verification, just if you're willing to pay. They would verify on payment details, where, historically, the blue tick, the blue checkmark has been a marker of trust, right?
It's that this person says who they say they are. They're a journalist. They're a political official.
Now, remember what I've been saying all along about look to your state and local election officials. Look to those trusted, authoritative sources for information. If you upend that model at a time when authoritative information is absolutely critical, I think there's a significant amount of risk.
So it was a good thing, as I see it, that Twitter has paused on rolling out that that feature, whether it was due to those concerns I just laid out or it was more of a technical implementation challenge, but we need to rethink and they need to be very clear on what the verification status means. And it's fine. Look, Elon owns the platform. He can do whatever he wants, but if he is going to make a radical change in the business model and the operating model, you need to clearly communicate to the users and so we can reset the expectation around what was historically a marker of trust. Now it's just a marker of payment.
MR. IGNATIUS: You're one of the nation's leading experts on this subject. Has Elon Musk asked for your advice?
MR. KREBS: Oh. [Laughs] No, unfortunately, I have not heard from Elon. I do know that he's got a good team on board right now inside his company. There are those in the trust and safety team. Yoel Roth is a great example of a leader in this space, and I understand that Elon listens to him. He's been retweeting Yoel's statements and updates on election misinformation. I would encourage everyone to go follow Yoel to understand what's happening inside Twitter.
But, nonetheless, as I just said, this is a really contentious time. Twitter is going through a number of different radical changes, and the parallel timing of these two tracks does not bode well right now.
MR. IGNATIUS: So we're out of out of time. I want to thank Chris Krebs, our guest, for a terrific summary of the issues the day before our Election Day.
Chris, thanks for joining us.
MR. KREBS: Thanks, David. Thanks, Post.
MR. IGNATIUS: So we’ll be back with other programming on a wonderful range of subjects. If you want to know what’s coming up, check WashingtonPostLive.com for more information.
I'm David Ignatius. Thanks for joining us. | 2022-11-07T21:19:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: Safeguarding U.S. Elections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/11/07/transcript-safeguarding-us-elections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/11/07/transcript-safeguarding-us-elections/ |
Some of the places, including Clark County, Nev., were home to major disputes over voting and unsubstantiated claims of fraud in 2020
Beth Reinhard
A voter places a ballot into a drop box in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Saturday. (Evan Cobb for The Washington Post)
The Justice Department announced that it will dispatch workers to 64 jurisdictions in 24 states on Election Day to ensure that they are in compliance with federal voting law, an increase from the 44 jurisdictions to which it sent monitors for the 2020 presidential election.
The Justice Department noted in a statement that it has dispatched people from its Civil Rights Division and other units to monitor the voting process since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
But this year’s midterm elections arrive as Republicans have waged a sustained campaign against alleged voter fraud over the past two years, despite scant evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, and as threats against politicians, their families and election workers have spiked around the country.
The list of jurisdictions where the Justice Department will dispatch monitors provides a window into where federal law enforcement officials suspect there could be disputes or tensions around the voting process.
Among the places that will be monitored Tuesday but did not receive federal monitors on Election Day 2020: Clark County, Nev., and Pinal County, Ariz. Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, was home to contentious election disputes after the 2020 election, and Pinal County experienced problems during its August primary election.
Berks County, Pa., will also have federal monitors Tuesday and did not have them in 2020. Members of the election board in Berks County adopted a new policy in September in which officials directed sheriff’s deputies manning ballot drop boxes to question voters about whether the ballot they are returning is their own.
Leigh Chapman, Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of state, expressed concern in a letter to the county sheriff that some voters might be intimidated by such an encounter and asked that the new policy not be implemented. But deputies nevertheless were stationed at drop boxes and questioning voters, according to news reports.
The county commissioner who introduced the policy declined The Post’s request for an interview earlier this week.
The Justice Department will also send monitors to Yavapai County, Ariz., where self-styled militia groups have monitored drop boxes in the past.
Attack on Nancy Pelosi's came after years of GOP demonizing her
In Wisconsin, the Justice Department plans to send monitors to Milwaukee, the state’s largest city and the place where the highest-profile disputes over voting have long played out. They also plan to send monitors to Racine, a city south of Milwaukee that recently changed its procedures for counting absentee ballots.
And in North Carolina, federal officials say they will monitor five counties with sizable Black populations: Alamance, Columbus, Harnett, Wayne and Mecklenburg counties.
Racial controversies have roiled two of those counties in recent months, according to local news reports. In Alamance County, a Superior Court judge in September rejected an effort by the North Carolina NAACP and other civil rights groups to remove a 30-foot monument of a Confederate soldier in front of the courthouse. In Columbus County, the sheriff resigned last month after he was recorded making racist remarks about Black employees. His name remains on Tuesday’s ballot.
The North Carolina election board said Monday that it is looking into 15 incidents in which voters or poll workers were intimidated or harassed. Those incidents occurred in 10 counties, including Harnett, Wayne, Mecklenburg and Columbus. Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state elections board, called the federal oversight “typical” on Monday and said those counties have had “voter intimidation or interference issues.”
But some Republican leaders quickly pushed back on the Justice Department for sending monitors.
Missouri Secretary of State John R. Ashcroft (R) told The Washington Post that the federal presence would “bully a local election authority” and could “intimidate and suppress the vote.” Ashcroft, whose father, John Ashcroft, was the U.S. attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, and Cole County Clerk Steve Korsmeyer (R) told federal officials they would not be permitted to observe polling places on Tuesday.
In addition to dispatching Election Day monitors, FBI special agents serving as election crime coordinators will be on duty in the bureau’s 56 field offices to receive voting-related complaints from the public, according to the Justice Department.
Attorneys at the agency’s National Security Division, which oversees cases related to foreign interference in elections and violent extremist threats to elections, will be working with the FBI and U.S. attorneys’ offices to counter any potential threats.
Employees in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division will also operate a hotline all day on Election Day, answering calls from people who spot possible violations of federal voting rights laws.
Amy Gardner, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Jacob Bogage and Patrick Marley contributed to this report. | 2022-11-07T21:51:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amid threats and disputes, Justice Dept. sends Election Day monitors to more places - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/07/doj-election-monitors-fraud-threats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/07/doj-election-monitors-fraud-threats/ |
11 French bishops accused of sexual abuse, church says
Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, archbishop of Reims and president of the French bishops' conference, holds a news conference in Lourdes on Monday. (Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images)
PARIS — Eleven current or former French bishops have been accused of sexual abuse, the head of the French bishops’ conference said Monday, signaling that some high-level Catholic Church officials not only turned a blind eye for decades but may have been perpetrators themselves.
Among those under investigation was Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, a former head of the French bishops’ conference, who has admitted to abusing a 14-year-old girl when he was a priest 35 years ago.
“I behaved in a reprehensible way,” Ricard, 78, wrote in a confession letter read during a news conference by Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, the current president of the bishops’ conference.
Monday’s revelations — which came as church officials met for an annual conference — are “shocking, but not surprising,” said Zach Hiner, executive director of SNAP, a network of church abuse victims.
Wherever independent commissions or church officials have looked for evidence of sexual abuse over past decades, they have tended to find cases on a stunning scale.
Last year, a report from an independent French commission found that French Catholic clerics had abused more than 200,000 minors over the past 70 years. The report estimated the number of perpetrators to be at least 3,000.
Catholic clergy in France likely abused more than 200,000 minors, independent commission estimates
“One doesn’t get to those kinds of levels without there being significant problems at the very top,” said Hiner, who said abuse accusations against “people at the highest levels of the Catholic Church” have proliferated.
Last year’s independent commission report in France gathered more than 6,000 testimonies, including from victims and witnesses, and several cases were forwarded to law enforcement officials.
Moulins-Beaufort said Monday that at least some of the 11 bishops who have been accused of abuse will be investigated by state authorities, along with parallel church investigations. But in cases where the window of prosecution has closed, internal probes are the only options.
“It can be rather opaque,” said Hiner, criticizing cases in which bishops were punished by the church “but without much information given to parishioners and the public as to why.” | 2022-11-07T21:55:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 11 French bishops accused of sexual abuse, Catholic Church says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/07/french-bishops-sexual-abuse-church/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/07/french-bishops-sexual-abuse-church/ |
It took more than twice as long to call House races in 2020 than 2018
It’s not clear how much of this is pandemic-specific
The Hunter’s Moon rises behind the dome of the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 9 in Washington. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
There is no inherent reason that it matters how long it takes to count votes cast in an election. A vote is a vote, and whether it is tallied at the instant polls close, or by noon the following day, or a week later, it is still the same vote it always was.
In recent years, though, the duration of counting has become a source of increasing agitation for Americans. One reason is simply impatience: We had come to expect over the past few decades that most races will be called on election night and that those not called wouldn’t affect the balance of power in Washington.
Then there’s the reason that came to the forefront in 2020. President Donald Trump, picking up a line of argument from Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) in 2018, suggested that counting mail-in ballots over the hours and days that followed the election allowed for fraud to occur — something neither Scott nor Trump was ever able to show had occurred. But this idea has become something of a mantra on the right, in large part because those votes have heavily come from Democratic voters and, therefore, offer a ripe target for depiction as nefarious and illegitimate.
There’s a third reason for the agitation, of course. In 2020 in particular, counting ballots really was quite a bit slower than it had been two years before.
This is admittedly somewhat subjective, since there are different mechanisms and triggers that prompt an official race call. Many news outlets, including The Washington Post, rely on the Associated Press’s calls in federal and state races to determine official winners. So, to evaluate how rapidly or slowly states were counting, we pulled the AP’s formal race call in each of the 435 House races for which it made a call in 2018 and 2020 and assessed how long it took to be made.
Different states close their polls at different times, of course, but our interest was in determining when results were confirmed generally. So instead of comparing results to poll closing times, we compared them to a universal metric: noon of Election Day on the East Coast. A race called as soon as polls closed in California, then, would be recorded as happening 11 hours after noon Eastern.
Here’s 2018. Because some races took far longer to call, the graph below is shown on a logarithmic scale, from about 6 p.m. Eastern on Nov. 6 until more than 300 hours later.
You’ll notice — and may perhaps remember — that several of the races that took longest to call were in California. A combination of heavy mail-in balloting and lots of House races consistently means that California races come in more slowly than other states. The same holds for Washington state: Voters vote by mail; that it’s on the West Coast has little to do with it.
One of the last races to be called, though, was the race in Utah’s 4th Congressional District — a race that took a long time to call because it was very close. That’s the other factor here, of course. Races with narrower margins (shown with smaller circles) take longer to count and then to adjudicate. So calls come later.
With 2018 as a baseline, let’s move to 2020. During that year, you will certainly remember, states relied more on mail-in ballots in an effort to reduce the threat of coronavirus transmission. Notice not only that the number of races that took a while to settle is larger below, but so is the time-frame the graph depicts.
Again California stands out — but so does New York. Changes to voting in that state slowed election results dramatically.
Overall, the average House race in which the AP made a call in 2018 had a winner identified about 15 hours after noon Eastern on Election Day. In 2020, that extended to nearly 35 hours.
A lot of that shift is a function of New York, where the average increased a lot across its large number of House seats. It’s also shaped by the increase in Alaska, where it took far longer to determine the winner in the state’s sole House race than it had two years before.
It’s interesting to compare Virginia and Washington on that graph. The arrow indicating the change in Washington starts further from the left-hand axis, in part thanks to the time difference. But while Virginia’s results were an average of 12 hours slower in 2020 than in 2018, Washington’s were more than 18 hours slower than they had been two years prior. This despite the state’s experience with mail-in ballots.
The biggest increase was New York, where the results came, on average, 200 hours later than they did in 2018.
Again, there’s nothing about this that is particularly fraught. For one thing, there’s no evidence that counting more slowly injects illegal ballots — or even makes such an injection more feasible in the first place. It’s also not clear whether 2020 was an aberration caused by the pandemic or a mark of how long it will take to know House results moving forward.
The moral, as always, is to be patient. In 2018, the state that saw its last House race called by the Associated Press the earliest was Kentucky, where the last race was called before 9 p.m. Eastern. But the last race was called in each state at an average of 11 p.m. Eastern on the day after Election Day. And in 2020, it took more than three days for all of the results to come in for an average state. That’s a bit after noon Friday.
That year, of course, the biggest race wasn’t called until Saturday: Joe Biden’s presidential win and Donald Trump’s reelection loss. | 2022-11-07T22:43:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | It took more than twice as long to call House races in 2020 than 2018 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/midterms-house-race-calls/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/midterms-house-race-calls/ |
Supreme Court seems ready to hasten challenges to federal agencies
The U.S. Supreme Court in D.C. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
Conservative Supreme Court justices indicated Monday that they are ready to ease the process of challenging the regulatory power of federal agencies, hearing arguments in two cases that could diminish the authority of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, respectively.
The issue in both cases seems mundane: whether someone singled out for enforcement action by either agency can go directly to federal court to make challenges about the constitutionality of the process. In both cases, the plaintiffs are challenging whether in-house administrative law judges used by the agencies are not appointed in ways that square with the Constitution. They don’t want to wait for final agency action to begin their challenges.
But the bigger issue is a battle by business interests to weaken the federal administrative state, and the plaintiffs hope to build on a string of Supreme Court decisions that have advanced that cause. The importance of the issue was underscored by amicus briefs by industry groups and the fact that two former Republican solicitors general were arguing the cases against the government.
Paul D. Clement represented the body-camera equipment firm Axon, which came under FTC scrutiny when it bought a rival, and Gregory G. Garre was the lawyer for accountant Michelle Cochran, who was accused by the SEC of violating auditing standards.
Both lawyers were solicitors general under President George W. Bush.
They told the justices that their clients should not have to undergo years of litigation before being able to challenge the constitutionality of the administrative law judges and, thus, the agencies’ enforcement actions themselves.
“The SEC acts as prosecutor, judge and, in effect, executioner in its own proceedings, all of which give it an extraordinary home court advantage,” Garre said. Because the in-house judges are too far removed from control of the president, he argued, they suffer a “blatant constitutional defect.”
Those targeted by the agencies should not have to wait for final agency action to challenge that, Garre said.
Justice Department lawyer Malcolm L. Stewart countered that Congress authorized review of the relevant agency actions by courts of appeals only after those actions became final. In doing do, Congress was making “clear that district courts have no authority to entertain constitutional challenges to . . . agency adjudications,” Stewart said.
But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who wrote one of the previous decisions that has raised questions about agency authority, said there was a “constellation” of similar cases that “make the case about the need for direct resolution of a related claim pretty strong.”
In the FTC case, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said, the status of administrative law judges “hangs over everything the agency is doing. Isn’t it in your interest to get this decided?” he asked Stewart.
Alito indicated that since the Supreme Court would have the final word on the constitutionality of the process, the sooner the better.
Clement agreed in the FTC argument. “The government says, look, it’s every citizen’s burden to have to go through these administrative processes before you get judicial review,” he said. “I don’t think that’s right if the administrative agency is alleged to be unconstitutional ... . That should not be the burden of citizenship.”
But liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan noted that in many other aspects of the law, a final decision was required before challenging the action.
“Going through the process is what due process is all about,” Sotomayor told Clement.
Kagan noted that the court is “pretty stingy” about allowing intermediate challenges. “So what makes yours different?” she asked.
The cases are Axon Enterprise v. Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission v. Cochran.
The Supreme Court's newest justice makes herself heard from the bench
Also on Monday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed her first opinion as a justice, dissenting from her colleagues’ decision to not review an Ohio death-row inmate’s claim.
Jackson said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit used the wrong standard to rule against Davel Chinn, who was convicted of a 1989 murder in Dayton. Chinn’s lawyers said prosecutors had withheld evidence that a key witness against Chinn had an intellectual disability that may have affected his ability to “remember, perceive fact from fiction, and testify accurately,” Jackson wrote.
The 6th Circuit said Chinn had not shown that the evidence would have more likely than not affected the outcome of Chinn’s trial. But Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said that standard was higher than one recognized in Supreme Court precedents.
“Because Chinn’s life is on the line, and given the substantial likelihood that the suppressed records would have changed the outcome at trial . . . I would summarily reverse to ensure that the Sixth Circuit conducts its materiality analysis under the proper standard,” Jackson wrote.
The case is Chinn v. Shoop. | 2022-11-07T22:43:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | SEC, FTC authority at heart of cases argued before Supreme Court Monday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/sec-ftc-authority-supreme-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/sec-ftc-authority-supreme-court/ |
The 31-year-old waiter culminated his quest to eat 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days on Sunday, just as his hometown was collectively mourning a World Series loss to the Houston Astros and a similarly crushing Major League Soccer Cup defeat — all within the space of 24 hours. Though he had been documenting the self-imposed challenge on social media, the attention ramped up when he began inviting people to watch him eat his final bird.
The event had the appeal of being only for if-you-know-you-know locals. Its location was described only as “that abandoned pier near Walmart,” and many saw the quest as somehow expressing something quintessentially Philly — just a regular working-class guy gutting it out, quite literally — at a moment when the city needed a boost.
But it isn’t clear that rallying a city was what Tominsky set out to do. The City of Brotherly Love’s inscrutable talisman never seemed to articulate a clear answer to a central question about his spit-roasted mission: For the love of God, why?
He wasn’t trying to prove a point, like a latter-day Morgan Spurlock (the guy who ate McDonald’s for a month and documented its ill effects for the documentary “Super Size Me”). And he’s no Don Gorske, the man from Fond du Lac, Wis., who has eaten a Big Mac every day for more than half a century out of sheer love for the Golden Arches’ signature burger. In several interviews, Tominsky revealed he wasn’t much of a poultry fan. “I hate chicken,” he said in a local TV news interview. He wasn’t getting paid. (Purdue offered him free chicken. He rejected the offer.). And he didn’t lose a bet.
I had hoped to put the question to him myself, but Tominsky on Monday said he was “a bit too overwhelmed” to talk.
And so I scoured other interviews in search of clues. “Why do this?” a reporter from local news outlet Billy Penn (reasonably) asked in the lead-up to the big event. To which he offered a strange response: “It seemed like the right thing to do.” When the interviewer pressed him, his answer was even more Yoda-esque. “I’m not sure how it started,” Tominsky said. “It’s hard to understand how it manifested.”
To the New York Times, he suggested he wanted to bring others joy by experiencing pain — and judging from his facial expression in the photos he posted, that’s just what was happening.
37 consecutive days eating an entire rotisserie chicken #chicken pic.twitter.com/83UJIYwbgw
But for someone setting out to entertain, he seemed to discourage merriment. “THIS IS NOT A PARTY,” read the flier announcing his event at the pier. So was it all a prank? An elaborate art project?
Whatever it was, even without calling it a celebration, the event might have worked in mysterious ways. Several hundred people turned out, according to news reports, and many following it on social media saw their own meaning in Tominsky’s experiment.
Some reveled in the Philly-ness of it all. “Yea, we lost 2 championships in one day,” one tweeted. “but the next day? we celebrated a man eating his 40th rotisserie chicken in 40 days at an abandoned pier behind walmart. you can’t keep Philly down.”
And for others, the lack of a point seemed like the point. “I feel like the rest of American society has turned into a kind of dystopian, capitalist, meaningless, soulless hellscape,” one attendee told a Billy Penn reporter. “So we’ve all become nihilists. And something like this — that’s not done with a profit motive, or really any meaning at all — is refreshing.”
Tominsky remained enigmatic even in his moment of triumph. When he polished off his final bite on Sunday, he gestured for the crowd to stop its chants of “He-ro! He-ro!”
“I’m no hero. I’m but a man,” he said. “I ate the chicken. I did the best I can. I just thank you all for being here, and thanks for watching me consume.” | 2022-11-07T22:47:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Philadelphia Chicken Man' ate 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/11/07/philadelphia-rotisserie-chicken-man/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/11/07/philadelphia-rotisserie-chicken-man/ |
The first lady has gone to marquee races in eight states in the run-up to Tuesday’s election, a strong sign that she’s more popular than her husband.
First lady Jill Biden at a campaign rally with Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) in Phoenix ahead of the midterm election. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
Is there a bat signal that vulnerable Democrats send into the dark night to summon first lady Jill Biden? If so, it has gone up in an astounding number of states with the country’s most competitive races — Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas, Virginia and Maryland — over the past two weeks.
Not only that, she is descending onto tougher races than her husband, in states where animosity toward Democrats is high, such as the razor-thin race of Sen. Mark Kelly in Arizona, or two unexpected battlegrounds on Long Island. It is a testament to her popularity, as the most requested surrogate in the administration, and her ability to track well with Democrats without being toxic to swing voters or Republicans, and to an overriding concern that President Biden’s presence is not always a plus.
After Tuesday, the question is, will there be carnage for everyone Jill Biden hoped to help, or will her tireless efforts sweep them out of harm’s way just before a Republican wave crashes in?
The 71-year-old first lady, known for dropping in at barre classes around Washington and leaving younger gym rats in her dust, has been on the kind of sprint toward the midterms that would exhaust Olympic athletes. She has been traveling to so many states that when she walked onstage at an event on Saturday, National Education Association President Becky Pringle felt compelled to remind her, “You’re in Arizona.”
She went to Houston the day after her beloved Philadelphia Phillies lost to the Astros in Game 6 of the World Series and politely clapped as the pastor of a Baptist church praised the team, followed by another event filled with congratulatory speeches about the Astros. She even had to give a speech in front of a screen declaring the Astros the world champions.
And then, she had to listen to the candidate she was trying to help, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, read a proclamation for the Astros. Hidalgo apologized to Biden halfway through. “This is so painful,” said Biden, before eventually congratulating the Astros on behalf of the Phillies. Now that is taking one for the team.
The administration has, essentially, put the first lady in charge of bringing home the races that will determine whether Democrats will hold onto the majority in Congress. The only marquee race President Biden is campaigning for, in contrast, is John Fetterman against Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. He has tended to go to deep blue states where the anger over inflation and gas prices that frequently gets directed toward him will not destroy Democrats’ chances of winning. He has not been to places like Georgia, Arizona or Wisconsin.
She only goes where campaigns and Democratic organizations have requested her presence, according to her press secretary, Vanessa Valdivia, but it is unclear if those requests are made in the spirit of having a little insurance or in a last-ditch attempt to throw the whole plate of spaghetti at the wall in hopes that something will stick.
Is where Jill Biden goes an indication of where Democrats are weak and desperate?
Her activity last week seemed to signal that what prognosticators have predicted is true: Democrats are in danger of losing seats in their longtime strongholds in New England. On the last Wednesday of October she was out in Providence and Cranston, R.I., stumping for Seth Magaziner, the state treasurer who is up against an extremely popular Republican, Allan Fung, who spent 12 years as the mayor of Cranston, and is running as a moderate who supports abortion rights and President Biden’s infrastructure plans.
The Saturday before Halloween, Jill Biden was out stumping for Sen. Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire, where a late surge by Republican Donald Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general, has Democrats worried. A Republican win in either race could indicate that the party might sweep the board.
Then on Sunday, she made the rounds in Long Island, where even the chair of the House Democratic campaign committee is worried about keeping his seat. Republican super PACs are trying to defeat Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who is up against Republican Mike Lawler, a state assemblyman who opposes most abortions and whom Maloney has dubbed “MAGA Mike.” President Biden, too, stopped in to boost Maloney over the weekend.
While in New York, Biden spoke at a fundraiser for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee in the home of Jonathan Soros (son of George) and also campaigned for Robert Zimmerman, who is in a toss-up race for a vacant seat in New York’s Third District. The decision to break out the big guns (the president) on Long Island can be seen as a sign of how worried Democrats are about losing ground in solidly blue territory, particularly when Gov. Kathy Hochul is facing a tougher bid in her election to a full term than expected.
Oh, and, like her husband and former president Barack Obama, Jill Biden went to Pennsylvania on a number of get-out-the-vote events that culminated in watching Game 4 of the World Series. (The Phillies lost that one.) Every Tuesday and Thursday, the first lady has taken a break from the campaign schedule to teach her English composition class at Northern Virginia Community College.
This weekend was her toughest push yet. In Arizona on Saturday, as she has done at many stops, Biden spoke of the election as “a choice between two drastically different visions for our country. In one, Democrats up and down the ballot, keep going to build on the historic progress that we have made. And in the other, Republicans are ramping up their attacks on workers, standing with corporations. They are putting Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block.”
Later, at a rally for Kelly, Biden reminded the crowd she is a teacher and gave them an assignment: “Do your homework,” she told them, and get people out to vote. “This race is going to be close, so put voting at the top of your to do list.”
The Houston trip the next day included Sunday services at two Baptist churches with Hidalgo, who is in a tough race to keep her seat as Harris County judge, and an impromptu stop at a soul food restaurant to eat oxtail, fried chicken, collard greens and sweet tea, and looking resigned while Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee celebrated the Astros’ win, according to a pool report.
Harris County is the largest jurisdiction in Texas, home to Houston, and a Democratic stronghold where Republican lawmakers are pushing to send monitors to do randomized checks on the polls in a state that has passed extensive restrictions on voting rights.
As she left one of the Baptist churches, Biden reminded the congregants to make a plan to vote and then a contingency plan for that plan and to make sure all their loved ones and friends and neighbors had a plan, too. “Because even if it seems small, every single vote counts,” she said. “One vote can win an election and one election can set a new course.”
Without pause, she was in Virginia on Monday stumping for Rep. Jennifer Wexton, and then rallying Democrats in Maryland. As for herself, she already voted last week in Delaware. She will be teaching on Election Day. | 2022-11-07T22:47:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jill Biden takes final relentless push to boost vulnerable Democrats - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/07/jill-biden-midterm-campaign-appearances/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/07/jill-biden-midterm-campaign-appearances/ |
The State-by-State Battle Over Abortion in the US
Analysis by Rebecca Greenfield | Bloomberg
Anti-abortion rights demonstrators protest during a Women’s March in Austin, Texas, US, on Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. On October 8th, exactly one month before Election Day, women and their allies marched across the country for a massive nationwide “Women’s Wave” day of action meant to rally supporters of reproductive rights ahead of the 2022 midterms. (Bloomberg)
In overturning Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court didn’t so much address America’s long-running fight over abortion as spread it to statehouses across the country. The court’s June 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization repealed constitutional protections for abortions that had been in place since 1973. That gave conservative governors and legislatures the power they had long sought to limit the medical procedure in their states, in some cases severely. Advocates on both sides are pushing for federal legislation to establish nationwide rules. For now, access largely depends on where you live — a principle that could eventually apply to other long-held American rights as well.
1. What have states done?
In around a dozen states, the Dobbs decision activated so-called trigger laws — which had been passed months or years earlier in case Roe were ever overturned — that imposed new limitations on abortion. Other states led by conservatives enacted fresh restrictions. Alabama, Texas and Tennessee are among eight states that now prohibit almost all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, with the only exception being if there’s serious medical risk to the mother. Medical providers could face felony charges, carrying fines and jail sentences, for violating these laws. Some laws go beyond criminalizing abortion to give legal rights to fetuses. In some states, new restrictions on abortion have faced court challenges.
2. What has that meant for abortions?
In the first two months after the Dobbs ruling, legal abortions fell in states that restricted the practice and increased in states where it remained broadly legal, for a net decline of 10,000, or about 6%, according to the Society of Family Planning, an abortion and contraceptive advocacy and research group. That number includes medication-induced abortions performed under clinical care but not “self-managed abortions,” those achieved by obtaining and taking abortion-inducing pills outside traditional US medical channels. Another study, published by the medical journal JAMA, found a nearly 120% increase in online abortion pill sales in July and August, placed through Aid Access, a nonprofit that helps prescribe and ship the medication from overseas.
3. How common is the use of abortion pills?
They became easier to receive by mail as a result of rule changes during the pandemic and were thus already the most common way to end a pregnancy in the US when Roe was overturned. One catch: Abortion pills are most effective in the first trimester of pregnancy and are recommended for use only up to 10 or 11 weeks of pregnancy. More than half of the 50 US states stipulate that the pill must be prescribed by doctors, a stricter standard than that of the US Food and Drug Administration, which also permits prescriptions by certified nurse practitioners. Even states with near-total bans on abortion face logistical hurdles in stopping people from ordering the pills from overseas manufacturers and taking them at home.
4. What’s happening with abortion clinics?
Of 65 clinics in 14 mostly southern states that provided abortion care as of June, not a single one was still doing so as of Oct. 2, and more than two dozen of them had shut down entirely, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. For women in states with no abortion services, the nearest clinic can be hundreds of miles and multiple states away, and the cost of transportation, lodging and care can be prohibitive. Groups that help finance abortions and related expenses received an influx of donations following the Dobbs decision. Since most Americans receive health insurance through work, some companies got involved too.
5. What are companies doing?
After the Dobbs decision, US corporations including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Walt Disney Co. and Meta Platforms Inc. said they would cover travel costs for employees going out-of-state for abortions.
6. What’s being proposed on the national level?
The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill that would basically re-establish the abortion protections that existed under Roe, making it legal to terminate pregnancies until what’s known as fetal viability. But it’s highly unlikely to pass the Senate, where a 60% supermajority is needed for most major legislation. On the Republican side, Senator Lindsey Graham proposed a nationwide abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but even some in his party oppose the idea as politically perilous in a nation that generally supports abortion rights.
7. Why is there concern about other long-held rights?
In his concurring opinion in the Dobbs decisions, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that the court should reconsider other decisions that, like Roe, rely on the assertion that an unwritten right to privacy is contained in the US Constitution. He cited rulings that legalized contraception, same-sex intercourse and same-sex marriage. | 2022-11-07T22:48:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The State-by-State Battle Over Abortion in the US - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-state-by-state-battle-over-abortion-in-the-us/2022/11/07/e7f86e7c-5ee6-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-state-by-state-battle-over-abortion-in-the-us/2022/11/07/e7f86e7c-5ee6-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
A 70-year-old woman from Newark claimed two six-figure prizes from the state lottery on the same day. (fergregory/iStockphoto)
After seven years of playing the lottery, a Delaware woman had a lucky break last month when one of the Ultimate Cash Instant Game tickets she’d bought at a gas station won her $100,000.
The 70-year-old woman from Newark told her best friend the news, and the pair drove to the lottery headquarters to claim her prize a few days later. Little did they know, they’d be back soon.
“When I scratched the $300,000 winning SERIOUS MONEY ticket later in the day, we just sat there in disbelief,” said the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to the Delaware Lottery, which does not publish winners’ names without consent.
Delaware is one of only a handful of states with laws that allow winners to remain anonymous, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association. In others, winners’ names are public record.
Powerball jackpot passes $1B again. An expert says it’ll happen more often.
Helene Keeley, acting director of the Delaware Lottery, congratulated the woman on her “double win.”
“It’s great to see our players bring home six-figure prizes,” Keeley said in a statement.
Lottery players across the country have been frantically buying tickets in recent days as the Powerball — one of the largest jackpot lottery games in the United States — recently soared to a record $1.9 billion value, the second time it has reached a 10-digit number.
Saturday’s Powerball drawing was the 40th consecutive one without a winner, and the next drawing is scheduled for Monday night. The jackpot’s odds are 1 in 292.2 million.
Thomas decided to take the two lump sums — totaling $780,000, ($551,851 after taxes) — to pay bills, help his family and potentially buy a house, the state lottery said.
Before the Delaware woman’s double win, the most recent person from the state to claim a six-figure victory was an 81-year-old who won $100,000 from an Oct. 10 Powerball drawing, according to the state’s 2022 winners list. | 2022-11-07T22:48:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Delaware woman wins $400,000 from lotteries in one week - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/07/double-lottery-win-delaware/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/07/double-lottery-win-delaware/ |
The return of Georgetown center Qudus Wahab after a year at Maryland should help the Hoyas in the paint. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The evaluation was no surprise coming from Patrick Ewing. The Hall of Fame center watched his Hoyas put together one of the worst offenses in the country last season without a big man that was any real threat to score. That would seem to be unacceptable for someone who won a national championship as a dominant big man and helped start the tradition of Georgetown’s dominant centers.
Ewing. Alonzo Mourning. Dikembe Mutombo. Greg Monroe. Roy Hibbert.
The Hoyas scored 70.7 points per game last season, which was 183rd in the country and ninth in the 11-team Big East, en route to a 6-25 record, including going winless in conference play. Georgetown’s two centers in 2021-22, Timothy Ighoefe and Ryan Mutombo, combined to average 7.9 points and 8.7 rebounds.
“That was the biggest part that we were missing … having somebody that we could throw it to in the post,” Ewing said.
Ewing went back to the future to address the gaping hole in the middle of the floor. Senior Qudus Wahab returned via the transfer portal after transferring from Georgetown to Maryland after two seasons on the Hilltop. The 6-11 center led the Hoyas in rebounds and was second in scoring in 2020-21 after coming to Georgetown as a three-star recruit ranked the No. 24 center in the nation, according to recruiting site 247Sports. He transferred to Maryland last season and saw his numbers decline in nearly every major statistical area. The hope is the Hoyas get the pre-Terps Wahab and that Ewing can continue to develop a player at his specialty position.
“If you want to be successful in any high school, college and beyond, you need to be able to score at all three levels,” Ewing said. “That was part of the team that I felt we were lacking so I am happy to have [Wahab] back. It’s still a work in progress. All still have to get used to playing with each other, but I have stressed to the group that he is someone that we are going to need once the season starts.”
Ighoefe transferred out and landed at California-Baptist, but Mutombo remains. Ewing also signed 6-10 Connecticut transfer Akok Akok, who averaged 3.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 1.1 blocks in 23 games last season.
“I'm a guy that brings a lot of energy to the team,” Akok said. “Can block shots, can run the floor, shoot the ball very well. Can step out on the perimeter and stretch the floor and make shots. Just a guy that brings a lot of energy to the team.”
The hope is that better play from the big men will also translate to the defensive end, where the Hoyas ranked dead last in the Big East by allowing 77 points per game. Ewing called the defense the biggest area that needs to improve and better rim protection and rebounding would go a long way. The Hoyas were ninth in the conference in defensive rebounding and eighth in blocked shots. Between Wahab, Akok and Mutombo, that’s plenty of natural size — now Georgetown needs the production.
“Think that’d be the most obvious thing that Georgetown missed last year,” Wahab said, “that’s coming from the paint and also rim protection.”
There are plenty of unknowns about the roster as four of the top five scorers from last season are gone and the fifth, point guard Dante Harris, is not with the team because of personal reasons. Ewing gave no timetable for his return. Ten players from last season, not including Harris, are no longer on the roster and ten newcomers, including Wayne Bristol Jr. who sat out last season, have arrived. 247Sports ranked the Hoyas’ seven-player transfer class fourth in the nation.
Ewing’s sixth season at the helm begins Tuesday with the Hoyas hosting Coppin State at Capital One Arena. They’ll host Wisconsin-Green Bay and Northwestern before heading to Jamaica for the Jamaica Classic. Big East play begins at home against Xavier on Dec. 16. Ewing sits with a 68-84 record and just one NCAA tournament appearance. | 2022-11-07T22:49:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Georgetown brought back Qudus Wahab to shore up the middle - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/georgetown-centers-qudus-wahab/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/georgetown-centers-qudus-wahab/ |
FILE - Minnesota Twins’ Carlos Correa rounds the bases after hitting a two-run home run against the Cleveland Guardians during the seventh inning of a baseball game Monday, June 27, 2022, in Cleveland. Minnesota Twins shortstop Carlos Correa formally opted out of his contract to become a free agent, the MLB Players’ Association announced Monday, Nov. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Ron Schwane, File) | 2022-11-07T22:49:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Correa formally opts out as Twins let Sanó, Bundy, Archer go - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/correa-formally-opts-out-as-twins-let-sano-bundy-archer-go/2022/11/07/44bcf1e2-5eeb-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/correa-formally-opts-out-as-twins-let-sano-bundy-archer-go/2022/11/07/44bcf1e2-5eeb-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
The game’s pool of answers gets some new rules as the game gets its own editor
The New York Times-owned hit puzzle game Wordle is getting a few adjustments to its answer system and a new dedicated editor, Tracy Bennett. The Times announced the system change and Bennett’s appointment Nov. 7.
Wordle now uses an answer list curated by the Times, and its pool of possible answers has shrunk to omit plural forms of three or four-letter words ending with “ES” or “S.” Words like MOLES or PANTS, for example, won’t ever be the right answers, but WOMEN or CACTI could still be correct. However, players can still use plural nouns like MOLES to see if any letters match up with the correct answer.
Other than that, the gameplay remains the same. You get six chances to guess the word of the day, which is selected from the same dictionary as before with a focus on words that are “fun, accessible, lively and varied,” as stated by the Times. Moving forward, Wordle will be under the stewardship of Bennett, who was previously an associate editor for the Times crossword.
Wordle is the creation of Welsh programmer Josh Wardle. Wardle originally made a prototype of the game back in 2013 and shelved it. He decided to complete the game during the pandemic with the help of his partner, Palak Shah. Shah curated the original 2,500 word answer list for the game. Wardle initially only shared the game with family and close friends, but when he unveiled it to the rest of the world in October 2021, Wordle became a viral hit that attracted millions players on a daily basis. On Jan. 31, the New York Times Company (which owns and publishes the New York Times) purchased Wordle for an undisclosed price “in the low-seven figures.”
When Wordles collide: ‘Wordle!’ developer donates $50,000 after old app goes viral by accident
Upon acquiring the game, the Times banned some obscenities from Wordle’s dictionary. However, it appears the policy was rescinded at some point; those words are currently playable as guesses. The Times did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
Certain generic words are also absent from the game’s dictionary. “ASIAN” is not a valid entry. “KOREA” and “BURMA” cannot be used while “JAPAN” and “CHINA” can be, perhaps out of the same desire to avoid political tension as the publication’s crossword section.
Some players have claimed that the Times has made Wordle more difficult since taking over the game, citing answers such as “CAULK” and “RUPEE.” This claim has been disputed, and in fact, the Times modified a few of the answers that were scheduled in pre-acquisition to make it easier. For example, the answer for Feb. 15 was AROMA, which was a substitute was the original answer AGORA (a sort of town square that existed in the city-states of ancient Greece, for the curious).
Wordle has also inspired dozens of spin offs from other developers who adapted the format to different subjects. Some prominent examples include geography guessing game Worldle and Heardle for music lovers. There’s even one for video game fans called GuessThe.Game, where players must identify the video game of the day based on screenshots that begin cryptically and become increasingly more obvious with hints such as release year, Metacritic score and platform to help the player along. | 2022-11-07T23:05:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wordle gets a new answer system and a dedicated New York Times editor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/07/wordle-new-answers-new-york-times-update/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/07/wordle-new-answers-new-york-times-update/ |
Falling sales suggest plant-based meat may be all hat, no cattle
Beyond Burger plant-based patties get prepared in a frying pan. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The future of plant-based meat was supposed to be cooked to perfection. In recent years, corporate and venture capital funds poured into the space. Fast-food giants such as KFC and Burger King raced to roll out offerings. The meme stock crowd rallied around Beyond Meat. Sales were growing. It would appeal to vegans missing meat! Even better, it would find a following with meat-eaters looking to cut back!
It’s now clear that the hype got ahead of a sometimes less than tasty reality. Sales of plant-based meats in the United States are down by more than 10 percent from this time last year. The issue is basic: The problems fake meat were meant to solve — from the climate impact of industrial farming to the health impacts of meat — are all too real, but the solution it offers appeals to far fewer consumers than expected.
The truth, of course, is that we eat not simply for nutrition, but for enjoyment. Meat offers up a sinewy, gamy, savory experience that is, to date, impossible to reproduce.
When I asked around over a period of weeks, I discovered few fans of processed meat substitutes. “Too chewy,” one friend said. “Mushy,” said another. My older son made a face. The only person I could find who claimed it tasted like the real thing admitted, actually, she hadn’t tasted the real thing in more than 20 years. Some people with vegetarian-leaning diets told me they didn’t mind it and were happy to have it as an option on fast-food menus, and others told me that they enjoyed it as a substitute for breakfast meat like sausage and bacon. But few people seemed to find plant-based meat really delectable.
On the expert side, everyone from Wall Street short sellers to market researchers said that, at least for now, many fake meat sales appeared to be to people giving it a test drive. “I think a lot of the demand was people trying it once,” said noted short seller Jim Chanos, when I called him up to ask how once-promising Beyond Meat ended up as one of the most popular shorts out there. He pointed out the company is "unprofitable.” When I asked him what he himself thought of the offerings, he replied, “Put me in the category of people who tried it once.”
And when it came to health, yes, these “meats” cuts back significantly on saturated fat compared to the real thing — but they also contain more sodium. They’re a highly processed offering. “These are not your mother’s veggie burgers made with beans and other whole plant ingredients,” warns a report issued this year by the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. The industrial food complex is a huge player, with companies such as Tyson Foods and Cargill dominating the space.
Those facts mean that many people well-informed about health have remained skeptical about adding these artificial meats to their diets. “It has the same feel as much else in the industrial landscape, where we think we can outsmart nature,” says Kristin Lawless, the author of “Formerly Known As Food.”
The data shows the new offering doesn’t seem to result in major meat cutbacks — it’s more of a supermarket add-on. As a study published this year in the journal Nature dryly observed, “Interestingly, after a household’s first PBMA [plant-based meat alternatives] purchase, ground meat consumption did not fall.”
In a moment of rising food costs, such novelties become all too easy to dispense with. Of the people who told me they both enjoyed plant-based meat and dined on it regularly (often as a substitute for breakfast meats), several said they’d cut back when inflation kicked up. That points to a significant problem — artificial meat is often more expensive than at least the budget version of the real thing.
In other words, people want to do right by the environment and their health — but not with a significant cost to their taste buds or wallet.
It’s hard not to think about margarine. Back in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, margarine was rapidly supplanting butter in cooking. One commercial proclaimed the stuff was so good it could “fool mother nature.” This wasn’t true, and consumers knew it. They just thought it was a healthier choice. When it became clear in the 1990s that wasn’t so, sales melted away. That’s not to say margarine is not still with us, but few talk about it as a replacement for butter.
It could be that what we’re seeing is a brief pause, and the meat-imitation market will pick back up as the product and the economy improves. One reason for optimism: plant-based meat consumers are, overall, younger than other shoppers, meaning there is more room for growth.
But there is already a viable protein option for those who want to maintain a vegan diet or cut back on meat. Like the doctor says, eat your peas … and other legumes such as lentils and beans. True, they don’t taste like a sausage or chicken. Then again, if you ask me, neither do the imitators. | 2022-11-07T23:13:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Falling demand for plant-based meat suggests hype got ahead of reality - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/plant-based-meat-declining-sales/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/plant-based-meat-declining-sales/ |
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to Oleg Kozhemyako, governor of the far eastern Primorsky region in September. Casualties among members of the 155th Brigade, which is normally based in Kozhemyako's region, have been high, prompting rare public outcry. (Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/Kremlin/AP)
The ministry added that the 155th Brigade had been fighting near the regional hub of Vuhledar for more than 10 days and advanced “five kilometers deeps into Ukrainian positions.” | 2022-11-07T23:35:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia’s heavy casualties in Ukraine spark outcry and rare official response - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/07/casualties-russia-outcry-vuhledar-svatove/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/07/casualties-russia-outcry-vuhledar-svatove/ |
Climate change threatening 'things Americans value most,' U.S. report says
US climate envoy John F. Kerry speaks during a briefing at the State Department on Nov. 2. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
1Every part of the United States is grappling with climate change — but not equally
2A warming world threatens reliable water supplies
3Extreme events are wreaking havoc on homes and property
4The U.S. can expect more forced migration and displacement
5Climate change is a growing public health threat
6It’s not just humans who are feeling the effects
7 There is good news — and opportunity to still shape the future
Climate change is unleashing “far-reaching and worsening” calamities in every region of the United States, and the economic and human toll will only increase unless humans move faster to slow the planet’s warming, according to a sprawling new federal report released Monday.
“The things Americans value most are at risk,” write the authors of the National Climate Assessment, who represent a broad range of federal agencies. “Many of the harmful impacts that people across the country are already experiencing will worsen as warming increases, and new risks will emerge.”
The congressionally mandated assessment, last issued under the Trump administration in 2018, comes as world leaders gather this week in Egypt for a United Nations climate summit, known as COP27, aimed at prodding nations to tackle the problem with more urgency.
Its authors detail how climate-fueled disasters are becoming more costly and more common, and how the science is more clear than ever that rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to slow the profound changes that are underway.
Humans have pushed the climate into ‘unprecedented’ territory, landmark U.N. report finds
The draft report, which likely will be finalized next year after a period of public comment and peer review, finds that in a world that has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, the situation in the United States is even more extreme.
“Over the past 50 years, the U.S. has warmed 68 percent faster than the planet as a whole,” the report finds, noting that the change reflects a broader global pattern in which land areas warm faster than the ocean, and higher latitudes warm more rapidly than lower latitudes.
Since 1970, the authors state, the continental United States has experienced 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit of warming, well above the average for the planet.
“The United States — exclusive of Alaska — is warming about two-thirds faster than the planet as a whole,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth.
That shift means significant parts of the country now must grapple with growing threats to safe drinking water, housing security and infrastructure. A hotter atmosphere creates a litany of health hazards, makes farming and fishing more difficult and unpredictable and imperils key ecosystems.
“There is no known precedent for a species changing its own climate as quickly as we are changing ours, and there are many uncertainties associated with a rapidly warming world,” the document states.
Scientists have documented with increased clarity how human-caused emissions are heating the planet. But Monday’s assessment underscores how those changes are deepening impacts on the health and pocketbooks of average Americans.
John Podesta, senior adviser to President Biden on climate change, said the report “underscores that Americans in every region of the country and every sector of the economy face real and sobering climate impacts.”
The study highlights how the frequency of billion dollar disasters has now increased from once every four months in the 1980s to once every three weeks in the present. It finds that the United States is experiencing some of the most severe sea level rise on the planet.
And it details the ever greater certainty that rainfall and heat extremes are proliferating, as are damaging wildfires and crippling floods.
“Substantively I think the report does a remarkably good job of connecting the dots between climate change and the things that really matter to folks,” said Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb. “The economy, jobs, justice. These things are what people need to be reading about to be understanding how these physical impacts are going to change our lives.”
In the short term, the assessment finds, communities must do more to adapt to the changes that already are here — and some are doing just that. But over the long term, the only real solution is for humanity to muster the political and technological will to stop polluting the atmosphere.
“We’re past the point of incremental changes,” Cobb said. “That era has passed us by, and the magnitude of the challenges we’re facing right now going forward are going to require transformative changes.”
Below are some central takeaways from Monday’s report, including what scientists say must happen for the United States to help shape a less costly, more livable future.
Every part of the United States is grappling with climate change — but not equally
From stifling heat waves in the Midwest to deadly floods in the Southeast, from warming oceans along the Northeast coast to raging wildfires in the West, “people across the country are facing increasing risks from climate change,” the assessment finds.
Further, given the warming that is already unavoidable, those kinds of catastrophes are likely to grow in coming years even if greenhouse gas emissions fall sharply.
But the impacts of such disasters are hardly uniform. If anything, they exacerbate inequality.
“The effects of climate change are felt most strongly by communities that are already overburdened, including Indigenous peoples, people of color and low-income communities,” the report finds. “These frontline communities experience harmful climate impacts first and worst, yet are often the least responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.”
A warming world threatens reliable water supplies
The government’s assessment argues that even amid more extreme rainfall and flooding events in many regions, there will be less reliable drinking water for millions of people.
That’s because saltwater is invading aquifers as seas rise, floods spread agricultural nutrients that pollute wells and other sources of drinking water, and lakes face a growing threat of harmful algal blooms.
While some areas struggle with deluges, others are stricken by drought.
Between 1980 and 2021, the report finds, drought and related heat waves around the country caused nearly $300 billion in damages. In recent years, droughts have caused water supplies to wither, reduced agricultural productivity and severely reduced water levels in major reservoirs.
“What the climate assessment does is that it brings it home and talks about what is already happening today and how climate change is making our food, water and infrastructure worse,” said Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy and a professor at Texas Tech University.
“Droughts are projected to increase in intensity, duration and frequency, mostly in the Southwest, with implications for surface water and groundwater supplies,” the authors write.
Extreme events are wreaking havoc on homes and property
As climate research has advanced, the connection between persistent warming and damaging real-world impacts has become clearer. Monday’s report details how a number of costly, deadly disasters are attributable at least in part to human-caused warming, including Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and a June 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave that killed 229 people.
The authors also detail how the nation has experienced more frequent billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. In 2021, the U.S. government tracked 20 such disasters — a collection of calamities that cost the nation an estimated $145 billion and killed nearly 700 people.
The United States has experienced an average of 7.7 billion-dollar disasters annually over the past four decades. But in the past five years, that average has jumped to nearly 18 events each year, or about one every several weeks.
Those disasters also don’t hit all Americans the same.
Homes with poor insulation or inefficient cooling can make it harder for low-income residents to heat or cool their homes. Redlining policies that long ago forced minority residents into less valuable neighborhoods now mean such communities are less likely to have adequate tree cover or access to green space.
These and other factors mean that a hotter climate and the extreme weather it fuels most negatively impact those who are least able to deal with the consequences.
The U.S. can expect more forced migration and displacement
Already, the authors of Monday’s report say, major storms such as Hurricane Maria, as well as extended droughts that strained lives and livelihoods, have led people to leave their homes in search of more stable places.
In the hotter world that lies ahead, they write, additional climate impacts — along with other factors such as the housing market, job trends and pandemics — are expected to increasingly influence migration patterns.
“More severe wildfires in California, sea level rise in Florida, and more frequent flooding in Texas are expected to displace millions of people, while climate-driven economic changes abroad continue to increase the rate of emigration to the United States,” the report finds.
Such shifts are inherently complicated and fraught.
Several Indigenous tribes in coastal regions, facing fast-rising seas, have already sought government help to relocate, but have struggled to do so without significant hurdles.
“Forced migrations and displacements disrupt social networks, decrease housing security, and exacerbate grief, anxiety and mental health outcomes,” the authors write.
Climate change is a growing public health threat
From vampire bats spreading more rabies in Texas and Florida, to the growing spread of Lyme disease thanks to booming tick populations, to more spreading of dengue, Zika, and chikungunya disease by mosquitoes, the human health impacts of climate change are sweeping.
Monday’s report says that scientists have “very high confidence” that “climate-related hazards will continue to grow, increasing morbidity and mortality across all regions of the United States.”
More extreme heat events, more communities forced to inhale toxic wildfire smoke, warmer temperatures that increase the transmission of diseases and other factors are exposing ever more Americans to the health risks posed by a warming atmosphere.
“While climate change harms everyone’s health, impacts exacerbate long-standing disparities that result in inequitable outcomes for historically marginalized people,” the report states.
But it also finds sharply reducing greenhouse gas emissions “would result in widespread health benefits and avoided death or illness that far outweigh the costs.”
It’s not just humans who are feeling the effects
Across the United States, the authors write, rising land and water temperatures are shrinking the habitats for wildlife and driving the migration of plant, bird and fish species northward or to higher elevations.
Hurricanes and storm surges are battering mangrove forests and wetlands that historically safeguard coastal communities. Wildfires supercharge threats to the water quality of lakes and streams. Marine heat waves stress the coral reefs and sea grass that support key fish populations.
“Ecosystems are having to adapt faster by an order of magnitude faster than they did in the last warming they experienced,” Hayhoe said, and that’s affecting the timing of when plants bloom and when their leaves are changing.
These biodiversity threats, too, could grow more dire without concerted action.
“Without emissions reductions, drastic changes to ecosystems are expected to pass a tipping point by mid- to late century,” the authors write, “where rapid shifts in environmental conditions lead to irreversible ecological transformations.”
There is good news — and opportunity to still shape the future
Hausfather said that the report shows some signs of hope going forward.
“Once we get global emissions to zero or net zero we expect warming to stop,” he said. “It doesn’t mean it cools down but that we don’t have as much.”
He cautioned, however, that “some climate change impacts — like sea level rise — will continue for millennia to come even after temperatures stabilize.”
The assessment also shows how innovation is reducing greenhouse gases and how adaptation is helping communities gird themselves for rising sea levels.
“Fifteen years ago it was really hard to find examples of people who were actually adapting and building resilience,” said Hayhoe. “But today it is happening all around us.”
Near-term actions such as ramping up public transit and incentivizing electric vehicles and energy efficiency can have tangible benefits. But, the authors write, it is long-term planning and transformational investments that offer “the opportunity to create a healthier, more just, and more resilient nation.” | 2022-11-08T00:19:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate change threatening 'things Americans value most,' report says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/cop27-climate-change-report-us/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/cop27-climate-change-report-us/ |
At COP27, developing countries want compensation for damage already sustained from climate change. Rich countries aren’t ready.
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, center, in Egypt for the climate summit. (Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images)
“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,” warned U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, as he opened two weeks of talks, known as COP27, in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh. Countries have agreed to start talking for the first time about the world’s wealthy nations paying a form of climate reparations to the most vulnerable countries.
The annual U.N. climate gathering is the main venue for nations to come together to try to cooperate on efforts to fight global warming. This year, policymakers have agreed to start talking about the developing world’s demands for more help with the harm they are already suffering from climate change, as farmland dries up, towns relocate to escape rising seas, and conflicts increase over access to increasingly scarce resources.
“We are getting dangerously close to the point of no return,” Guterres said.
But there was every indication that talks about “loss and damage” would end without significant breakthroughs. After hours of bargaining over the weekend about what items to include in the agenda, rich nations said that even including the subject in the official talks was a major step. Vulnerable countries said it was the bare minimum.
The gathering “offers us an opportunity to either make history or, if you like, be a victim of history,” Senegalese President Macky Sall told leaders Monday, speaking on behalf of African nations in his capacity as chair of the African Union.
“Those who pollute the most should pay the most in order to get our planet off this track of climate crisis,” Sall said.
After a year of catastrophic flooding in Pakistan and Nigeria, widespread drought and the hottest-ever summer in Europe, policymakers said the toll of climate change is becoming ever more apparent. But they worried that the political will by the world’s richest nations to help their more vulnerable peers is limited. Fury among those most affected by global warming is rising in proportion.
Amid soaring global inflation, the war in Ukraine and a narrowing political path in Washington for President Biden to act ambitiously on climate issues, expectations for the talks were lower than for those in Scotland a year ago. Last year, advocates for action held hopes that the Biden administration was ready to reengage on climate issues after President Donald Trump’s climate-skeptic term in office. This year, the frustration is more palpable, with countries failing to live up to their existing promises even after some in Glasgow pledged to deliver more-ambitious climate goals.
The bitterness is compounded by the choice of Egypt, a nation with a long record of human rights violations, as host. The climate movement gained steam through free speech and demonstrations, but Egyptian authorities have banished protests to the periphery of Sharm el-Sheikh, all but eliminating them and forcing activists to employ more subdued strategies. And one of the country’s most prominent political prisoners, the British Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, entered his second day of withholding both food and water in a prison cell outside Cairo to protest his detention.
“The Global South remains at the mercy of the Global North on these issues,” Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley told leaders.
“What will our choice be?” she asked. “We have the power to act or the power to remain passive and do nothing. I pray that we will leave Egypt with a clear understanding that the things that are facing us today are interconnected.”
Even among rich nations there are divisions, with French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday vowing to push the United States and China to “step up” emissions reduction efforts and funding for vulnerable countries.
“The Europeans are paying, but the simple problem is that we’re the only ones paying,” Macron said during an event in Sharm el-Sheikh with African and French climate activists.
“And so now, one must put the pressure on rich, non-European countries, to tell them, ‘You must pay your part.’ ”
Macron’s effort may have to wait until next week at a summit of the leaders of the Group of 20 major economies, since neither Biden nor Chinese President Xi Jinping were in Egypt on Monday. Xi skipped the gathering last year, too. Biden is expected to visit Egypt at the end of the week, after other leaders have departed, because the midterm elections are keeping him in the United States early in the week.
American policymakers have focused on bolstering private investment to support the transition to clean energy in developing countries. Along with various partners at the summit, U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry is expected to announce a plan for the private sector to earn “high quality” carbon credits from channeling funds toward projects that speed the energy transition in developing countries, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to preview the effort.
Experts said that the conversations on loss and damage would probably take years to develop, and that the best-case outcome from Egypt was probably an agreement on a framework to keep talking. Even that is uncertain, said Jonathan Pershing, Kerry’s deputy until earlier this year, who is now the program director of environment at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
“This is the answer that the political moment would accept, but ultimately we will need to have more specificity to move forward,” he said. He noted that the current emissions reduction framework had been under discussion for decades before it was settled in Paris in 2015.
Leaders of climate-hit countries said that regardless of pressures from the war in Ukraine and political crosswinds in rich nations, their needs were urgent and expanding. Humanitarian aid is not sufficient to meet disaster-struck countries’ growing need for funds, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said.
“For the lost and the damaged world,” he said, “such gatherings are our only hope.”
Some climate advocates said they would view the talks as a success if any concrete progress is made on what some call climate reparations. Putting it on the agenda was a “little milestone,” said Harjeet Singh, an Indian climate expert who is head of global political strategy for Climate Action Network International, an advocacy group.
A dedicated fund for loss and damage, overseen by the U.N. climate agency, could establish a mechanism for assessing all those losses, Singh said. It could produce technical reports on the developing world’s needs and set recommendations for how much funding rich countries must deliver. It would also offer a way to hold wealthy nations accountable for fulfilling their promises.
“We are not expecting every penny now,” he said.
But after the climate catastrophes of this year, as well as long-running frustrations over the developed world’s failure to deliver promised support, the people bearing the worst effects of climate change need reassurance that the world recognizes their suffering, Singh said.
“I would call it a success if it sends that message of hope, and restores trust in the system,” he said.
Kaplan reported from Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Siobhán O’Grady in Sharm el-Sheikh and Tim Puko, Maxine Joselow and Paulina Firozi in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-11-08T00:19:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.N. climate talks off to tense start as nations feud over damages - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/un-climate-conference-damages/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/un-climate-conference-damages/ |
Teen pleads guilty to shooting fellow Magruder High student in bathroom
Steven Alston Jr. had brought a homemade ghost gun to the Montgomery County school
Police talk to a man outside Magruder High School in Derwood, Md., on Jan. 21. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
A Montgomery County teenager accused of shooting a fellow student inside the boys bathroom at Magruder High School — nearly killing him and putting the school on lockdown — pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder Monday.
Steven Alston Jr., now 18, “pulled a handgun from his waistband and pointed it at the victim’s head,” prosecutor Donna Fenton said in court. “The victim attempted to push the handgun away, when at that time the defendant stepped back and intentionally fired.”
DeAndre Thomas, who was 15 at the time, was struck in the pelvis. He spent more than 50 days in the hospital and underwent at least eight operations. Prosecutors indicated he will attend Alston’s sentencing hearing set for Dec. 22.
As part of Alston’s plea agreement, prosecutors said they would “affirmatively recommend” placement in a youth offender program at the Patuxent Institution. The program typically takes six to seven years to complete, according to earlier testimony in the case, and has its own parole program.
Earlier coverage: Victim inches toward recovery
Alston’s attorney, David Felsen, has long said Alston felt threatened by Thomas and others and brought the gun to school to protect himself.
“There is also substantial evidence that my client was the victim of prior assaults,” Felsen said in Montgomery Circuit Court on Monday, adding that he will address the topic more at the sentencing. “That does support his statement that he was concerned about being jumped.”
The midday shooting on Jan. 21 at Magruder, a school of 1,600 students, shocked residents of Montgomery County. It also shed light on the availability of ghost guns, fully functional weapons that can be put together with parts ordered online and without a permit.
In earlier court proceedings, prosecutors played audio of an interview between investigators and Thomas, the shooting victim. He told them that during the months before the shooting, he and Alston began “talking trash to each other,” which led to a series of fistfights. “Just punching each other,” Thomas said.
On Jan. 21, Thomas added, the two had agreed to meet in the bathroom for what Thomas thought was going to be another fistfight. That’s when Alston walked in, pulled out the gun and fired, according to authorities.
Students in the bathroom scattered out, making commotion in the hallway that a school security officer noticed, prosecutors said. He went into the bathroom and found Thomas.
Earlier coverage: Alston to remain in adult court
Over the ensuing minutes, Alston — with his gun concealed — was able to walk undetected to a different part of the school. When the lockdown was called, a teacher helped pull him into a classroom.
He stayed there for about two hours while police tried to identify the shooter. An assistant principal working with them noted a social media post that stated: “Steven shot ’Dre.” Investigators determined that Steven was Steven Alston. A SWAT team then burst into the classroom he had ducked into.
Their actions were captured on video, which was played in court.
“Hands up! Hands up!” the tactical officers shouted, before moving in on Alston and quickly knocking him to the ground.
Police charged Alston, who was 17 at the time, as an adult.
In an earlier interview, Thomas’s mother, Karen, had spoken about the case. “I was totally scared,” she said. “I thought I was going to lose my baby.”
Felsen had tried at an earlier hearing to get his case moved to the juvenile court system, arguing its focus on rehabilitation was more appropriate for his client. The attorney noted that even if prosecutors and the judge recommend his client go the Patuxent Institution, there is no guarantee he will be accepted, which could result in him being sent to a general adult prison.
But Judge David Boynton ruled he should stay in the adult system. “Mr. Alston clearly poses a danger to the community,” the judge said.
In court Monday, Boynton said that in pleading guilty to attempted first-degree murder, Alston was admitting that he had taken “steps in furtherance” of premeditated murder. | 2022-11-08T00:20:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teen pleads guilty in Magruder High School bathroom shooting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/07/magruder-high-plea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/07/magruder-high-plea/ |
About 85 percent of people who were qualified to be prescribed the antiviral Paxlovid did not take it, researchers say. (Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg)
Covid patients who were treated with Paxlovid, the oral antiviral that has proved highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death among elderly and at-risk people, appeared less likely to suffer from several key symptoms associated with long covid, according to a new study.
The report, which draws on databases from the Department of Veterans Affairs, examined more than 9,000 people who took Paxlovid, along with an almost 50,000-strong control group of people who tested positive but did not take the drug. It showed an approximately 25 percent reduction in 10 of the 12 symptoms studied, including the common complaints of lingering fatigue and brain fog. The results held true whether or not people had been vaccinated or had a prior infection.
“This study is very important,” said Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University. “It has public health implications that are quite relevant today.”
Even as vaccines have reduced the risk of hospitalization and death from infection with SARS-CoV-2, researchers continue to worry about the individual suffering and population-wide threats from long covid.
Data released this summer by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Household Pulse Survey suggests that close to 15 percent of adults have had long covid, developing symptoms lasting three or more months after contracting the virus. The CDC recently enhanced the web-based survey to assess how big an impact those symptoms are having on long-haulers’ ability to carry out day-to-day activities.
Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research and development at the VA St. Louis Health Care System and lead author of the new report, said it showed the importance of introducing an antiviral to reduce the severity of acute disease. It also lends credence to the idea that long covid symptoms may be driven, at least in part, by viral persistence, in which the virus is not fully cleared by infected individuals.
“Suppressing the viral load may reduce the problem of viral persistence,” said Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
The new study, funded by VA, was released online as a preprint, meaning it has not yet been peer reviewed as is standard protocol for academic journals. Publishing preprints has become more common in the urgent atmosphere of the pandemic, often leading to a form of almost instant online peer review. Several prominent virologists chimed in online quickly and positively.
The pandemic is rewriting the rules of science. But at what cost?
Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine and executive vice president of Scripps Research, tweeted that the report is “a major advance,” and reviewed the findings in an online post that emphasizes the urgency of developing treatments for what is now widely recognized as a mass-disabling condition.
“We have no treatment that has been validated to treat Long Covid,” Topol wrote. “Rigorous, randomized, definitive clinical trials are long overdue.”
There are plans to measure the impact of the Pfizer drug (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir) next year as part of the National Institutes of Health’s $1.15 billion RECOVER program, the agency announced recently. The clinical trial will enroll 1,700 adults. Results are not expected until 2024.
Some researchers said it would be useful to have access to data from Pfizer’s placebo-controlled clinical trials assessing the impact of the antiviral on acute covid in thousands of volunteers.
“We could do a long-term follow up to determine if both groups have the same or different rates of persistent symptoms,” said David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai Health System in New York.
Pfizer said the company is “working with multiple institutions toward the start of studies to evaluate Paxlovid for potential use in addressing long covid.” In its 2022 financial guidance, the company reported Paxlovid revenue of $22 billion.
Clinicians have been hampered in developing specific treatments for long covid in large part because the mechanism — or mechanisms — behind the huge variety of reported symptoms has not been identified. Leading theories include viral persistence, the development of microclots and acute inflammation, which other studies have shown can cause long-term damage.
Iwasaki speculates that using Paxlovid to stop the virus from replicating might not only prevent viral persistence but also the other mechanisms, by containing the virus within the upper respiratory tract before it migrates to other organs.
“The virus is the trigger for all of the other hypotheses,” Iwasaki said. “Nip it in the bud as quickly as possible, and some of these things could be prevented.” She said she believes there may be advantages in taking Paxlovid as soon as possible after diagnosis.
The new study has inherent limitations.
The people who enrolled qualified to receive the drug according to the emergency use authorization issued last year by the Food and Drug Administration, which is for anyone 12 and older at risk of severe disease including those 65 and older. As a result, the study did not include previously healthy young people, who represent the majority of patients seen at many long covid clinics, according to Benjamin Abramoff, director of the Post-COVID Assessment and Recovery Clinic at Penn Medicine.
There is no data to show whether those previously healthy young people would reap the same benefits as people at risk of severe disease. Putrino cautioned that the study’s promising results may be related to the antiviral’s ability to reduce the severity of acute illness that can lead to lingering complications such as lung fibrosis from pneumonia, pericarditis from inflammation and what’s known as post-ICU syndrome, rather than the other symptoms he commonly sees.
“Many, many others with long covid had mild/non-hospitalized acute disease but went on to develop this debilitating, syndromic, ME/CFS-type long covid,” Putrino said, referring to chronic fatigue syndrome.
As a retrospective study rather than a randomized controlled trial, there may also be underlying differences that are unaccounted for in the study between those who took Paxlovid and the control group, including being more engaged with their physicians, said Abramoff.
“The study provides more evidence for the importance of prospective controlled studies to look into Paxlovid as a means of preventing long covid in the broader population,” Abramoff said.
Al-Aly, the lead author, said the study also highlighted for him the remarkable underutilization of an effective therapy, with 85 percent of people who were qualified to be prescribed the antiviral not taking it. “Is it because they were not offered it, or they had concerns?” he asked.
In the short time since the study was released online, Al-Aly said he has seen lay readers draw misguided conclusions.
“We are not saying any and all people should take Paxlovid,” Al-Aly said. “At this point, we do not know that. People need to understand that.” | 2022-11-08T00:20:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paxlovid may reduce long covid risk for some patients, VA study finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/07/paxlovid-reduces-long-covid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/07/paxlovid-reduces-long-covid/ |
President Richard M. Nixon waves to an estimated 8,000 of his supporters at a youth rally in Marine Stadium on Aug. 22, 1972, in Miami Beach after the Republican National Convention nominated him for reelection. With him are Pam Powell, head of Young Voters for the President, and Sammy Davis, Jr., the rally master of ceremonies. (AP)
An earlier version of this article misstated the chronology of President Nixon's statements and actions. He made his remarks about youth voting less than a year before the Watergate break-in, not three months after the break-in. This version has been corrected.
Fifty years ago, when young Americans aged 18 to 20 got to vote in their first presidential election, Democrats were confident that it would be a bonanza for their candidate, George McGovern. But President Richard M. Nixon had other ideas.
After the ratification of the 26th Amendment in 1971, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, Nixon invited 500 newly eligible voters to the White House for a July 5, 1971, ceremony, where the amendment was officially certified.
“A country throughout history, we find, goes through ebbs and flows of idealism,” Nixon told them. “Time after time the country needs an infusion of new spirit, an infusion of youth. You are bringing that.”
Nixon might not be the politician often associated with idealism — less than a year after he made those stirring comments came the Watergate break-in that would doom his presidency — but he was shrewd enough to make a strong bid for these new voters.
The next year, he faced off against McGovern, a U.S. senator from South Dakota whose campaign saw the new voters as potential game changers. McGovern strategist Fred Dutton estimated that his candidate would win 75 percent of the 25 million newly eligible voters, which would translate to a margin of 8 million votes for the Democratic challenger. (Some early estimates put it at 10 million.) That would be enough to sway a relatively close election: Nixon had won the popular vote in 1968 by only around a half-million votes.
Next month, as Democrats and Republicans face off in a tight battle for control of Congress, Democrats are counting on backing from groups that have long supported them. But young voters tend to turn out less in midterm elections, and Republicans have made gains among Latinos. If there’s a lesson from the presidential election 50 years ago, it’s that no demographic’s vote can be taken for granted — especially not people who are new to voting.
Democrats didn’t run a presidential candidate 150 years ago. It backfired.
In 1972, both sides saw the new voters as an important battleground, and campaign buttons reflected some of their efforts to win over the youngsters (“1st Time Voter for McGovern,” “Right on, Mr. President”). The U.S. Youth Council produced a nonpartisan “Watch Out I Vote” button, in a psychedelic font with flowers in the O’s.
The Student Vote Project ran public service spots on radio stations and used themed T-shirts, purses, sneakers and even an umbrella emblazoned with the word “Vote!” to encourage young people to participate.
McGovern’s campaign launched a massive youth registration campaign targeting college campuses. But Republicans didn’t cede ground. The Nixon campaign turned to 30-year-old Ken Reitz to be the full-time, paid director of Young Voters for the President. The Los Angeles Times described him as “Long Hair, Mod Dress, but He’s a GOP Pro.” Reitz told the Harvard Crimson in 1972 that he set up chapters in all 50 states, with 400,000 volunteers.
“Posters of Nixon adorn the walls of all the offices, and rock music blares almost continuously from radios,” the college newspaper reported.
How the Watergate scandal broke to the world: A visual timeline
Still, at first it seemed that McGovern would have a huge advantage among young voters. After all, he was the antiwar candidate while the Vietnam War raged on (although Nixon promised to reduce the number of American troops in Vietnam and end the draft), and Nixon was a law-and-order president at a time of youthful rebellion. A July 1972 Gallup poll found that registered voters 18-24 — who would be voting in their first presidential election — favored McGovern by 57 percent to 41 percent.
But the poll also contained a major red flag for Democrats: Half of the potential new voters hadn’t yet registered, and Nixon led in this subgroup by three percentage points. Many of these young voters did not go to college.
The poll “raises a sharp challenge to the expectation of strategists for Senator George McGovern that he can win a critical eight-million-vote margin over President Nixon among first-time voters by conducting a massive youth-registration campaign,” the New York Times reported. “The new poll suggests that the McGovern registration strategy could even backfire, producing more young voters who favor Mr. Nixon than the Democratic nominee.”
The paper noted that noncollege youths could cut into McGovern’s advantage, adding, “Calculations based on the Gallup findings and Census Bureau statistics thus suggest a far larger potential for Mr. Nixon than for Mr. McGovern among young people so far unregistered.”
Nixon took note of the poll, telling White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman in a memo that same day, “In studying the New York Times release of the Gallup Poll on youth one lesson comes through loud and clear — it is imperative that we limit our registration wherever possible, without announcing that that is our tactic, to the non-college youth.”
At the GOP convention in August, Nixon made an appearance at the Republican Youth Rally, where Sammy Davis Jr. was performing. Davis went over to Nixon and embraced him from behind; the president awkwardly smiled while clasping his hands over his own chest. The photo provoked a backlash against Davis from many Black Americans.
“This is your first vote,” Nixon told the young Republicans. “And years from now, I hope you can all look back and say it was one of your best votes.”
In his memoir, Nixon described the crowd as a “new kind of Republican youth: they weren’t square, but they weren’t ashamed of being positive and proud.”
By August ’72, a Newsweek poll showed Nixon leading slightly among 18- to 24-year-old likely voters, while Democrats struggled to register young McGovern supporters.
“The McGovernites are risking blanket registration drives mainly on college campuses and in black neighborhoods,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Yet among these two target groups, success seems questionable.”
The paper added that while money was tight for Democrats, “the Republicans are mounting a well-financed and highly organized effort to register voters favorable to President Nixon.”
The pollster George Gallup wrote in the Boston Globe in October that the biggest surprise in the race was Nixon’s strength among young voters.
“The enthusiasm for McGovern on the college campuses of the nation — so marked in the early months of 1972 — has faded considerably,” he concluded.
Watergate scandal ushered in a golden age of comedy
In the end, Nixon wound up getting nearly half of the vote of the young first-time voters — not that he needed them. In a historic landslide, he won 49 states and nearly 61 percent of the popular vote, losing just Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
The youth vote was a factor in House and Senate races that year. This group was targeted in a concerted effort by one young candidate who was just a few years older than the first-time voters: 29-year-old Democrat Joe Biden, who upset 63-year-old Republican Sen. Cale Boggs of Delaware to win the Senate seat and launch his Washington political career.
In that campaign, Biden painted his opponent as out of touch, running newspaper ads with the tagline: “Joe Biden. He understands what’s happening today.” But he also distanced himself from the more liberal McGovern, saying, “I’m not as liberal as most people think.” | 2022-11-08T00:20:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats took young voters for granted against Richard Nixon in 1972 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/29/nixon-mcgovern-1972-young-voters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/29/nixon-mcgovern-1972-young-voters/ |
The effort spawned a two-hour line at Philadelphia City Hall, as well as anger among voters who saw it as an attempt to infringe on their rights
People wait in line to vote early or resubmit ballots Monday at Philadelphia City Hall. (Caroline Gutman for The Washington Post)
Kirby Smith said after he and his wife were told that their mail ballots would not count, because they were missing dates, they stood in line for two hours at Philadelphia City Hall to cast replacement ballots, missing much of the workday.
“Oh I’m going to vote. It’s not a question,” said Smith, a 59-year-old Democrat who said he viewed the court decision as part of an attempt to block people from voting. “I’m going to fight back.”
Multiple judges have ruled over the past two years that mail ballots returned on time by eligible Pennsylvania voters should be counted even if they lack a date on the outer envelope. Republicans sued in October to reverse that policy, arguing that it violated state law. Last Tuesday, they won a favorable ruling from the state Supreme Court, which directed counties not to count ballots with missing or inaccurate dates.
That decision triggered a sprawling volunteer-run effort to make sure voters who had already returned their ballots knew that their votes would not count if they didn’t take action.
Nowhere has that effort been more intense than in Philadelphia. On Saturday, city officials published the names of more than 2,000 voters who had returned defective ballots and urged them to come to City Hall to cast a new ballot in the few days remaining before Election Day. Community activists and volunteers for the Democratic Party and the Working Families Party began calling, texting and knocking on people’s doors to get the word out.
On Monday, the line to cast a replacement vote at City Hall snaked outside and into the building’s courtyard as volunteers supplied snacks and bottled water, according to voters and activists.
“I’m lucky. I could wait in line and do this,” said Melissa Sherwood, a 25-year-old Democrat who works from home. “Some people who don’t have that luxury probably took one look at the line and said no way.”
Penina Bernstein said she was thousands of miles away in Colorado when she found out — from friends and strangers who contacted her via Facebook — that her ballot was undated and would not count. She made immediate plans to get back to Pennsylvania to vote.
“I am flying home tonight and I will be there to fix it tomorrow, because my voice will not be silenced by voter suppression,” said Bernstein, 40, who added that she is not wealthy and was making the trip at significant expense.
Several volunteers said they had spoken to many other voters who said they would not be able to make it to City Hall to fix their ballots, because of a disability or a lack of transportation.
The mobilization to contact voters is a decentralized, ad hoc effort being carried out by many disparate groups. While some voters told The Washington Post that they had been contacted about their ballots multiple times, others said they had not heard anything until they received a call from a reporter.
“Our fear is there will probably be several thousand Philadelphians who lawfully attempted to vote and their votes will not count,” said Benjamin Abella, an emergency physician who has been volunteering with a group of fellow doctors working to notify voters that they need to fix their ballots.
Abella said that the effort by his group and others was a grass-roots mobilization to compensate for the lack of government effort to contact voters individually. He said voters who managed to get to City Hall found few workers ready to receive them — thus the long waits. “It’s really unfortunate that this is the way democracy works in America in 2022,” he said.
Shoshanna Israel, with the Working Families Party in Philadelphia, said the effort to help voters fix their ballots has snowballed since Sunday, with 250 people signed up for a phone-bank session Monday evening. The party has programmed voters’ names, type of ballot deficiency and county of residence into software that creates a tailored script for volunteers contacting voters.
Several voters told The Post that they had not received any notification from the city government. Nick Custodio, a deputy city commissioner, said Philadelphia officials put out a robocall to voters whose numbers they had. But otherwise, he said, “we’re focused on the election tomorrow.”
City officials had announced that voters could cast a replacement at City Hall until 5 p.m. Monday. But about 3:45, officials told some people in line that they would not reach the office before closing time and could not vote, according to Abella, who was there.
The decision upset some people, and sheriff’s deputies arrived to enforce the decision. City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, a Republican, wrote on Twitter that it was a “disgrace” that voters were being put in the position of trying to cure their ballots at the last minute. City officials are “doing the best they can to help as many voters as possible with very little time and resources,” he wrote.
Not all counties in Pennsylvania notify voters when their mail ballots are deficient and allow them to submit replacements. Courts have found that state law does not require counties to give voters a chance to fix defective ballots, but neither does it prevent them from doing so.
In Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, officials posted lists of more than 1,000 names of voters with undated or incorrectly dated ballots. Just over 100 cured their ballots on Monday, according to city officials.
Darrin Kelly, president of the Pittsburgh-area AFL-CIO-affiliate, said his members account for 147 of the voters whose ballots have been set aside there. His volunteer phone-bankers had contacted about 100 of them by 5 p.m. Monday and expected to reach all of them by the end of the evening.
“The most important thing is protecting our democracy and making sure everybody has a chance to vote,” said Kelly, who guessed that most of his members are Democrats.
At a public meeting of the Lancaster County elections board Monday, a citizen urged the board to notify voters who had cast defective ballots and allow them to cast another, saying to do otherwise would amount to disenfranchising neighbors. One of the board members said he agreed, but the other two did not.
“We’ve never cured ballots in Lancaster County It’s a questionable procedure,” said Joshua G. Parsons, a county commissioner and a member of the board. “It’s a questionable procedure.”
In northeastern Pennsylvania’s Monroe County, Republicans sued last week in an effort to block officials from inspecting mail ballots before Election Day, the first step of the county’s effort to ensure that voters who returned ballots with errors — such as missing signatures or dates — had a chance to cast a replacement. A state judge denied that request Monday.
Meanwhile, the fight over undated and incorrectly dated ballots is not over. When the state Supreme Court directed counties not to count those ballots, it also directed them to set those ballots aside and preserve them — apparently in anticipation of more litigation. On Friday, several voting and rights groups filed a lawsuit in federal court, arguing that not counting those ballots over a “meaningless technicality” would amount to a violation of civil rights law.
Election officials fear vote-counting delays will help fuel fraud claims
Clifford Levine, a Democratic election lawyer based in Pittsburgh, said he expects as many as 1 percent of mail ballots to be set aside for errors — a potentially difference-making sum in tight races such as the U.S. Senate contest. As of Monday, more than 1.1 million Pennsylvanians had cast ballots by mail, with about 70 percent of them Democrats.
The Pennsylvania secretary of state’s office has released the names of at least 7,000 voters whose ballots have been flagged for errors, but Levine said that number will grow through Election Day as more ballots arrive — and also because some counties have chosen not to review mail ballots, notify voters of errors or share the information with the state. | 2022-11-08T00:36:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pennsylvania voters scramble to cast new ballots after GOP lawsuit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/pennsylvania-voters-scramble-cast-new-ballots-after-gop-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/pennsylvania-voters-scramble-cast-new-ballots-after-gop-lawsuit/ |
A rally advocating for early voting and voting rights on Oct. 30 in Decatur, Ga. (Elijah Nouvelage for The Washington Post)
MARIETTA, Ga. — Election officials in Georgia’s third most populous county announced Monday that they are shipping hundreds of ballots overnight to voters who requested an absentee ballot but never received it because of a clerical error.
Officials in Cobb County, a fast-growing suburb of metropolitan Atlanta, said on Friday that they failed to mail more than 1,000 requested absentee ballots because the election worker in charge of the machine used to package and mail absentee ballots improperly used a flash drive that records which requested ballots have been sent to voters.
Since the error was discovered, many of those voters have received an absentee ballot or have opted to vote by another method, according to county officials. The rest will have a ballot overnighted to them.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of Cobb residents over the weekend. As part of a settlement reached Monday, the county said it will accept any ballots from affected voters by Nov. 14 as long as they are mailed by Election Day.
Cobb County Superior Court Judge Kellie S. Hill signed a consent order on Monday evening after deliberating with the county and civil rights organizations.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office said it has opened an investigation into the incident, calling the failure to mail more than 1,000 ballots “unacceptable.”
Janine Eveler, Cobb County’s election director, apologized for the error during a Monday afternoon news conference.
“We’re so sorry to these voters,” Eveler said. “We’re sick about it, the employee who is responsible is sick about it. She’s in tears all the time. We’re very upset, this has never happened to us, and we just want to make it right.”
Daniel White, an attorney for the county, added: “We want voters to be able to choose how they want to vote. We wanted to make it as convenient as possible. This was just a purely clerical error that an engineer is sick about, and the staff sick about it.”
Eveler said the county has faced high turnover in its election office, and 38 percent of election workers are new to their roles this year. The county lost several employees because they were under “too much pressure, and their own lives were suffering with the extra workload,” Eveler said. Ahead of the election, she said many staffers are working more than 80 hours a week.
“Though that is no excuse for such a critical error,” Eveler said.
Georgia's largest county can't find a top elections official
Lawyers for the ACLU said they will work to ensure the order is fully implemented but cautioned that the specific incident didn’t account for the full scope of issues with absentee ballots in Georgia this year.
“We are happy that today’s ruling grants a specific subset of those voters a chance to cast their ballot. However, we heard from many voters who are not included in the solution provided today. We hope those voters can somehow exercise their right to vote as well, whether by mail or in person,” said Vasu Abhiraman, senior policy counsel for the ACLU.
A new election law approved last year also shortened the window of time during which voters could request an absentee ballot and the county could deliver it, which Eveler said made it “more difficult to get the number of ballots out in the short time that we have.” | 2022-11-08T01:15:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ga. county will overnight hundreds of absentee ballots after ‘clerical error’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/cobb-county-georgia-absentee-ballots/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/cobb-county-georgia-absentee-ballots/ |
Actor Matthew McConaughey was on Capitol Hill in June. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
McConaughey is known to be a fan of the team. He is already involved in professional sports ownership as a co-owner of Austin FC in Major League Soccer. He would not be in position financially to be the lead owner of Washington’s NFL franchise but could join or assemble a group of investors.
The New York Post, which first reported McConaughey’s interest in the Commanders, linked him to the prospective investment group that might be formed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and music mogul Jay-Z.
“I don’t know if they will partner on it,” that person said last week, adding that each is “interested.”
Amazon carries the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” package. Bezos has been mentioned as a potential owner of other NFL franchises, including the Seattle Seahawks.
Mat Ishbia, president and chief executive officer of United Wholesale Mortgage and previously a bidder for the Denver Broncos, said Friday that he plans to consider a bid for the Commanders.
“The NFL is a great league and Washington is one of the elite franchises,” Ishbia said in a statement issued to The Post through a spokesperson. “I am interested in exploring this opportunity further in the very near future.”
Media entrepreneur Byron Allen, another former Broncos bidder, also is preparing a bid for the Commanders, a person with knowledge of the situation said last week. If successful, Allen would become the NFL’s first Black principal team owner.
The Commanders said last week that owner Daniel Snyder had hired an investment bank to “consider potential transactions” related to the franchise. The Commanders did not specify whether he and his wife, Tanya, the team’s co-CEO, are considering the sale of the entire franchise or a minority share. | 2022-11-08T02:42:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Matthew McConaughey explores forming or joining bid for Commanders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/matthew-mcconaughey-commanders-sale/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/matthew-mcconaughey-commanders-sale/ |
Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy to take on Spieth-Thomas duo in ‘The Match’
Tiger Woods will make his third “The Match” appearance, while it will be the debut in the series for Rory McIlroy. (Andrew Boyers/Reuters)
After a version earlier this year of “The Match” became the first to not include any professional golfers, the next one will feature nothing but stars from the PGA Tour.
Friends and business partners Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy are set to take on Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, who have a long-standing personal bond of their own, in the seventh installment of the made-for-TV series.
The foursome will square off over 12 holes Dec. 10 at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Fla., in an event aimed at raising funds for Hurricane Ian relief efforts.
With this match scheduled to tee off at 6 p.m., Woods told the other three on social media, “See you boys under the lights.”
This will be the third “The Match” appearance for Woods, who took on Phil Mickelson in the inaugural event in 2018, then teamed up with former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning in the second one against Mickelson and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady in 2020.
McIlroy, Spieth and Thomas will make their “The Match” debuts. With Woods rarely participating in tournaments since suffering severe injuries in a February 2021 car crash, the other three are arguably the most popular golfers active on the PGA Tour.
Apart from Woods, the other golfers who have participated in previous “The Match” events — Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka — have defected to LIV Golf. McIlroy emerged this year as the PGA Tour’s most outspoken critic of LIV Golf, and Woods has joined him in working to shore up support for the established circuit.
A spokesperson for LIV Golf did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether organizers of “The Match” have reached out to the Saudi Arabia-backed venture about possible future participation in the series.
Woods and McIlroy also have partnered away from the course in co-founding TMRW Sports, an investment group that plans to launch a “new tech-infused golf league” in 2024. The 46-year-old Woods recently said he was “excited about blending golf with technology and team elements common in other sports,” as the league trumpeted additional investment from the likes of tennis superstar Serena Williams, former Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton and Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
McIlroy, 33, returned to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking last month after winning the CJ Cup in South Carolina. Earlier this year, he staged a stirring rally to win the lucrative FedEx Cup title, and other victories last season included the Tour Championship and the Canadian Open.
Thomas sits at eighth in the ranking after a 2021-22 season that saw him win the PGA Championship for his second major title. Spieth, who got a win this year at the Heritage, is 13th in the ranking. The pair of 29-year-olds helped the United States win the Presidents Cup in September, and their close friendship goes back to their early teenage years.
The sixth installment of “The Match,” which took place in June, featured Brady and Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers taking on the younger quarterback duo of Allen and the Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes. In one of his few enjoyable sports moments this year, Rodgers won it for his side by draining a birdie putt at the 12th and final hole. | 2022-11-08T02:43:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy to face Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas in 'The Match' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/the-match-tiger-woods-rory-mcilroy-jordan-spieth-justin-thomas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/the-match-tiger-woods-rory-mcilroy-jordan-spieth-justin-thomas/ |
Military ballots in Wisconsin will be counted under judge’s ruling
Election official says she created fake ballots for the ‘greater good’ of exposing the potential for voter fraud
People cheer on Wisconsin state Rep. Janel Brandtjen (R) outside the state Capitol in Madison, Wis., on Aug. 6, 2021. (Todd Richmond/AP)
MADISON, Wis. — A judge declined Monday to issue an order that would have delayed or prevented the counting of military ballots in Wisconsin in a lawsuit that came after a disaffected election worker said she reached a “breaking point” and created three fake ballots to highlight flaws in the state’s voting system.
Waukesha County Judge Michael Maxwell said he was refusing the request to block the immediate counting of military ballots because he considered the idea a “drastic remedy” that would have risked disenfranchising more than 1,000 service members.
The lawsuit was filed Friday by state Rep. Janel Brandtjen (R) and others after Brandtjen received three military ballots at her home under fictitious names. Kimberly Zapata, who at the time was Milwaukee’s deputy elections director, told prosecutors that she ordered the fake ballots because she was frustrated by Brandtjen and other Republicans focusing on baseless claims instead of actual weaknesses in Wisconsin’s voting procedures.
“I just came to a breaking point of all the harassment and the complaints and the criticism and even the death threats that our office receives regarding election administration and the mistrust in it. It’s not what they’re saying. It’s not conspiracy theories. It’s not satellites that are changing votes,” she said in an interview Monday, referring to a false and far-fetched claim that satellites were used to manipulate voting machines. “But on the other hand, it’s not nothing either.”
“I understand what I did was wrong, and I understand that I need consequences for it,” Zapata said. “But at the same time, I did this for the greater good. I did this for the American voters to believe in the election system again. But now I am struggling because even though what I did was wrong, it came from pure of heart. But now I’m facing financial ruin because of this.”
Zapata said she sought to draw attention to what she saw as a problem in “the loudest and most attention-grabbing way.”
State Rep. Mark Spreitzer (D), a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly’s elections committee, said Zapata should have raised her concerns with lawmakers instead of creating fake ballots. He said she wasn’t helping improve trust in the state’s voting system.
“I think it did the exact opposite of improve voter confidence in the election,” he said. “It undermined it by making people think that there might be some vulnerability here when that vulnerability, at least right now, seems to be entirely theoretical in that someone could do what she did but there’s no evidence that anybody but her has actually done it.”
Ann Jacobs, a Democrat on the state’s bipartisan elections commission, said Zapata should have brought her concerns to local or state election authorities instead of ordering fake ballots.
“There’s lots of different ways to address it. She chose none of them,” she said.
Brandtjen, the chairwoman of the state Assembly’s elections committee, frequently promotes false claims about elections. In response to receiving the fake ballots, she filed a lawsuit that sought to prevent the counting of military ballots unless local officials could show they were following a law requiring them to keep lists of all military voters. About 1,400 military ballots had been cast as of Friday.
“I think I made clear in my questioning that I felt that was a drastic remedy, that I felt that it was at least at a minimum a temporary disenfranchisement of our military voters,” he said.
Midterm elections live updates: Trump calls for ‘a humiliating rebuke’ of Democrats
More than 43 million early votes have been cast
2:11 AMTrump calls Nancy Pelosi an ‘animal’ for impeaching him | 2022-11-08T03:00:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Military ballots in Wisconsin will be counted under judge’s ruling - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/wisconsin-military-ballots/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/wisconsin-military-ballots/ |
After her husband was attacked in their home, the California Democrat has not said whether she will remain in House leadership
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks on Capitol Hill in March. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was already facing a pivotal midterm election Tuesday that could chart the future for both the Democratic Party and her political legacy. But the brutal and politically motivated hammer attack on her husband, Paul, late last month has frozen the conversation in place as colleagues await word on her decision whether to stay in the House or retire from public service.
When she reclaimed the gavel, it came with a vague promise to step down at the end of 2022, giving these past four years a sense of urgency to accomplish big legislative priorities while setting in motion a slow-moving contest among junior aspirants to win enough support to succeed her.
Potential successors to her speakership, who have already spent months behind the scenes courting support, have now gone quiet — both out of respect to their caucus leader of two decades and the desire to appear focused on trying to save their razor-thin majority that is on the line Tuesday.
Some veteran lawmakers and aides say the attack on her husband will embolden Pelosi, 82, to remain atop the caucus, even if an increasingly likely political defeat relegates her to minority leader. They contend she would never want to look as if she had been forced out by a fanatic inspired by right-wing conspiracy theories.
Others wonder if the attack provides the personal pull for Pelosi to finally leave Congress and return home to help her husband of nearly 60 years through his “long recovery,” as she has called it. Still, others suggest Pelosi probably made her decision months ago, pointing to capstone moments such as the speaker’s official visit to Taiwan in the face of sharp criticism from Beijing and the U.S. State Department — the type of journey one takes if they know they are leaving the stage.
Pelosi’s Taiwan trip a culmination of decades of challenging China
Those are the conflicting views expressed by a half-dozen current and former lawmakers, along with more than a dozen current and former leadership aides, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Pelosi’s possible future and decision-making calculus.
Those who have spent years around her give simple advice to those asking about her future: have fun guessing, because she doesn’t offer up those details freely.
Pelosi spent almost 10 days out of the spotlight after the attack on her husband, eventually granting an interview with CNN in which she recounted being woken up before dawn by her Capitol Policy security detail at her Georgetown condo to learn about the attack on her husband.
In the interview that aired Monday, she didn’t offer any details on whether she would stay in Congress but acknowledged the attack would have an impact. “For me, this is really the hard part because Paul was not the target and he’s the one who is paying the price,” she told Anderson Cooper.
With Paul Pelosi discharged from the hospital late last week, the House speaker returned to Washington on Sunday, where she will remain for election night. A large congressional delegation leaves this week for a global climate change summit in Egypt, and while it’s unclear if Pelosi is joining those lawmakers, some hope for clarity about her decision before lawmakers take off.
House Democrats have not scheduled their leadership elections, with most expecting the secret ballot to take place in December. And no one has officially declared a candidacy for any of the top three slots. But a group of younger Democrats is agitating for Pelosi and her octogenarian compatriots, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), to all step aside.
If Pelosi stands down from leadership, many Democrats expect her to finish the year in charge of the House and possibly return next year to the rank-and-file backdrop as she considers the right moment to resign altogether.
Officially, in mid-September, Pelosi acknowledged she was undecided about her plans, growing so irritated by the congressional press corps’ repeated questions about her future that she rhetorically asked whether she was “speaking a different language” that they did not understand.
“First, we win. Then we decide,” Pelosi said.
‘The strongest speaker in history’
Win or lose the majority, stay or leave next year, Nancy D’Alessandro Pelosi has already left a historic mark on the House, Congress and the nation.
“You could argue she’s been the strongest speaker in history,” Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who clashed with her in the 1990s when he was speaker and she was a rank-and-file Democrat, said in an interview last year.
Sam Rayburn (D-Tex.) had the longest tenure as speaker, from before World War II into the Kennedy administration, but he had to deal with powerful Democratic committee chairmen — an inconvenience Pelosi never had as her chairs genuflected to her wishes, Gingrich said. Republicans Joe Cannon (Ill.) and Thomas B. Reed (Maine) were known as towering speakers in the early 20th and late 19th centuries, respectively, but neither had to pass sweeping legislation with just three or four votes to spare, as Pelosi has done the past two years.
“She has shown more capacity to organize and muscle, with really narrow margins, which I would’ve thought impossible,” Gingrich said.
After first claiming the speaker’s gavel in January 2007, Pelosi set a blistering pace for policy wins with a Republican and then Democratic president, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, respectively, over the next four years. They raised the minimum wage, rescued a Wall Street collapse, vastly expanded a children’s health insurance program, rewrote health-care laws with the Affordable Care Act and reshaped financial services laws.
The secret to her success has been a combination of East Coast big-city savvy, as the daughter and sister of two Baltimore mayors, and West Coast connections to the thriving money centers that have fueled the liberal takeover of a Democratic Party once rooted in Midwestern manufacturing cities and towns.
But after roughly $50 million in ads run against Democrats in 2010 that included her image, Pelosi became the “face of defeat” in that midterm drubbing, as one ousted incumbent said afterward. Rather than go quietly into the night, as every ousted speaker had done since the early 1950s, Pelosi stuck around and fought to reclaim the majority.
Finally, in 2018, after four consecutive defeats, Pelosi struck gold in the midterm backlash to the Trump presidency and reclaimed the speaker’s gavel with a record-setting level of House diversity. Similar to her first four-year run, she had to navigate two years with a Republican president before Democrats could claim the White House and unified control of Congress.
Pelosi chalked up bipartisan victories that included a new trade deal and massive pandemic relief negotiated with the Trump administration and then led the passage of a roughly $5 trillion domestic policy agenda with President Biden that rivals the first two years of the Obama White House.
Pelosi considers the ACA her single most consequential accomplishment, but her closest allies consider her second term as speaker more tactically impressive for all the chaos of the era: two impeachments of Donald Trump, a global pandemic that killed millions, an insurrection at the Capitol.
But again this year, Pelosi’s Democrats are on the ropes. Another resounding midterm defeat would suggest her legacy will be a dominant force with major policy wins while also being willing to risk handing the majority to Republicans if the payoff was major legislative victories.
“You use power when you get it,” John Lawrence, Pelosi’s chief of staff during her first stint as speaker, recalled her saying during a recent interview.
Just before the 2010 midterms, Lawrence wrote an email to his former boss about expending the “political capital to accomplish great” things, like passing the ACA.
“Our successes included the seeds of our own destruction,” Lawrence wrote to then-Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who was Pelosi’s closest ally early in Congress.
Pelosi saw no other choice. “The alternative — doing little but remaining strong — was never an option for her,” Lawrence wrote in the email, included in his new book, “Arc of Power,” about Pelosi’s first run as speaker.
Pelosi’s domineering force has been her greatest strength, as Gingrich noted, but also sowed the seeds for a quiet rebellion among junior Democrats who have chafed under the firm manner of her leadership.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) arrived after the 2018 Democratic wave along with a bunch of newcomers who had campaigned, in part, on being a new generation of leaders, ready to leverage reforms out of Pelosi in exchange for supporting her continued reign.
When more than 60 incoming Democrats gathered after that election, “she crashed the meeting,” Slotkin recalled. Slotkin watched in awe as Pelosi began rounding up their support, one by one, rather than letting the newcomers coalesce together to issue demands.
“It was my first experience with her as operator,” said Slotkin, who has voted present twice rather than affirmatively in support of Pelosi for speaker in the formal roll call that starts each Congress. While Slotkin and others in the new generation of Democrats have routinely disagreed with Pelosi’s political strategy, they acknowledge there may be no one better at managing the ideological factions within the caucus.
“I mean, if you want to get something through the House, she counts votes exceptionally well,” Slotkin said.
Who comes next?
That grip Pelosi has on the caucus has left many wondering if the next Democratic leader will be much less effective, incapable of unifying the ideologically, regionally, ethnically and generationally diverse caucus.
For 20 years, Hoyer has served as Pelosi’s lieutenant, and sometimes rival, as his base of support came from more moderate factions that have at times balked as Pelosi advanced liberal priorities. Hoyer is the longest-serving No. 2 in congressional leadership to never achieve the top prize, but, at 83, many Democrats say that his time has passed and that an old White man is not the best face for the future.
For the last 17 years, Clyburn has served just behind Pelosi and Hoyer. Four months younger than Pelosi, Clyburn has sometimes joked that he is “the baby” of the leadership trio. But he has sent signals that he is willing to allow a more junior member of the Congressional Black Caucus break the racial barrier for the speakership: Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who has held another top post for four years.
Jeffries, 52, first elected in 2012, won his leadership post in a tough internal election after the 2018 midterms by touting himself as part of the next generation of Democratic leaders.
He has spent the past couple years working assiduously with rank-and-file Democrats, catering to their needs on everything including media requests and establishing a de facto suggestion box to make them feel heard. His two lieutenants, Reps. Katherine M. Clark (D-Mass.) and Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), are expected to run respectively for the Nos. 2 and 3 positions in leadership.
Clark joined the House in 2013, Aguilar in 2015. The trio hails from the three largest states in terms of members of the House Democratic caucus, as well as serving in the most influential member caucuses: CBC, Congressional Progressive Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), well-known for his role as impeachment manager for Trump in 2020 and as a member of the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, also has made an unofficial late entry into the leadership contest. His pitch has been his media-savvy presence and his massive fundraising war chest — key skills that the modern speakership requires.
But Schiff’s semipublic overtures gave the other three cover to be even more aggressive in their effort to lock down support, according to senior aides familiar with the private talks. As he tried to sell himself as a staunch acolyte of Pelosi, they felt they could more aggressively court votes to succeed Pelosi and the other leaders before the party elders had actually decided to step aside.
Taking, not asking for, power
Pelosi has, at times, mocked supplicants who have courted her and asked her to essentially anoint them as her heir apparent, often saying no one will ever give away power.
“You have to seize it,” she told political writer Susan Page in the book “Madam Speaker.”
Pelosi knew from her first day in office what powerful post she wanted to claim.
She arrived to the Capitol in 1987 after winning a special election and was soon ushered off to a dinner with that generation’s up-and-coming House Democrats who were demanding more power.
The regular dinner crew included a future White House chief of staff and secretary of Defense (Leon Panetta), a future Senate majority leader (Charles E. Schumer), a future Senate whip (Richard J. Durbin) and several other future committee chairs in the House and Senate.
Meet the woman who will become the first female speaker of the House, Miller said — an anecdote repeated over and over by the dinner participants.
By 2001, Pelosi had soundly defeated Hoyer in a bid to become Democratic whip, and a year later, she bucked her party’s leader, then-Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), and led the opposition to an Iraq War resolution that he had negotiated with the Bush White House.
It passed, but a majority of House Democrats supported Pelosi’s position and Gephardt resigned his post after the 2002 elections. Pelosi became minority leader, and four years later, she helped guide Democrats to their first majority since 1994.
Only Rayburn, who served as speaker for more than 17 years and four more as minority leader, led a congressional caucus longer than her. By year’s end, Pelosi will have served the fifth-longest stint as speaker.
That tenure has come at a price, both politically and now, since the attack on her husband, personally.
In the last two months of these midterm elections, Republicans spent nearly $56 million on more than 124,000 ads that mentioned her name or showed her image, always in tough, grainy video, according to research by AdImpact, an independent firm.
Democrats have drawn a direct line from the hundreds of millions of dollars in stark anti-Pelosi ads, along with violent imagery about her, to the home invasion and attack on her husband.
Now, she has acknowledged it will impact her decision — yet no one is certain which direction that will go. Back in 2010, when she realized Democrats were about to lose the majority, Pelosi kept a very close-knit circle of advisers about whether she should retire.
When she was deciding what to do, her brother Tommy D’Alessandro Jr. invoked the legendary actress Greta Garbo, who retired in her prime at 35. “Pull a Garbo and get out,” he advised, according to Lawrence’s book.
Miller told her at the time that whatever she decided, it should be quick so as to fend off any challenge and to let others begin their campaigns should she leave. “Time is of the essence,” he said.
Now, as she makes this decision again more than a decade later, the circle is even smaller. Her brother died three years ago. Miller retired eight years ago and is not in regular contact with his old friend.
Pressed about her future in mid-September, she said her focus was proving critics wrong and maintaining the majority.
“Even though there are some among you who belittle my political instincts and the rest, I got us here twice to the majority,” she said, before stumbling over the words that might have given a hint about her future.
“And I don’t intend to — our giving it up,” Pelosi said.
Trump calls Nancy Pelosi an ‘animal’ for impeaching him
1:45 AMMaking D.C. and Puerto Rico states would dilute GOP power, Graham says in Ga. | 2022-11-08T03:00:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | With her political future unclear, Nancy Pelosi stares down another midterm - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/with-her-political-future-unclear-nancy-pelosi-stares-down-another-midterm/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/07/with-her-political-future-unclear-nancy-pelosi-stares-down-another-midterm/ |
She survived the 1918 flu pandemic as an infant, served as an officer in the Navy women’s branch during World War II and co-owned a D.C. bookstore. Her books often explored LGBTQ issues.
Writer and literary critic Doris Grumbach in 1998. (Jack Mitchell/Getty Images)
Doris Grumbach, a wide-ranging author and literary critic who wrote about love, sex, religion and aging, explored gay and lesbian themes in her novels and earned critical acclaim for her humorous, plain-spoken memoirs about the frustrations of old age, died Nov. 4 at a retirement community in Kennett Square, Pa. She was 104.
Ms. Grumbach liked to note that she was one of only a few people to survive the coronavirus pandemic and the 1918 influenza pandemic, which spread when she was an infant. “No one else has had these kind of experiences — the president should put me on some kind of task force,” she joked to her daughter Barbara Wheeler, who confirmed the death but did not cite a cause.
A versatile and observant writer with a voice that was by turns graceful and cantankerous, Ms. Grumbach published seven novels, six memoirs, a children’s book and a biography of author Mary McCarthy — a full shelf of books, although she got off to a late start.
Her first published work, a novel called “The Spoil of the Flowers” (1962), was released the year she turned 44, and it would be another 17 years before she gained attention as a novelist for “Chamber Music” (1979), presented as the memoirs of a famous composer’s 90-year-old widow.
Loosely inspired by the lives of composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, Marian, the novel told the story of an unsatisfying marriage, a fatal case of syphilis and a lesbian relationship that offered extraordinary late-in-life comfort. Reviewing the book for the New York Times, John Leonard wrote that Ms. Grumbach “handles incendiary materials with such cool authority, such metronomic precision, such unobtrusive care that the effect of the prose is subversive.”
“I am tempted,” he added, “to say that the book is all bone; instead, it is all strings — gut and nerve — and each vibrates.”
In addition to writing novels and memoirs, Ms. Grumbach taught English literature and worked as a literary critic, contributing to publications including the Times, the Saturday Review and Commonweal. She was also the literary editor of the New Republic for two years in the 1970s, a book reviewer for NPR’s “Morning Edition” and PBS’s “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” and the co-owner of a Washington bookshop, Wayward Books, with her partner of nearly five decades, Sybil Hillman Pike.
But Ms. Grumbach was perhaps best known for her novels, which examined the triumphs and frustrations of women struggling to assert their independence and burst through the confines of a chilly marriage, an exploitative business world or a society that was intolerant of lesbian relationships.
Many of her characters were drawn from real people: “The Missing Person” (1981) chronicled the rise and fall of a movie star reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe; “The Ladies” (1984) was inspired by the romantic relationship between two aristocrats in 18th-century Ireland; and “The Magician’s Girl” (1987) featured a Diane Arbus-style photographer and a poet modeled on Sylvia Plath.
“I write fiction to make sense of the world I have known in my eighty-two years of life,” Ms. Grumbach told the reference work Contemporary Novelists in 2000. “I use the people I have known, the ones I have thought might have existed, and myself, as I imagine myself to have been or to be, as characters. … There is no lesson in any of these seven novels, unless it is the lesson that life is infinitely varied, that characters (persons) are never typical, and that place/setting is always filtered through the vagaries of memory.”
In her 70s, Ms. Grumbach began to focus on the difficulties and disappointments of aging. Her first memoir, “Coming Into the End Zone” (1991), also served as a way for her to come to terms with the loss of writers, editors and other friends who were dying from AIDS, and to memorialize their lives in print.
She had never thought of herself as “a major talent,” she told Publishers Weekly — more like “a second-string writer and critic who made a certain wave but not a great splash” — and it was dismaying to see herself live while others died prematurely.
“I think writing is an act of healing,” she added. “It’s an exorcism of sorts, to put into words and symbols this almost inexpressible anguish. That was why I started, to try and alleviate the despair.”
The older of two children, Doris Muriel Isaac was born in Manhattan on July 12, 1918. Her father sold men’s clothing, and her mother was a homemaker.
Ms. Grumbach excelled in the classroom, skipping several grades and entering high school at 11 before losing her confidence, developing a stammer and taking a year off school, according to biographical information from the New York Public Library, which holds her archives. By the time she graduated from her all-girls Manhattan public school, she said, she had “amassed the highest total of unexplained absences in the records of Julia Richman High School.”
Ms. Grumbach received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1939 from New York University and a master’s degree in medieval literature from Cornell University in 1940. The next year, she married Leonard Grumbach, a fellow Cornell student who was working toward a PhD in neurophysiology.
They moved to New York, where Ms. Grumbach wrote subtitles for Hollywood movies that were distributed overseas and worked as a proofreader for Mademoiselle magazine. As part of the job, she wrote captions accompanying undergarment photos. She was fired after declaring that a girdle would “make you look positively uncanny.”
During World War II, Ms. Grumbach served as an officer in the WAVES, the women’s branch of the Navy Reserve. She and her husband later settled in the Albany, N.Y., area, where he taught at a medical school and she taught English at a girls’ preparatory school and then at the College of Saint Rose, a Catholic school.
Raised in a largely nonobservant Jewish household, she had become a Catholic in the late 1940s. She wrote her first articles for Catholic publications before adopting a “secular spirituality,” her daughter said, as part of a religious journey that she chronicled in memoirs including “The Presence of Absence” (1998).
Ms. Grumbach first gained notice for her biography of McCarthy, “The Company She Kept” (1967), which was drawn in part from interviews she conducted with the author at McCarthy’s home in Paris. The book argued that McCarthy’s fiction was essentially autobiographical — a premise that infuriated the subject, who saw the galleys and threatened to sue Ms. Grumbach until she agreed to “minor deletions, some revision, a little paraphrase here and there,” according to an essay Ms. Grumbach wrote for the Times.
After Ms. Grumbach’s marriage ended in divorce in 1972, she moved to Washington with Pike and taught at American University. She and her partner started Wayward Books in the basement of their home in the Barnaby Woods neighborhood, later moving the shop to a two-story building near Eastern Market, over the objections of friends who insisted that people on Capitol Hill never read. The store sold used and “medium-rare” books, with a large selection of feminist, LGBTQ and African American literature.
In 1990, Ms. Grumbach and Pike packed up the bookstore — as well as their own personal library, which included a 16-volume edition of the Oxford English Dictionary — and moved to a house overlooking a cove in Sargentville, Maine, where they ran the bookshop until retiring to Pennsylvania in 2008.
Ms. Grumbach’s other books included “Fifty Days of Silence” (1994), about her attempt to live in solitude, and “Life in a Day” (1996), about the events of a single day at age 77, which won a Lambda Literary Award. She received the Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award, a lifetime achievement honor for LGBTQ writers, in 2000.
Her daughter Jane Emerson died in 2011, and Pike died in 2021. In addition to her daughter Barbara Wheeler, survivors include two other daughters, Elizabeth Cale and Kathryn Grumbach Yarowsky; Pike’s four children, Christopher Pike, Susan Pike, Carol Ann Pike Kostecki and Mary Pike Azam; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Ms. Grumbach worked on several unfinished projects over the years., including a biography of author Willa Cather, and said she had little interest in publishing for publishing’s sake.
“What I care about is the time and thought it takes to produce a book,” she told Publishers Weekly in 1991. She added: “You do what you want and do it the best that you can. If it makes it, then you celebrate with it, and if it doesn’t — well, you haven’t wasted your life.” | 2022-11-08T03:22:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Doris Grumbach, versatile novelist and literary critic, dies at 104 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/07/novelist-critic-doris-grumbach-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/07/novelist-critic-doris-grumbach-dead/ |
VILLANOVA, Pa. — Kyle Neptune did not get a chance to catch up with his Hall of Fame predecessor on the day he made his Villanova coaching debut. Neptune had a game to try and win and pleasantries with anyone — even a two-time national champion such as Jay Wright — would have to wait. | 2022-11-08T03:24:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Villanova wins in 1st game without Wright; Neptune in charge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/villanova-wins-in-1st-game-without-wright-neptune-in-charge/2022/11/07/26132b5a-5f07-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/villanova-wins-in-1st-game-without-wright-neptune-in-charge/2022/11/07/26132b5a-5f07-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
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