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Kyle Kuzma paced the Wizards with 20 points Monday night. (Jacob Kupferman/AP)
CHARLOTTE — As the Washington Wizards continue to work on finding an identity in Coach Wes Unseld Jr.’s second season, they have plenty of options.
Take their past four games. Are they the crisp, versatile upstarts with a snappy offensive trio at their core, as they were in an excellent win at Philadelphia last week? Or are they listless teammates who couldn’t muster enough energy in preparation for Kevin Durant, as they were in a terrible home loss to Brooklyn? Or could they be feisty underdogs who gave the host Memphis Grizzlies fits at times without star guard Bradley Beal in a narrow loss Sunday?
Monday night’s 108-100 win at the Charlotte Hornets may have featured Washington’s truest form yet. Those Wizards, who clearly had more talent than their hosts (even as Beal missed his second straight game while in the NBA’s health and safety protocols after testing positive for the coronavirus), outlasted the Hornets. They survived a turnover-riddled first half and snapped to attention on offense to beat a team with three wins to its name.
They extended Charlotte’s losing streak to five and dropped the Hornets to 3-8, but …
“That was a game of the ages,” Unseld noted sarcastically.
After a sloppy showing by both sides, the Wizards (5-6) finally grabbed the momentum when Kyle Kuzma got going late in the fourth quarter and Washington was able to get stops — or simply take advantage of Charlotte’s many misses.
“My messaging to them was we’ve got to continue to build. At times, I didn’t like the way we played — got sloppy, at times looked a little selfish,” Unseld said. “We know it’s hard to win — second night of a back-to-back, on the road, you’re down a man, all that. This is life in the NBA. And it’s most important that you can continue to build the right habits. It was good to get the win, and like I said, we had some really good moments. But we had some stretches there where we have to clean that up and make sure — I think we’re a better group than that.”
Kuzma led four Wizards in double figures with 20 points, and Kristaps Porzingis added 19 points, eight rebounds and five assists. Two-way player Jordan Goodwin had a career-high 17 points on 7-for-7 shooting and chipped in five assists and four rebounds.
Kuzma’s late surge — he had nine points in the fourth quarter — helped seal the deal as Charlotte’s shooting cratered.
“I liked his energy,” Unseld said. “He had some nagging bumps, but he pushed through.”
The Hornets shot 41.6 percent. P.J. Washington led the way with 25 points.
The first half was the ugliest stretch of basketball the Wizards have been a part of all season — even uglier than their blowout loss to Brooklyn on Friday because, in that game at least, Durant was on the floor. The Hornets don’t have anyone within a mile of his talent, but Washington played down to their level just one night after battling the far-stronger Grizzlies.
Neither team cracked 50 points before heading to the locker room Monday. They combined to make 4 of 13 three-pointers and worked their way to 15 turnovers. At least Charlotte was playing to type: The Hornets are the fourth-worst shooting team in the league. The Wizards just couldn’t make a shot, but they figured it out later.
Here’s what else you need to know about Monday’s win:
Three-point woes
The Wizards made a paltry 5 of 19 shots from the three-point line, but at least they weren’t alone. The Hornets made 5 of 32.
The NBA’s attempt to emphasize civic engagement by not holding games on Election Day meant Monday’s slate offered a smorgasbord of basketball: 15 games with all 30 teams in action and the matchups tipping off every 15 minutes. The Wizards and the Hornets went first, tipping at 7 p.m.
Gafford returns
Center Daniel Gafford checked out with 1:19 remaining in the first quarter and walked straight to the locker room holding what appeared to be his left collarbone or shoulder. The Wizards said he had a neck strain, but the backup center returned with 3:21 left in the third quarter and finished the game, notching five points and seven rebounds. That was good news for Washington, which can hardly afford another absence beyond Beal and backup guard Delon Wright (hamstring).
Unseld said after the game that he thought the injury would not limit Gafford’s activity going forward.
Hachimura off the bench
Rui Hachimura had 16 points and gave the Wizards a big lift off the bench, where he has been solid, if not eye-popping, all season.
The deadline for players to sign extensions on their rookie scale deals passed last month without Hachimura landing one, and his responsibilities have shrunk slightly in his fourth year after beginning his Wizards career as a starter. He played a starring role during Washington’s preseason trip to Japan but entered Monday’s game averaging a career-low 10.5 points. | 2022-11-08T03:43:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wizards find some answers in a victory over the lowly Hornets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/wizards-hornets-kyle-kuzma/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/wizards-hornets-kyle-kuzma/ |
Terrapins 71, Purple Eagles 49
Kevin Willard's tenure in College Park began with a win in Maryland's season opener against Niagara on Monday night. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via AP)
Starting in the spring and lasting into the fall, Kevin Willard has been picking up wins as the new Maryland men’s basketball coach. He landed highly touted local recruits. He hasn’t shied away from the lofty goal of winning national titles with the Terrapins. And when he has spoken publicly, he’s done so as if he’s following a blueprint that outlines exactly what Maryland fans want to hear.
But the time has come for Willard to win on the court, and that’s primarily how he’ll be evaluated for the rest of his tenure.
Willard’s first test wasn’t a challenging one; his team faced Niagara of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, and he opened his career in College Park on a positive note with a 71-49 victory. Monday night at Xfinity Center began with the crowd roaring as an arena announcer introduced Willard, and it ended with those fans cheering him off the court in approval.
Willard took over this program after Mark Turgeon’s 11-year tenure featured teams that amassed winning records but lacked deep tournament runs. Whether Willard can buck that trend and help Maryland return to national prominence will remain unknown until he takes his teams into the postseason, and there will be some patience before fans make that judgment. After more than seven months of anticipation through the offseason, though, Willard’s reign has officially begun, and a 1-0 record now sits by his name in the school’s record book.
The Terps’ roster for this first season combines key returners and new faces, and against Niagara, Willard had contributions from both. Senior forward Donta Scott, a four-year starter who stayed in College Park through the coaching change, had a standout showing with 18 points and a 4-of-5 clip from three-point range.
But the Terps also benefited from the collection of players Willard added to the roster this offseason. Willard needed a point guard and brought in Jahmir Young, a former star at DeMatha Catholic High who had been a prolific scorer at Charlotte the past three seasons. In his Maryland debut, Young came to life in the second half and ignited the Terps during a critical stretch on his way to 14 points on the night.
“Everyone reacts to how your point guard’s playing,” Willard said. “And when he kind of turned the boosters and he got after it, I think he just gave everyone else a little energy and a little emotion, and I thought that was the difference.”
Maryland led by only four points with 16 minutes to go, and the Terps responded by forcing Niagara into a six-minute scoreless stretch. Young sparked that 9-0 run with back-to-back second-chance baskets. Another new player, Patrick Emilien, capped the stretch with a steal and score to lift Maryland to a more comfortable lead. Its advantage continued to swell until the margin resembled what was expected of the Terps against an overmatched opponent.
With the return of three key players — Scott, guard Hakim Hart and forward Julian Reese — along with the addition of talented transfer guards Young and Don Carey (Georgetown), Willard has a veteran starting lineup. The depth behind those five is far more unproven.
Willard first called upon Jahari Long, a transfer guard from Seton Hall, and Ian Martinez, a guard in his second year with the Terps who didn’t play much last season. Behind them, freshman wing Noah Batchelor and Patrick Emilien, a graduate transfer forward from St. Francis (N.Y.) played. Those four bench players combined for 14 points.
But as Willard tinkered with lineups late in the first half, he thought the offense stagnated. After a fast start, Maryland cooled off, scoring just 10 points in the final 12 minutes of the first half. The Terps had just a 34-27 lead at the break.
“It wasn’t the players’ fault,” Willard said. “It was my fault, because I put in terrible lineups that hadn’t practiced together, and we didn't know what the heck we were doing.”
With five steals, Martinez was a bright spot in Maryland’s defensive effort that improved as the night went on. Three of his takeaways came during a three-minute stretch as the Terps pulled farther ahead with their key second-half run. The Purple Eagles missed all six of their attempts from three-point range.
Maryland’s doesn’t have much size on its roster, and Niagara scored 34 of its 49 points in the paint and outrebounded the Terps 17-13 in the first half.
“I feel like they were out-hustling us,” Young said. “They were tougher than us. I feel like that was our biggest drop-off that we had, and that's why they stayed in the game, to be honest with you.”
Willard has said he expects Reese to have a breakout season. In the opener, Reese picked up his second foul midway through the first half. He finished 3 for 5 from the field, not making a shot until 8:06 remained. Late in the game, Reese scooped a nice pass to Scott, who then hit a three-pointer as Maryland surged through the second half.
Maryland looked like a team still coming together. Willard doesn’t expect the Terps to be a finished product at this point, and they’re not. But they did enough to ensure Willard could leave Xfinity Center for the first time as a new coach with a win and a pleased fan base.
“This new era, we’re going to make it our era,” Scott said. “We’re going to make it the best we can make it.” | 2022-11-08T04:01:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland opens the Kevin Willard era with a win over Niagara - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/maryland-kevin-willard-niagara/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/07/maryland-kevin-willard-niagara/ |
FORT WORTH, Texas — Mike Miles, Emanuel Miller and No. 14 TCU got an early wake-up call while barely avoiding a season-opening upset.
“Every game moving forward ... we’ve got to know that for 40 minutes we’ve got to compete. Every possession matters, every single play matters, every execution we do matters,” Miller said. “We are one of the best teams in the country. And so we’ve just got to prepare and be the best team.” | 2022-11-08T04:55:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miles' late 3 gets No. 14 TCU past Arkansas-Pine Bluff 73-72 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/miles-late-3-gets-no-14-tcu-past-arkansas-pine-bluff-73-72/2022/11/07/361cf95e-5f16-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/miles-late-3-gets-no-14-tcu-past-arkansas-pine-bluff-73-72/2022/11/07/361cf95e-5f16-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
The idea of “competitive authoritarianism” has been around for two decades. It was coined by political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way in a 2002 essay in the Journal of Democracy to describe a particular phenomenon of “hybrid” regime that was coming into focus after the end of the Cold War. Bucking the optimistic vogue of the 1990s, they argued that polities around the world should not be seen as countries fitfully transitioning to democracy, but rather where a form of quasi-authoritarianism was entrenched via largely normal electoral structures.
“In competitive authoritarian regimes, formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority,” Levitsky and Way wrote, gesturing to governments like that of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia or Alberto Fujimori in Peru, which stacked the field in their favor through a pliant or cowed media as well as other abuses of state power. “Incumbents violate those rules so often and to such an extent, however, that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy.”
In 2020, they updated their work, noting that a good number of the “competitive authoritarian” regimes they had singled out earlier remained as such, while new countries joined the club. Think Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Or the regime built by the late Venezuelan demagogue Hugo Chávez. Or the illiberal dominance of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
“Competitive authoritarianism is not only thriving but inching westward. No democracy can be taken for granted,” Levitsky and Way wrote. “Similar tendencies have even reached the United States, where the Trump administration borrowed the ‘deep state’ discourse that autocrats in Hungary and Turkey used to justify purges and the packing of the courts and other key state institutions.”
Are you ready to vote? This toolkit will help you prepare for the midterms.
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As Americans vote in midterm elections, the specter of “competitive authoritarianism” looms. That may be disquieting to many in a country that still sees itself as a democracy with no peer, wrapped in myths of exceptionalism and preeminence. But for years, analysts who examine the health of democracies in a global context have been sounding the warning. They point to the toxicity of the United States’ polarized politics, the partisan bias of the Supreme Court, the prevalence of gerrymandering that skews electoral outcomes in districts in favor of the party drawing the maps, and the electoral rejectionism of the Republican Party, which has seen the steady progress of legislation in various Republican-controlled states that critics dub as anti-democratic measures that could undermine popular sovereignty.
It’s now entirely conceivable that Republican officials in a number of battleground states will wield enough power — and feel sufficiently empowered — to throw out 2024 election results in their constituencies should the results go against their interests. On the state level, Republicans are gaming the system in eye-catching ways: Even though Wisconsin, for example, is a 50-50 state, a gerrymandered Republican map could give the GOP a veto-proof, supermajority in the legislature. Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels quipped last week that, if elected, his party “will never lose another election” in the state.
This has been achieved by design, argued Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Antidemocratic politicians supported by safe seats and polarization have walked through and begun enacting an authoritarian playbook,” she wrote. “This playbook has massively accelerated democratic disintegration over the last five years.”
The Democrats have played their own part in this polarization, Kleinfeld noted, but the “rapid decline is asymmetric” and “is primarily being driven by a very different Republican Party” than the one that existed, say, under former president Ronald Reagan.
The troubled paradox of U.S. democracy
A consensus of scholars of democracy fear that the guardrails protecting the system of American democracy are steadily eroding. U.S. democratic decline has been charted in numerous forms. Freedom House has shown how the United States has had a rapid regression as a “free” society in recent years; the Economist Intelligence Unit listed the United States as a “flawed democracy” in 2017, while Europe’s International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance now dubs the United States as a “backsliding democracy.”
The Varieties of Democracy index, hosted out of Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, has tracked growing “autocratization” in the United States over the past decade, accentuated by Trump’s denial of the legitimacy of the 2020 election and the Republican Party’s broader embrace of that denial. It separately has mapped on a grid how the Republicans have drifted deeper into the illiberal right, close in kinship to ruling nationalist factions in countries like India and Turkey and far-right parties in the West. (The GOP’s traditional conservative counterparts in Western Europe, meanwhile, are closer to the Democrats.)
Seeing all this, Democrats, including President Biden, have made desperate appeals to voters to take to the electoral ramparts and protect the nation’s democracy. But these entreaties may prove insufficient, suggested Mark Copelovitch, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, at a time when Republican messaging about gas prices and economic pressures have consumed the conversation. “There’s an ‘in your face’ aspect to this that is much more tangible than ‘democracy is about to collapse’ or ‘Wisconsin’s electoral and legislative institutions no longer meet basic criteria of democracy,’” he wrote to me in an email.
Copelovitch pointed to how Polish voters in 2015 delivered a sizable majority to the opposition right-wing populist Law and Justice party after it successfully campaigned off the public’s economic anxieties. It has remained in power since, consolidating its hold over the Polish state and judiciary with an illiberal ruthlessness that has seen E.U. officials raise fears over the future of democracy and rule of law in Poland.
“If Republicans win big on Tuesday, it will be, in large part, because some meaningful share of voters switched their votes to or turned out for the GOP — in patterns similar to what we’ve seen in Poland and elsewhere — in the belief that this will improve their economic prospects,” Copelovitch said.
For their part, Levitsky and Way are less fearful of competitive authoritarianism taking hold of the United States. They wrote earlier this year that the United States still possesses a potent civil society, private sector and media scene, a robust political opposition (in their formulation, that’s the Democrats) and enough institutional capacity in its decentralized federal system to thwart genuine authoritarianism.
But there’s little reason to cheer. “Rather than autocracy, the United States appears headed toward endemic regime instability,” they wrote in Foreign Affairs. “Such a scenario would be marked by frequent constitutional crises, including contested or stolen elections and severe conflict between presidents and Congress … the judiciary … and state governments. … The United States would likely shift back and forth between periods of dysfunctional democracy and periods of competitive authoritarian rule during which incumbents abuse state power, tolerate or encourage violent extremism, and tilt the electoral playing field against their rivals.” | 2022-11-08T05:15:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. democracy slides toward ‘competitive authoritarianism’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/american-democracy-backsliding-competitive-authoritarianism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/american-democracy-backsliding-competitive-authoritarianism/ |
Dear Amy: I have been married to the same man for 52 years. Thirty-six years ago, I had a child, who is a product of an affair. I had two boys already when my third son was born.
My husband was away during a military tour when the affair happened. I wanted a divorce, but my husband fought for our relationship. The father of my child was years younger than I.
My husband accepted this child as his own. When this son was 2 years old, his biological father died in a car accident. His biological father had never seen my son. We never told my son that my husband is not his biological father.
I am feeling guilty about not telling my son, but my husband is against it. My two other sons know, but he does not know. He is 36 years old now.
Wishing: Yes, you should tell your son the truth about his biological parentage and provide him with information about his biological father. This will probably be hard on all of you, but the rest of the family knows this essential truth about your youngest son, and he deserves to know the truth, too.
People who learn the truth of their DNA later in life sometimes report that this knowledge helped to fill in gaps or answer long-standing questions they’ve had about their identity.
Dear Amy: “Arlene” is my close childhood friend. When her daughter “Lena” was born, I was asked to be Lena’s godmother. I was thrilled. For years, I made the effort to celebrate Lena’s special days, to visit, and to be in touch regularly, even after they relocated to the opposite coast.
Once Lena graduated from college, I tried to meet up at least once a year. I’ve never had children of my own, so this was important to me. Lena had a baby of her own last year with her partner. She and her little family have now relocated to be near Arlene. Before they left, I visited her and the baby and sent gifts.
Arlene and I have grown apart over the years. We don’t talk regularly but send texts on birthdays and exchange Christmas cards. Last year, I received a holiday card from Arlene with the note, “It will be a milestone celebrating Lena’s wedding.”
I’m extremely disappointed not to have been invited! Lena is in her 30s now, and thus a mature adult. I’m disappointed and hurt that neither of them thought to call me or send a specific note to at least offer the “immediate family only” excuse as a reason not to extend an invite to this wedding.
How should I handle this? I do think it’s important that they know I was hurt, but want to set a noble example.
Should I send a card/gift for the wedding and wait to address the issues a few weeks after the event? Should I do this by phone — or by letter? Should I address them both individually, or just contact the mother?
Godmother: “Lena” is your goddaughter. She is the one getting married. She has dropped the ball and has neglected to include or contact you. Your relationship with both women has grown distant enough to have relegated you to an outer orbit, with very sparse contact.
You contributed to this shaming of her for exerting her own choice. Some women cannot use hormonal birth control. It can make them very sick. This is her business — not anyone else’s.
Upset: There are non-hormonal methods of birth control available for women, but I agree with you that this should be her choice. | 2022-11-08T05:15:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My son doesn’t know his dad isn’t his biological father - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/08/ask-amy-son-biological-father/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/08/ask-amy-son-biological-father/ |
What can I do to make myself be kinder and more loving with him? I have tried therapy, which did not help. Help me love my husband again.
— Irritable
Irritable: Can you afford, and manage logistically, some time where you live apart? I’m not talking about a legal separation; I mean things such as alternating solo vacations with ones you take together, or studying for x weeks at y program, or spending a season in one place while your husband spends it in another.
This is where separate interests are a lifeline. One loves golf and the other museums, one loves visiting cities and the other fishing in the mountains, etc. If you have a difference in tastes that has evolved organically, then it’s much easier to suggest you pursue them for a time apart, and it’s more likely to be restorative to your relationship. When you get to exercise some selfhood that you haven’t in a while, it’s easy to see how you could come back to each other feeling refreshed. No promises, but it’s worth a try.
And if it’s about you, not him (thus your impatience with “everyone else”), you may see that more clearly, too.
Because there’s a strong socializing current against doing this, he might take offense, even if he would benefit from it as much as you would.
But to draw some fortitude, think of all the ways people have found this space away from their spouses over the years that had the appearance of social acceptability: men’s and women’s clubs, weekend golf/fishing/shopping/lunching, workaholic tendencies, volunteering at church. Think of the whole repertoire of mid-century battle-of-the-sexes-type yuk-yuk jokes, and underneath the sexism, you can make out the foundation of reality: that too much togetherness can be tough on a couple, and we’ve known this for a really long time.
Aren’t we (over)due to have more realistic expectations, and to take these restorative steps out loud?
· Re: “more irritable and more short-tempered. … I think I want to live alone”: I have never heard a clearer statement of an introvert who is not getting enough alone time, and with it the ability to recoup some socializing energy.
If this resonates with you, can you build some quiet alone time into your life on a regular basis? Even an hour out of a day is immensely useful. As is a room in your home you can relax in with the expectation that nobody is going to come invade it and bring more people into it. Even ones you love. Because even people you love use up your social energy.
· You don’t mention what he is like or whether he is lovable to you. Think of what you really want at this point in your life. What happiness or contentment looks like. Who you want to be, including being pleased over your interactions with others. If you are grouchy because you are not living a life that satisfies you, take time with your values to see what might be possible. | 2022-11-08T05:15:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Spouse wants to be 'more loving' to husband of 53 years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/08/carolyn-hax-husband-more-loving/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/08/carolyn-hax-husband-more-loving/ |
Dear Miss Manners: My family arrangement has been to go to a relative’s home almost every Thanksgiving and Christmas over the past 10 years or more. The hostess never attempts to accommodate my gluten and lactose intolerances, which she is aware of. She serves mostly wheat- and dairy-based items for appetizers and entrees — lots of Italian food, breads, pasta dishes with cheese, etc. — therefore I’m left out.
There are usually no more than 12 people, and often fewer. It hurts my feelings that she has never attempted, or even offered, to accommodate me at these family dinners I’m expected to be a part of. Thanksgiving turkey is only safe for me if no gravy is poured on before I take mine. She’s never volunteered any info on ingredients or the menu — whether there’s flour or butter in gravies or sides, for instance.
That you should make other plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas. | 2022-11-08T05:15:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: Relative won’t make food I can eat for holiday meals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/08/miss-manners-thanksgiving-intolerances-food/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/08/miss-manners-thanksgiving-intolerances-food/ |
Compete — fairly. Regulators have long been aware of the dangers of monopoly. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), inspired by the giant combinations of the Gilded Age, states plainly that anyone who monopolizes a trade is guilty of a felony. Yet companies are equally aware of the desirability of monopolies: You can charge what you want and rest on your laurels. And politicians, judges and regulators have repeatedly softened absolute bans on monopoly. In Verizon v. Trinko (2003), the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia declared that “the mere possession of monopoly power, and the concomitant charging of monopoly price, is not only not unlawful; it is an important element of the free-market system.”
Don’t move too fast or break too many things. The corporation was designed as an institution to let people take risks and shoot for extraordinary targets. Limited liability is a supreme device for encouraging people to risk a bit of their capital without risking personal ruin (“everything including your cufflinks” as they used to say at Lloyds). Companies have taken awe-inspiring risks — the East India Company sailed to the other side of the world at a time when that was equivalent to traveling to the moon, for example.
More on Business From Bloomberg Opinion’s Adrian Wooldridge:
• The Accountant Shortage Threatens Capitalism’s Future
• An Anti-Woke Warrior Has US Companies Running Scared
• If Companies Really Want to Do Some Good, They Should Unbundle ‘ESG’ and ‘DEI’ | 2022-11-08T06:25:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Five Habits of Highly Successful Companies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-five-habits-of-highly-successful-companies/2022/11/08/6a1186d4-5f2b-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-five-habits-of-highly-successful-companies/2022/11/08/6a1186d4-5f2b-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
EUGENE, Ore. — N’Faly Dante had 16 points and 10 rebounds as No. 21 Oregon opened the season with an 80-45 victory Monday night over Florida A&M.
Florida A&M: Rattlers coach Robert McCullum was on Oregon coach Dana Altman’s staff from 2014-17. ... Florida A&M visits eight Power Five teams on its non-conference schedule, including Oregon State, Miami, Florida, Georgia, Louisville, Kentucky and Purdue. The team plays 11 of its 13 non-conference games on the road. | 2022-11-08T06:28:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | No. 21 Oregon wins opener against Florida A&M, 80-45 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/no-21-oregon-wins-opener-against-florida-aandm-80-45/2022/11/08/4daff3fe-5f26-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/no-21-oregon-wins-opener-against-florida-aandm-80-45/2022/11/08/4daff3fe-5f26-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
In a 2019 file photo, a police officer stands guard in front of the Masjid Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, where one of two mass shootings occurred. (Vincent Yu/AP)
An Australian man who in March 2019 killed 51 worshipers at two mosques in New Zealand has appealed his life sentence, sparking accusations that he was trying to inflict more emotional damage on the Muslim community.
New Zealanders expressed relief and joy in August 2020 when Brenton Tarrant, the gunman responsible for the deadliest act of violence in the country’s modern history, was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
For many in Christchurch, a city of nearly 370,000, the sentencing was an opportunity to start healing from the shooting. In 2020, Tarrant pleaded guilty after a surprise reversal of his original plea, but he has now appealed both the sentencing and conviction, New Zealand’s court of appeals confirmed Tuesday.
“This is rather a blatant and calculated attempt to retraumatise the Christchurch victims specifically and the nation as a whole. This shows that the March 15 terrorist has no remorse,” the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ) said in an emailed statement. FIANZ said Tarrant was attempting to “gain notoriety and in the process milk our justice platforms for hate speech,” and also “gain new adherents to their cause of hate.”
Imam Gamal Fouda of the Al Noor Mosque, one of the two mosques targeted in the massacre, said he was “struggling to understand” why Tarrant was appealing the conviction after he had pleaded guilty.
“I cannot help but think that this is another action from this terrorist to harm his victims again by keeping alive the memory of him and his terrorist actions,” Fouda said in a Facebook post.
He said he believed the appeal “will cause a significant trauma in our community.”
A clerk at the court said the appeal would receive an oral hearing, but that the date for the hearing had not yet been set. The court did not immediately grant a records request for the notice of appeal.
Local news outlet Stuff.co.nz reported last year that Tarrant has claimed his guilty pleas were made under duress, when he was “subject to inhuman or degrading treatment,” preventing a fair trial, citing a recent memorandum by human rights lawyer Tony Ellis. When reached by The Washington Post, Ellis declined to comment, saying he no longer represented Tarrant.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declined to comment on the appeal to reporters, saying she had pledged not to say the gunman’s name. “His is a story that should not be told and his is a name that should not be repeated,” she said, according to the Associated Press. “I am going to apply that same rule in commenting on his attempts to revictimize people. We should give him nothing.”
In the days following the massacre in 2019, Ardern pledged to change the country’s gun laws. In a matter of weeks, a permanent ban on a variety of weapons went into effect. New Zealand’s legislative response to the mass shooting drew sharp comparisons to the United States, where gun legislation has failed amid opposition by Republicans.
Why won’t the U.S. change its gun laws? New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern says: ‘I do not understand.’
Authorities say the Christchurch shooter explained his actions in a manifesto that drew from the “great replacement” narrative — a racist theory that maintains native-born Whites are being intentionally displaced as ethnic majorities in their nations. The theory was also present in screeds left by shooters in El Paso in 2019 and Buffalo earlier this year.
Temel Atacocugu, one of the survivors of the attack, told the New Zealand Herald in reaction to the appeal that Tarrant was “trying to not be forgotten.”
“He’s doing these things to keep reminding the public that ‘I’m still here,’” Atacocugu said, adding: “It’s not going to work and he will remain [in prison] forever.”
Michael Feola contributed to this report. | 2022-11-08T09:23:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Christchurch gunman appeals conviction, life sentence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/christchurch-new-zealand-gunman-appeal-life-sentence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/christchurch-new-zealand-gunman-appeal-life-sentence/ |
A custody dispute in South Korea centers on presidential dogs
A 2018 photo from the South Korean Presidential Office shows President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook playing with the puppies born from two dogs gifted from North Korea. (Reuters)
SEOUL — Two fluffy former “peace puppies,” gifted in 2018 by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, are now at the center of a custody row between South Korea’s former and current presidents.
Moon Jae-in, who stepped down from South Korea’s top office in May, plans to give up the pair of dogs that Kim presented him to mark the two countries’ growing friendship after a summit four years ago. Moon’s office said Monday that he’d made the decision because of a lack of support from his successor, Yoon Suk-yeol.
The Pungsan hunting dogs — the beloved breed is indigenous to North Korea — are named Songgang and Gomi. They gave birth to seven puppies during Moon’s presidency, and he took the parents and one offspring to his personal residence as he left office.
It was an unprecedented move since the trio, as official state property, was supposed to be returned to the presidential archives per requirements of the Presidential Records Act. But after negotiations with the archives and the interior ministry, Moon was entrusted with the dogs’ care, according to his office. The ministry even pursued a legislative amendment to implement the move.
South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Monday that the ministry proposed a monthly budget of 2.5 million won ($1,800) in government funds to cover the pets’ food and veterinary care costs. The plan was derailed by “unexplained opposition” from Yoon’s administration, Moon’s office said.
“It seems that the presidential office is negative towards entrusting the management of the Pungsan dogs to former President Moon,” it said in a statement. “If that’s the case, we can be cool about it.”
The statement cited Moon’s “regrets” in having to return “companion animals he grew attached to.”
Neither side in this week’s dispute offered full details on the pets’ monthly expenses — which amount to $21,600 annually. Songgang and Gomi remained out of sight. | 2022-11-08T09:23:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dogs gifted by Kim Jong Un caught in South Korean presidential custody row - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/south-korea-president-dogs-gift/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/south-korea-president-dogs-gift/ |
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks during a news conference in Shaukat Khanum hospital, where is being treated for a gunshot wound in Lahore, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 4, 2022. Khan’s protest march and rallies were peaceful until the afternoon attack on Thursday, when a gunman opened fire at his campaign truck. The shooting has raised concerns about growing political instability in Pakistan, a country with a history of political violence and assassinations. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudhry) (K.M. Chaudary/AP)
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan postponed the resumption of his protest march on the country’s capital meant to challenge his successor’s government, his party said Tuesday. | 2022-11-08T09:29:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Party says Pakistan's ex-PM Khan delaying march on Islamabad - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/party-says-pakistans-ex-pm-khan-delaying-march-on-islamabad/2022/11/08/3ab01ab8-5f3f-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/party-says-pakistans-ex-pm-khan-delaying-march-on-islamabad/2022/11/08/3ab01ab8-5f3f-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
INDIANAPOLIS — The Indianapolis Colts fired coach Frank Reich after another lackluster offensive performance in the team’s third consecutive loss, and replaced him with former All-Pro center Jeff Saturday.
NEW ORLEANS — Kenyan Drake rushed for 93 yards and two touchdowns, Justin Houston had an interception to go with his third straight multiple-sack game, and the Baltimore Ravens beat the New Orleans Saints 27-13.
SAN FRANCISCO — Stephen Curry scored a season-high 47 points, knocking down seven 3-pointers, and the Golden State Warriors beat the Sacramento Kings 116-113 to snap a five-game losing streak.
ATLANTA — Dejounte Murray scored 25 points, rookie A.J. Griffin came off the bench in Trae Young’s absence to add a career-high 24 and the Atlanta Hawks snapped the Milwaukee Bucks’ season-opening, nine-game winning streak with a 117-98 victory.
DURHAM, N.C. — Jeremy Roach scored 16 first-half points to help seventh-ranked Duke open Jon Scheyer’s coaching tenure with a 71-44 win over Jacksonville. | 2022-11-08T09:30:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/11/08/9d0d2f22-5f3d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/11/08/9d0d2f22-5f3d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Ballot-box confrontations. Legal challenges. And what if a candidate claims premature victory? ‘Democracy is at stake,’ says one anchor.
An election night watch party in Washington's McPherson Square on Nov. 3, 2020. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Viewers tuning in to live coverage of the midterm elections Tuesday night will probably find the usual busy graphics of updating vote tallies, the celebratory scenes from far-flung hotel ballrooms and the familiar studio panels of pundits holding forth on what it all means.
But for the first national election night since the cycle that culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol, broadcast networks will have to look far beyond the vote tallies.
There could be live reports on confrontations at local ballot boxes. Deep analysis of down-ballot races that never previously made the grade for the national news.
And if a candidate in a close race takes the podium to declare victory? Don’t expect the cameras to turn that way in a hurry.
“I feel an incredible responsibility to get it right,” said CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, who has been covering elections since 1996. “I think democracy is at stake.”
Inspired by Donald Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, some of his supporters have worked for the last two years to undermine foundations of the democratic system. In Arizona, a group has staked out early-voting sites with guns in hand, in what they assert is a search for fraud. In Georgia, the secretary of state says a pro-Trump attorney gained access to some voting machines and compromised their security. A man under investigation for allegedly trying to do the same in Michigan is also the Republican nominee for attorney general in the state.
More than half of all Republicans running for Congress or key statewide offices this year have denied or questioned the outcome of the 2020 election, according to a Washington Post analysis. Some of them have been working with Republican officials in swing states, attempting to disqualify thousands of mail ballots in Democratic-leaning areas.
CBS responded to the explosion of ballot challenges and lawsuits by establishing a dedicated “democracy desk” that will keep tabs on the integrity of the voting process and note challenges as they are made. Both NBC and CNN will be relying heavily on teams they formed in 2020 in anticipation that Trump might falsely claim victory.
“Our job is to not only tell the audience which candidates won or lost, but we also have to give the audience a sense of whether American democracy is winning or losing on the night, and that is new,” said David Reiter, the CBS executive in charge of special events.
Some fear a repeat of the 2020 “red mirage,” when early election night results showed Trump leading in some areas before vote counts from mail-in ballots and big cities flipped the balance to Joe Biden. Reporters explained at the time that large polling sites take longer to be counted and Democrats favored mail-in voting at the height of the pandemic. But Trump nevertheless claimed that hundreds of thousands of fake votes were fabricated overnight, a lie still widely believed by his supporters.
As election night 2020 morphed into a sprawling, week-long story, political journalists dug into the details of the counting process and scrambled to assess the potential significance of fraud claims. The CNN team of reporters on that story is prepared for a similar workload this week.
“It is pretty clear that there is still going to be a large chunk of mail voting and some states will take a while to count,” said David Chalian, the network’s political director.
Once again, networks are reminding viewers to be patient with the count on Tuesday, noting that it ultimately took four days to call the election for President Biden.
“For the public, the expectations have probably changed,” said Marc Burstein, the executive who oversees election coverage for ABC News. “It’s no longer going to be considered a surprise if we don’t know the outcome by the end of the night or the next morning.” Reiter agreed, “I think it’s going to be a very long night.”
Networks will also be challenged to decide what merits live coverage on election night. In 2020, Trump essentially declared victory in the early-morning hours of Nov. 4, in a speech that was widely reported by mainstream news outlets, albeit with intense skepticism.
Several network executives told The Post that they have gamed out an approach for candidates who declare victory early or spread falsehoods. “I probably can’t imagine us carrying live the speech of a candidate saying they won if we don’t think they won,” ABC’s Burstein said.
Carrie Budoff Brown, the NBC News executive overseeing midterm elections coverage, said that network journalists will always vet the claims made by candidates. “Our mantra here is that we want to be accurate, not necessarily first,” Budoff Brown said.
One election expert who knows something about the ecstasy and agony of being first is Chris Stirewalt, who was Fox News’ political editor in 2020 when its decision desk that made a quick and decisive call of the state of Arizona for Biden on election night, days before other news networks followed. The call instantly became legendary in the election-analysis community, and although it enraged Trump and many of the network’s core conservative viewers, some election experts say it helped thwart his efforts to claim the election was stolen.
“It was important that Fox made the call and stood by the call,” said Stirewalt, who was laid off by Fox (he says he was fired) in January 2021. “Once you open the door to strategizing about when you are going to make your calls for ratings or viewer experience or anything other than making the calls, then you have profoundly undermined the concept of a decision desk.”
But Stirewalt, who now works for the smaller cable channel NewsNation, also urged his fellow broadcasters to remember that claims of fraud and impropriety are hardly new to 2022, “and not overhype either the results or perceived threats.”
Arnon Mishkin, a consultant who has led Fox’s decision desk since 2008, will be back in his role on Tuesday, the network said.
Chalian said CNN is ready for any scenario that might present itself on Tuesday night. “I find the joy of election night in the surprises,” he said. | 2022-11-08T10:03:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Election night could be chaotic. TV news is bracing for it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/11/08/tv-news-midterm-election-night-democracy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/11/08/tv-news-midterm-election-night-democracy/ |
Mary K. Brown wanted a sign next to the foot — ‘wear your boots kids’ — other nurses told investigators
Mary K. Brown had plans for a dying man’s foot, according to a recently filed affidavit.
As the registered nurse amputated her patient’s right foot on the afternoon of May 27, she told colleagues that her family owned a taxidermy shop, the affidavit alleges. Her co-workers recalled her saying that she planned to take the 62-year-old patient’s foot from the nursing home in Spring Valley, Wis., and display it at the shop.
According to them, she said she wanted to put a sign next to it: “wear your boots kids.”
Brown, 38, was charged Thursday with two felonies: mayhem and intentionally causing great bodily harm to an elderly person. The Pierce County district attorney has enhanced the possible punishment for each charge by up to six years because she’s accused of victimizing someone 60 or older.
Kevin Larson, administrator and chief executive of the Spring Valley Health and Rehabilitation Center, said in a statement that he and his staff “will continue to fully cooperate with the investigation into this matter.”
“The person identified is not employed with our community,” Larson added.
The 62-year-old man wound up at Spring Valley in March, Pierce County District Attorney Halle Hatch wrote in the affidavit. He had fallen at his home and, when the heat went out, suffered severe frostbite on both of his feet. Several nursing home employees described his feet as “black like a mummy.”
The man’s ill health extended beyond the frostbite. In the weeks leading up to May 27, hospice nurses cycled in and out of his room, expecting that his death was imminent, the affidavit states.
A few days before the amputation, the man rolled out of bed, Tracy Reitz, the nursing home’s director of nursing and clinical services, told Pierce County sheriff’s investigator Pete Koch. His already severely damaged right foot was further mangled in the fall, requiring Reitz to wrap it.
The man, who was “slightly coherent,” stared at his foot and apologized for the smell it was producing, Reitz told Koch.
Around this time, Brown asked Larson, the nursing home’s administrator, for permission to amputate, the affidavit states. Larson said no, telling her to merely stabilize the foot instead because he thought the man would die within hours. Defying those expectations, the patient held on for several days, Larson said, prompting Brown to amputate the foot because she “believed it was the right thing to do,” according to the affidavit.
Around 4:30 on the afternoon of May 27, Brown corralled and deputized her co-workers, identified only as Nurse 3 and Nurse 4 in court documents, to help her change the man’s bandages, the affidavit states. When they went in, Nurse 3 stabilized his foot while Nurse 4 held his hand. Both nurses told investigators that, as Brown changed the bandages, she expressed disbelief that no one had amputated his foot, according to the affidavit.
Brown then did it herself, cutting the foot with gauze scissors, Nurse 3 told investigators. The man didn’t seem to be in any pain, the nurse said.
Nurse 4 had a different perspective. She said she was busy holding the man’s hand when, all of sudden, his foot had been cut off, the affidavit states. Only after realizing what had happened was she able to figure out why the man’s grip was “extremely tight and he was moaning a little bit.”
Two days after the amputation, the man told another unnamed nurse that he had “felt everything and it hurt very bad,” according to the affidavit.
After amputating, Brown talked about taxidermy and mentioned the “wear your boots” sign, both nurses told the sheriff’s investigator. Nurse 3 said Brown mentioned taking the foot home to epoxy it, among other things, the affidavit states.
“She thought it was weird that Brown wanted to bronze the foot,” Koch wrote in the report.
Brown also talked to the sheriff’s investigator, the affidavit states. She admitted to amputating the man’s foot, even though the man never asked her to do so, conceding that the procedure was beyond the scope of her work as a nurse and she knew no doctor had approved it, according to the affidavit. She told the investigator that she suspected a doctor would deny her request, so she forged ahead without asking.
“He stated that he knows that the hospice doctor would have for sure,” Koch wrote in his report.
Larson said that, after conducting his own investigation into what happened, he determined that Brown had amputated the foot for the man’s “dignity and comfort” and because she “believed it was the right thing to do,” not for any malicious motive or to mistreat the patient, the affidavit states.
After amputation, the foot was placed in a red biohazard bag and put in a freezer, although Brown pushed Nurse 4 to retrieve it so she “could take it home to preserve it,” according to the affidavit. Reitz told investigators she nixed that idea, instructing Nurse 3 to monitor the 62-year-old man and make sure that, if he didn’t make it, his foot stayed with him. When he died days later, his body and foot went to a funeral home, where a medical examiner, noticing what he described as “the unusual circumstances” of the man’s foot not being attached to his body, alerted investigators.
“She stated she was trying to make the quality of life better for him,” Koch, the sheriff’s investigator, wrote in the report. “When she is thinking of herself in his condition, she would have wanted it off.” | 2022-11-08T10:59:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wis. nurse accused of amputating man’s foot for family’s taxidermy shop - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/08/nurse-arrested-foot-amputation-taxidermy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/08/nurse-arrested-foot-amputation-taxidermy/ |
FILE - Senate candidate U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin gives his victory speech at his watch party, Aug. 23, 2022, in Tulsa, Okla. (Mike Simons/Tulsa World via AP, File)
OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma Republican U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, would become the first Native American in the U.S. Senate in nearly 20 years if he’s elected Tuesday. | 2022-11-08T10:59:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oklahoma's Mullin could be first Native in Senate since 2005 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/oklahomas-mullin-could-be-first-native-in-senate-since-2005/2022/11/08/9a3838e0-5f4d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/oklahomas-mullin-could-be-first-native-in-senate-since-2005/2022/11/08/9a3838e0-5f4d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Police chief bragged about shooting Black man 119 times, according to recor...
That could affect their votes – and their safety from covid-19.
Analysis by Marisa A. Abrajano
Marianna Garcia
Aaron Pope
Robert Vidigal
Joshua Tucker
Jonathan Nagler
A sign marks the entrance to a voting precinct on the first day of early voting in the general election in Phoenix, Oct. 12, 2022. Arizona Latinos responded to a tough crackdown on immigrants by building a turnout machine that helped propel Democrats to power. The movement's strength will be tested Tuesday, when Democrats are counting Latino voters to help them overcome economic worries. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
How do Latino people — the largest ethnic minority group in the United States — use social media to get their political and public health information? With Twitter now owned by the wealthiest man in the world and voting about to end in the 2022 midterms, the answers to that question have consequences. The news Latino people encounter online would probably be quite different from what White people encounter, since many Latino people consume news in Spanish: 30 percent of U.S. Latinos consider themselves bilingual, and 40 percent communicate primarily in Spanish. Some social media platforms, including Meta, admit that their content moderation is worse in Spanish. In fact, WhatsApp, which is highly popular among Latino people, doesn’t monitor content at all, relying on users to install fact-checking monitors on their accounts.
Our research found that, indeed, Latino people use social media differently than do White Americans. What’s more, Latino people who rely on Spanish-language social media are more likely to believe misinformation about election issues and are more likely to rely on social media for information about the coronavirus.
Latino people use social media differently than White people do
To understand how and where Latino people get information online, we surveyed 2,636 individuals across America who identify as Latino/Hispanic/Latinx. Respondents were recruited with online advertisements in both Spanish and English to take an online survey. Our sample included roughly equal numbers of English-dominant, bilingual and Spanish-dominant respondents. We also sampled approximately 1,000 non-Latino people as a comparison group. We weighted respondents on education, gender, age, and region to match the national proportions of Latino people and all people based on census figures from the ACS.
We asked our respondents which social media platforms they had accounts on. And we asked detailed questions about their sources of political and coronavirus information.
As you can see in the figure below, Latino people were slightly less likely to use Facebook than White people (79 percent versus 96 percent) and were also slightly less likely to use YouTube (73 percent versus 75 percent).
But Latino people were substantially more likely than White people to use WhatsApp (53 percent versus 14 percent), TikTok (42 percent vs 24 percent), and Telegram (16 percent versus 5 percent). That was true even among U.S.-born Latino people, 33 percent of whom said they use WhatsApp. An even higher proportion of Spanish-language dominant Latino people uses WhatsApp: 70 percent.
Latino people were also more likely to use these platforms for political information and discussion
We found that Latino people were more likely to follow politicians on social media than White people. Of Latino people on Telegram, for example, 39 percent said that they followed at least one politician on the platform, while only 32 percent of White people said the same.
Even more striking was how Latino people used platforms to talk about politics. While only 15 percent of White people reported using WhatsApp to talk about politics once a day or more, 31 percent of Latino users said they did.
Latino people are more likely to use social media to find information on covid-19
We also asked respondents where they got information about covid-19. This information could be critical to decisions made by individuals about their own behavior; incorrect information could literally put lives at risk.
We found that 53 percent of Latino people said that they relied “a lot” or “a great deal” on social media for information about covid-19. For White people, the figure was only 34 percent.
Of course, social media may be peddling misinformation on covid-19. That’s especially true on Spanish- language social media, as Teo Armus has found. That’s a problem, as we found that 56 percent of Spanish-dominant Latino people and bilinguals said they got their covid information from social media. After controlling for respondents’ levels of education, income, and age, Hispanics were much more likely to say that they relied on social media for information about covid-19 than were White people.
Latino people who rely on Spanish-language social media are more likely to believe in election fraud
As Jeronimo Cortina and Brandon Rottinghaus reported in February here at The Monkey Cage, Latino people who rely mainly on Spanish-language media are more likely to believe in baseless accusations than those who rely on English-language news sources. We dug further into this, specifically checking on whether social media use related to belief that the 2020 election was fraudulent. To measure this, we asked who respondents thought more people really voted for in the 2020 presidential election: Joe Biden or Donald Trump. And we asked Latino respondents if the news they consumed on social media was in English, Spanish or both.
We found that 40 percent of Hispanic respondents who relied on Spanish language social media for their news believed that Trump received more votes than Biden, a belief held by only 31 percent of Hispanic respondents who relied on English language social media. Even controlling for demographics such as age, education and income and whether the respondent generally used English or Spanish, reliance on Spanish language social media was associated with a greater likelihood of thinking that Trump won the election.
As others have reported, Spanish-language social media platforms are not as highly monitored for misinformation and disinformation as are English-language platforms. Will this shape Latino votes in this election? Our research suggests that that’s likely.
Marisa A. Abrajano is a professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego and faculty affiliate of the Center for Social Media at New York University.
Marianna Garcia is a political science PhD student at the University of California at San Diego and a graduate research associate of the Center for Social Media at New York University
Aaron Pope is a project manager at the Center for Social Media at New York University.
Robert Vidigal is a research data scientist at the Center for Social Media at New York University.
Joshua A. Tucker is a professor of politics and co-director of the Center for Social Media at New York University.
Jonathan Nagler is professor of politics and a co-director of the Center for Social Media at New York University. | 2022-11-08T11:00:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Latinos who use Spanish-language social media get more misinformation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/latino-midterms-votes-misinformation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/latino-midterms-votes-misinformation/ |
NEW ORLEANS — A bent for bombastic self-promotion that helped Rep. Clay Higgins win his congressional seat in 2016 — when the Mountie-hatted ex-sheriff’s deputy’s anti-crime videos earned him the “Cajun John Wayne” nickname — became a point of criticism as he sought a fourth term representing Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional district. | 2022-11-08T11:00:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Congressman's self-promotion an issue in Louisiana race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congressmans-self-promotion-an-issue-in-louisiana-race/2022/11/08/36dc8b70-5f4d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congressmans-self-promotion-an-issue-in-louisiana-race/2022/11/08/36dc8b70-5f4d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A coveted open seat in the U.S. Senate has sparked a closer-than-expected faceoff to be decided Tuesday between Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan and Republican “Hillbilly Elegy” author JD Vance.
When GOP Sen. Rob Portman announced he'd be vacating the seat last year, it was considered Republicans’ to lose. After former President Donald Trump won a second, historic victory in the state in 2020, pundits declared the state’s status as a political bellwether state “unrung.” Republicans’ extended lock on every state elective office, the Ohio Supreme Court and both legislative chambers drove Democrats to regroup. | 2022-11-08T11:01:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats aspire to flip US Senate seat in solid red Ohio - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrats-aspire-to-flip-us-senate-seat-in-solid-red-ohio/2022/11/08/6ed1a11a-5f4c-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrats-aspire-to-flip-us-senate-seat-in-solid-red-ohio/2022/11/08/6ed1a11a-5f4c-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
A person with diabetes wears a glucose monitoring sensor that checks blood sugar levels. (iStock)
In the United States, an estimated 1.3 million adults with diabetes — 16.5 percent of those who have been prescribed insulin to manage their disease — have rationed their use of the medication in the past year, according to a report published last month in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
The researchers found that some people who ration insulin delay refilling their prescriptions, and others skip doses or take a smaller dose of insulin than needed. Insulin is a hormone, created by the pancreas, that helps the body turn food into energy and also helps control blood sugar levels.
In people with diabetes, however, the body does not make enough insulin (Type 1 diabetes) or does not use it correctly, known as insulin resistance (Type 2). As a result, those with Type 2 diabetes may be prescribed insulin (known as “human insulin” but made in a lab) to keep their blood sugar levels in line, while those with Type 1 require a daily dose of insulin to live.
Learning to live with diabetes
The insulin generally must be injected via a needle, pen or pump, although an inhalable powder also can be used in some cases. The new report was based on data from an ongoing health research project of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with the researchers focusing on a nationally representative sample of 982 adults who use insulin to treat diabetes.
The report attributes the rationing to the cost of the drug and what it describes as “inadequate” insurance coverage. The price of the four most popular types of insulin has tripled in the past decade, according to the American Diabetes Association.
The report notes that rationing was more common among lower- and middle-income participants (15 and 20 percent, respectively) than higher income people (11 percent). Also, more Black participants rationed (23 percent) than did White or Hispanic participants (16 percent). Rationing was most frequent among those who were uninsured, with 29 percent saying they had rationed insulin. Still, 19 percent of those with private insurance rationed the drug, blaming high co-pays, vs. 14 percent of Medicare and 12 percent of Medicaid recipients. | 2022-11-08T11:04:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Over 1 million Americans with diabetes rationed insulin in past year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/08/diabetes-insulin-rationing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/08/diabetes-insulin-rationing/ |
Brian Tyree Henry appears in September at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of “Causeway.” (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
“If you have the privilege of seeing Brian in even one role … his magnitude as an actor, his range, his depth of spirit, it’s just undeniable,” Neugebauer says. “There’s a natural tendency in this industry to slot people into certain boxes, and I think Brian blasts open the framework of those boxes. I think he can do anything.”
Jennifer Lawrence plays a U.S. soldier who suffers a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan. She returns home to live with her mother while she recuperates. (Video: Apple TV+)
Born in North Carolina and raised partially in Washington, Henry has acted since childhood. He attended Morehouse College, a liberal arts school in Atlanta, and graduate school at Yale before finding work in theater. Having been a Black man at Yale, and then on Broadway, Henry knows what it is to be in the minority. He approaches his craft with empathy, at times drawing from his own experiences.
As their friendship deepens, James reveals to Lynsey that he endured his own traumatic injury some time ago, the circumstances of which left him feeling ashamed and isolated. While grieving in his own life, Henry says, the actor thought to himself, “Well, nobody can see me. No one knows what’s going on. I have to make sure that I smile … and that I’m okay when I leave the house.” He saw himself in James’s need to push forward, which sometimes meant denying the immensity of his pain.
“I don’t think we originally made him that upset with the world,” Glover says. “He became more and more somebody who’s like, ‘I don’t want to be bothered, I just want to do my thing and get … out.’” | 2022-11-08T11:08:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brian Tyree Henry is your favorite actor’s favorite actor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/08/brian-tyree-henry-atlanta-causeway-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/08/brian-tyree-henry-atlanta-causeway-interview/ |
On an intense tour for his candid memoir, the “Friends” star shares his story of addiction — repeatedly
Matthew Perry, photographed in New York last week while on a heavy promotion tour for his new memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big, Terrible Thing,” in which he describes his long struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. The book was released Nov. 1. (Jelani Rice for The Washington Post)
NEW YORK — For a big celebrity, the 13th step of recovery may be the tell-all book tour.
Half his life spent in and out of treatment or sober-living centers. Fourteen stays in rehab. Sixty-five times in detox, beginning at age 26, two years into co-starring in the 10-year TV sitcom juggernaut that was “Friends.” Fourteen surgeries. More than 6,000 Alcoholic Anonymous meetings, though anonymity was rarely an option.
“Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” published last week, is written with frequent filter-free candor after decades of trying to keep his troubles secret. “I’m a back-against-the-wall, old-time addict,” says Perry, 53, perched in a Tribeca hotel room, three days after the memoir’s official release. “I have anxiety with a side order of depression.”
Book World: In Matthew Perry’s memoir, a need for fame leads to 65 rehab stints
In therapy since age 18, Perry names names and discloses price tags. He shares stories of impotence, exploding colostomy bags, dumping Julia Roberts, making out with Valerie Bertinelli (with passed-out husband Eddie Van Halen nearby), unrequited crushing on Jennifer Aniston and an insatiable quest for fame that rivaled his appetite for pills and alcohol.
“I have a never-ending need for attention but it’s never the right kid of attention,” he says. “It didn’t work. It didn’t fix that hole in me, and that was surprising to me.”
Perry looks tired, nigh onto exhausted at 10 a.m. The actor is the midst of an intense, whirlwind media tour where he is asked to relay these horrors on an almost hourly basis. How he almost died. The story of being too incapacitated to appear in a movie with three scenes opposite Meryl Streep.
Perry’s candor keeps making news. “It’s putting me on the map and people are talking about me again. That’s nice because it’s been five or six years when there was none of that,” he says. “Sometimes I think I went through the addiction, alcoholism and fame all to be doing what I’m doing right now, which is helping people.”
In “Friends, Lovers,” Perry writes that he spent $7 million on rehab at many of the world’s five-star centers. Now, he concedes that it was more likely $9 million.
Perry was often so hung over on set that if his character — sarcastic, tightly-wound, sweater-vested Chandler Bing — needed to move from the couch to the table, “I had to make sure that my hand was leaning on something so I wasn’t shaking,” he says.
As details from the memoir emerged, Perry wound up having to publicly apologize to actor Keanu Reeves, whom he disses twice in the book, writing that Reeves “still walks among us” yet River Phoenix and Chris Farley died young from drug overdoses.
“A mistake. I realized that wasn’t a nice thing to do,” says Perry, who has apologized repeatedly. “I should have used my name. I just wasn’t thinking.” Additionally, a story he relays in the book about beating up Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau in grade school may have been misremembered. “Now, I don’t think that I did,” he says. And Bertinelli took to TikTok, “mortified” that Perry recounted a make-out session that occurred in their 20s.
The book tour, especially theater events in New York, Princeton and Washington, has proved therapeutic. “I’m more comfortable talking to 1,500 people than sitting on my couch watching TV,” he says. He loathes being alone, though he’s gotten better at that. Currently not in a relationship, Perry says that, with one exception, he’s terminated every romantic relationship he had — mostly with actresses. “I was so fear-driven. I would end these relationships, and there are five or six women there that I would love to be married to.” His “assistant/best friend,” he writes in the book, lives with him. Why does he fear being alone? “I think I’m afraid of my mind a little bit,” he says.
Perry is not a fan of the second A in Alcoholics Anonymous. He wasn’t granted the accommodation. “It plays to the stigma. It’s a disease. Why should we hide that?” In Bill W’s “The Big Book” about AA, “the point of his story is these bad things kept happening to him and he still kept drinking after that,” Perry says, a cup of coffee and water bottle by his side. “My story makes that sound like a Cinderella story. My story is so much worse than Bill’s story.”
Here is what he wants to tell people dealing with addiction: “If hard work and determination was all it took to get you sober, I would have gotten sober 20 years ago. It’s not about that. It’s about a spiritual connection. It’s about opening up your mind and your heart to be able to have a spiritual experience,” he says. “I scared people, a lot of people. There are about five people who said ‘I’m done. I can’t watch this anymore. I’m finished.’ I think I scared them enough that they may be gone forever.”
“The only thing that made me keep a lid on my using and drinking was that I had the greatest job in the world. I can’t blow this up. I can’t lose this job,” he says. Miraculously, he didn’t. “When you’re making a million dollars a week, you can’t have the 17th drink. If I didn’t have that, the show, I’d probably be on the streets.”
In “Friends, Lovers,” Perry shares his obsession with Batman. He has moved frequently but keeps a Batroom — a “Mattroom” as he calls it — filled with superhero memorabilia. He jokingly calls an assistant “Alfred” who, in turn, calls Perry “Mr. Wayne.” The actor bought a mammoth $20 million apartment that never felt like home because he thought it seemed like a place where Bruce Wayne would live.
“We both are loners. We both are wealthy. We both drive cool, black cars,” says Perry, who owns an Aston Martin Vantage V8 Roadster. “I don’t fight crime — but I do save lives on occasion.”
He does not watch “Friends,” though he did during his recent Diane Sawyer interview, which made him cry, “looking at this very thin, lost, scared man,” he says. “It’s a difficult thing for me to watch, because I’m thinking, ‘Oh, I was on Vicodin at that time. Oh, I was drinking at that time.’ But I should watch it because I think it would cheer me up to see it, because it’s good and it’s funny.” | 2022-11-08T11:08:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Matthew Perry’s endless loop, promoting his candid memoir - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/08/matthew-perry-profile-interview-memoir/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/08/matthew-perry-profile-interview-memoir/ |
The monthly book-club-style gathering at Songbyrd brings music admirers together and turns them into a family
The R&B Club at Songbyrd takes place on the second Sunday of the month. (Alexis P. Williams)
Before Verzuz and Club Quarantine, four local music lovers were curating their own discussions about the legacy of a genre whose relevance has been called into question in recent years. Since February 2018, Marcus K. Dowling, Julian Kimble, Ashley-Dior Thomas and Justin Tinsley have hosted the R&B Club — a monthly, book-club-style meetup for fellow soul music enthusiasts at Songbyrd Music House.
At the R&B Club, the “language we all understand” that Stevie Wonder sang about in “Sir Duke” isn’t dismissed as “niche” or “passe.” When a recording of Tevin Campbell’s “Can We Talk” is paused too soon, a singalong erupts to finish it. When the panel asks which version of Diddy’s “I Need a Girl” is better, a full-blown discussion is guaranteed.
“I was really tired of people saying R&B is dead, nonexistent or fading away,” said Thomas, an operations consultant for small businesses. “I do not understand where this is coming from. It’s such a lazy conversation. R&B sometimes gets treated like it’s the cousin of music rather than the mom or the dad.”
The hosts got the idea for the events after attending Songbyrd’s Classic Album Sundays series. They sought to combine their mutual admiration for the genre with their respective strengths — Dowling’s knowledge of D.C.’s musical history, Kimble’s flair for debate, Tinsley’s knack for sharing cultural context and Thomas’s productivity expertise — to create a “holistic picture” of R&B for the public.
With such year-long themes as “’90s R&B albums” and “R&B legends” as their framework, the hosts select a topic and examine how that artist’s personal journey, lyricism, vocal ability or production quality continue to fuel the heartbeat of rhythm and blues today. Using a chronologically organized playlist as a guide, the hosts contribute to the conversations with intimate stories, unwavering opinions and little-known facts about the subjects. They keep an open mic handy to encourage audience members to share their connections, too. The sessions, which may have begun as a gathering of like-minded music buffs, have evolved into a safe space for fans who have become family, according to Dowling.
“You walk into that room and your real human passion gets exposed at some point within that two hours,” said Dowling, who moved to Nashville during the pandemic to work as a country music reporter for the Tennessean. “Something that’s very organic to who you are as a person comes out. … You’re probably going to cry. You’re going to laugh, and something about you that you don’t want the world to know is probably going to come out. We have a communal experience.”
These local record shops give you an analog break from a digital world
Kimble, a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Post and other publications, believes he and his co-hosts feed guests’ desires to “feel something” deeper than the soundtrack to their weekend bottomless brunch. “In a city where people can go to several places, do the exact same thing, I don’t know that there’s anything like the R&B Club in D.C.,” he said. “That’s what people are drawn to.”
This year’s series is focused on songwriters and producers. At October’s Raphael Saadiq event, best friends and first-time attendees Montez Freeman of Southeast and Justin Schofield of District Heights immediately “felt a sense of community” in the audience.
“These are my people,” Freeman said. “I did not expect to see that many people that are interested in this type of obsession over music. I didn’t feel like a nerd or an outsider anymore.”
Schofield appreciated that the hosts acknowledge artists who he thinks aren’t valued enough by the mainstream.
“There’s so much music from back then to the present,” Schofield said. “Let’s blow the dust off of this thing and let’s play it. Let’s talk about what we have in the past and make it alive again.”
Following a brief hiatus during the pandemic, the club relaunched in July 2022 spotlighting Missy Elliott. The rapper-songwriter even co-signed the “fun” of the event herself on Twitter. For Thomas, Elliott’s comment only reaffirmed what the late record executive Andre Harrell told her during a chance encounter in March 2018.
“I showed him a photo from our Jodeci event and he was like, ‘Oh, you got something going here. I’ve never heard of this,’ ” Thomas said. “And I knew. I don’t care if 10 people or three people came every month after that. Andre Harrell tells us we got something going. That’s all I needed. We’re taking off.”
Harrell founded Uptown Records, which housed acclaimed R&B acts like Al B. Sure! and Mary J. Blige, whose “What’s the 411?” album was covered by the R&B Club in April 2018. Thomas said the music mogul was surprised that people cared enough to examine R&B, let alone discuss minute details like seeing a sophisticated vocalist like Blige donning combat boots and a backward baseball cap while singing about “Real Love.”
At the R&B Club, they do. Southeast resident Charles Nelson likes that it also respects D.C.’s musical heritage.
“Like a lot of native Washingtonians, we love hip-hop, we really love go-go. But deep down, we’re R&B heads,” Nelson said. “In this city, everybody knows Marvin Gaye, Raheem DeVaughn, Donny Hathaway, Roberta Flack and all these people that [were] born here, have ties to this town. We’re naturally [an] R&B town.”
Kimble supported this point during the Saadiq event, when he recounted seeing the multi-instrumentalist during a two-night show at 9:30 Club. According to Kimble, Saadiq shared his affection for the go-go cover of his song “Still Ray” by local act Backyard Band. “The second night, [they] came out and did the song with him,” Kimble said. “[D.C.] is an R&B city because it’s just in the DNA of it.”
For Alisha Edmonson and Joe Lapan, the owners of Songbyrd and its sibling Byrdland record store, the R&B Club allows them to brainstorm clever ways to connect with the audience.
“Depending on [who] the artist is, I’ll be like, ‘Oh, maybe there’s a record I can help [them] give away’ or ‘Is there a cool R&B show?’ ” Lapan said. “I [helped] them give away tickets to Alex Isley and Maxwell. Because it’s a group of dedicated R&B fans, even if we’re celebrating Raphael Saadiq, we know that that crowd is interested in Isley and Maxwell.”
Pre-pandemic, the sessions were held in the dimly lit basement at Songbyrd’s former location in Adams Morgan. The darkness and proximity fueled the confidence of guests who would spontaneously stand up and dance or burst into song, free from a judgmental gaze. At the new Songbyrd near Union Market, guests sit at tall tables in a brightly lit, converted warehouse. But Edmonson believes the uniqueness of the communal listening experience remains.
“The music is the tempo we create, and that’s what makes it intimate,” Edmonson said. “The space is a blank canvas for whatever mood people want to bring into it.”
At the end of the Saadiq event, the hosts announced November’s edition would spotlight Virginia’s own Pharrell Williams, and gasps and cheers echoed across the room. Tinsley, a senior culture writer with ESPN’s Andscape, thinks these heartfelt reactions are what make the experience special.
“I’m never not in awe when I look out into the crowd,” Tinsley said. “You love the music, but you love to hear people speak about their connections to the music. I think that’s the genesis of what great music is, [and] definitely great R&B. We always want that type of connection because you know when a connection is real, [and] you know when a connection is manufactured. I don’t think [there’s] anything about this club that is manufactured. The R&B Club is one of the greatest gifts that D.C. has right now.”
The R&B Club is held the second Sunday of each month at Songbyrd, 540 Penn St. NE. “Diary of an R&B Songwriter and Producer: Pharrell” will take place Nov. 13 from noon to 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door, and include a drink. | 2022-11-08T11:08:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The R&B Club keeps soul music alive in Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/11/08/r-and-b-club-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/11/08/r-and-b-club-dc/ |
Falcons defensive lineman Ta'Quon Graham loses the ball to finish a play on which he had recovered a fumble, leading to the Chargers' winning field goal Sunday in Atlanta. (John Bazemore/AP)
ATLANTA — There was a flash of brilliance in the NFL’s sorriest division, the NFC South, late Sunday afternoon in Tampa. Quarterback Tom Brady summoned some of his all-time-greatness to lead the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on a last-minute drive that beat the Los Angeles Rams with a touchdown in the closing seconds, prompting Brady to exclaim afterward, “That was [bleeping] awesome.”
Indeed it was. But that’s not a word combination that has been used regularly this season to describe the four NFC South teams and their combined record of 13-23. The Buccaneers and Atlanta Falcons lead the way with matching 4-5 marks. The New Orleans Saints are 3-6 after their 27-13 loss to the visiting Baltimore Ravens on Monday night. Even the Carolina Panthers, at 2-7, qualify as contenders, a mere two games out of first place.
No, the follies of the NFC South were more appropriately illustrated earlier Sunday afternoon with a double-fumble play that led to the Falcons losing at home, 20-17, to the Los Angeles Chargers on a field goal as time expired. Chargers tailback Austin Ekeler lost a fumble in the final minute. But Falcons defensive lineman Ta’Quon Graham, after scooping up the football and running along the sideline, lost the ball. The Chargers regained possession on the same play they had lost it, then moved back into position for their winning kick.
“It just slipped out,” Graham said in the postgame locker room. “Just one of those football plays that I didn’t make. It definitely sucks. But we’ve got a Thursday night game. So it’s on to the next.”
A nationwide audience on Amazon Prime Video will be treated — or is it subjected? — to the joys of the NFC South on Thursday when the Panthers host the Falcons. It’s a rematch of a crazy Week 8 game the Falcons won, 37-34, in overtime in Atlanta. With 12 seconds left in regulation, the Panthers tied the score with a stunning 62-yard touchdown pass from quarterback P.J. Walker to wide receiver DJ Moore. But Moore was penalized for removing his helmet during the ensuing celebration. The Panthers missed a 48-yard extra point, then missed a 32-yard field goal attempt in overtime.
The division is interesting, even if it’s not particularly good.
NFL playoff teams with losing records
*strike-shortened season
Source: NFL Record & Fact Book
“If you look around the league, it’s so competitive week in and week out,” Falcons Coach Arthur Smith said Sunday. “It usually comes down to the end. I think it’s kind of a trend around the National Football League. We’ve been in our fair share in really the last two years. We didn’t get it done today.”
The instability in the division has occurred in part because the Saints, Falcons and Panthers tried but failed to trade for quarterback Deshaun Watson, then with the Houston Texans, in March. The Texans instead traded Watson to the Cleveland Browns.
After they were spurned, the Saints re-signed Jameis Winston. The Falcons traded 2016 MVP Matt Ryan to the Indianapolis Colts and signed Marcus Mariota. The Panthers eventually traded for Baker Mayfield, whom Watson had displaced in Cleveland. Winston and Mayfield have been plagued by injuries and have been unable to keep their starting jobs.
The Panthers fired Matt Rhule as their coach after a 1-4 start and named defensive assistant Steve Wilks their interim coach. The Saints are in their first season since promoting Dennis Allen from defensive coordinator after Sean Payton stepped aside. Likewise for the Buccaneers, who promoted defensive coordinator Todd Bowles when Bruce Arians stepped down in March. Smith, in his second season with the Falcons, is the dean of NFC South coaches.
It was supposed to be a seamless transition for the Buccaneers, especially when Brady ended his nearly six-week retirement to chase an eighth career Super Bowl triumph this season at 45. But it has been a bumpy ride filled with on-field struggles, sideline outbursts and intense off-field scrutiny of his personal life.
The NFC South circa 2022 perhaps should steal the mantra of the NFC East in 2020: Someone has to win the division. Washington won the East two years ago with a 7-9 record, joining the 2010 Seattle Seahawks (who also went 7-9) and the 2014 Panthers (7-8-1) as the only teams to make the playoffs with losing records in a non-strike season.
No matter the record, the NFC South winner will have a first-round playoff game at home in January.
“A lot of times in this league, it’s really matchups week to week,” Smith said. “Every game is its own story.”
The Buccaneers probably would be the most dangerous NFC South team in the postseason, given Brady’s presence. He took the Buccaneers 60 yards in 35 seconds Sunday to defeat the Rams, 16-13, with a one-yard touchdown pass to rookie tight end Cade Otton with nine seconds left.
But the Falcons also are interesting. They’re fourth in the league in rushing offense. They might have beaten the Buccaneers last month if not for a controversial roughing-the-passer call against defensive lineman Grady Jarrett. And they can get back to .500 if they win Thursday in Charlotte.
But first, they must move quickly past the topsy-turvy defeat to the Chargers.
“It’s tough, man,” safety Richie Grant said after Sunday’s loss. “It’s a tough pill to swallow. … That’s one that got away. But I believe in our guys.” | 2022-11-08T11:08:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Someone has to win the NFC South, right? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/nfc-south-bucaneers-falcons-panthers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/nfc-south-bucaneers-falcons-panthers/ |
Election Day begins in D.C., Maryland and Virginia
Maryland voters cast their ballots at the Silver Spring Civic Building on Oct. 27. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Election Day voters are beginning to head to the polls in Virginia, as the Washington region turns out to cast ballots in the 2022 midterm elections. Polls will open at 7 a.m. in both Maryland and D.C.
Among the more heated contests attracting attention: tight congressional races in Virginia and Maryland; the at-large D.C. Council race; and an initiative that would increase the minimum wage for the District’s tipped workers. All statewide races, headlined by the vote for governor, are on the ballot in Maryland, where voters also will decide whether to make it the latest state to legalize marijuana.
Virginia’s congressional races this cycle are some of the most competitive in the country. In the Virginia Beach-anchored 2nd District, Rep. Elaine Luria (D) is running for reelection, competing with state Sen. Jen A. Kiggans (R-Virginia Beach). Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) faces a test from Republican Yesli Vega, a Prince William Board of County Supervisors member, in the 7th District. In the Northern-Virginia-based 10th, Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D) is being challenged by Republican Hung Cao.
Several notable local races are on the ballot in Virginia as well, including for a seat on the Loudoun County School Board; for a seat on the Arlington County Board, a race that has become a de facto referendum on housing policy in the D.C. suburb; and for mayor of Fairfax City, a nonpartisan race that has drawn partisan dollars.
A guide to the 2022 Virginia election
Maryland voters will be deciding Gov. Larry Hogan’s (R) successor. Polls show Democrat Wes Moore has a lead of more than 30 percentage points over Republican Dan Cox; if Moore wins, he will become the state’s first Black governor.
Maryland has its own congressional battle in its 6th District, where business executive Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) has a rematch with Del. Neil C. Parrott (R). The state attorney general and comptroller are also before voters, as is Question 4, which would make recreational marijuana legal for adults. Local election officials warn that it will take days or weeks for all ballots to be counted in Maryland, delaying some results.
In heavily Democratic D.C., Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) is likely to win a rare third term. Several council races are on the ballot as well, led by the race for council at large, which features three sitting council members among the eight candidates vying for two seats. Initiative 82, which would gradually raise the tipped minimum wage to match the standard minimum wage by 2027, is on the ballot, too.
Polls will close at 7 p.m. in Virginia and at 8 p.m. in Maryland and D.C.
This article will be updated throughout the day.
The 2022 D.C. elections | 2022-11-08T11:21:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Election Day 2022 voting begins for D.C., Maryland, Virginia midterms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/elections-maryland-dc-virginia-voting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/elections-maryland-dc-virginia-voting/ |
A view of Dulles International Airport from a Metrorail car on the new Silver Line extension. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
The Silver Line extension is the largest expansion of the Metrorail system in eight years and will bring regional rail service about 28 miles west of Washington into Loudoun County.
It includes a stop at Dulles International Airport, something regional travelers, airport officials and business leaders have desired for decades. The line includes five other stations and forms the spine for a burgeoning Northern Virginia tech corridor.
While four years behind schedule, the $3 billion project will bring the first rail connections between the Washington region’s largest economic powerhouses — downtown D.C. and Tysons — the area’s international airport and the nation’s wealthiest county.
The first passenger train to serve the new corridor will depart the Ashburn station at 1:54 p.m. on Nov. 15. The first full-length westbound trip will depart the Downtown Largo station at 12:51 p.m., arriving at Wiehle-Reston East at 2:02 p.m. before servicing the new stations.
Where does the Silver Line extension go and how long is the ride?
The project is four years behind schedule. What took so long?
What will it cost to ride and how often will trains arrive?
What should I know about getting to Dulles via Metro?
What happens to bus service to Dulles?
What else should commuters know about the new stations? | 2022-11-08T11:21:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. Metro's Silver Line to Dulles opens Nov. 15. Here’s what to know. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/08/metro-silver-line-dulles-opening/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/08/metro-silver-line-dulles-opening/ |
Javier Zamora is an award-winning Salvadoran American poet, author and activist. (Apollo Fields)
Javier Zamora, 32, is an award-winning Salvadoran American poet, author and activist. His memoir, “Solito,” chronicling his nine-week journey at the age of 9 to the United States from El Salvador, by boat, bus and foot, to join his parents in California, was released in September. He lives in Tucson with his wife.
When you were 9, you made a nine-week, 3,000-mile journey — without your family — from your home in El Salvador to join your parents in the United States. In “Solito,” you write about the experience and processing it, and you dedicate the book to Chino and also Patricia and Carla. Can you explain who they are and what they meant to you on that journey?
The journey wasn’t supposed to be that long. The journey was supposed to be two weeks at most, and this coyote smuggler, who brought my mom over, was supposed to be with us every step of the way. But the coyote left us. And “us” was me, a 9-year-old kid; Chele, a 33-year-old man; Marcelo, a 28-, 27-year-old man; Patricia, who was probably 29 or 28, with her 12-year-old daughter, Carla; and this young man who couldn’t have been more than 19 named Chino.
At first, I was supposed to be taken care of by Marcelo — only because my grandpa knew him and had paid him money. Me and Marcelo were from the same town. But he didn’t. He uses me as his little, I don’t know, servant. I go and get his cigarettes or whatever. He was a scary-looking guy. I guess when you’re a kid everybody’s scary. Chino was scary because he had a buzz cut, almost a shaved head and tattoos, and Marcelo had tattoos as well, and at that time tattoos were rare and bad in El Salvador, and so I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust anybody. But then Patricia is the first person who’s nice to me, I guess because she’s a mom, and I room with her and her daughter. And I think after the boat, Chino takes care of me when no one else is; he literally provides warmth.
And Chino carries you on his back in the desert and would not leave you — that’s sort of the very best of humanity, right? Even amidst all the stress and deprivation.
And they didn’t have to. You know, they didn’t have to, which is the thing that, as an adult, really blows my mind.
I imagine that that is something that shapes you, knowing that people would do that, that people who don’t know you are good enough that they would sacrifice and put themselves at risk for you. Is that something that you have carried with you, or has kind of helped define who you are?
Huh. Wow. I’ve always thought that it was my dad and his leftist upbringing, which is why I gravitated to Che Guevara — because when I read about Che Guevara, it really unlocked something. But I think it’s what you just said: that it was these people, these strangers that could be so kind and showed me that you could care about strangers, which is probably why I gravitated towards that -ism, which is socialism.
I’m having a moment. I hadn’t put it that way because in my head, because since I came here when I was 9 up until I was 29 and sat down to write this book, I avoided thinking about them. It’s not like I didn’t think about them — it’s just that I did not want to, because I knew that just saying “Patricia” or “Carla” would break me. And the only name that I could utter in the writing of my first book, “Unaccompanied,” was “Chino.” In a poem, I say, “Oh, I hadn’t thanked you,” but even when I read that line, I would always choke up. I’ve always wanted to help [others], but always thought that that was because of my dad, not because of these individuals that were very real, but that I actively tried to not think about for years.
And you’ve said that you hoped that they would see that the book is dedicated to them. But they haven’t yet, as far as you know?
Do you think they will?
This is telling to how I process things: I just don’t think about them. That has been my superpower as a little kid; that’s when I learned to just dissociate, like, I’m not going to go there. But I’ve let my mind wander, especially before the book came out. The scenario that I think about is that they’re at Target, they’re at Walmart, or they’re just walking in the streets and they happen to see this book, and they see a name, “Javier.” They’re like, “Oh, I know Javier.” And they just open the book and see that it’s dedicated to them. That that kid that they helped created something and is thanking them.
What do you hope people reading this who don’t know trauma like what you went through as a 9-year old crossing the desert — you couldn’t even tie your shoes and yet were setting out on this epic journey — what do you want them to come away with?
Bottom line: that we’re human. That we are — but at the same time that we’re more than our trauma. We all know those pictures of immigrants as they’re trying to cross the border; photographers just take a snapshot of perhaps the worst second of that person’s life. And us, as viewers, that’s how we get to know that stranger. That’s it. We don’t hear anything else.
This book is attempting to expand on that picture. It’s adding one or two more layers. That we — and that’s everybody that’s in the book — are not only our stories of the literal crossing of the Sonoran Desert. I am not only the 20 hours that I was on the boat. I am not the minutes that I was facing down in Oaxaca while guns were pointed at me. I am also what’s in between. And what was in between were these beautiful moments. These moments that perhaps if a stranger were to be looking at us in 1999 as we were eating fish in Acapulco, perhaps they’re like, “Why are they tripping that that fish is really good? I have it once a week. It’s not that good.” But to us, after just being so close to death and being traumatized by guns, that fish was the best fish of our lives. Because it had to be for our momentum to continue to go forward and for us to stay positive. And I think that’s why we survived: Because we had to.
Having said that, this is only nine weeks of my life. I am also not this trauma. I am more than it. And that these people coming across the border are as human as me and you having this conversation, and they deserve everything that has happened to me after the writing of this book of those nine weeks.
How do you feel when people say you’ve lived the American Dream: You came across on your own, and now here you are a celebrated poet, celebrated author, with degrees and recognition and fellowships from all these prestigious universities?
If I hadn’t seen people run into the desert and never see them ever again, and to this day I don’t know whether they survived, perhaps I would be a believer in the American Dream. It’s a very real thing that happened, but it has become this metaphor that has haunted me. If I am put on this pedestal and if they can’t get it, the dream is not a dream. It is a nightmare. We, meaning us immigrants, are constantly made to be believe that we all have access to this [dream], and on paper, yes, I was born in a rural town and then Harvard paid me to be there and gave me an office and gave me a fat stipend. On paper, you’ll be like, “Oh, wow. That happened in a lifetime. That’s a trip.” Yes, it is a trip in and of itself, and yet I know hundreds of more qualified people that could have also held that position, and for X, Y and Z reasons they don’t get there. And that means that the system is broken, if the system is only supposed to work for the less than 2 percent, or less than 1 percent. If that is the dream, I don’t want any part of it.
Back to Che.
Yeah, back to Che. But also back to Chino, Patricia and everybody that was with me.
It is difficult because I have survivor’s guilt. But a lot of it, too, is growing up as a child of immigrants or as an immigrant yourself, working your way towards this dream, you are faced at multiple times with being the first in your family or being the first blah, blah, blah. The first Central American, or the first previously undocumented person to get an NEA. It’s like the “firsts” weight you down and rip you apart because you are saddened that you are the first of a lot of these things. Or that you’re one of five Latinos or one of five Black people to get this, or one of five Asian people. That is not a badge of honor but a slap in the face of all the other people in your family and all the other friends that you grew up with, and all the people from X, Y, Z country. You know?
I think that also leads to my wanting to not remember where I came from and not remember Patricia, Chino and everybody I describe in “Solito.” It is the dream that also makes you reject, and, for me, has taken me to a darker, unhealthy mental health journey that has been difficult. Luckily, I’ve gotten out of that because of another person who’s riding the same wave: my therapist. She’s a child immigrant from the [Dominican Republic] herself. And because of my wife, as well. Her grandparents were immigrants, and she also didn’t grow up in the best side of town, the first person of her family to go to college. So this idea of we don’t really talk about regarding the dress of dream. It’s heavy. It’s a heavy dress.
You talked about the images of the United States, “la usa,” while you were still a kid and your parents were in the U.S. When you got to California, what it was like for you when the reality and the dream collided?
I really expected the United States to be the United States of “Full House,” of “Baywatch,” of “Saved by the Bell,” of “90210,” of “Friends.” I really thought, in my 9-year-old brain, that all these things happen in California and all these people were neighbors, and they were not a fictitious show, but they were documentaries. And when I was going to come here, my parents were going to have a house with a front yard and a backyard with the same — this is how erroneous my dream was — with the same flora and fauna of El Salvador in San Francisco. And I was going to run to the backyard and pick a mango and eat it like I did in El Salvador because, of course, life in this country must be better than life in El Salvador. Because if it wasn’t, it didn’t make sense why my parents left me and why everybody keeps on leaving. It just doesn’t make sense.
But then you get here, and this is another thing that broke my parents’ hearts. After they picked me up from the desert and we make it to San Rafael, California, we’re driving. If you’ve ever been to San Rafael, it’s beautiful; you can see all the houses on the hill. But we’re not going towards the hills, and we’re not going toward the houses. We’re going to less and less trees, more and more concrete, these huge buildings that are apartment complexes. Finally, we make it to this 12-unit apartment complex, double-decker, and we get to a door and my parents open, and they’re fumbling the keys, and I’m like, “Where’s the house?” Like, “What are we doing here?” And my dad and mom start crying because this was their apartment that they didn’t even own, or they didn’t even have for themselves. They shared with two men who rented. It’s a two-bedroom apartment that they rented one bedroom and a couple was sleeping in the living room.
There’s a lot of talk about the problem at the southern border. Obviously during the Trump administration there was a lot of focus on the policies there, but this has been going on for many administrations, as you well know. What hope do you have for a more humane solution?
Well, yes, thank you for saying that. This has been going on forever, and it’s on both sides of the aisle: Democrats and Republicans are equally at fault of letting the situation get this bad. And also, international policy rarely gets talked about in debates. It’s like you can’t talk about what the United States has done abroad because if you do, you’re automatically considered a socialist or a communist. “Why are you doing that? We’re the great American democracy.” But in reality, it’s the great American empire, and these are the vestiges coming at the footsteps of the empire.
We have survivors at the border, people who have fled and survived something terrible in their homelands. I think that’s what people don’t understand: that people don’t want to do this. Why would you want to leave everything and everyone you know in order to roll your dice at the American Dream? It doesn’t make sense. And maybe if we consider these people as survivors, like we do people who are fleeing a war, like, say, Ukraine, maybe we’d have more empathy for them. And I think it’s an empathy problem. And statistics are not doing it for us. Very shocking images are also not doing it for us. And I just hope that my narrative, my story, is adding some humanity and putting a face to somebody who has survived that. If you don’t know somebody who has gone through X, Y and Z trauma, you’re less likely to care. But now you know Chino. You know Patricia. You know Carla. You know me. Maybe you can care more about this kid, these teenagers, these young adults, these adults, trying to survive and just live.
This interview has been edited and condensed. KK Ottesen is a regular contributor to the magazine. For a longer version, visit wapo.st/magazine. | 2022-11-08T11:38:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Poet Javier Zamora on immigrants who roll their ‘dice at the American Dream’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/08/javier-zamor-immigration-solito/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/08/javier-zamor-immigration-solito/ |
By Graham Vyse
(David Senior for The Washington Post)
If you’ve heard the word “neoliberal” in American political discourse in recent years, it probably hasn’t sounded like a compliment. Left-wing populists say neoliberals in the Democratic Party sold out to Wall Street. Right-wing populists say neoliberals in the conservative establishment abetted the rise of so-called woke capitalism. Political scientists talk about neoliberalism in yet another way — as a bipartisan political consensus around free markets, which has been blamed for inequality, the escalating climate crisis and other social ills.
But one night last month, over Blue Moons at a downtown D.C. pub, I talked with a group of millennial and Gen Z political wonks who are proud to call themselves neoliberals — embracing the term as a rebuke to populists of the left and right. Two dozen of these guys — and they were almost all guys on this occasion — had just attended a meeting of the DC New Liberals at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a moderate-left think tank whose Center for New Liberalism has established more than 80 chapters claiming over 10,000 members around the world. (The D.C. chapter has nearly 500 members.) With its “Neoliberal Podcast,” which has more than a million downloads, and a Twitter account (@ne0liberal) that has more than 79,000 followers, the institute is on a quest to bring market-friendly moderation into the age of internet-meme politics — making a new appeal to young Americans who’ve largely rallied behind an invigorated progressive left.
Whereas democratic socialists might put a red rose emoji in their Twitter bios and advocate for Medicare-for-all, these neoliberals often identify themselves with a blue globe emoji — since they’re proud to reclaim “globalism” from its detractors — and support free trade, liberalized immigration and the rising “YIMBY” (“Yes, in My Backyard”) movement, which favors dense, more affordable housing in cities. They also clearly have a lot of fun — posting playfully about their belief that overregulation of food carts is denying us a cosmopolitan utopia with “taco trucks on every corner.”
Karl Nielsen, a 24-year-old aerospace engineer who leads the D.C. chapter, told me his brother turned him on to this neoliberal community a few years ago, and he was immediately smitten: “I was like, ‘Dude, this is it. This is where we belong.’ The memes were fantastic. They were doing a ‘Neoliberal Shill Bracket,’ which is a Twitter tournament where you vote to determine who’s the ‘Chief Neoliberal Shill.’ That was really easy to get excited about, so I jumped right in.”
This subculture may sound like it was born in a conference room at PPI, which was founded as an intellectual home for moderate Democrats in 1989, but it actually began with a bunch of economics aficionados posting on Reddit following the 2016 election — a moment when “neoliberal” had reemerged as a disparaging term for those on the center-left.
“Bernie Sanders had run in the primary against Hillary Clinton and, for the first time in a while, the Democratic Party had been divided between the left and the center-left,” recalls Colin Mortimer, the 25-year-old director of the Center for New Liberalism, who was a college student at the time. “It wasn’t like there were rational Republicans to ally with — Donald Trump had won the presidency. People on the center-left felt adrift and were looking to coalesce and create community.”
Mortimer and others like him — including Jeremiah Johnson, 35, now the Center for New Liberalism’s policy director — ended up creating community on the subreddit page r/Neoliberal. As Johnson would later recall, many of their fellow posters wanted to joke about the sexiness of economist Paul Krugman or how former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and his successor Janet Yellen were “god-emperors of the universe.” Still, politics was never far off, and Mortimer and Johnson ultimately founded the Neoliberal Project, which included @ne0liberal, their podcast, a newsletter, a magazine and a meetup network. PPI invited the Neoliberal Project to join the think tank, which they did in 2020.
Neoliberals are well aware that their centrist politics aren’t for everyone. Markose Butler, the Center for New Liberalism’s 30-year-old organizing director, told me his views put him at odds with his classmates and teachers in college and graduate school. “It wouldn’t surprise my professors that I’m working for an openly neoliberal organization, but it might disappoint them,” he said with a smile. “I was the class conservative, even though I’m very much a Democrat.”
Lily Geismer, an associate professor of history at Claremont McKenna College and the author of “Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality,” told me this new generation of neoliberals will have to account for the failures of the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) — the influential group that started PPI, broke with the redistributionist liberalism of the New Deal and Great Society, and advanced Bill Clinton’s brand of centrism in the 1990s. Geismer argues that PPI’s focus on economic growth led to “intensive inequality” and low-income Americans being more vulnerable. “There’s been a remarkable generational shift, and there’s a desire [among young Americans] for much more robust forms of social welfare and government assistance,” she said.
PPI’s president and founder, Will Marshall, has made clear that the institute isn’t advocating a return to the Clintonite policies of the DLC — but it is hoping that Mortimer, Johnson and their network of young people can help generate new ideas and create new influence for today’s Democratic moderates.
As Mortimer explained it to me, his cohort of neoliberals is enthusiastic about “deregulation to achieve progressive goals,” but also committed to a strong social safety net. These neoliberals are generally supportive of President Biden, even if PPI has taken issue with some of his more left-leaning policies. They also admire leaders like Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who has a globe emoji in his Twitter bio, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — although Nielsen and Butler said they were devastated when Buttigieg talked about the “failure” of neoliberalism during the 2020 campaign.
Recently, PPI has decided that formally using the “neoliberal” label may not actually serve its goals. The think tank created its Center for New Liberalism in 2020 to house the Neoliberal Project and other intellectual work, but ultimately announced that having “two names and two websites was cumbersome and confusing.” In September, the Center said it would continue “The Neoliberal Podcast” and the Twitter account but phase out the broader branding of the Neoliberal Project, arguing that the mission of promoting and defending liberalism was “too important to be distracted by arguments over nomenclature.”
Nomenclature was certainly part of what grew the Neoliberal Project — a self-conscious effort to make “neoliberal” an identity. Then again, maybe a little rhetorical concession is fitting for this group — the politics of pragmatism, applied even to themselves.
Graham Vyse is an associate editor at the Signal.
Meet the political spam artists whose relentless pleas for money clog your inbox | 2022-11-08T11:38:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Neoliberals, often spurned by both parties, seek to polish their brand - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/08/neoliberals-millenials-genz/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/08/neoliberals-millenials-genz/ |
Midterm elections live updates Control of Congress at stake as voters head to polls
Dispatch from Arizona: Abortion provider fearful of a Republican win
Sarah Sanders dances around question on accepting election results
Find out what congressional district you’re in
A crowd listens at a Republican rally Monday night in Virginia Beach featuring House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Derek Hawkins
Control of Congress is at stake Tuesday as voters head to the polls at the close of a tumultuous midterm season in which Democrats and Republicans have clashed over the economy, abortion, crime and other salient issues. Republicans are confident they will pick up the five seats they need to flip control of the House, while a handful of fiercely fought Senate races will determine which party controls that now evenly divided chamber. Also on the ballot Tuesday: gubernatorial races in 36 states, where abortion policy, voting rights and scores of other issues will play out for years to come.
At a rally in Ohio on Monday, former president Donald Trump called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) an “animal,” claiming she impeached him twice “for nothing.” At a rally in Maryland, President Biden warned of the danger of “election deniers” as he made a closing pitch for Democrats.
More than 44.2 million Americans had cast early ballots as of late Monday night, according to the U.S. Elections Project. At this same point in 2018, 39.1 million early votes were cast.
The earliest polls close at 6 p.m. Tuesday, but we probably won’t know all the results on election night. Here’s how long counting votes may take in each state and how The Washington Post calls races.
Nikolas Mourtoupalas
Americans aren’t just casting votes for candidates this election. They’re voting on a range of major ballot measures, too.
Following a Kansas ballot initiative on abortion rights earlier this year, a record number of abortion measures are up for a vote.
California, Michigan and Vermont are asking their residents whether they want to enshrine abortion rights in state law. Kentuckians are voting on whether to amend the state constitution to say it doesn’t grant the right to an abortion. Finally, in Montana, voters are deciding whether to require health-care providers to try to save any infant born alive, including after attempted abortions.
PHOENIX — Election eve was like most recent days for Gabrielle Goodrick: a long shift at work.
Goodrick, a physician at one of Arizona’s only independent abortion clinics, has been on the front lines of a maddening, high-stakes back-and-forth over the legality of the procedure in her state.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion seesawed from outlawed to allowed as two Arizona laws bounced through the state judicial system.
As of Monday, abortion until the 16th week of pregnancy was legal, and Goodrick worked all day. But she — and her patients — fear what will happen if Republicans sweep into statewide offices.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was already facing pivotal midterm elections 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.
President Biden and former president Donald Trump hit the trail once more Monday night, as both men eyed a potential 2024 rematch.
Biden, who has stuck to mostly blue states amid his low approval ratings in swing areas, continued that trend with an appearance in Maryland, where he took aim at those who question election results. Trump was in Ohio, where he campaigned for J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, and other GOP candidates. There, he criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), listed grievances and said he would soon make a “very big announcement.”
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Republican gubernatorial candidate Sarah Sanders skirted around answering a question Monday night about whether she would accept the outcome of the election no matter who wins.
“I’m looking forward to celebrating a huge victory tomorrow night,” she told reporters.
Sanders served as a White House press secretary under President Donald Trump and is one of several Republican candidates nationwide who have questioned the 2020 election results. When asked whether she believed the presidential election was stolen from Trump, Sanders told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in March, “I don’t think we’ll ever know the depths of how much fraud existed.”
Trump told people close to him Monday that he might announce his candidacy at a rally scheduled for Monday night in Ohio, according to three people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential conversations.
The remarks prompted a chain of phone calls from party leaders who have tried for months to keep Trump from announcing until after the midterms. Some of his advisers began communicating to others Monday that efforts needed to be made to talk him out of announcing, two of these people said, while other advisers were egging him on to jump in. In the end, Trump didn’t announce on Monday night, but he went a step closer, promising “a very big announcement” on Nov. 15 at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Kirby Smith said that after he and his wife were told their mail ballots would not count because they were missing dates, they stood in line for two hours at Philadelphia City Hall to cast replacements, missing much of the workday.
Kevin Schaul
Not sure which congressional district you’re in? The Washington Post has an app for that.
The way it works is simple: Enter your address, and our interactive map will show you your district and the major candidates appearing on your ballot. You’ll also be able to see your district’s demographic breakdown and find out who won your district in the 2020 presidential election.
Here’s what things look like in Georgia this year, for instance.
The electoral landscape is different than it was two years ago. Officials across the country recently redrew district lines based on population data from the 2020 Census. That means your district boundaries may have changed, maybe even by a lot. | 2022-11-08T12:04:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Election Day 2022 live updates: Control of Congress at stake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/election-live-results-updates-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/election-live-results-updates-2022/ |
By Dan Balz | Nov 8, 2022
This midterm campaign could be one of the most important in history.
A Republican takeover of the House, the Senate or both would blunt the President Biden’s agenda for the next two years. Election deniers could win key positions at the federal and state levels.
And these midterms are also a prelude to what now looks to be a combustible election in 2024, one that could produce a rematch between Biden and Trump.
No single group of voters holds the key to the midterm elections, but both parties see Black, Latino and college-educated White women as crucial demographic blocs that Democrats must hold to avoid big losses.
The Washington Post traveled to Colorado, Nevada and Georgia to listen to these crucial voters, to hear how they are deciding for whom to vote for and what are the issues uppermost on their minds.
People wait in line for early voting for the midterm elections in Atlanta on Nov. 4.
In Georgia, more than 2 million people voted early, a dramatic increase from the 2018 midterm elections but short of 2020.
Black voters are the Democrats’ most important and reliable constituency. Democratic candidates in many battleground states and especially in Georgia will need another big turnout from them.
Kelly Martin, 39, is married with three children and works in foreclosure law.
Kelly and Jolon Martin carve pumpkins with their daughters at their home in Peachtree Corners, Ga., on Oct. 27.
“It’s a nerve-racking time to be Black in America,” she said.
Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee in Georgia's gubernatorial race, speaks during the ‘Pop Out to the Polls’ rally for her in Atlanta on Nov. 4. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post)
In the governor’s race between Stacey Abrams and GOP incumbent Brian Kemp, Martin said she has high praise for Abrams.
“I love her get-out-the-vote campaign,” she said. “She’s a very boots-to-the-ground type of woman, which I like.”
Black voters turned Georgia blue two years ago, helping elect President Biden and two Democratic senators, one of whom — Raphael G. Warnock — is in a neck-and-neck race for reelection against Republican nominee and local football icon Herschel Walker.
Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) speaks at a campaign rally in Columbus, Ga., on Oct. 8. (Elijah Nouvelage for The Washington Post)
Edward Muldrow, 56, served for 23 years in the Air Force and now is a consultant working on large infrastructure projects.
Edward Muldrow served as Republican Party chair in Gwinnett County, Ga., in 2019 and 2020.
“The Democrat Party continues to lie to the Black community about what they’re going to do … and then they go back on their word,” said Muldrow.
He said Democratic policies have hurt rather than helped the Black community, particularly the 1994 crime bill, which was drafted in the Senate by Biden.
Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker speaks alongside Nikki Haley at a rally in Hiram, Ga., on Nov. 6.
And while he doesn’t think Walker is “ready for prime time,” he doesn’t think Warnock is either. “We’ve got to vote for one of them, and so for me, the tie goes to the runner. I go with the Republican.”
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) stands with performers and Nevada voters during an East Las Vegas Block Party in Las Vegas on Oct. 22.
Latinos are the largest minority group in the country and make up nearly a fifth of the U.S. population. It is roughly triple the size of the Asian American community and about 50 percent larger than the Black population.
That makes them one of the most important constituencies in American politics.
The Latino vote defies easy categorization.
What motivates Cuban Americans in South Florida — for years it was staunch anticommunism — does not necessarily win over Mexican Americans in Arizona or Nevada.
In the 2020 Presidential election, Trump’s share of the Latino vote jumped 10 percentage points, to 38 percent, according to a Pew Research analysis of voters.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), center, speaks to voters in Las Vegas.
Today, Democrats are worried about losing the Nevada Senate seat held by Catherine Cortez Masto, a Latina completing her first term.
She’s in a toss-up contest against former state attorney general Republican Adam Laxalt.
Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt campaigns in Las Vegas on Nov. 5. (David Becker for The Washington Post)
A Laxalt victory could tip the Senate to GOP control. Democrats are also nervous about the governor’s race and three House seats in Nevada.
Iris Ramos Jones, 37, came to the U.S. from Ecuador nine years ago. She is married, has a daughter and works in Real Estate.
Iris Jones shows an apartment for sale in Henderson, Nev.
Jones is a registered as a Republican and said her choice is based on values.
“There are good things about both parties, but my personal values are more aligned with them. Family. Freedom. Hard work.”
“I don’t need and I do not appreciate the government telling my kids what they should believe or not,” she said.
Iris Jones reads religious passages for kids from the Book of Mormon with her daughter in their home in Las Vegas.
She worries about the direction of the country if Democrats remain in charge, fearing that the lead in the direction of socialism.
“My country had been destroyed [by socialism],” Jones said.
“I know what socialism looks like. And it is very unfortunate that this is the path we are going in this country right now … I didn’t come here and sacrifice so much just for my child to have to live in the same type of country that I was born in.”
Rocha M, 42, was born in Mexico, immigrated to Texas when she was 23 and eventually made her way to Las Vegas.
Rocha M is a union member of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Las Vegas.
I met her at the Culinary Workers union offices in Las Vegas. She’s part of an army of more than 350 canvassers the union is deploying to knock on doors.
Her goal is to keep Nevada in the Democrats’ column.
“We have to teach our community that our vote is really important,” says Rocha M.
She spoke about the overt racism she felt while Trump was in the White House. “It was for me more hate on the streets,” she said.
“I’m not saying he’s all of the Republicans, but I’m saying at that time it was really, really bad … like we were sometimes scared of going out because, well, I do look Mexican, you know, I cannot hide it.”
Victor Villanueva, 32, has been canvassing for Somos Votantes, a national Latino voter advocacy group.
Victor Villanueva walks door to door speaking to Nevada voters in Las Vegas.
At most doors, he says he hears about prices and the economy.
“I would say 90 percent of the people that I talk to, [it’s] health care or, you know, child care, that also affects them. But, yeah, it’s mainly the finances, the way inflation [is hitting them].”
Victor Villanueva studied communications in community college and said what he learned has helped him in Nevada. “Every interaction is different,” he said. “If they’re on the fence, really, it’s because they’re not really educated on, you know, who is actually running or what it is that they’re actually doing for the community.”
He mentioned an elderly woman with a son who has Down syndrome and who worried about what might happen to him if something happened to her, whether the health-care system would be able to provide for him.
“They just want things to get better,” Villanueva said.
Nevada voters wait for Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt to arrive at an event in Las Vegas on Oct. 22.
Scholars studying Latino politics and voting patterns say direct contact between campaigns and voters is the likeliest path to increasing turnout.
Latino turnout will help to decide the outcome of Senate, House and governors’ races in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Katie Skinner, left, and Corie Detwiler pick up their children from school in Littleton, Colo. on Sept. 2. Both women say the reversal of Roe is a motivating factor to vote for Democratic candidates.
White women with college educations will influence the November elections in two ways.
One is how they vote: for Republicans or Democrats. The other is how many will vote. The combination of the two will shape the outcome.
Alexandra Donato takes a selfie with a cutout of Donald Trump outside a Doug Mastriano campaign rally in Philadelphia on Nov. 6. (Caroline Gutman for The Washington Post)
Republicans hope to move some White suburban women who supported Democrats in 2018 and 2020 back to their column.
Democrats hope to prevent that from happening. While White women as a whole vote more Democratic than White men, as a group they tilt to Republicans.
In 2016 and 2020, Trump won 52 percent and 55 percent of White women respectively, according to exit polls.
In Denver, Robin Kupernik and Elizabeta Stacishin met for lunch after the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion.
Robin Kupernik works from her home in Arvada, Colo., on August 16.
The were both angry and remembered saying to each other at the same time, “This is not about babies, this is about keeping women down.”
It was Donald Trump’s presidency that pushed Kupernik, 57, and Stacishin, 53, toward getting politically active.
Elizabeta Stacishin stretches after roller blading in Denver on Aug. 17.
But the energy they were a part of in 2018 had started to wane by earlier this year. They sensed a lapse of commitment on the part of voters like themselves who had propelled Democrats to victories in 2018 and 2020.
Then came the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June.
Jackie Schwartz, of Denver, protests for abortion rights on June 27, four days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the right to abortion.
“I think that everyone is feeling in their bones, especially women, the insult and indignity of what the Supreme Court has done.” said Stacishin.
“And that is in no small part why I am working as hard as I’m working for the midterms right now.”
Barbara Kirkmeyer, the Republican candidate for U.S. House to represent Colorado's 8th District, greets people at a campaign stop in Brighton, Colo.
Mother of three, Julianna Dixon, 36, goes by her childhood nickname of “Boo.” Dixon preferred not to be photographed.
She is a founder of Ladies For Liberty, a network for women with the goal to “combat cancel culture and encourage independent critical thought.”
The issues motivating her are the same as those that Republican candidates have focused on during the fall campaign: “Crime rates, cost of living, education and immigration are all on the top of Mount Rushmore,” she said.
Yadira Caraveo, the Democratic candidate for U.S. House to represent Colorado's 8th District, is a pediatrician and the daughter of Mexican immigrants.
Dixon has judged Biden to be “the worst president in my lifetime, if not in history.”
Republican victories in the midterms, she said, “would definitely bring some much-needed balance that is lacking right now.”
The question in Colorado and other states is whether White suburban Republican and independent women, like Dixon, who are worried about the cost of living, school decisions and rising crime will outnumber those motivated by abortion like Kupernik and Stacishin.
Joe Lombardo, the Republican nominee for Nevada's gubernatorial race, holds his grandson during a campaign event in Henderson, Nev. on Nov. 6. (David Becker for The Washington Post)
No group of voters is a monolith and the voters in these three states are not a scientific sample of the country.
But in speaking for themselves, they provide insights into the realities of their lives and perhaps others like them.
Editing and production by Kainaz Amaria. Photo editing by Natalia Jimenez. | 2022-11-08T12:05:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The three voter groups that could decide the midterm elections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2022/midterm-elections-voters-demographics-race/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2022/midterm-elections-voters-demographics-race/ |
College mental health centers are swamped. Here’s what parents can do.
Advice by Elizabeth Chang
(The Washington Post/iStock image)
Last fall, a couple on the West Coast nervously sent their daughter off to school in the Midwest. The 18-year-old had anxiety and depression and had spent much of the previous two years in remote learning, which made her parents wonder whether she would be better off attending a local school. But, her mother said, “she had her heart set on going away for college.”
The mother had found a therapist for her daughter to see, but it didn’t work out. “I think she met with the therapist once, and it’s like, ‘Well, it didn’t really click, but I’m fine. I’m fine,’ ” her mother said. (She and the other parents spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.)
Except she wasn’t fine. Soon her mother was answering calls in the middle of the night. “It’s really, really hard to be … 2,000 miles away … and have your daughter calling at midnight — sobbing, crying and having a panic attack,” she said. She would sometimes stay on the line until her daughter was calm enough to fall asleep.
At one point, the mother called the school asking for someone to check in on her daughter. The school suggested her daughter go to a hospital. Instead, she and her husband flew their freshman home for a visit. Their daughter made it through the semester, but the family decided she wouldn’t go back in the spring.
Mental health issues among children and adults have been rising for years. Pre-pandemic data from the Center for Collegiate Mental Health showed that the number of students seeking mental health services nationally increased at more than five times the rate of enrollment. The result: Counseling centers have shifted to “short-term crisis support and rising caseloads of clinicians, which are both associated with reduced treatment and less effective care,” the center noted in its 2021 report.
“Most counseling centers are saying that they see more students every year come through, and that’s why they’re changing some of their service models, because we can’t do individual therapy weekly anymore,” said Becca Smith, director of counseling at Berry College in Georgia and president of the American College Counseling Association. Smith added that many counseling centers established stepped care, a triage system that could decide when a student can go to group therapy or a support group instead of individual therapy.
In addition to mental health issues, students must cope with the “newfound freedom” of college, one mother said. “There’s a lack of structure beyond a class schedule. There’s really odd sleep cycles, which definitely affect your mental health. Or alcohol.”
My teen is depressed and won't take meds. What do I do?
On top of that, many current students spent significant amounts of high school learning remotely, which has made the transition more difficult academically and socially.
These factors combined have left families charting their own paths, with often distressing outcomes.
“Given the current situation — increasing numbers of students with mental health concerns that may have been exacerbated by the pandemic, along with the inability of college counseling centers being able to keep up with demand — it is important that parents and students take steps to manage the transition to college,” Smith said.
Brett Scofield, a psychologist and CCMH’s executive director, suggests parents and students research what kind of mental health services a school offers and what the limits are — for example, how many counseling sessions a school will provide.
The size of the school can make a difference in the level of care, Schofield added. According to data from CCMH, standardized caseloads for counselors rise along with enrollment.
Ask about average wait times for therapy. One mother said her daughter signed up in August, didn’t have an intake appointment until late October, and was only given one therapy appointment before winter break. Meanwhile, the student’s therapist at home had gone on maternity leave. “So she had nobody for a while,” her mom said.
“If you already know that your student has a mental health or physical health concern, and will need continued care, it is important to set that up before the student arrives on campus,” said Nance Roy, chief clinical officer of The Jed Foundation (JED), a nonprofit that works with high schools and colleges to strengthen their mental health services.
Finding out that a school doesn’t offer adequate services for your child “doesn’t mean that institution would not be a good fit,” Scofield said. You may be able to make arrangements for your child to continue seeing their therapist through teletherapy, if state laws allow it, or find a therapist off campus.
Many schools offer counseling referral services such as Thriving Campus or Welltrack Connect. Another option is the Psychology Today database.
Understand your student’s privacy rights
The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act generally protects the privacy of a student’s treatment records, unless that student is a threat to themselves or others. “If a student is seeing a therapist on campus, that information cannot be shared with parents unless the student expressly gives permission or in the case of an emergency,” said Roy, who is also an assistant professor of psychiatry in the Yale University School of Medicine.
For that reason, parents should have a conversation with their student before they go to college about whether the student is willing to sign a release of confidential information, Roy said, adding that parents should be aware of who the student has listed as their emergency contact.
While a school cannot give a parent privileged information, a parent can contact a school at any time to share information with a therapist or ask the counseling center or dean of students to check on a student.
Check in with your kid — appropriately
Don’t focus your conversations on grades or whether your student is taking care of themselves. “It’s probably not helpful to be calling your child every day or texting and emailing them and saying, ‘Are you okay?’ ” Roy said. “You can glean a lot of information about how someone is doing just in regular conversation.” If you think they are at risk or in danger, ask directly if they are having thoughts of suicide and notify the campus if so.
One sophomore who struggled during his freshman year with undiagnosed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder echoed this advice. “If my dad … was, like, badgering me … I’m not going to be as willing to open up and be like, ‘Yeah, well, actually, I didn’t do too well on this test because this was going on,’ ” he said.
Make your support clear
Smith said students are often reluctant to let their parents know when they are having difficulties. “They’re really afraid the parents are going to be upset or stressed,” she said. “And a lot of times, we find the opposite.”
After their daughter withdrew from school, the West Coast parents sent her to an intensive therapy program. She received a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder and started new medication. The treatment allowed her to return to the same school this fall, where she’s seeing an off-campus therapist and doing a better job of taking care of herself. “She definitely struggles from time to time, but she also absolutely loves it,” her mother said.
When she recently asked her daughter what made the greatest difference in getting through that tough first semester, her daughter said it was “knowing that no matter what happened, she had our unconditional love and support. So, if things went bad, she needed to come home, she needed to transfer schools, she failed out of school, she knew that she could tell us and it would all be okay.”
As the college sophomore with ADHD put it: “It’s always good to just have ringing in your head, ‘I’m going to do this, but I know at least I have people behind me, if something goes wrong for some reason.’ ” | 2022-11-08T12:22:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How parents can support college students with mental health issues - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/11/08/college-mental-health-parents/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/11/08/college-mental-health-parents/ |
In this year’s tightest contests, Democrats have focused on reproductive rights, while Republicans have emphasized public safety
Jim Schultz and Keith Ellison participate in a debate in October. (Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune/AP)
MINNEAPOLIS — To hear Keith Ellison tell it, his bid for a second term as Minnesota attorney general is likely to be decided by one major issue: abortion.
In a message echoed by other Democratic attorney general candidates around the country, Ellison frequently offers a “stark” warning of what could happen if his Republican opponent wins this week. “My opponent will absolutely take your right to a safe, legal abortion away,” Ellison said at a recent debate. “I will do everything to protect it.”
Ellison’s opponent Jim Schultz paints a very different picture on the campaign trail. Like other Republican attorney general hopefuls, Schultz has focused on public safety, describing Ellison’s policies as “fundamentally reckless and extreme” in a region still reeling from the police killing of George Floyd more than two years ago.
“It is immoral to embrace policies that have led to the extraordinary violent crime in our communities,” Schultz said at a debate.
These dueling themes have defined contentious attorneys general races around the country this election cycle, with particularly competitive races in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Texas.
While elections for attorneys general have traditionally been overshadowed by other races on the ballot, the politics of abortion and the growing influence of state attorneys general — who hold the ability to enforce, block or sue over policies that have national implications — have drawn more attention to races in the midterms. Many attorney general candidates have raised record-breaking sums, and outside groups have funneled significant money into the races.
“There was a time when these races only got attention because it was an up-and-comer who might be running for governor sometime down the road,” said Paul Nolette, a Marquette University political scientist who studies the politics and polices of state attorneys general. But attorneys general, Nolette said, have increasingly “realized their own powers and been a lot more prominent,” delving into issues like the environment, immigration, health care and guns.
“Just about every hot-button issue you can imagine, and that’s given them an opportunity to collectively get more prominence,” Nolette said. “They are no longer simply another down ticket race.”
Michigan: A Democratic incumbent vs. an election denier
In Michigan, Dana Nessel, the incumbent attorney general and a Democrat, is facing a challenge from Matthew DePerno, a Republican lawyer who is currently under state investigation for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state.
While issues of voting and democracy have been center stage in the race, abortion has been a major issue. DePerno has said he would uphold the state’s contested 1931 law, which would allow abortion providers to be charged with felony manslaughter for performing abortions. Nessel opposes and says she will not enforce the law, which was slapped with an injunction last month.
Echoing other GOP candidates, DePerno, who has been endorsed by former president Donald Trump, has increasingly seized on issues including public safety. “Dana has sat on the sidelines as crime has skyrocketed in this state, and as your next attorney general, I will fight to clean up this state,” DePerno said at September rally with Trump.
In Georgia, Attorney General Chris Carr (R) has clashed with his opponent, Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan, over the state’s law banning abortion. Jordan and other abortion rights advocates say the statute includes language that could allow the state to investigate and criminally charge women who seek to have abortions or suffer a miscarriage. Carr has said he does not believe the statute would allow criminal prosecutions of pregnant women, but said at a recent debate that “it would be up to the district attorneys to make that determination.”
At a recent debate, Carr touted his efforts on public safety and accused Jordan of ignoring rising crime in her Atlanta-area district. Jordan pushed back on Carr’s claim, noting crime had risen across the entire state “on the attorney general’s watch.”
Wisconsin: Incumbent zeroes in on abortion
Abortion and crime have also been center stage in Wisconsin’s attorney general race, where Democratic incumbent Josh Kaul has filed a lawsuit to overturn the state’s abortion ban.
His Republican challenger Eric Toney said this month he believed local prosecutors should be able to investigate and enforce the abortion ban in other parts of the state should local district attorneys in other regions decline to press charges. Toney, the district attorney of Fond du Lac County, later tried to walk back that position.
Toney has accused Kaul of being soft on crime; Kaul has said Toney’s focus on prosecuting violations of the abortion ban would ultimately take time and resources away from “serious crimes” like sexual assaults and homicides. “Our AG needs to have public safety as his top priority not a far-right radical agenda,” Kaul said in a debate.
In Nevada, incumbent Aaron Ford (D) is locked in a tight race against Republican Sigal Chattah, who has campaigned on a slogan of “Make Crime Illegal Again.” Chattah, an attorney involved in lawsuits over the state’s coronavirus restrictions, has come under fire for a comment she made about the incumbent telling a friend in a text message that Ford, who is Black, “should be hanging from a [expletive] crane.”
Chattah, who was born in Israel, defended statement as a flippant remark that she had been casually using since her childhood. “When I say to my friends, ‘I’m going to hang you from a crane,’ I don’t literally mean I’m going to hang you from a crane,” Chattah told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Ford has seized on Chattah’s views on abortion, which is legal in Nevada the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. Though Chattah is against abortion, she has said she would defend the current law. But Ford has pointed to previous comments she has made on the issue, including a May blog post where she said she supports a law like the one passed in Texas which prohibits abortion after detection of a fetal heartbeat.
“Attorneys general like me in purple states like Nevada have become one of the last lines of defense in protecting abortion access,” Ford told the Reno Gazette Journal. “An antiabortion attorney general could severely limit the statute’s scope.”
Arizona: A Trump endorsed Republican candidate
In Arizona, Kris Mayes, the Democratic candidate for attorney general, has sought to make abortion a major issue in the closing days of the race, telling voters she will not prosecute medical providers or women under a 1901 state law that bans nearly all abortions in the state.
Abe Hamadeh, a former Maricopa County prosecutor who has been endorsed by Trump, has instead focused on rising crime and election fraud, claiming without evidence that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and that a “day of reckoning is coming.”
Election issues are also playing out in Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) led an effort to overturn the 2020 election results in four states — a push that failed but has also been seized upon by conservatives who increasingly see state attorneys general offices as the front lines to national political fights.
Recent polls have shown Paxton in a tight race with Rochelle Garza, a former ACLU attorney from the Rio Grande Valley. She has made democracy and abortion rights the center of her campaign to defeat Paxton, who faces a litany of legal issues including a 2015 indictment for securities fraud and a federal investigation into claims from former employees that he abused his powers to help a wealthy donor.
In Minnesota, the matchup between Ellison and Schultz has become one of the most unpredictable races on the ballot, attracting millions of dollars in outside spending on television ads and get-out-the-vote efforts. If Schultz wins, he would be the first Republican to be elected Minnesota attorney general since 1971.
The race’s closing days have been dominated by a back and forth on crime and abortion — with Schultz accusing Ellison of trying to use abortion to distract what he has described as his the incumbent’s “failure” to keep Minnesota families safe. He has touted endorsements from the state’s largest police union and spent the final weekend of the campaign rallying with police officers at what his campaign called a “Defend the Police rally.”
“The race for attorney general comes down to one question: Do you trust Keith Ellison to keep you and your family safe?” Schultz says in a campaign ad. “The answer is no. Keith Ellison is extreme. He has let violence spread like cancer.”
Ellison has pointed out that, under Minnesota law, local district attorneys, not the attorney general, primarily handles criminal prosecutions, including those for violent crime. He said that when his office was asked to take on a case by local prosecutors, they had taken the case and “never lost.”
Ellison, 59, a longtime lawmaker who spent 12 years in Congress before becoming the first Black man elected statewide in Minnesota, has criticized his opponent’s lack of legislative and professional experience — including basic knowledge of what the attorney general’s office does. “He has never tried a case or stepped in a courtroom in his life,” Ellison said.
While Schultz has said he wants the attorney general’s office to be “apolitical” and would not focus on abortion, Ellison has pointed out that Schulz previously served on the board of an antiabortion group. He has mocked his opponent’s pledge that he wouldn’t make abortion the focus of his time in office, likening it to the pledges made by conservative Supreme Court justices who later ruled to invalidate the constitutional right to abortion.
“We’ve heard this before,” Ellison said. “And now Roe is gone” | 2022-11-08T12:26:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | High-profile attorney general races pit abortion against crime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/08/attorney-general-state-results/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/08/attorney-general-state-results/ |
Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his first inaugural address, on March 4, 1933. (Hugh Miller/The Washington Post)
On Tuesday, the United States holds its first midterm elections since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Since then, it has become increasingly clear that the grave threat to American democracy posed on that day was no aberration; it was a prelude to a broader right-wing movement to undermine our electoral process.
Across the country, an alarming number of Republican ideologues who deny the results of the 2020 election are expected to win on Tuesday — some in secretary of state races that will determine who runs elections and how. Republican-controlled states have introduced laws (and GOP-affiliated groups have filed lawsuits) to suppress the vote. And the party has reprehensibly stoked conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric at every turn.
But as uncertain and dangerous as America’s future seems, history offers some solace — and guidance about how to move forward. While Jan. 6 is now forever associated with the far right’s failed attempt to subvert American democracy, it is also the date of a seminal pro-democracy speech delivered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt 80 years earlier.
Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms address to a nation in crisis imagined a future in which all of humanity enjoys the “four essential human freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Though he insisted that it was “no vision of a distant millennium,” the United States is still striving to achieve those freedoms today. Roosevelt’s message remains as urgently relevant as ever.
By Jan. 6, 1941, the country had endured a revolutionary war to achieve independence; a civil war in which those fighting against the horrors of slavery prevailed; and a devastating economic depression during which many desperate Americans questioned whether democracy could (or even should) survive. There is no doubt the United States suffered from harmfully limited conceptions of who possessed so-called unalienable rights — the civil rights movement was still decades away — but even in Roosevelt’s time, the trend was clear. In the face of existential threats to democracy, time and time again, those who fought for freedom persevered.
This is not to deny the current crisis. A majority of Americans is dissatisfied with the democratic status quo. Trust in institutions is at an all-time low. And when a New York Times-Siena poll this year explicitly asked whether all Americans experience the four freedoms Roosevelt described, the results were bleak. Just 50 percent thought all Americans enjoyed freedom of religion; 34 percent believed so about freedom of speech; 17 percent about freedom from want; and 11 percent about freedom from fear.
But the fact that circumstances are dire does not mean they are hopeless; history has repeatedly proved that. And there is no shortage of contemporary leaders who are fighting for a freer, fairer future — as advocates have done since the country’s founding. Tory Gavito, who co-founded the progressive group Way to Win after the 2016 election, has worked tirelessly for years to develop and implement winning strategies to build progressive power. As she prepared for this year’s Election Day (and the possibly grueling days to follow), she quoted educator, activist and writer Brittany Packnett Cunningham in a note to Way to Win supporters: “I choose the discipline of hope over the ease of cynicism. I choose fortitude over fatalism.”
We might not know the outcome of this election cycle Tuesday night, this week or — God forbid, if Georgia goes to a runoff — this month. But regardless of the results, our past helps foreshadow what comes next: People of good faith will come together to fight for democracy. Because the defining characteristic of this country is not American exceptionalism. It’s American resilience — and the ongoing pursuit of a more perfect union.
In Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, he famously declared that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” But what is often lost when people remember that earliest of soundbites is what came right after. That was his definition of fear: “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” It is not just that fear is unproductive; it actively undermines progress. To persist through tumultuous times, it will take discipline, strategic vision, hope and history — and a mass movement of people who have achieved freedom from fear. | 2022-11-08T12:31:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | On Election Day, FDR's Four Freedoms are still out of reach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/elections-fdr-four-freedoms-democracy-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/elections-fdr-four-freedoms-democracy-future/ |
Workers ranging from secretaries of state to poll workers have faced harassment online since the 2020 elections. They say social media companies and law enforcement need to do more.
Colorado Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold has been threatened hundreds of times since 2020. (RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post/AP)
Since the 2020 election, the threats have followed Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) across her Facebook and Instagram pages, into her email inbox and Twitter feed, and across fringe social networks.
“Watch your back,” said one Facebook message. “I KNOW WHERE YOU SLEEP, I SEE YOU SLEEPING. BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID.”
“Penalty for treason? Hanging or firing squad. You can pick Griswold,” said one Instagram comment.
Griswold’s office has identified hundreds more threats against her since 2020, when she says Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the election results opened her up to a torrent of abuse. Though her office is in communication with major tech companies to address harassment and disinformation, she said it’s clear Silicon Valley is not adequately responding.
“The ‘big lie’ and disinformation about elections has been used to pass voter suppression, destabilize elections, corrode confidence and it has led to political violence,” Griswold said. “It’s a tremendous problem.”
The flood of online harassment that Griswold has experienced over the past two years is indicative of a tide of threats that have targeted election workers at all levels, from secretaries of state to poll workers. Elections experts say the threats are a direct result of the false narratives about the 2020 elections that were spread in part on social media and have catapulted once obscure administrators and county officials to the center of viral hoaxes and conspiracy theories.
Election officials who’ve been targeted online and law enforcement officials are bracing for another wave of threats on Election Day and its aftermath, when new claims of election fraud are expected to lead to more violent rhetoric online.
The FBI declined to comment for this story. Last month, the agency issued a warning about the threats to election workers, and said it continues to “prioritize identifying, mitigating and investigating threats targeting election workers.” It has asked the public to submit tips related to election crimes via local field offices or its website.
Jen Easterly, director of the government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said during a forum last week that local law enforcement also plays a critical role in securing elections. CISA spent several weeks doing nationwide trainings about how to de-escalate situations.
“Securing elections is a nonpartisan activity, and there is no place for threats,” she said. “It is unacceptable.”
Election officials throughout the country, including in competitive states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania, say the threats come in waves and follow what’s happening in the news. Allie Bones, Arizona’s assistant secretary of state, said her office is expecting the week of Election Day to be “active.”
The continued harassment has contributed to high turnover among election officials across the country. According to a survey published earlier this year from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law, 1 in 5 election officials are unlikely to continue serving through 2024. Politicians’ attacks on the system, and stress, are the primary reasons they plan to leave, according to the study.
“It’s a challenge every day,” said Lisa Deeley, who as chairwoman of the Philadelphia city commissioners oversees that city’s elections. “The job has changed so much because every day you’re getting the kitchen sink thrown at you, and all the vegetables in the refrigerator and all the sheets and towels in the linen closet.”
Election officials across the country report being in communication with major tech platforms to address any new threats. Election officials in states including Arizona, New Mexico and Pennsylvania say they have had conversations with representatives from companies including Facebook and Twitter, where the issue of election-related threats were discussed.
Twitter, which recently laid off most of its communications staff, did not respond to a request for comment. The company has long had a policy prohibiting threats against election officials, and continues to enforce it, said a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the company’s election plans. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, earlier this year shared guidance with CISA and all 50 election offices outlining how to help election officials protect themselves online.
“We encourage anyone who encounters potentially violating content to use the many reporting tools we make available directly in our apps so we can quickly review it,” Meta spokeswoman Dani Lever said. “We have also expanded our policies to address coordinated harassment and threats of violence against election officials and poll workers.”
But most states and counties do not have dedicated staff to monitor the scope of threats taking place.
On Election Day, the Arizona Secretary of State Office will rely on a group of interns to keep an eye on what’s happening online, though their focus will primarily be on addressing any questions people have about voting.
“We don’t have a security staff that’s monitoring all of the comments,” Bones said. “It’s quite traumatizing to have to go through all of that and see what people are saying about you, your office or your boss.”
And fringe social networks or more private chat channels, where researchers say much of the most violent rhetoric occurs, remain a blind spot for most election officials.
In the run-up to the election, there were multiple threats generally against people counting ballots on sites such as Gab and the .win forums. On Gab, people shared images of guns with captions like “When it takes too long to count the ballots and it goes into another day” and “When the windows are covered to count illegal ballots.”
Since the 2020 election, there have been increased efforts to combat threats against election officials, both online and off. The Justice Department in 2021 launched a task force focused on protecting elections officials. As of August, the task force had reviewed more than 1,000 “harassing contacts” directed toward election workers, and about 11 percent met the threshold for a federal criminal investigation. The task force reported charging four federal cases, and joining one other case. There have also been multiple state prosecutions.
However, election officials on the front lines say these prosecutions amount to just a fraction of the threats they receive.
At the state level, there’s been an increased push to pass legislation. Washington state recently adopted a law that would make it a felony to threaten an election worker online, and Colorado now has a law that would make it illegal to post an election official’s information online to harass them. Other states are considering similar measures.
Online threats and doxing against election officials have been a key focus of the congressional Jan. 6 Committee hearings. Al Schmidt, a Republican former Philadelphia city commissioner, told the committee that after Trump tweeted about him, he and his family received death threats. Shaye Moss, a Georgia poll worker, said she was stunned to see horrible threats flood her Facebook Messenger inbox after Rudy Giuliani, then Trump’s top campaign lawyer, publicly claimed she and her mother had rigged the election outcome.
“A lot of threats wishing death upon me, telling me I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920,’” she said.
David Becker, the executive director and founder of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the threats are coming not because the officials “did anything wrong, but because they pulled off the greatest success in the history of democracy” in 2020.
“There’s a real toll taken here on real human beings,” Becker said. “There’s no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Election officials don’t get rich and famous. Your best case scenario as an election official is anonymity.”
Tim Starks contributed to this report. | 2022-11-08T12:31:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Online threats flood election workers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/08/election-workers-online-threats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/08/election-workers-online-threats/ |
Fun? Yes. Prudent? Not exactly. (Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)
You’re not going to win the lottery. To be more precise, your chances of winning Saturday’s $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot are 292,201,338 to 1. If your goal is making money — as opposed to having fun — it’s hard to make a worse bet. Yet 45 state governments would very much like you to believe otherwise.
Each year, states spend more than $600 million marketing their lotto offerings, often through award-winning ad campaigns. (Remember “A Dollar and a Dream”?) An oddity of these ads is that they need not be honest about what they’re selling. In fact, Section 1307 of Title 18 of the US Code quite specifically excludes state lotteries from truth-in-advertising laws.
As a start, state lotteries amount to a regressive tax. Research has shown that poor people play the lotto more often, spend a higher percentage of their income on it, and are about 25% more likely to gamble for money rather than fun. One national survey found that players making less than $10,000 annually spent $597 on average on lotto tickets, or almost 6% of their income. Worse, these expenditures tend to crowd out spending on necessities, such as buying food and paying rent.
One could still argue that adults should be free to make bad decisions. Yet evidence suggests that lotto players have a poor understanding of the risks they’re taking. About a third of participants in one experiment failed to even look at the back of a lotto ticket, where warning information is placed, while only about 20% could correctly interpret their odds of winning. Few players realize that their average return is about 52 cents on the dollar.
Digital advertising will likely worsen these problems. Between 2016 and 2021, the percentage of lottery ad budgets dedicated to online campaigns more than doubled, from 8% to 17%. Lottery agencies say this will help them target likely gamblers, “personalize” marketing pitches and more effectively sell tickets. Another way to put it is that states are getting better at deluding the vulnerable. | 2022-11-08T12:31:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | $1.5 Billion Powerball Is Fun. It’s Also a Policy Failure. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/15-billion-powerball-is-fun-its-also-a-policy-failure/2022/11/04/0665aec0-5c39-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/15-billion-powerball-is-fun-its-also-a-policy-failure/2022/11/04/0665aec0-5c39-11ed-bc40-b5a130f95ee7_story.html |
(The first of a three-part series on immigration.)Has the Biden administration figured out how to stanch the flood of desperate migrants overflowing across the southwestern border?
“It’s a new technology,” suggested Tonatiuh Guillén López, who headed Mexico’s National Migration Institute during the first six months of the administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and is now a critic of Mexico’s repressive approach to migration. “So far it’s working.”
Opening a legal path to entry while offering no quarter to those caught making their way across the border on their own seems to have produced the right set of incentives to take pressure off a border enforcement infrastructure that cannot cope with the vast number of asylum seekers and economic migrants trying to cross.
If the strategy continues to perform, expect the Biden administration to keep pressing Mexico to take Cubans and Nicaraguans, Brazilians, Colombians and Haitians.
But while these early results will come as a relief to President Biden and the many other Democrats hammered by Republicans wielding stories about a border “out of control,” the arrangement is unlikely to work for long.
By July 2020, some 70,000 asylum seekers had been sent to Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican border towns under this deal, Guillén Lopez wrote. Moreover, thousands more were returned to Mexico starting in March 2020, under the guise of pandemic precautions.
In 2019 the border patrol encountered 623,671 Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans trying to enter the US illegally, almost three times as many as in 2018. In 2021, following the pandemic lull, they encountered 701,409. This happened despite the deployment of Mexico’s National Guard to catch migrants along its northern and southern borders.
This set of circumstances presents a unique challenge to the American asylum apparatus: Judges don’t know to whom they should release Venezuelans as their cases wind through the courts. It also allowed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to dupe a few dozen of them and put them on a plane to Martha’s Vineyard. Had they been Salvadorans they would have had friends or family waiting in Boston or LA.
The US does need to find a way to bring order to its southwestern border. Hundreds of thousands of people are flocking to it each year. In the 2022 fiscal year, DHS reported about 2.38 million “encounters” at the southwest land border (a number that encompasses multiple attempts by some migrants).
They are coming from further afield. Last year, border patrol agents encountered 131,000 Colombians, 225,000 Cubans, and even 18,000 Indians trying to enter the US across the southwestern border. Given climate change, growing economic distress and blooming authoritarianism around the world, these numbers are likely to grow. And the stories peddled by smugglers back home of the Haitians and Cubans, Venezuelans and Colombians successfully making their way into the US will encourage more.
While the agreement with Mexico over Venezuelans won’t work as a broader mechanism to control migration into the US, the basic idea of deploying deterrence to steer migrants toward legal channels, which are safer and cheaper, seems like a reasonable approach to ease the strain on a border infrastructure that just can’t cope.
Likewise, prospective immigrants from Cuba for years had various legal paths – including a lottery of 20,000 visas per year. They were the carrot. The stick took the form of a deal whereby the government in Havana took back Cubans caught trying to enter the US illegally.
“In both cases the US government had found an equilibrium that balanced credible legal pathways with effective enforcement,” Selee argued. “Policy decisions undermined these equilibria right at the same time that migration pressures increased due to real economic and personal security reasons.”
The Mexican balance was upset at the start of the pandemic in 2020. Not only did the Mexican economy tank. After the US deployed public health powers to expel migrants trying to enter, it stopped being able to prosecute Mexicans for re-entry. In the case of Cuba, the US withdrew its consular services on the island – making it extremely difficult to apply to migrate legally – while Havana stopped taking its citizens back. Then Nicaragua started receiving Cubans without a visa, opening a new land route to the US.
Incentives must be crafted carefully. On the stick side, expelling prospective migrants automatically using the legal power deployed during the pandemic is proving a bad idea, since they will turn around and try again. And the US probably has to offer more carrots. It makes sense to have Venezuelans fleeing the Maduro regime apply for asylum before facing the horrors of the Darien gap, let alone reaching the southwestern border. But a 24,000 cap seems way too low.At the end of last year, about 140,000 Venezuelans were awaiting a decision on their request for asylum in the US, says the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Over 40,000 applied just in the first half of this year. Still, from January through September, only 2,267 were recognized.
The US can’t rely permanently on Mexico to play the role of The Wall – an approach unlikely to be politically tenable. And if the fenced-in high-tech border separating the US from Mexico can’t stop committed migrants from arriving in this country, try to picture what happens on the border separating Mexico from Guatemala and Belize.
What makes sense is a regional approach: perhaps a deal where Mexico, the US and maybe Canada agree on quotas for both asylum seekers and economic migrants and set up an application process that happens far from any border.
This won’t stop people from coming. But it would help bring the US’s overwhelmed southern border under control.
• Immigration’s Burden Doesn’t Fall on a Handful of Red States: Eduardo Porter
• When Immigration Hypocrisy Landed on Martha’s Vineyard: Tyler Cowen | 2022-11-08T12:31:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s Venezuelan Migrant Deal Won’t Fix the Border - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bidens-venezuelan-migrant-deal-wont-fix-the-border/2022/11/08/ce3f4ede-5f58-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bidens-venezuelan-migrant-deal-wont-fix-the-border/2022/11/08/ce3f4ede-5f58-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
In theory, the Democrats shouldn’t be that worried about gasoline prices today. In practice, the Democrats are terrified about gasoline prices today:
I’m going to have a little — as they say — come to the Lord talk with the oil companies pretty soon.
That was President Joe Biden speaking in California heading into the last weekend before Tuesday’s midterm elections. His fear of a pump-price backlash explains his zig-zagging in terms of, by turns, cajoling oil companies to produce more and then threatening them with divine retribution. This is despite average gasoline prices having fallen by almost a quarter from June’s $5 a gallon peak.
In part, his fear stems from the fact that, at $3.80, pump prices are still relatively high compared to history; any price starting with a three is apt to rile up US drivers. Yet, as with all prices, three isn’t what it used to be. In September, when gasoline averaged a shade lower at about $3.70 a gallon, it accounted for 2.3% of disposable personal income. At the $5 peak in June, it was 2.9%. These are far lower shares of income than during previous spikes.
Redraw that same chart showing instead the rolling 12-month change in gasoline’s share of disposable income and a very different picture emerges.
At its peak, the disruption unleashed by the Iranian revolution pushed gasoline’s share of the US wallet to more than 4.5%, the highest on record. The most rapid 12-month increase then was in the period leading up to March 1980, following which voters turfed out President Jimmy Carter. Democrats can argue quite reasonably that $3-plus gasoline today isn’t the burden it once was; the data support this. But that will tend to be overshadowed by the fact that the 12-month increase recorded this March was actually a bit faster than that under Carter. It also doesn’t help that energy prices in general have risen sharply as a result of recovery from the pandemic and — in another echo of those turbulent 1970s — war.
Another aspect of this dichotomy between pump prices and the rate of change concerns conservation. The last time gasoline ate up around 3% of income was in the period of 2011 through the middle of 2014, coinciding with the disruption of the Arab Spring. Back then, gasoline averaged about $3.50 a gallon. This year, however, we didn’t get to similar levels of income share until average pump prices hit $5. In other words, in terms of gasoline’s impact on US wallets, $5 is the new $3.50.
This may explain why US gasoline demand didn’t collapse outright this summer, as preliminary weekly data from the Energy Information Administration had suggested. As it turns out, gasoline consumption in June through August fell by only 3% year over year, the same as in the summer of 2011, when gasoline jumped from less than $3 to almost $4. High prices have had an impact, but nothing like what one might have predicted at $5. The US driver is more resilient than imagined. Given the whiplash they’ve experienced, though, they may well be just as unforgiving as expected.
US Refiners Eye a Rare Winter Windfall: Elements by Liam Denning | 2022-11-08T12:31:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gasoline at $5 Hurt Democrats More Than Drivers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/gasoline-at-5-hurtdemocrats-more-thandrivers/2022/11/08/b1a257f8-5f5d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/gasoline-at-5-hurtdemocrats-more-thandrivers/2022/11/08/b1a257f8-5f5d-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
By Molly Smith | Bloomberg
The survey’s inflation metrics were mixed. The net share of owners raising prices ticked down for a fifth month to 50%, the lowest since September 2021 but still well-elevated. However, the share of firms planning to increase prices in the next three months rose for the first time since May, and about a third plan to raise compensation, the most this year.
“Inflation, supply chain disruptions, and labor shortages continue to limit the ability of many small businesses to meet the demand for their products and services,” NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said in a statement.
Some 13% owners expect lower real sales in the next three months, up from 10% in September. Nearly half said they expect business conditions to dim over the next six months, an increase from September. | 2022-11-08T12:32:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US Small-Business Optimism Drops for First Time Since June - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/us-small-business-optimism-drops-for-first-time-since-june/2022/11/08/87426dc6-5f59-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/us-small-business-optimism-drops-for-first-time-since-june/2022/11/08/87426dc6-5f59-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Top advisers made the latest of several attempts to prompt firms to boost production but were rebuffed
President Biden speaks at the White House last month. (Oliver Contreras for The Washington Post)
Before President Biden lambasted oil companies for excess profits last week and threatened to slap a “windfall tax” on them, several of his top energy advisers privately attempted to woo that same industry only to get rebuffed, according to seven people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Officials from the White House and the State and Energy departments reached out to oil industry trade groups and companies in mid-October to get support for a plan to buy crude to refill the country’s emergency reserves. They told industry representatives their plan would help U.S. oil and gas companies by guaranteeing that the government would purchase oil in months to come if crude prices fell to about $70 a barrel or below.
It was the latest of several attempts by the Biden administration to prompt oil companies to boost output, this time by telling them they could invest with the confidence that the government would help ensure steady revenue. Officials including the National Economic Council director, Brian Deese, and Amos Hochstein, a special presidential coordinator at the State Department, called some of the world’s largest oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell.
But none has endorsed the plan or committed to boosting output, a setback for an administration trying to lower energy prices going into an election and weaken the power of Russia as a major energy exporter. Instead of repairing relations with the U.S. oil industry, the outreach deepened a divide between the White House and executives who control U.S. oil output and have little trust that the president will back them.
Several industry officials said executives told administration officials that the logic of the plan wasn’t clear and that the effort was probably too small to work as the White House claimed. Some called the outreach a political ploy amid a series of comments from the president blaming the oil companies for record-high prices and castigating them for their historically high profits.
“We’ve been disappointed that the conversations of the last several weeks have been geared so much toward midterm politics,” said Chet Thompson, leader of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, the refiners’ trade group. “We’ll be happy after that to get back to serious energy policymaking.”
Biden announced the plan — along with more withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — from the White House on Oct. 19 and criticized oil companies in the same speech. He said they shouldn’t be delivering so much profit to shareholders “while a war is raging,” referring to Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Days later, shortly after other cordial, private talks between Energy Department officials and industry leaders, Biden accused oil companies of “war profiteering” as he raised the possibility of imposing a windfall tax.
The mistrust goes both ways, according to administration officials. John D. Podesta, a top climate adviser at the White House, said oil company executives are failing to show patriotism. They should be spending to boost production that might lower consumer prices, he said, at a time when Russia has used its power as one of the world’s top energy exporters to put pressure on NATO countries and to fund its war in Ukraine.
U.S. has warmed faster than the planet as climate change threatens what ‘Americans value most,’ report finds
Instead, he said, they are heeding major shareholders who have demanded restraint and paying some of their huge profits back to those investors instead of spending on growth. It has irritated White House officials who want lower prices for consumers, and many of them passed around recent comments from ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods that the company was helping “the American people” through “the form of our quarterly dividend.”
“Comments like that are just highly frustrating,” Podesta said. “The total lack of recognition of what is happening to families around the country.”
Woods’s comments on Oct. 28 were part of an ExxonMobil earnings call about its latest record profit, $19.7 billion. Chevron had just posted an $11.2 billion profit, its second highest on record. The size of the profits and the commitment to shareholders over consumers pushed Biden to his first public suggestion that he might support a windfall tax, the culmination of months of internal debates, administration officials said.
“It’s frustrating that a year ago we were being told to stop drilling, and in the past several months, we’ve been beat up for not drilling enough,” ExxonMobil spokesman Casey Norton said in a statement. “In actuality, we delivered record production from our US refineries so that we could do our part to help meet demand. Much of the profits were then handed back to our shareholders, 40% of whom are American families.”
Biden’s inner circle has been fixated on gasoline prices since last year, believing they’re pivotal to the president’s popularity and potentially Democrats’ success in Tuesday’s election. In a Friday speech outside San Diego, Biden suggested he would soon try to meet with oil company executives.
“Well, I’m working like hell to deal with the energy prices,” he said, according to a White House transcript. “I’m going to have a little, as they say, come-to-the-Lord talk with the oil companies pretty soon.”
At the center of last month’s offer was a plan to refill the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The administration decided, over industry objections, to sell 180 million barrels of the government-owned oil starting in the spring to prevent soaring prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The reserve is now down to a little more than half of its 714-million-barrel capacity and will need to be at least partially refilled.
The White House announced in October it settled on a plan to buy crude when prices are at or below $67 to $72 per barrel. The rule is the first of its kind, enabling the Energy Department to enter fixed-price contracts with suppliers, paying in advance for future delivery, in 2024 or 2025 under the plan, the White House has said.
Podesta said the system could help prevent the type of plummeting prices that led to mass bankruptcies and pullbacks in the industry in recent years. That should remove the “excuse” that the industry can’t invest because of fears over potential supply gluts or weak long-term demand growth, he said.
Industry leaders said it’s unclear it would work that way. The program isn’t big enough or effective soon enough to change the broader dynamic in the industry, which is influenced by global factors and investors that have become aggressive about getting better returns, they said.
Administration officials also noted that it is common for any White House to reach out to stakeholders to ensure support for and the quality of any new program or rule. And some initially expected little commitment from oil companies because the firms have been slow or reluctant to make major changes in response to past administration requests.
Strained relations between the two sides go back to the administration’s earliest days. Industry executives have been frustrated that the White House has prioritized climate change, blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, limiting their access to federal land, and aggressively pushing for oil companies to shift their businesses to produce cleaner energy instead.
As energy prices began rising last year, the administration also first spent more time pursuing new supply from international exporters instead of changing domestic policy to help U.S. oil companies. Those moves drew attacks from political opponents, and Biden often responded by blaming high prices on the companies, further irritating industry executives.
In recent months, industry relationships have improved with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who at times has struck a more conciliatory tone and whom some industry leaders have grown to consider an earnest dealmaker. But some still see White House officials, especially the economic adviser Deese, as quick to use their comments to attack them and to consider policies such as export bans that companies say would be harmful.
“When Deese joins the calls, it tends to be more of a lecture,” one lobbyist said.
Administration officials said Deese has good relationships with many executives and asks probing, challenging questions to produce better policies for taxpayers.
“Brian Deese’s role is to support the President in building an economy that works for working families, and the American people deserve somebody who will stand up for them in his role,” White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said in a statement. “Rigorously challenging the logic of oil companies making record profits at the expense of the American people isn’t ‘political,’ it’s what real public service is about.”
Talks have continued in the past two weeks even amid the president’s rhetoric. Some of Granholm’s top aides have been asking for guidance on what could boost inventories — especially of refined products such as diesel and gasoline. They fear a severe storm or other supply disruptions could cause major price increases because those inventories are so low, according to people familiar with the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Administration officials have stopped mentioning export bans or new mandates to refill low commercial inventories, the people said. While fall’s mild weather is likely to limit energy demand, they are urging companies to start getting inventories to healthy levels voluntarily.
Industry leaders have stressed that markets, left alone, will eventually produce solutions and refill inventories. Some have also pitched waivers of the Jones Act — which permits only U.S.-flagged vessels to complete maritime cargo transport between American ports — to lower costs for supplying to key storage sites, as well as waivers on sulfur limits in diesel fuel, policies that might hurt unions or worsen air quality, according to people familiar with the talks. Some in the administration are still planning to revisit new mandates to boost commercial inventory levels later if the industry doesn’t come through on its own, according to one of the people. | 2022-11-08T12:32:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden courted oil companies before threatening them with windfall tax - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environmnet/2022/11/08/biden-oil-companies-windfall-profits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environmnet/2022/11/08/biden-oil-companies-windfall-profits/ |
How the National Children’s Museum CEO would spend a perfect day in D.C.
Cartoon monsters, slides and dance parties are all in a day’s work for Crystal Bowyer. But being CEO of the National Children’s Museum isn’t all fun and games.
“Inside the museum, every single day we are seeing hundreds or thousands of kids and we have the opportunity to really spark something in them that impacts their lives,” she says.
The museum acts as an extension of a classroom, spinning education into playful, interactive exhibits for kids. One of the museum’s big draws is “Emotions at Play with Pixar’s ‘Inside Out,’ ” a hands-on exhibit meant to teach children how to manage and express the emotions touched on in the Academy Award-winning animated film (joy, sadness, anger, disgust and fear). It’s also a highlight for Bowyer, who’s spent more than a decade working in the nonprofit sector focused on childhood education and development.
Naturally, Bowyer’s dream day would be a kid-friendly odyssey around the city — with some fun for adults, too.
I have a 22-month-old and 8½-year-old, so we start our mornings pretty early here on the weekends. On the first weekend of the month, we always have our member mornings at the National Children’s Museum, and I do take my family because the museum opens up a little bit early for our members. This was particularly helpful in the summer, when there are a lot of tourists in D.C. I could get my kids into the museum before it got very busy. And then we would have breakfast at the museum. We have a Bluestone Lane cafe there, which is a really cool cafe based out of New York, but the founders are Australian and they present really healthy food options.
We spend a lot of Saturday mornings at the Fields at RFK [Campus] watching our son play soccer, especially in the fall. I think it’s an amazing resource for our community, a wonderful park. I love getting to watch my child get outside and play with other children.
We used to live in Georgetown and love that neighborhood. So we would probably go there and shop around and check out what’s new. We would shop the Made in DC store, which is always one of my favorites. Bacchus Wine Cellar on Wisconsin [Avenue NW] is a lovely, locally owned shop that we go to and get a bottle of wine for dinner that night.
And since it’s so close to the French Embassy, there are so many great French cafes there, so we would go to Boulangerie Christophe and pick up one of their salads — I personally like their niçoise salad — and sandwiches and picnic down by the Georgetown waterfront. On the way to the waterfront, we’d stop at Olivia Macaron; that’s our favorite spot to get a small little treat.
I love to be outside with family. We do a lot of hiking and biking, and we love the bike trail on the Capital Crescent Trail. So after lunch, we’d burn off our macarons with a bike ride up the trail, and we usually ride up to Fletchers Cove. At Fletchers Cove, we’d stop and go down by the water and let the kids skip rocks and run around a little bit before we bike back.
We’d then cap off the family fun day by stopping by Millie’s for a little sweet treat from the ice cream window. We live right near Millie’s and American University Park now, so that is our family spot. We would go a lot on Friday afternoons to pick our son up from school and walk there together to the ice cream window to celebrate the end of the week. I love the s’mores ice cream. They have a kid’s cup where you can do all these toppings, so of course, my son is getting chocolate ice cream with gummy bears and marshmallows and just things that should not logically go together. But he loves it.
Now we’re going to leave the kids at home with a babysitter and go out for the night. So we’re going to go over to Maxwell Park in Shaw. It’s our favorite spot. We love wine and got married at a vineyard in Willamette Valley, Ore. Maxwell Park has a really fun wine list that changes every month with a different theme.
And then we’ll probably go to our all-time favorite, which is a very D.C. spot on the Georgetown waterfront, Fiola Mare. They just always have the best service and amazing pastas. So we’ll go there for dinner, and then we’re going to head over to the Anthem and catch Sturgill Simpson. We had tickets for that show right before the pandemic. We’ve seen Sturgill Simpson a few times, and we love him — he’s like a hipster that’s making country cool again, and I’m from the country and I married a hipster from Chicago. [On our way home,] we would have our Lyft driver drive us by the Tidal Basin so we can see the monuments at night, which is the most magical time to see them. | 2022-11-08T12:32:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A D.C. Dream Day with National Children's Museum CEO Crystal Bowyer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/crystal-bowyer-dream-day/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/crystal-bowyer-dream-day/ |
Americans’ support for transgender rights has declined. Here’s why.
The culture war over transgender rights is part of a fight over competing notions of gender and sexuality, including issues like abortion and sex education
Analysis by Kelsy Burke
Emily Kazyak
A sign outside a restroom in Durham, N.C., in May 2016. (Gerry Broome/AP)
During the 2022 midterm election campaign, Republican public officials targeted transgender rights in what NPR and other news media have called the new front in the culture wars. Last month’s Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Survey appears to offer confirmation, finding increased polarization on all measures of LGBTQ rights. In particular, Americans’ support for transgender rights has declined.
Public opinion on ‘bathroom bills’
Take one measure: whether laws should require transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex assigned at birth, not their current gender identity. In 2016, only 35 percent of all Americans favored these “bathroom bills,” the first of which was proposed that year in North Carolina. In 2022, after numerous other states proposed similar laws, the number of Americans supporting them rose to 52 percent.
The jump was especially pronounced for White evangelicals and Republicans. In 2016, only 41 percent of White evangelicals and 44 percent of Republicans supported the requirement that transgender people use bathrooms that aligned with their sex assigned at birth. By 2022, that number doubled to 86 percent and 87 percent, respectively.
Other groups also increased their opposition to transgender rights, but the rise was less dramatic for Democrats and Americans who are unaffiliated with religion. Only 27 percent of Democrats favored bathroom bills in 2016, compared with 31 percent in 2022. Among nonreligious respondents, support for requiring transgender people to use the bathroom that aligns with their sex assigned at birth increased from 21 percent in 2016 to 34 percent in 2022.
These numbers suggest that transgender issues are increasingly being lived out in polarizing ways among Americans — in other words, that the “culture wars” narrative holds true. As sociologists, we have sought to dig deeper than the quantitative findings to understand why Americans hold such diverging beliefs.
Trans activists work locally. Conservatives fight back nationally.
Gender logics
Using Nebraska as a case study, we asked residents to explain their views about transgender bathroom use in their own words.
The random sample of 938 mostly cisgender Nebraska residents who completed the mail survey were evenly split across this issue, with a slight majority (51 percent) saying transgender people should be required to use bathrooms that align with the sex they were assigned at birth. Like the latest PRRI national data, our respondents who were politically conservative and White evangelicals were more likely to oppose transgender rights on bathroom use.
In analyzing the 623 respondents who answered open-ended questions about “bathroom bills,” we found that support or opposition hinges on beliefs about the nature of gender itself. Sociologists have described these as believing in “static gender” (assigned at birth and unchanging) or “fluid gender” (can change over the life course and can manifest differently for different people).
Supporters of transgender rights believe in gender fluidity and take transgender people’s experiences seriously. These respondents reasoned that “people should live their lives as the way they identify themselves.” They argued that to deny transgender people the ability to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity is “disrespectful,” “discriminating,” and “exposes them to needless humiliation.” Some supporters questioned why social life is organized around gender at all, and suggested gender-inclusive restrooms as an option that would allow everyone, transgender or cisgender, to “pee in peace,” as one of our respondents wrote.
In contrast, opponents of transgender rights see gender change as illegitimate and privilege cisgender people’s experiences. Respondents reason that “you cannot choose gender” and that “society should not be forced to recognize other categories than male and female.” Opponents also take for granted that social life should be organized by gender and position transgender people as threats to both the status quo and to cisgender people, especially women and children. To allow transgender people the ability to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity is “dangerous to our children” and “an invasion of our privacy,” two respondents wrote.
Why are Republicans so focused on restricting trans lives?
The PRRI survey finds that Americans overall are more likely to view gender as static than as fluid (59 percent of adult Americans surveyed), dividing sharply along political and religious lines. In 2022, 87 percent of White evangelical Protestants say they believe there are only two genders, man or woman, compared with 68 percent of White mainline Protestants, 76 percent of Black Protestants, 70 percent of White Catholics, 51 percent of Hispanic Catholics, and 45 percent of nonreligious respondents. Eighty-eight percent of Republicans believe there are only two genders, man or woman, compared to 66 percent of independents and 36 percent of Democrats. These data reflect the broader political landscape, with White Protestant Republicans pushing anti-trans legislation.
The stakes of the culture wars
Though these findings obviously relate to transgender people, they implicate cisgender people, too. The culture war over transgender rights is part of a war over competing notions of gender and sexuality, and how those should be regulated in the social world. Thus, in 2022, we have observed simultaneous political attacks on transgender people, reproductive freedoms, and sex education. Americans are divided because we have fundamentally different vantage points over whose identities deserve protection and which experiences are to be prioritized and believed.
Kelsy Burke is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and 2022-2023 Public Fellow for the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).
Emily Kazyak is an associate professor of sociology and women’s and gender studies at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. | 2022-11-08T12:33:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why do Republicans attack transgender rights? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/transgender-republican-evangelical-bathrooms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/transgender-republican-evangelical-bathrooms/ |
Michels, who won a tough primary after getting Trump's endorsement, initially refused to commit to accepting the results of the election before saying in late October he would “certainly” accept the outcome. Michels also has said “maybe” the 2020 election lost by Trump was stolen, even though President Joe Biden’s win has survived numerous lawsuits, reviews and recounts. | 2022-11-08T12:36:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wisconsin's Evers, in 2nd term bid, says democracy at stake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/wisconsins-evers-in-2nd-term-bid-says-democracy-at-stake/2022/11/08/b2953a58-5f54-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/wisconsins-evers-in-2nd-term-bid-says-democracy-at-stake/2022/11/08/b2953a58-5f54-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
A statue is seen at the site of the discovery of two dozen well-preserved bronze statues from an ancient Tuscan thermal spring in San Casciano dei Bagni, central Italy, in this undated photo made available by the Italian Culture Ministry, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2022. (Italian Culture Ministry via AP) (Uncredited/Italian Culture Ministry) | 2022-11-08T12:37:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Discovery of bronzes rewrites Italy's Etruscan-Roman history - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/discovery-of-bronzes-rewrites-italys-etruscan-roman-history/2022/11/08/40f9dc98-5f5c-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/discovery-of-bronzes-rewrites-italys-etruscan-roman-history/2022/11/08/40f9dc98-5f5c-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
By Amudalat Ajasa | Nov 8, 2022
On Tuesday morning, early risers watched as an ominous blood moon seeped into the horizon.
A blood moon framed by a U.S. flag blowing in the wind on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Sky watchers across Central America, Asia, Australia, the Pacific islands and parts of South America had the opportunity to gaze at the red moon in all its glory.
The blood moon in Fish Creek, about 140 miles southeast of Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, Australia.
Goyang, northwest of Seoul.
A man uses a smartphone to take a picture of the moon through a telescope in Goyang, northwest of Seoul.
Photos from across the world showed the moon turning rusty shades of red — a phenomenon that occurs when the moon is in a total eclipse.
People watch as a full moon rises ahead of a total lunar eclipse in Stanwell Park, New South Wales, Australia.
Dean Lewins/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
The blood moon seen in Australia.
Total lunar eclipses only happen during full moons when the Earth completely shields the moon from the sun. Once the sun, Earth and the moon are exactly aligned, light from simultaneous sunrises and sunsets around the Earth project onto the moon, briefly casting a coppery-red coat on its surface.
This combination of images shows the progression of a blood moon over the skies of Tokyo.
A beach in Australia.
The moon began to slip behind the Earth at 3:02 a.m. Eastern time. By 4:09 a.m., the partial eclipse caused the moon to look like there was a bite taken out of its surface.
At 5:17 a.m., the moon began touting its red cloak in total eclipse. Viewers watched the spectacle for just under 90 minutes.
The moon over Sydney Harbour Bridge.
This is the second time the moon was draped in red this year. In any given year there are a minimum of two lunar eclipses and a maximum of four, Geoff Chester, an astronomer and public affairs officer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, told The Washington Post. If there are two in one year, both tend to be total lunar eclipses.
“Twice a year, somebody somewhere on the planet will see a total lunar eclipse if it’s a year where we have two eclipses,” Chester said.
This total lunar eclipse marked the last time the moon would be bathed in red until 2025.
This scientist uses drones and algorithms to save whales — and the rest of the ocean
Editing by Jason Samenow and Julie Vitkovskaya. Copy editing by Rebecca Branford. | 2022-11-08T13:40:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Blood moon photos 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/interactive/2022/blood-moon-photos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/interactive/2022/blood-moon-photos/ |
Some veterans opposed Its simple design, by architecture student Maya Lin. Five million people a year now visit to honor those who died in the war.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is in Washington, D.C., was created to honor those who died in the Vietnam War from 1959 to 1975. The design, a V-shaped wall of black granite with names inscribed of those who died, was not liked by all veterans when it was chosen. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Honoring veterans has a special connection to World War I
The changes helped soften the criticism, which faded over the years. Today the memorial is among the most-visited sites in Washington. To Scruggs and many others, it means “these guys ... didn’t die for nothing.”
If you go (and even if you don’t)
The memorial, just off Constitution Avenue near the Lincoln Memorial, is open 24 hours a day every day. The 1 p.m. anniversary event on Friday (Veterans Day) is free but requires registration. For information, go to vvmf.org/40th.
Many visitors bring paper and charcoal or a crayon to make an image of a name, called a “rubbing.” Directories at the site show where each name is on the wall. If you can’t visit in person, a volunteer with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which raised $8.4 million to build the wall, will do it for you. A request form is at vvmf.org/name-rubbing. | 2022-11-08T13:58:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vietnam Veterans Memorial, once criticized, gained respect in 40 years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/08/vietnam-veterans-memorial-40-years/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/08/vietnam-veterans-memorial-40-years/ |
If Republicans gain control of both the US House and Senate, their first move will likely be making the Trump administration’s tax cuts for businesses permanent. It will be costly, perhaps adding a little over $500 billion to the budget deficit, but there is a way for it to get done even in this era of high inflation.
That’s why Democrats should relish the chance to have a Republican-dominated Congress write and pass the bills to eliminate the SALT deduction. Sure, President Joe Biden would have to sign-off on such a bill, but he could take full responsibility for doing so without doing too much harm to his ratings. The states where SALT matters most – California, New Jersey and New York – are solidly blue.
Likewise, this is the optimum moment to bite the bullet on the mortgage interest deduction. Mortgage debt payments as a percent of personal income are near record lows at less than 4%, according to the Federal Reserve. Fewer families will be see their household budget disrupted by its elimination than in any prior reform attempt. And with mortgage rates are rising, it will only grow more difficult to eliminate the deduction in the future if it doesn’t happen soon.
Eliminating the SALT and mortgage interest deductions might seem like concessions to Republicans on the surface, but in reality it would mean stripping out two costly and regressive provisions from the tax code that just happen to be politically inconvenient for the Democrats to do away with on their own. The Joint Committee on Tax estimates that these two provisions each cost roughly $25 billion a year. Summing them together, however, would overestimate the combined impact of eliminating both provisions. That’s because getting rid of the SALT deduction, for example, would cause fewer people to itemize and therefore fewer people would take the mortgage interest deduction.
Republicans who are opposed on principle to a carbon tax should find solace in two ways. First, they should demand that Republican Senator Shelley Capito’s comprehensive permitting reform bill be included in the package. That bill would dramatically reduce the regulatory burden on US energy companies – both green and fossil fuel – allowing for expanded production. Economists have long emphasized that carbon taxes work by decreasing consumption, not production. An America that consumes a bit less oil and gas but produces a bit more would become an export powerhouse with the potential to offset the global power of OPEC and Russia.
• What Happened to Republicans’ Policy Agenda?: Jonathan Bernstein
• Midterms Move Climate Battle Beyond Washington: Liam Denning | 2022-11-08T14:02:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | These Bipartisan Deals in Washington Make Sense in 2023 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/these-bipartisan-deals-in-washington-make-sense-in-2023/2022/11/08/126d33ca-5f66-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/these-bipartisan-deals-in-washington-make-sense-in-2023/2022/11/08/126d33ca-5f66-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
It takes a lot of time to count ballots in US elections. What’s more, the speed at which votes are counted varies from state to state and county to county, as different jurisdictions use different methods to reach a final count.
Why it’s the case is less well understood. The US is unusually slow at confirming winners; the recent runoff presidential election in Brazil had a full vote count available a few hours after the polls closed. In the US, by contrast, no state will have a final count on Tuesday night. Some states will have large fractions of their overall totals unavailable for days and won’t be able to call close races for a week or two.
Much of the slow count is a function of the basic structure of US elections. American voters typically encounter long ballots featuring elections from school boards to the US Senate. In many other countries, voters might see only one item on the ballot — typically, the local candidates facing off for a seat in parliament, although there are plenty of variations. The US simply holds far more elections for far more positions than most other democracies.
On Tuesday every state will hold US House elections, about two-thirds will hold US Senate elections,(1)most will hold state legislative elections with many voters choosing representatives in two chambers; 36 have gubernatorial elections accompanied by up to half a dozen or more statewide executive offices to fill; and then there are all sorts of local offices, state and local judicial elections and state and local ballot measures, all depending on the state, county, city and other government bodies. Some voters may have only a dozen or so contests; others may face more than 50.
The US also has an unusually decentralized election administration. Decentralization means that each state and even each county (or whichever authority is responsible) has to choose how much to spend on rapidly counting ballots when there are competing priorities just within election administration, let alone all the other things states and local governments do. It isn’t surprising that as a result, some are quicker and some are slower.(2)
Some people who have latched on to the false claims of election fraud from 2020 point to machine counting as a problem. In reality, machines are more accurate than humans when it comes to counting. Long US ballots also make counting by hand impractical; a recent attempt to do it in a Nevada county turned into a fiasco stopped by the courts.
Even on Election Day, the use of drop boxes in some places means that someone has to physically retrieve ballots and, depending on what methods they use, separate them into the correct precincts since voters who live in different areas and use different ballots sometimes use the same drop box. All mail-in ballots take time to process, from physically removing the ballot from the envelope to ensuring that whatever anti-fraud protocols (such as signature matches) are followed. Votes received in advance could be processed and even counted when they are received, but some states — most notoriously Pennsylvania — don’t allow that. So the count goes on.(3)
• Political Change Comes Slowly to Pennsylvania: Francis Wilkinson
• Republicans Can Rescue American Democracy: Jonathan Bernstein
(1) Oklahoma has two Senate seats to fill.
(2) It isn’t unusual for urban areas to count more slowly because they often have more ballots to count without proportionately larger resources devoted to counting them. Some Republicans have used those slow counts as evidence of fraud, claiming that those areas with a lot of Democratic votes hold back until they see how many votes are needed. But cities have the same custody of ballots that every other area has, and there’s no evidence of anything awry; more obviously, the many close elections that Democrats have lost despite late reporting cities (including, most notably, the 2016 presidential election) make it clear that the accusations have no merit at all.
(3) Mail ballots coming in at different times account for a lot of the observed effect in many states in which Democrats gain as the count goes on. Why? Because older voters, who currently trend Republican, tend to vote as soon as their ballots arrive in October (or even September in some states) while younger voters, who trend Democratic, are more likely to vote at the last minute. (And it’s no coincidence that the high-turnout groups are also the earliest voting groups). | 2022-11-08T14:02:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why the US Counts Ballots So Slowly - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-the-us-counts-ballots-so-slowly/2022/11/08/8fb83598-5f69-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-the-us-counts-ballots-so-slowly/2022/11/08/8fb83598-5f69-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
A Sonoran Desert toad, Coronado National Forest, Cochise County, Ariz. (Brad Wilson/Getty Images)
The U.S. government has an unusual request: Please don’t lick psychedelic toads.
The National Park Service issued a warning this week to visitors to refrain from licking the large Sonoran Desert toad as they try to reach a state of hallucinogenic enlightenment from the “potent toxin” that the amphibians naturally secrete.
These toads, also known as Colorado River toads, “have prominent parotoid glands that secrete a potent toxin,” the Park Service advised. “It can make you sick if you handle the frog or get the poison in your mouth,” it warned.
While it’s unclear how many people are wandering through national parks in search of toads, and there is no data to suggest it is widespread, the practice is well known in popular culture and among celebrities.
Bufotenin, a white milky substance also known as “5-MeO-DMT,” is a natural psychedelic that the toads naturally secrete, according to Drug Science, an international scientific research group.
It can be snorted, inhaled or smoked and induces a “short but intense psychedelic experience or ‘trip’ ” of around 30 minutes, with hallucinogenic effects that are “significantly stronger” than those induced by the primary psychoactive molecule found in the similar substance ayahuasca, the group said.
The research body said it is a “popular myth” that people can get high by licking toads. In fact, it can be “dangerous,” causing poisonings and even fatalities in humans, the group said.
Prominent figures including former boxing champion Mike Tyson, comedian Chelsey Handler and President Biden’s son Hunter Biden have publicly discussed 5-MeO-DMT therapy or toad-venom rituals.
British scientist James Rucker, a psychiatrist at King’s College London, told The Washington Post on Tuesday that he welcomes the warning, referencing reports of people licking the coldblooded creatures in Asia and elsewhere outside the United States. “I imagine the vast majority of people are looking for a cheap psychedelic experience,” he said. “I would caution people against it.”
The bufotenin chemical and other naturally occurring drugs can be “transformative,” with potential benefits to those suffering from depression and alcoholism, said Rucker, who carries out similar clinical research trials. “They stir up the mind, and they can induce feelings of euphoria and ecstasy,” he added.
However, he cautioned that they can also induce panic, paranoia and severe anxiety, as well as bring up buried feelings that can be hard to process and manage without professional support.
The drugs are often described as “amplifiers of the psyche,” said Rucker. “They can be very positive, beautiful, awe-inspiring experiences,” he said, and “catalyze a reconnection with the self and others.” But he warned that people should be wary of the “hype and hope” associated with such psychedelic drugs.
Bufotenin can also be found in some trees and plants, and its use in seeds as “shamanic snuffs” can be traced back almost 3,000 years in spiritual ceremonies in Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil, according to Drug Science. The chemical works by quickly passing the blood-brain barrier and emulating the neurotransmitter serotonin, which leads to hallucinations and a euphoric mood, among other impacts.
The substance is mostly illegal in the United States, classified as a Schedule I drug with no approved medical use. However, the secretions can have some limited use in research, with approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration.
Calling the creatures “toad-ally terrifying,” the Park Service described the Sonoran Desert toad as one of the largest toads found in North America, usually measuring about seven inches long. The chunky, short-legged amphibians normally make a “weak, low-pitched toot, lasting less than a second,” in their call, it added.
The somewhat solitary toads are found in parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and sometimes California, and they generally live at least 10 years.
Adult toads normally have “dark olive-green leathery skin above and a smooth creamy-white underside,” according to Oakland Zoo, with an enlarged white wart near the angle of the jaw that also secretes a toxin.
The creatures release the potent chemicals from glands just behind their eyes as a “defensive” mechanism against “animals that harass this species,” according to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The powerful toxins can be strong enough to kill full-grown dogs that pick up the toads in their mouths, causing symptoms including excessive salivation and an irregular heartbeat, it added.
The toads remain underground much of the year, emerging in the summer rainy season from May to July. They are nocturnal during the hot summer months and live primarily off beetles, spiders, lizards and sometimes smaller toads in desert scrub or woodlands.
“I’m sure the toads would appreciate their dignity and autonomy being preserved, too,” Rucker told The Post. “The toad wants to be left alone. We should respect that.” | 2022-11-08T14:04:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stop licking psychedelic Sonoran desert toads, National Park Service says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/08/national-park-toad-sonoran-desert-hallucinogenic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/08/national-park-toad-sonoran-desert-hallucinogenic/ |
Politician links Poland’s low birthrate to women who drink ‘as much as men’
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland's ruling Law and Justice party, in 2019. (Wojtek Radwanski/AFP/Getty Images)
The leader of Poland’s ruling party caused a stir at home and abroad after he claimed the country’s low birthrate is caused by young women who drink as much as men do.
The unsupported claims by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s Law and Justice party, were swiftly denounced by women’s rights groups and lawmakers inside and outside the country.
“If we see a continuation of the situation where, until the age of 25, young women drink as much as men their age, then there will be no children,” Kaczynski said Saturday.
Kaczynski’s reasoning set off a firestorm in a country where access to contraception is considered the worst on the continent — and its abortion restrictions are tougher than in many other European countries. A pregnancy can be terminated only in cases of incest and rape or if the mother’s life is in danger.
After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, which for almost 50 years established a constitutional right to abortion on American soil, some Polish activists noted “a lot of parallels” — pointing out that they are the only two developed nations in the 21st century to have rolled back abortion rights.
Lessons from Poland, the other developed country curtailing abortion rights
“We could of course laugh about this, make memes out of it, but it’s a serious, tragic matter,” Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus, a member of the Sejm for the Left political coalition, told reporters Monday, according to the Guardian.
Another politician from the same party, Barbara Nowacka, said on Twitter that Kaczynski “knows nothing about women, our plans, dreams and life."
Critics said the relatively low and declining birthrate in Poland — among the lowest in Europe at 1.38 children per woman in 2020, per the World Bank — could be blamed on rising costs of living and raising children, the coronavirus pandemic and broader changes in cultural attitudes.
Broadly speaking, alcohol consumption can affect fertility for those trying to conceive — but its impact applies to men, too. A 2021 study from the U.S. National Library of Medicine focusing on Poland found that the chance of high alcohol intake was four times greater in men than in women.
Kaczynski was campaigning ahead of Poland’s 2023 parliamentary election when he made the remarks, adding that he is “a sincere supporter of women’s equality” but not a supporter “of women pretending to be men, and men pretending to be women.”
PES Women, a group that promotes gender equality and women’s representation inside and outside the Party of European Socialists, slammed Kaczynski’s remarks as “outrageous” and “ridiculous.”
More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, new poll says, as U.S. birthrate declines
The European Parliamentary Forum in 2020 said Poland had regressed on access to effective and affordable methods of birth control as the government moved to encourage people to have more children by promoting a policy that paid mothers per child.
Kaczynski, who served as Poland’s prime minister from 2006 to 2007, was once described by Politico as the country’s “most powerful” but “divisive politician.” The 73-year-old is not married and has no children. | 2022-11-08T14:06:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Poland politician Kaczynski pins low birthrate on women drinking alcohol - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/poland-jaroslaw-kaczynski-women-alcohol-birthrate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/poland-jaroslaw-kaczynski-women-alcohol-birthrate/ |
Iraqi officials said that Stephen Troell was killed as he drove through central Baghdad
Iraqi security forces stand guard outside the hospital where the body of a U.S. citizen who was killed in Baghdad is being held, Iraq, Nov. 7, 2022. (Ahmed Saad/Reuters)
A U.S. citizen was shot dead in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, the State Department announced Monday, marking a rare attack on foreign visitors to the country.
“We can confirm the death of a U.S. citizen, Stephen Edward Troell, in Baghdad. We are closely monitoring local authorities’ investigation into the cause of death,” announced the statement, which had no further comment “out of respect to the family.
Iraqi officials said Troell’s vehicle was attacked by “unknown” gunmen as he drove through central Baghdad on Monday. The weapon was fitted with a suppressor, they said, but provided no further information. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive case.
Iraq’s new Prime Minister Muhammed al-Sudani has ordered an investigation into the killing and promised “details, causes and access to the perpetrators as soon as possible.”
Almost 20 years after the American-led invasion of Iraq, the country is in many ways considered safer for foreigners than for Iraqis. While scores of citizens have died during hospital fires and Iran-backed Shiite militias have killed those who criticize them, the country has attracted a steady stream of Western tourists and YouTube bloggers, without incident.
In social media postings from 2018, Troell had shared photographs of visits to Baghdad’s renowned Mutanabi Street book market, and to one of the capital’s bridges across the Tigris River, a popular stop-off for families at sunset.
An identification card recovered from Troell’s possession indicated that he had worked with Millennium Relief and Development Services, a nonprofit aid organization headquartered in Bellaire, Tex.
A conference program from 2016, available online, suggested he had engaged in missionary work in the past. “In December of 2012, the Troell family moved to the Middle East to study Arabic and continue their effort in making the name of Jesus great among the nations,” it said.
A new Iraqi government, sworn in last month, faces steep challenges in tackling everything from the short term security situation to the long term challenges posed by climate change amid a population boom.
The killing of an American citizen in downtown Baghdad will be an early test for Sudani. Under his predecessor, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, investigations into high profile assassinations were frequently opened, but the alleged perpetrators usually walked free, due to their links to powerful Iran-linked militias.
Mustafa Salim in Baghdad contributed to this report. | 2022-11-08T15:12:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stephen Troell, U.S. citizen, killed in Baghdad, Iraq - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/iraq-stephen-troell-millenium-baghdad/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/iraq-stephen-troell-millenium-baghdad/ |
The Washington Post has live election results pages for all 50 states and Washington, D.C. during this year’s midterm elections. We’re covering every federal office, as well as a large collection of state and local elections.
Don’t know where to start? Our midterm elections hub is a great place to look first.
Here’s every link you’ll need to follow along as results come in on election night and after.
Where to go for key results:
Issues to watch:
Results for races where election deniers are on the ballot
Results for races where abortion access is on the ballot
Results by state:
When will we know election results and why some race calls may be delayed | 2022-11-08T15:20:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Election results 2022: House, Senate, governor races - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/election-results-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/election-results-2022/ |
Post Elizabeth: ‘The Crown’ season 5 — what’s good, what’s bad and what could have been uglier
Catherine, Princess of Wales, listens as Prince William speaks during a visit to Scarborough, England, on Nov. 3. (Charlotte Graham/Pool/AFP/Getty Images) (AFP/Getty Images)
The sometimes complex relationship between royals and their charities is getting an overhaul. Britain’s Prince and Princess of Wales (better known as Prince William and Kate Middleton) debuted their first “community impact day” with a visit last week to Scarborough, in northeast England. Ahead of their arrival, the couple’s foundation worked with the Two Ridings Community Foundation, which oversees grants to regional organizations, to raise 345,000 British pounds for long-term support of youth mental health and well-being. The funds are to be distributed to community groups the couple visited.
Such “impact days” reportedly will supplement, but not replace, traditional royal outings (partly because they take months to organize). But it does represent a change. “Instead of visiting deprived communities, giving them a day in the sun and then hoping money will be raised as a result, the Prince and Princess of Wales want to reverse the process by using the build-up to a visit to generate money, which they can then announce and disburse when they get there,” Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reports. Aides said the prince stressed “impact” and “legacy” while planning, the paper went on, “reflecting the undeniable fact that he felt the traditional way of doing things was generating neither.”
The initiative was reportedly in the works before the death of Queen Elizabeth II made William first in line to the throne. We’re curious to see how William seeks to maximize the value of engagements — but putting a cash value on royal activities carries risks. In February, police opened an investigation into the most recent royal cash-for-honors scandal, involving a former senior aide to King Charles and the foundation of the then-prince.
We know: We are not television critics. But we have thoughts after watching the new season of “The Crown,” which starts streaming Wednesday.
The show’s early seasons benefited from pointing up events that most people could not recall in any detail. Long-forgotten moments were unearthed for a mass audience and a glossy presentation dazzled, from the acting to costumes and sets. Depicting the 1990s, however, the fifth season of “The Crown” is working much closer to viewers’ memories — and feels less docu than drama.
The new season wields all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, pitting the ever-tortured, doe-eyed Princess Diana against the family Firm and a husband in love with someone else. The story is painful for all concerned, including those reliving it at home. That we all know how it ends doesn’t make the show less binge-able, but it lends the new season a soapy rinse more familiar to Lifetime movies (no offense, Lifetime). And if Queen Elizabeth’s dutiful manner in past seasons suggested perceptiveness of the people and plotting around her, the new episodes portray her as not merely out of touch but somewhat dim. It’s a discordant shift from a series in which her character previously reigned supreme.
Two years after season four, Netflix’s drama happens to return a mere two months after the real Elizabeth’s death, sparking all manner of pre-stream harumphing about the unseemliness of dramatizing the late queen — or reminding the public of less-than-flattering activities of the new king and queen consort. Repeat after me: It’s a scripted show. The royals had critics in the 1990s. Whatever details were fudged, whatever events bluntly referenced to yank viewers up to speed (hello, toe-sucking affair that torpedoed the marriage of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson!), much of this content came from news reports, books or interviews with which many royals, or their friends, cooperated. And yet, the show’s treatment of Camilla, the only one who never unzipped her lips, might actually win her fans. All the angst is likely to fuel viewership, not reduce it.
The show could have been tougher on Charles — and in places seems to admit as much. Over and over, his character argues for modernizing the monarchy, presumably with a bigger role for himself. Change might have been a controversial stance then, but it’s not now, even if no one knows what “modernizing” really means. Yes, his infamous phone call with Camilla (while both were married to others) is recounted, but so is the national embarrassment that followed. Also depicted: how Charles and Camilla supported each other throughout. The episode possibly most mortifying to today’s king simultaneously stresses Charles’s charity work; end credits observe details about the youth helped by the Prince’s Trust, which Charles founded in 1976.
Diana is not shown similar deference. The series takes no pains to introduce facts after the episodes (plural) that invoke Diana’s 1995 interview with Martin Bashir, who is shown faking bank statements and lying to secure the sit-down that produced such headlines as “there were three of us in this marriage” and pushed the royal couple toward divorce. A 2021 independent investigation concluded that Bashir used “deceitful behavior” and that the BBC fell short of its standards for integrity. Prince William issued a scathing statement last year, which he read aloud, noting that “The interview was a major contribution to making my parents’ relationship worse” and “the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to [Diana’s] fear, paranoia and isolation that I remember from those final years with her.” The BBC has said it will not broadcast the interview again. The Bashir content is about the only point on which a royal response seems possible, whether from William or his brother, who has, ahem, a docuseries forthcoming from Netflix.
Still, the season has its gems, including the much-improved faux royal bling and requisite corgi moments. Once again, the Princess Anne character, now played by Claudia Harrison, charms with her brusque love. Anne’s 1992 marriage to Tim Laurence, a former equerry to Elizabeth II, sets the stage for looking back at Princess Margaret’s thwarted romance with Peter Townsend. We think the songs and conversation that punctuated this episode were inspired by Margaret’s 1981 Desert Island Discs interview — but, please, tell us if we’re wrong. Vanessa Kirby as young Margaret was spot-on, and the show’s reference to a significant moment in Windsor Castle’s crimson drawing room dovetails with a mention in Townsend’s 1978 memoir.
Some footnotes to on-screen points:
* Here is the text of the queen’s 1992 speech known for its “annus horribilis” reference.
* Penelope “Penny” Knatchbull, whose long friendship with Prince Philip is depicted, was one of the few to attend Philip’s covid-restricted funeral in 2021.
* The queen’s private secretary is Robert Fellowes, husband of Princess Diana’s older sister, Jane.
* For those wondering how the much-mentioned Church of England rules on divorce were overcome by the queen’s daughter: She remarried in Scotland.
* And ... we suspect that visitors to Britannia will soon spike. The decommissioned royal yacht is in Edinburgh and open to tourists most days of the year.
Here’s The Post’s review of season five.
👑🏖️📅: Britain’s government has added a bank holiday to celebrate King Charles’s coronation on Saturday, May 6. The Monday holiday on May 8 creates a three-day weekend to help mark “a unique moment for our country,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said.
Climate kudos: The new prime minister praised the king’s “long-standing and far-sighted leadership” on environmental change at a reception Friday marking the end of the British presidency of COP26. The next U.N. climate summit, COP27, opened on Sunday in Egypt. Recall that Charles had planned to attend the summit before becoming king. Also useful: this Post article on the complexities and paradoxes of Charles’s environmental positions.
One detail we noticed in this Yahoo News report about Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir, “Spare,” was almost an aside: that the Netflix docuseries on Harry and his wife, Meghan, would be out a month ahead of the book’s January publication. That would put the show’s release in December. The Yahoo writer, Omid Scobie, co-wrote a sympathetic biography of Harry and Meghan, “Finding Freedom,” and is thought to have strong sources among the couple’s network. We’ve asked Netflix for confirmation.
Royal-adjacent reality-TV alert: Mike Tindall, the retired rugby star married to Princess Anne’s daughter, Zara Phillips, is competing on the British reality TV show “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!” Tindall’s social media accounts are being handled by a support team while he is in the Australian jungle, a Friday tweet confirmed. We hope he’ll be running his social accounts again soon — and sharing more pics of himself in his wife’s hat.
Princess Catherine will host a Christmas concert with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace announced. Carol performances will be recorded Dec. 15 at Westminster Abbey and broadcast on Britain’s ITV One on Christmas Eve. While aiming to celebrate the joys of human connection, the service “will combine both traditional and modern elements, aiming to appeal to people of all faiths and none,” a statement said.
This is the second Christmas program Catherine has hosted; last year’s “Royal Carols: Together at Christmas” honored front-line workers in the coronavirus pandemic and others who served their communities.
Watch Catherine play the piano as Scottish singer Tom Walker performs “For Those Who Can’t Be Here” during last year’s event.
Fifteen finalists have been unveiled for the Earthshot Prize, the environmental competition Prince William launched in 2020. Three innovators have been designated for each the contest’s five categories: protecting and restoring nature; clean air; reviving oceans; building a waste-free world; and fixing the climate. Winners receive 1 million British pounds each and support from the contest’s network to scale and implement their innovations. The winners will be announced in a Dec. 2 ceremony in Boston attended by William and Catherine. (Beantown is a Kennedy homage; the contest is inspired by JFK’s “moonshot” speech.)
More green for the queen: King Charles planted a lime tree in the Buckingham Palace grounds Friday as part of the #QueensGreenCanopy effort. More than 1 million trees have been planted in honor of Queen Elizabeth II, according to the QGC website. The effort, begun in 2021, was extended to encompass this year’s tree-planting season, which ends in March 2o23.
Prince William’s official Instagram account shared a selfie-style video Friday to highlight the Earthshot Prize finalists.
Opinion|Post Elizabeth: ‘The Crown’ controversy’s clash of art and reality | 2022-11-08T15:25:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | ‘The Crown’ season 5: What’s good, bad and could have been uglier - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/post-elizabeth-newsletter-the-crown-season-five-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/post-elizabeth-newsletter-the-crown-season-five-review/ |
“I can get exercise and I can place bets,” Steve Cimino told his wife when he started bicycling to Virginia. “Everybody wins.” (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Like many city dwellers, Steve Cimino does not own a car. So, in early 2021, when Virginia launched online sports gambling, the writer from Northeast Washington came up with a plan. On Saturdays, he could chart a 15-mile bike ride that would take him across the river into Arlington. Once across the state line, he would pull the bike over — often stopping to sit on the same ledge just off a bike path, right outside the Air Force Association Headquarters building — place his bets on his phone and then start back home.
“I can get exercise and I can place bets,” Cimino told his wife. “Everybody wins.”
Cimino is not alone in his journeys across the river. Despite mobile sports gambling being legal in the District, many D.C. players find themselves drawn to Virginia and its far more robust options, driven across the Potomac River mostly by frustration with the D.C. operation. They pull their cars to the side of Virginia roads, they schedule visits to suburban friends, they study college football lines before a trip to the airport — all for what they consider an easier and more enjoyable gambling experience.
“On a Sunday, it’s [second] nature now to drive over the line and pop back over in time for the 1 o’clock games,” said Mike Callow, a radio producer who works in Northwest Washington. Callow often stops in empty parking lots just over the Virginia state line to place his bets.
In the fledgling world of mobile sports gambling, a monopoly like that is rare. Most states that allow mobile sports gambling have approved multiple big-name competitors like DraftKings, Caesars and FanDuel, all of which are offered in Virginia. (The apps require geolocation checks to verify that users are in a permitted jurisdiction.) With Maryland set to launch its own mobile operation in the coming weeks — and with 10 operators already having applied to offer mobile betting in Maryland — D.C.'s only-show-in-town approach will soon be surrounded by a stable of competitors, offering better promotions and more highly regarded apps.
Cimino remembers reading about D.C.’s coming launch and feeling a deep sense of skepticism. When the time came and he fired up the Gambet app, he felt justified in his distrust.
“It just seemed like all the fears came to fruition,” Cimino said. “It is a dumb, unfinished, incomplete app that we were all supposed to love just because we love gambling.”
Cimino’s reaction was a common one, and soon a chorus of criticism clouded the city’s operation. Users voiced displeasure with both details both aesthetic and integral. They claimed the user interface was bad, the geographic restrictions were confusing — mobile gambling isn’t permitted in parts of the District — and the odds themselves were worse than those offered by other outlets.
“The app was garbage — it’s still garbage — and the actual lines? Oh my gosh, I took one look at it and said ‘nope, I am not placing bets on this thing,’” Callow said.
GambetDC was projected to net more than $20 million a year for the city but hasn’t yet come close, with the pandemic also impacting its rollout. In fact, documents submitted to the city council in March 2022 showed the operation had actually cost the city $4 million dollars in its first year, mostly because of marketing expenses. Critics pointed to that red number as proof that the venture was doomed.
“You shouldn’t be able to lose money running a gambling operation,” Scott Kraff, a lawyer from Northeast said with a laugh. “That should not be possible.”
“The [Gambet] revenue was way below the projections that the city told people they were expecting and, well, the proof is in the product,” Hacker said. “It’s a [bad] app and it’s a [bad] experience. If you can very easily go across the river and have a better experience, people will do that.”
The District’s mobile operation fared better in fiscal year 2022; the total money wagered was up 38 percent from the previous year, and the number of wagers was up 59 percent. GambetDC delivered an estimated $2.6 million in revenue to the District government’s general fund in 2022, according to Melissa Davis, chief of communications for the city’s Office of Lottery and Gaming,
Even with improved numbers, the office is aware of the public’s past criticisms, Davis said. In late October, GambetDC launched an improved version of its app, “more in line with what players currently experience when wagering with competitive products in surrounding jurisdictions,” Davis wrote in an email. “We expect this new app to address the concerns of local sports bettors, demonstrate GambetDC’s strength as a sportsbook, and pave the way for future successes.”
“If you talk to anyone who has used it, they usually recommend not using it,” said Bennett Conlin, who covers the sports gambling industry for SportsHandle. “There are a lot reasons not use GambetDC and there are a lot of people that have been very outspoken about not liking the app. I know they’ve made some changes to [it], but it’s tough to come back from people’s unhappiness and go above and beyond some of the mishaps they’ve had.”
The original contract between Intralot and the city runs until 2024. Last month, D.C.Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) introduced legislation that would terminate the contract at its conclusion and end Intralot’s monopoly, opening the city to national operators.
“We need to turn the page on this embarrassing episode,” Silverman said in a statement. “Residents deserve an online app that works, taxpayers deserve a program that brings in money for the District, and we all deserve a system where we don’t hand huge contracts to a preferred company and its subcontractors without even looking at the competition.”
Until those prospective competitors have a chance to enter the D.C. market, gamblers like Cimino see their trips to Northern Virginia as a fine way to run out the clock. He has made the bike ride over the river most Saturdays since Virginia’s operators went online, traveling deep enough into the state for the apps to recognize that he is no longer in the District. He places his bets as weekend cyclists whiz by, and then he heads back to Washington.
“The fact that Gambet couldn’t win over me or my friends who are gamblers … is not a good sign,” Cimino said. “At this point, I don’t think Gambet is ever going to hit.” | 2022-11-08T15:33:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | To escape GambetDC, some frustrated sports gamblers head to Virginia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/escape-dc-betting-app-some-frustrated-sports-gamblers-head-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/escape-dc-betting-app-some-frustrated-sports-gamblers-head-virginia/ |
Sepp Blatter was FIFA president when Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup in December 2010. (Walter Bieri/Keystone/AP)
Awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar was “a bad choice,” Sepp Blatter, who was president of soccer’s world governing body at the time of the 2010 decision, said Tuesday, claiming that an agreement between French and Qatari officials swayed votes.
“It’s a country that’s too small,” Blatter, the leader of FIFA for 17 years before he stepped down in 2015, told the Swiss newspaper group Tamedia in his first comments since being acquitted of corruption charges by a Swiss court in July. Prosecutors have appealed the decision. “Football and the World Cup are too big for that.”
The smallest host by size since the 1954 tournament took place in Switzerland, Qatar will host 32 teams that will play 64 games in eight stadiums in and around Doha, the site of massive and controversial construction projects for the tournament, which begins Nov. 20. Over a million visitors are expected, but many will commute from neighboring countries because of limited places to stay in Qatar.
From October: The World Cup is only a month away. Will Qatar be ready?
A bid by the United States, which Blatter has said he voted for, fell short in the final round of voting among five candidates. It is believed Qatar beat out the United States during a meeting hosted in Paris by Nicolas Sarkozy, then president of France, the week before the December 2010 vote by FIFA’s executive committee.
Present at the meeting were Michel Platini (the former French soccer great who was then president of UEFA, the European soccer body) and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, then the crown prince of Qatar and now the emir.
Blatter claimed Tuesday, as he has in the past, that Sarkozy pressured Platini, repeating his version of a telephone call from Platini saying that the voting plan had changed.
“Thanks to the four votes of Platini and his [UEFA] team, the World Cup went to Qatar rather than the United States. It’s the truth,” Blatter said of the 14-8 vote.
Another issue as the tournament approaches is concern for LGBT tourists in Qatar, where officials have reportedly arbitrarily arrested and mistreated LGBT people. That issue returned to the fore this week when Khalid Salman, a former Qatari national team player who is an ambassador for the World Cup, called homosexuality a “damage in the mind” in an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF. He added that being gay is “haram” — forbidden in Arabic — and that he has a problem with children seeing gay people.
The interview was cut short by a media officer of the World Cup organizing committee, ZDF reported.
Ten years in, the growing NWSL is facing more scrutiny than ever | 2022-11-08T15:34:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sepp Blatter says awarding World Cup to Qatar was a mistake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/sepp-blatter-world-cup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/sepp-blatter-world-cup/ |
The storm probably will make landfall between Fort Lauderdale and Daytona Beach late Wednesday night with strong winds, coastal flooding and heavy rain
A high-resolution model simulation of Nicole as it churns toward the coastline. (WeatherBell) (WeatherBell)
Hurricane watches are in effect for the east coast of Florida and may be upgraded to warnings Tuesday as Subtropical Storm Nicole churns toward the Sunshine State. Confidence is increasing about the potential for the storm to be near or at hurricane strength as it makes landfall on Florida’s Atlantic coastline Wednesday night.
Rain, strong winds and coastal flooding could begin along Florida’s east coast early Wednesday, with deteriorating conditions in the afternoon and especially at night.
Tropical storm warnings are up from Hallandale Beach, which is just north of Miami, to the southern coast of Georgia. The warning connotes a high likelihood of tropical storm impacts. In addition, a hurricane watch — representing the threat of winds reaching 74 mph — spans from Hallandale Beach to the Volusia-Brevard County line along Florida’s Space Coast.
Those strong onshore winds, primarily near and north of Nicole’s center, could spur high-impact storm-surge flooding as water is piled up against the coast over multiple tide cycles. A storm surge warning, for a rise in water above normally dry land, blankets the east coast of Florida and portions of coastal Georgia.
Meanwhile, tropical storm watches have been expanded to include the gulf side of Florida, too, primarily from north of Bonita Beach to the Ochlockonee River. That encompasses Port Charlotte and Fort Myers, both hit hard by Category 4 Ian barely six weeks ago, as well as the greater Tampa area.
Hurricane warnings are in effect for the northwest Bahamas, including the Abacos, Berry Islands, Bimini and Grand Bahama Island. That’s around where Nicole will intensify, probably into a hurricane, on Wednesday.
Nicole, or Nicole’s remnants, will sweep up the East Coast from Friday into the weekend, dropping heavy rain from the Carolinas to Canada. For many locations, an entire month’s worth of rain could fall in as little as 24 hours.
On Tuesday morning, Nicole was 385 miles east-northeast of the northwest Bahamas. Maximum winds were estimated at 50 mph, and the storm was moving west-northwest at 8 mph.
A gradual curve to the west or even west-southwest can be expected over the next 24 hours. Nicole is a more localized pocket of spin, embedded within the overall counterclockwise flow of an upper-level low-pressure system. That means Nicole will revolve about the broader parent disturbance, albeit briefly, like a horse on a merry-go-round. That will steer it west into Florida.
Nicole is a subtropical storm, which means it is a hybrid system possessing characteristics of both tropical and nontropical systems. Consequently, its wind field is enormous — 40 mph tropical-storm-force winds expand outward up to 380 miles from the center.
On satellite, Nicole was beginning to show some signs of perhaps becoming a bit more tropical. That said, it is still lopsided. A clear surface swirl of cloud cover exists, but the bulk of thunderstorm activity is displaced north of the center.
Nicole is likely to make landfall somewhere between Fort Lauderdale and Daytona Beach late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. Tropical-storm-force winds could begin 18 hours or more ahead of its arrival — or as soon as Wednesday afternoon in southeast Florida and Wednesday evening toward the Treasure and Space coasts. Persistent onshore flow will result in coastal flooding over the duration of several tide cycles.
In fact, most of the Atlantic coastline of Florida should see a storm surge of up to 3 to 5 feet. That may not sound like much, but tens of thousands of Florida homes are within 5 feet of sea level.
“Evacuation efforts and flood preparations should ... be brought to completion before conditions become unsafe,” the National Weather Service wrote. “Leave immediately if evacuation orders are given for your area to avoid being cut off from emergency services or needlessly risk[ing] lives.”
Rain bands and squalls will pivot onshore early Wednesday morning but will increase in coverage and intensity during the afternoon. A few of the squalls, primarily within 20 miles of Florida’s east coast, could produce tornadoes or waterspouts north of the storm’s center, especially between Palm Beach and near Daytona Beach.
Winds will be on the order of 30 to 45 mph on Wednesday along the coastline but will increase to 45 to 60 mph within about 50 miles of Nicole’s center, with gusts to 75 mph and higher possible within its narrow core. The storm probably will be a Category 1 hurricane at landfall, which should occur near or within a few hours after midnight Wednesday night into Thursday morning.
A widespread 3 to 5 inches of rainfall with localized 6 to 8 inch totals can be expected in eastern Florida, with an inch or two less to the west.
“Flash and urban flooding will be possible across portions of the Florida Peninsula along with renewed river rises on portions of the St. Johns River,” the Hurricane Center wrote.
Water levels on the St. Johns River north of Orlando were at moderate flood state on Monday morning from the lingering effects of Hurricane Ian's rains at the end of September. Rains from Nicole this week are expected to cause the river to rise to near major flood stage again. pic.twitter.com/6ZzJXRhdbn
— Jeff Masters (@DrJeffMasters) November 7, 2022
Eventually, Nicole’s waterlogged circulation and remnants will be scooped up the Eastern Seaboard by an approaching trough, or dip in the jet stream. Its moisture will pool along a cold front draped along the Appalachians, bringing 2 to 3.5 inches of rain between there and the Interstate 95 corridor. The key time frame for this rain event would be Friday and Saturday.
If Nicole comes ashore in Florida at hurricane strength, it would be a highly unusual event: The Lower 48 has recorded only five landfalling November hurricanes since the mid-1850s. That would make it a once in roughly 30- to 40-year event. | 2022-11-08T15:34:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Subtropical Storm Nicole expected to hit Florida at hurricane strength - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/08/tropical-storm-nicole-florida-hurricane/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/08/tropical-storm-nicole-florida-hurricane/ |
Pedestrians in critical condition after being struck near Gaithersburg school
The school is open for Election Day voting
Two pedestrians were hit on the morning of Nov. 8 near an elementary school in Gaithersburg. (iStock)
Two pedestrians are in critical condition after they were struck Tuesday morning near Fields Road Elementary School in Gaithersburg.
Gaithersburg police responded around 7:20 a.m. to the collision on School Drive near Muddy Branch Road. Both pedestrians were transported to the hospital, said a spokeswoman for Montgomery County police, which is investigating the incident. The driver remained on the scene, police said.
Montgomery County Public Schools are closed for Election Day, but several campuses, including Fields Road Elementary, are designated polling places. Police said in a tweet that the school was still open for voting and instructed voters to enter the school using the Muddy Branch Road entrance. | 2022-11-08T15:34:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pedestrians in critical condition after being struck near Gaithersburg school - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/pedestrians-critical-condition-after-being-struck-near-gaithersburg-school/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/pedestrians-critical-condition-after-being-struck-near-gaithersburg-school/ |
Nigerian fraudster Hushpuppi sentenced to 11 years in U.S. prison
An FBI seal is seen on a wall on Aug. 10, 2022, in Omaha, Neb. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)
A Nigerian fraudster accused of using the proceeds of his crimes to fund a lavish lifestyle he flaunted on social media was sentenced to more than 11 years in a U.S. federal prison for his role in a series of international online scams.
Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, better known by his Instagram handle Hushpuppi, was sentenced to 135 months in prison and ordered by a California judge Monday to pay a total of $1.7 million to two of his victims, according to a Justice Department news release.
Although he would later be accused by prosecutors of targeting high-profile victims including a U.S. law firm, a foreign bank and a professional soccer club in Britain, Abbas never appeared to keep a low profile. The 40-year-old shared pictures and videos of his life in Dubai with his more than 2 million Instagram followers, according to the Associated Press, showing off luxury cars, designer clothes and trips on a private jet. His account has since been deactivated.
Abbas was extradited to the United States from the United Arab Emirates following his arrest in Dubai in June 2020 and has remained in U.S. custody ever since. Don Alway, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, described him in a statement as “one of the most prolific money launderers in the world.”
#فيديو | "صيد الثعالب 2": شرطة دبي تُسقط "هاشبوبي" و"وود بيري" و10 أفراد من عصابة غسيل أموال واحتيال إلكترونية دولية#هاشبوبي #HushPuppi pic.twitter.com/aXyft2fnZG
— Dubai Policeشرطة دبي (@DubaiPoliceHQ) June 25, 2020
As part of a plea deal last year, he admitted to conspiracy to engage in money laundering in the full knowledge that the money was obtained illegally.
In one case, prosecutors alleged that he conspired with others to trick a Qatari business executive into sending them hundreds of thousands of dollars. According to the plea deal, Abbas and an associate falsely told the unidentified business owner that the money was needed to help secure a $15 million loan that the victim needed to build a school and related tax costs.
Abbas then used the money for his own benefit, buying a $230,000 luxury Swiss watch and obtaining citizenship and a passport from the tiny Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, the plea deal said.
He also admitted as part of the plea deal to being a co-conspirator in plans to launder around $14.7 million stolen from a bank in Malta. In an aspect of the case not mentioned in the plea deal, U.S. prosecutors alleged that the funds were taken by North Korean hackers.
Alway, the FBI assistant director, said this fraud “financially ruined scores of victims and provided assistance to the North Korean regime.”
According to the plea deal, one of the tactics favored by Abbas and his associates was “business email compromise,” a type of phishing attack in which scammers illegally access email accounts belonging to a company to trick employees into making an unauthorized money transfer.
Abbas and his co-conspirators used this tactic to conspire to launder millions of pounds stolen from the unnamed British soccer club and a British company. In another case, Abbas was accused of scamming a law firm in New York into fraudulently transferring more than $900,000 to a Mexican bank account controlled by his fellow conspirator, Canadian national Ghaleb Alaumary.
Alaumary was sentenced to 140 months in federal prison in September 2021 for conspiring to launder tens of millions of dollars in various fraud schemes, including in the alleged North Korean online banking theft.
U.S. accuses three North Koreans of conspiring to steal more than $1.3 billion in cash and cryptocurrency
In a letter to the judge before his sentencing, Abbas admitted providing the bank accounts into which he and his co-conspirators encouraged victims to deposit funds. But in most cases, he denied that any transaction — and therefore any loss to the victims — had occurred.
The only exception was the case of the Qatari national. Abbas said his involvement in that scam led to “the loss of over $300,000 out of [the] total $800,000.”
For that, he wrote, “I make no excuse for my actions and I take full responsibility for what I have done, if I could turn back the hands of time I would make an entirely different decision and be more careful in the choices and friends I make.”
Abbas was ordered to repay $922,857 to the law firm and $809,983 to the business owner in Qatar as part of his sentence.
“Abbas leveraged his social media platforms — where he amassed a considerable following — to gain notoriety and to brag about the immense wealth he acquired by conducting business email compromise scams, online bank heists and other cyber-enabled fraud,” Alway said. | 2022-11-08T15:34:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nigerian fraudster Hushpuppi sentenced to 11 years in U.S. prison - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/08/hushpuppi-nigeria-fraudster-sentenced/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/08/hushpuppi-nigeria-fraudster-sentenced/ |
An earlier version of this newsletter mistakenly said Sen. Brian Schatz (D) represents Rhode Island. He represents Hawaii. This newsletter has been corrected.
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Today we’re chugging coffee to power through a busy day of covering the midterm elections and the COP27 climate summit. Send tips and recommendations for caffeinated beverages to maxine.joselow@washpost.com. ☕️ But first:
House Republicans will tout nuclear and natural gas at the U.N. climate summit in Egypt, Rep. John Curtis says
Curtis, who chairs the Conservative Climate Caucus, is leading five members of the group on a trip to the climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, known as COP27. The GOP lawmakers will attend the conference from Thursday through Sunday and will meet with delegations from U.S.-allied countries in Africa, Asia and the European Union, according to Curtis spokesman Adam Cloch.
Republicans touted these technologies at last year’s U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. But this year, Curtis said, their argument has been “validated” by the energy crisis in Europe, where some countries have shut down nuclear reactors and shunned fracking, leaving them more reliant on Russian supplies amid the war in Ukraine.
“Europe has given us a look into the future for the United States,” Curtis said. “Twenty years ago, Belgium decided that nuclear was bad and they shut it down. Today that energy has been replaced by dirty Russian natural gas. Just 15 years ago, Europe produced as much natural gas as Russia, but they were too good to frack, so today they buy fracked natural gas from Russia.”
Opponents of nuclear power argue that new reactors take too long to build and that the problem of nuclear waste has not been solved. Meanwhile, leading scientists say the world must rapidly phase out all types of fossil fuels — including natural gas — to stave off the catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change.
The trip comes as Republicans seek to bolster their credibility on climate change, which polling shows younger conservative voters want elected officials to address.
Curtis represents the youngest district in the country, with the average age of residents hovering around 26 or 27. (The district includes the city of Provo, the home of Brigham Young University.)
Curtis said his constituents in Carbon County — named for its old coal mining towns — are clamoring for climate action. “I've seen and heard very clearly from the conservative youth in my district that this is important to them,” he said.
Still, no Republicans voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, which authorized the biggest burst of spending in U.S. history to tackle global warming, including generous tax credits for advanced nuclear reactors. Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), who is joining the delegation, has derisively dubbed the climate law the “Inflation Expansion Act.”
“I don't want to raise taxes and costs for Arizona families just so Biden can hire more IRS agents and study methane gas emissions from farting cows (yes, this is in the bill) … so I voted no,” Lesko said in a statement this summer.
The view from Democrats
By contrast, Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said he plans to highlight the benefits of renewable energy when he attends COP27 after Tuesday’s midterm elections.
“The path to energy security is clean energy: solar, wind, hydrogen and hydropower, and whatever contribution nuclear can make, but I don't think compared to these other sources it's going to be significant as the years go by,” Markey said in a separate phone interview Monday from Chelmsford, Mass., where he was rallying support for local candidates.
As for natural gas, Markey said that while Europe is increasing its dependence on gas “on an emergency basis” in the near term, the continent “has to end this era of dependence on fossil fuels” in the long term to keep climate targets within reach.
While Markey is making the trek to Sharm el-Sheikh, some other Democratic climate hawks are staying home because of midterms that will probably deliver a blow to their party and to U.S. climate policy.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who is running for a second term, is skipping the summit because the timing “was tough with elections,” spokesman Mike Inacay said in a text message to The Climate 202.
Welcome back to a section of The Climate 202 we’re calling “COP27 reporter’s notebook,” where our colleagues in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, reflect on the mood at the COP27 climate talks. (Loyal readers will remember that Maxine wrote this section last fall from the COP26 talks in Scotland.)
Today we’re sharing this dispatch from Siobhán O'Grady, The Washington Post’s Cairo bureau chief, about the second day of the summit, which comes as Russia intensifies its brutal war in Ukraine:
I spent much of this year reporting from Ukraine, so when country pavilions opened at COP27 on Monday, I knew which one I wanted to visit first.
This is Ukraine’s first time having a pavilion at any COP — a feat the country managed to pull together despite the war.
Ukraine’s pavilion was simple but among the most striking I saw today. Showcased in a small, illuminated shelf on the wall was a piece of a tree trunk. When I looked closer, I saw pieces of shrapnel still embedded in the wood.
A member of the delegation told me it had been brought all the way from Irpin, the small city neighboring Kyiv that came under intense Russian bombardment for the first several weeks of the war.
As a correspondent in Kyiv at that time, I documented unforgettable horrors in Irpin — and will never forget watching families flee across the broken bridge that separated the city from the capital.
The salvaged tree trunk had more than just one meaning, the delegation member explained to me. Yes, it showed how the war in Ukraine was destroying the country’s natural resources.
But that the tree was struck with shrapnel also meant it might have saved someone’s life — essentially taking a bullet for whomever may have been hiding behind it.
Rich and poor nations fight over climate damage as COP27 kicks off
As COP27 gets underway, the debate over how wealthy nations can help poor nations cope with the effects of climate change is taking center stage. Here are the latest developments:
The Biden administration is planning to unveil a plan for private companies to help finance the energy transition in developing countries, according to U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of discussions, The Washington Post’s Evan Halper and Tim Puko report. Companies would be given credits for assisting this financing, which they could use to offset their own emissions. The Financial Times first reported on the plan.
French President Emmanuel Macron called on the United States and China — two of the world’s top emitters of greenhouse gases — to “step up” efforts to provide financial support to developing countries that are being hit hardest by climate change, The Post’s Allyson Chiu reports. “The Europeans are paying, but the simple problem is that we’re the only ones paying,” Macron said during an event Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh with African and French climate activists.
Cities, states, businesses and other actors will play a crucial role in helping the United States meet President Biden's goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, according to a report released Monday by the America Is All In coalition. “Cities and states make all the difference in the world, and they can close the gap,” former White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy told The Climate 202 in a phone interview from the sidelines of COP27.
The negotiations are taking place against a backdrop of increasingly dire warnings from leading scientists. The fifth National Climate Assessment released Monday found that over the past 50 years, the United States has warmed 68 percent faster than the planet as a whole, The Post’s Brady Dennis, Chris Mooney and Steven Mufson report. The new assessment also warns that significant parts of the country will face growing threats to health, safe drinking water, housing security and infrastructure.
Biden hopes to meet with Xi on climate change this month
Biden administration officials are working to add climate change to the agenda for potential discussions between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at this month’s Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks have not been formally announced, The Post’s Tim Puko reports.
An announcement on the Biden-Xi talks at the G-20 could come within days, one of the people said, and the pair could meet as soon as Nov. 14.
Climate change is one issue that both leaders have a common interest in, but Beijing suspended climate talks with the United States after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) traveled to Taiwan in August. Xi is not expected to attend COP27, raising doubts about prospects for ambitious dealmaking at the conference.
Before President Biden threatened fossil fuel companies with a “windfall tax” last week, some of his top energy advisers tried to woo the industry and were rebuffed, according to seven individuals familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, The Post’s Tim Puko reports.
In mid-October, officials from the Energy and State departments contacted oil industry trade groups and companies in an effort to gain support for a plan to buy crude to refill the country’s emergency reserves, saying the plan would guarantee that the federal government would purchase oil if costs fell to $70 per barrel. The proposal was meant to encourage the firms to boost production by promising a steady revenue.
However, industry representatives said at the time that the plan’s logic was unclear and that it wouldn’t work the way the administration claimed it would. The episode marked the latest setback for the White House as it attempts to prod oil industry leaders into boosting production while criticizing their excess profits.
A climate change report card for the world — Sarah Kaplan for The Post
Millions without power in Kyiv amid rolling blackouts — David L. Stern, Bryan Pietsch, Annabelle Timsit and Miriam Berger for The Post
November feels like September as warm weather shatters records in East — Ian Livingston for The Post
Subtropical Storm Nicole forms, hurricane watch issued for Florida’s east coast — Matthew Cappucci for The Post
Rishi Sunak to strike gas deal with U.S. to ease energy crisis — Ben Riley-Smith, Rachel Millard and Emma Gatten for the Telegraph
Climate scientist David Ho on the gender imbalance among world leaders attending COP27: 🙃 | 2022-11-08T15:35:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House Republicans to push nuclear power, natural gas at COP27 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/house-republicans-push-nuclear-power-natural-gas-cop27/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/house-republicans-push-nuclear-power-natural-gas-cop27/ |
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversees the Florida Department of State. (Thomas Simonetti/For The Washington Post)
The DeSantis administration is attempting to block Department of Justice election monitors from gaining access to polling places in South Florida, saying in a letter that the federal government’s involvement would be “counterproductive” and in violation of state law.
Although Florida law has an exception allowing law enforcement to enter polling sites, McVay said Justice Department monitors do not qualify.
“Absent some evidence concerning the need for federal intrusion, or some federal statute that preempts Florida law, the presence of federal law enforcement inside polling places would be counterproductive and could potentially undermine confidence in the election,” McVay wrote.
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the Justice Department said in a news release announcing the monitoring locations that it has observed local election procedures nationwide since 1965.
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.
Separately, Missouri officials said Monday that they would not allow the Justice Department to conduct routine inspections under the Americans With Disabilities Act and Voting Rights Act at polling places on Election Day.
Missouri Secretary of State John R. Ashcroft (R) told The Washington Post that the Justice Department’s presence amounted to a bid to “bully a local election authority” and could “intimidate and suppress the vote.”
Ashcroft and Cole County Clerk Steve Korsmeyer (R) told federal officials that they would not be permitted to observe polling places Tuesday.
“This is not the Voting Rights Act. This is the Americans With Disabilities Act. What’s next? They’re going to want to be at elections because they want to check that insulation in the building was purchased from China in the 1970s? Give me a break,” Ashcroft said in a phone interview.
He compared Justice Department officials from the U.S. attorney’s office from the Western District of Missouri to “jackbooted thugs,” and individuals in Arizona who have been seen patrolling ballot drop boxes with firearms.
“I think we’ve already had lawsuits around the country about individuals around polling places,” Ashcroft said. “And they were told that they had to stay away from them because they could intimidate voters.” Justice Department officials last observed Missouri elections in 2016 at polling places in St. Louis.
FBI special agents serving as election crime coordinators will also be on duty in the bureau’s 56 field offices to receive voting-related complaints from the public, according to the Justice Department. 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.
Jacob Bogage contributed to this report.
Will abortion motivate women to vote Democratic?
3:04 PMA GOP wave could mean the most diverse House GOP class in history | 2022-11-08T15:35:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DeSantis official says Justice Dept. can’t send monitors to 3 Florida counties - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/justice-department-monitors-florida-desantis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/justice-department-monitors-florida-desantis/ |
Republican Neil C. Parrott, a Maryland state legislator who is running for the state’s 6th Congressional District seat, stands in the Maryland State House on April 4, 2022, in Annapolis, Md. Parrott faces incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. David J. Trone on Nov. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Brian Witte). (Brian Witte/AP)
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A rematch between U.S. Rep. David Trone and Republican Neil Parrott for the congressional district in western Maryland appears to be the state’s most competitive congressional battle playing out Tuesday. | 2022-11-08T15:36:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trone, Parrott, congressional rematch appears competitive - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trone-parrott-congressional-rematch-appears-competitive/2022/11/08/93e8da5a-5f6e-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trone-parrott-congressional-rematch-appears-competitive/2022/11/08/93e8da5a-5f6e-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
The composition of the gut microbiome appears to influence whether a cancer treatment called immunotherapy is successful
(Sam Kaplan/Trunk Archive)
The composition of a person’s gut microbiome — which consists of trillions of bacteria and other microbes — appears to influence whether a ground-breaking cancer treatment called immunotherapy is successful in some patients. Scientists have found that patients who harbor certain gut bacteria have better responses to immunotherapy than patients who lack them.
Scientists caution that this strategy of using a fiber-rich diet — or any diet for that matter — to boost immunotherapy remains unproven. But the research they are doing is shedding new light on how the gut microbiome affects our ability to fight disease.
The team examined the diets of 128 melanoma patients and found that those who regularly ate large amounts of fiber from fruits, vegetables, and other plant foods had better outcomes on immunotherapy than patients who ate the least amount of fiber. Their findings, published in Science in December, showed that every five-gram increase in daily fiber intake was associated with a 30 percent lower risk of death or cancer progression.
In the new study, patients are given daily meals that include as much as 50 grams of daily fiber from foods like beans, lentils, farro, brown rice, fruits, and vegetables — about twice the recommended amount. The average American only eats about half that amount, roughly 15 grams. (A control group will eat a healthy diet that follows guidelines from the American Cancer Society.)
Facton is continuing immunotherapy for nine months, and he’s decided to continue his new way of eating. “I feel better, and I don’t see any downside to it,” he said. “It makes me a healthier person overall — and now, cancer free. What a huge bonus.” | 2022-11-08T15:36:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | More fiber for the microbiome may boost immunotherapy cancer drugs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/08/microbiome-fiber-immunotherapy-cancer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/08/microbiome-fiber-immunotherapy-cancer/ |
Barring head coverings in prison violates federal law, appeals court rules
A blind inmate and a staff member at Deerfield Correctional Center in Southampton County, Va. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
A Virginia prison’s restrictions on head coverings violated an inmate’s religious beliefs, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled Monday.
The policy, a unanimous three-judge panel said, “required Richardson to either violate his religious beliefs — by refraining from wearing a head covering at all times — or risk discipline.”
Until December 2020, Deerfield Correctional Center in Capron treated all head coverings in the same way, according to the court records — they had to be removed in the dining hall, visiting room, administrative building and other designated locations unless engaged in “an approved religious activity.” At the time, the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) allowed individual prisons to decide their own policies on head coverings.
After David Richardson sued, VDOC issued a new policy allowing head coverings anywhere in the prison as long as inmates removed them when requested for a search. But he is still seeking a court order to prevent a reversion to the old policy. An attorney for the state said at oral argument that the “ability to change a policy certainly exists,” but VDOC “has no intention to go back.”
The court declined to decide whether federal law allows for an injunction against Virginia barring a reinstatement of the head covering restrictions. Under the Religious Land Use And Institutionalized Persons Act, a state government can avoid having its laws preempted by a federal court by changing a policy that infringes on religious rights.
That question was only raised on appeal, the court said, so it must be decided first by the district court judge overseeing the case.
That judge, Henry E. Hudson, previously ruled that Richardson did not show that the prior policy imposed a substantial burden on his religious rights because he “retained the ability to wear a head covering in many areas of the prison” and because the “restrictions were rationally related to the penological objective of security and policing for contraband.”
The appellate court disagreed. Richardson said in his complaint that he has for several decades followed a “multi-denominational” belief system that “incorporates practices from the Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist, and Islamic traditions,” including wearing a Muslim cap known as a kufi.
“Richardson holds a sincerely held belief that his religion requires that he wear a head covering at all times and in all places,” the judges wrote. “Deerfield’s head covering policy placed Richardson between the proverbial rock and a hard place." | 2022-11-08T15:47:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Va. prison rule banning head covering violates federal law, appeals court says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/barring-head-coverings-prison-violates-federal-law-appeals-court-rules/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/barring-head-coverings-prison-violates-federal-law-appeals-court-rules/ |
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) speaks in Kennesaw, Ga., during a Unite Georgia campaign rally on the eve of the midterm elections. (Seth Herald/AFP)
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has been working harder than most of his colleagues to get Republican candidate Herschel Walker elected to the Senate from Georgia. He’s stumped for Walker repeatedly; he’s been on Fox News more than once to boost Walker, including sitting for a “town hall” program hosted by Sean Hannity that amounted to little more than an extended campaign ad. And he was there Monday night, helping make a final push for voters to turn out.
Graham wants very much to see Republicans retake the majority in the chamber and clearly sees the swing Georgia seat as both instrumental to that effort and as a place where he can exert some influence. After all, he represents the state just across Georgia’s northeastern border.
Speaking on Monday night, Graham indirectly revealed that his embrace of Walker was not really about the candidate himself. It seems pretty clear that Graham would have been pushing just as hard for pretty much anyone who was going to appear on Georgia’s ballot in front of “(R).” After all, consider the warning he offered about the never-very-feasible idea that Democrats would push to grant statehood to two places that lack representation.
“Does anybody need D.C. and Puerto Rico to be a state?” he asked the crowd at the Walker rally, yielding a chorus of “No!” in response.
“That dilutes our power,” Graham concurred.
A frank assessment. Also an assessment worth parsing, given the unclear antecedent: dilute whose power?
You are certainly by now familiar with the fact that the Senate distributes power unevenly. There are about 600,000 people in Wyoming, a population that is granted 2 percent of the nation’s senators. There are about 40 million people in California, a population that is granted 2 percent of the nation’s senators. California is granted more than 50 voting seats in the House, more than 12 percent of the total votes in that chamber. Wyoming gets one-fifth of 1 percent of House votes. But in the Senate? They’re even.
This advantages Republicans. There are a lot of rural states that have two senators, and rural states tend to vote more heavily Republican. So that 2 percent of the Senate from Wyoming is Republican and the 2 percent of the Senate from California Democratic. Wyoming’s one-fifth of 1 percent of the House is Republican, too; California’s 12 percent is more than 80 percent Democratic.
Defenders of the system, also generally Republicans, insist that this is necessary to protect the cohesiveness of the nation. If Wyoming didn’t have the robust say in Congress granted by its two Senate seats, the argument goes, why would it choose to remain in the United States just to be governed by coastal Democrats?
Of course, this argument depends largely on arbitrary decisions about where state lines were drawn. Do you know why the Dakotas provide four Republicans to the Senate? Because the region was split into two separate states upon admission to the U.S. to have twice as many senators. If we split California into four states, three of which were heavily Democratic, it’s safe to assume that the response would not be: Good, that gives the Republican-voting “state” more of a say in national politics.
That’s the natural way to read Graham’s comments, of course: Adding D.C. and Puerto Rico means adding new states that he predicts would simply send more Democrats to the Senate. Sure, D.C. is more populous than Vermont or Wyoming, but giving D.C. statehood adds Democrats and therefore dilutes Republican power. Republican power that depends on things like fragmenting the Dakotas in the first pace.
Puerto Rico, incidentally, is more populous than 20 states. It’s got more residents than Nevada or Arkansas or Iowa. But it has no say at all in voting for president or in the Senate. It just has to be governed by coastal Democrats … and interior-state Republicans.
Let’s assume for the moment that Graham’s assumption is right and that making D.C. and Puerto Rico states would simply give Democrats four more senators. Right now, with a 50-50 Senate, 186 million Americans are represented by Democrats and 145 million by Republicans (divvying up a state’s population between the two parties where the Senate representation is split). That’s 3.7 million people represented by each Democratic senator and 2.9 million per Republican. If there were suddenly 54 Democrats and we add in the unrepresented populations of D.C. and Puerto Rico to the total, each Democratic senator now represents 3.5 million people — still more than 20 percent more than the number represented by each Republican.
Even setting that aside, the assumption isn’t fair. Like D.C., Puerto Rico has nonvoting representation in the House. The island’s current resident commissioner (as the seat is called) is Jenniffer González — an official aligned with the Republican Party. A decade ago, the island’s governor was affiliated with the GOP. The idea that both of Puerto Rico’s senators would be Republicans is hard to defend.
It’s impossible not to point out that both D.C. and Puerto Rico are heavily non-White. D.C. has a lower percentage of non-Hispanic Whites than all but three states; Puerto Rico’s percentage is lower than all 50 states and D.C. But again, remember that Puerto Rico has more residents than a number of those other states.
We can put a finer point on this. Graham and the crowd at that Walker rally believe that neither D.C. nor Puerto Rico should have representation in the Senate, and Graham worries — despite Puerto Rico’s Republican-friendly voting history — that “their” power would be diluted were those territories to be made states. Power that is already weighted heavily to the GOP’s advantage, ostensibly because it’s necessary to retain a cohesive nation.
You may draw your own conclusions about Graham’s comments.
Will Latino voters continue to shift toward Republicans?
3:40 PMMeta declines to remove misleading claim about blocked GOP votes
3:32 PMAfter GOP lawsuit, Philadelphia takes step that will slow vote count
3:25 PMDeSantis official says Justice Dept. can’t send monitors to 3 Florida counties
3:24 PMDispatch from Va.: Democracy on the ballot for Jan. 6 National Guard member | 2022-11-08T16:26:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Puerto Rico statehood would dilute whose power exactly, Sen. Graham? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/puerto-rico-statehood-would-dilute-whose-power-exactly-sen-graham/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/puerto-rico-statehood-would-dilute-whose-power-exactly-sen-graham/ |
Roosevelt Bridge restrictions likely to end this month after emergency repairs
Commuters have endured lane closures and vehicle weight restriction since February, when the District abruptly closed part of the span because of deteriorated steel beams
Eastbound lanes of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge on Tuesday. Orange construction cones line much of the westbound span. (Tim Richardson)
Crews have nearly completed emergency repairs on the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, D.C. transportation officials said, and the span is expected to fully reopen without weight restrictions by the end of this month.
The bridge that carries Interstate 66 over the Potomac River has been an active construction zone since mid-February, when the District abruptly closed part of it to traffic after an inspection found steel support beams had continued to deteriorate.
The timing of the restrictions coincided with an increase in office work earlier this year, coming about two years into the pandemic. Their removal will provide a smoother crossing between Virginia and the District, likely easing backups on both sides of the river during peak travel periods.
The emergency work, estimated to cost the city $7 million, originally was expected to take between three and six months. D.C. transportation chief Everett Lott warned the schedule could be affected by delays in supply chains and targeted the end of September for completion.
The work includes fixes to the bridge deck as well as the superstructure, which supports the deck. It involves repairing steel floor beams that have corroded over time from the salt mixture applied for snowstorms.
As crews began work on the bridge, Lott said they discovered some of its stringer beams, which support the bridge deck, also were in need of repair. That additional work and challenges with the delivery of materials delayed the project, he said.
“The great news is that all the materials are in, and we were able to get most of the work done on the beams,” Lott said this week. “We’re anticipating being able to get the project finished, hopefully by the end of this month, if the weather cooperates.”
Heavyweight vehicles will be able to return when the project is complete. Vehicles weighing more than 10 tons, including buses and large trucks, have been detoured onto other Potomac River crossings during construction.
Work on the 58-year-old bridge began after an early February inspection found worsening conditions for steel support beams, prompting the closure of three middle lanes and restrictions on heavyweight vehicles along the busy commuter route.
Most travel lanes have since reopened, at least during rush hour. In June, the city restored three lanes in each direction, saying the change made traffic backups more manageable.
A District Department of Transportation traffic analysis earlier this year found delays are worse in the eastbound lanes and during the morning rush. Smaller delays are experienced throughout the day, according to the assessment, and the effects have not expanded to surrounding streets or other bridges that cross the Potomac. The most significant backups are seen on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, when more workers are commuting into the city.
Drivers report challenges at various entrance ramps onto the bridge, including from the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Commuters who take public transportation say the bus detour has meant longer commutes.
Arlington transportation officials say they have not seen significant problems on the Virginia side of the bridge, although they have urged travelers to find alternate ways to cross the Potomac during construction.
The Roosevelt Bridge is an important commuter route in the Washington region that supported an average of about 150,000 vehicles daily before the pandemic. It has not had a major rehabilitation since it opened in 1964, and was determined to be in “poor” condition in 2018 — a designation that does not necessarily mean it is unsafe to use. It is also past a bridge’s 50-year life span.
The District is planning a $150 million overhaul of the bridge within the decade, which will involve significant structural repairs and upgrades. It also will add pedestrian and bike accommodations while extending the bridge’s life by at least 25 years.
The National Capital Planning Commission in June approved preliminary site plans for the project, giving DDOT an early green light to move forward. Construction, however, is not expected to begin until 2024 at the earliest.
District officials say the emergency repairs will enable the bridge to support normal operations until the full rehabilitation is completed. Lott said crews are working around-the-clock to “get this bridge back and ready to the capacity that it had before we had to shut it down.” | 2022-11-08T17:01:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Roosevelt Bridge restrictions to end after emergency repairs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/08/roosevelt-bridge-repairs-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/08/roosevelt-bridge-repairs-open/ |
FILE - Eric DeValkenaere, a Kansas City, Mo., police detective, testifies during his trial on Nov. 10, 2021, at the Jackson County Courthouse in Kansas City, Mo. The former Kansas City police detective convicted of shooting and killing a Black man in 2019 is asking that his conviction be overturned or that he be given a new trial. A Jackson County judge convicted DeValkenaere in March of involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action in the death of Cameron Lamb. His attorneys argue in a brief filed Oct. 27 with the Missouri Court of Appeals that Circuit Judge Dale Youngs’ decision was flawed. They say DeValkenaere, who is white, and his partner had probable cause to be on Lamb’s property and arrest him, and that his death was lawful use of force by a police officer. (Rich Sugg/The Kansas City Star via AP, File) | 2022-11-08T17:05:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kansas City officer appeals conviction in shooting death - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/kansas-city-officer-appeals-conviction-in-shooting-death/2022/11/08/95645e2e-5f7b-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/kansas-city-officer-appeals-conviction-in-shooting-death/2022/11/08/95645e2e-5f7b-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Viewer’s guide: The races to watch early on election night
A poll worker wearing a “VOTE” mask at the Piedmont Park Polling location in Atlanta on Tuesday morning. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Election Day 2022 could be a drawn out affair: 3 of the 4 most crucial Senate races — the ones that may prove decisive for control of the chamber — could take days to count all their votes or, in the case of Georgia, potentially require a December runoff.
But we should have a good sense of which direction the wind is blowing relatively early. For those who might not be up for pulling an all-nighter like we will, here are some early races to monitor, along with what they might tell us.
As noted, it’s possible this could be headed for a runoff, and 2020 showed us that things can change significantly at that point. So we might not know the winner tonight or even this week. But it’s still worth keeping a close eye on in the meantime — both because a winner tonight would be pivotal, and because it’s likely to be one of the first Senate races in which we have extensive results.
The polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern, and Georgia counts its votes relatively quickly (though vote totals from redder, rural areas will come in first, which could be misleading).
Unlike some other races in which the GOP candidate has closed a significant gap in recent months, this one has polled tight throughout. There is some evidence that Republican candidate Herschel Walker has gained toward the end, but that’s generally shown up in lower-quality and GOP-aligned polls.
If Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) is looking like he could force a runoff or even win, that would go a long way toward assuring Democrats that they might just hold their 50-50 Senate majority. If a flawed candidate like Walker wins, though, it’s difficult to see how Democrats would hold on. Republicans would basically be able to put things on ice with just one more win in Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire or Pennsylvania.
This, unlike Georgia, is one of those races in which the GOP candidate has made up some major ground in the polls. Don Bolduc was down nearly nine points to Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) in the FiveThirtyEight polling average in early October, and the race had been somewhat forgotten, but he’s now within the margin of error in most late polls.
The voting closes in New Hampshire between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern, depending on the area, and the counting is likely to be slower there than in Georgia. But when it comes to an early race that could test how much fringier candidates can take advantage of a good environment, you’d struggle to find a better one. (GOP Gov. Chris Sununu once dismissed Bolduc as “not a serious candidate.”)
Republicans can still win the Senate without Bolduc, but if he’s seriously threatening to unseat Hassan, it’s probably going to be a good election for the GOP.
This one won’t affect the Senate majority, but it’s very much along the lines of New Hampshire when it comes to what it will say about the overall environment. And with almost all of the biggest governor’s races either taking place further west or featuring polls that close later, this is the one to watch early on.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has long been a pretty popular governor, and she appeared to get a major break when the GOP nominated Tudor Dixon, a former commentator for fringe conservative media. But as in New Hampshire, the race has closed substantially.
It’s not looking quite as close as New Hampshire, but if Dixon can compete with Whitmer — say, keep it within the low single digits — Democrats could be in for a very difficult election.
Almost all of the polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern, and in 2020, 94 percent of the vote was counted on election night. (Things were prolonged because it was close, but the race was called for President Biden by early Wednesday morning.)
Indiana-1
Indiana and Kentucky feature some of the earliest poll closing times in the country, with much of those two states closing by 6 p.m. Eastern.
That’s too early! But it does mean we can look to them to get some of the earliest indicators of how the election is going. And in the House, the one race in these two states that’s competitive is Indiana’s 1st district, where Rep. Frank J. Mrvan (D-Ind.) is trying to ward off a challenge from Republican Jennifer-Ruth Green. (Many of the polls in this northwest Indiana district actually close at 7 p.m., but that’s still one of the earliest poll-closing times in the country for a key House race.)
The district went for Biden by more than eight points, but it’s considered a toss-up by handicappers with Green closing strong. If Green wins, it probably confirms Democrats will lose the House by a clear margin and relatively early (as is expected).
North Carolina-13
Plenty of eyes will be on neighboring Virginia, where the polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern and three key districts are in play. But the vote-counting will likely be faster south of the border in North Carolina’s very swingy and vacant 13th district — 99 percent of North Carolina votes were counted on Election Day in 2020 — and it’s got one of the earliest poll closing times for a pure toss-up race.
This race features a young former football player who has described himself as a “MAGA warrior,” Bo Hines, against a more-seasoned Democratic candidate in state Sen. Wiley Nickel — a dynamic that parallels many of the biggest races in the country.
Republicans should win this kind of seat if they’re going to have a big night, but keep an eye on the margin. And if Democrats win, that’ll give them plenty of hope elsewhere, given that this district closely matched the 2020 election results. (Also keep one eye trained on the bluer 1st and 6th districts which, if at all competitive, could signal a very bad night for Democrats.) | 2022-11-08T17:05:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here are the races to watch tonight for the 2022 midterms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/races-watch-early-election-night-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/races-watch-early-election-night-2022/ |
Georgia and South Dakota are the latest states to provide off-road wheelchairs on public trails
Natalie B. Compton
“I was floored by what it could do,” Aimee Copeland Mercier said of the Action Trackchair. (Aimee Copeland Foundation)
Lee’s circumstances changed Friday, when Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources and the Aimee Copeland Foundation unveiled a fleet of all-terrain power wheelchairs for rent at 11 state parks and outdoorsy destinations, including Cloudland Canyon. The Action Trackchair models are equipped with tank-like tracks capable of traversing rocks, roots, streams and sand; clearing fallen trees; plowing through tall grass and tackling uphill climbs.
In 2017, Colorado Parks and Wildlife launched its Staunton State Park Track-Chair Program, which provides free adaptive equipment, though guests must pay the $10 entrance fee. Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources has placed off-road track chairs in nearly a dozen parks, including Muskegon State Park. In 2018, Lee reserved a chair at the park that boasts three miles of shoreline on Lake Michigan and Muskegon Lake. “It allowed me to have so much independence on the sand,” he said.
“We want to create an unforgettable outdoor experience for everyone, not just for people who can walk.”
— Jamie McBride, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
South Dakota is also expanding its squadron: On Tuesday, the South Dakota Parks & Wildlife Foundation unveils its second all-terrain chair. South Dakota resident Michael M. Samp is leading a fundraising campaign to purchase up to 30 chairs. Last year, Samp’s father packed up his fishing pole and piloted a track chair to Center Lake in Custer State Park. He reeled in trout, just as he had before he was diagnosed with spinal cerebral ataxia.
This month, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will wrap up its months-long pilot program that tested out the chairs in five parks. On Nov. 16, the agency will evaluate the success of the amenity. Early indications are positive.
The Georgia initiative was spearheaded by Aimee Copeland Mercier, who suffered a zip-lining accident in 2012 and lost both hands, her right foot and her left leg to a flesh-eating bacterial infection. Copeland Mercier, a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker, tested several types of all-terrain chairs before committing to Action Trackchair, which several other state programs also use.
The Minnesota-based company was founded by Tim and Donna Swenson, whose son Jeff was paralyzed in a car accident. The original design resembled a Frankenstein of sporting goods parts, with snow bike tracks and a busted boat seat. Today’s model could be an opening act at a monster truck rally.
“We have a few screening questions,” McBride said, “ but we leave the eligibility up to the user.”
Since launching the program in June, McBride said the chairs are booked three to four days a week, with heavier interest on weekends. “We haven’t turned too many people away at this point,” he said.
To steer visitors in the right direction, parks have created maps highlighting the trails designated for the track chairs, such as Staunton State Park’s trio of routes that range from roughly three to four miles. The visitors center staff are also ready with recommendations. (To transfer from chair to chair, visitors will need a companion to assist.)
McBride said one goal is to erect markers that would provide detailed information about the hike, such the extent of accessibility. “We want to let people know if they can get all the way to the waterfall or halfway,” he said, using a hypothetical example.
Copeland Mercier also has a wish list. She hopes to expand the network of chairs to other parts of Georgia, such as the coastal, southern and central regions. Once the foundation acquires several vans (another aspiration), the staff could move the 30 to 40 chairs (ditto) around the state to fill fluctuating demand. She is also eyeing other states.
“North Carolina is next,” said Copeland Mercier, who divides her time between Atlanta and Asheville, N.C. But the grand plan is even bigger. “The goal is to alter the U.S.A.” she said. | 2022-11-08T17:06:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Free all-terrain wheelchairs are appearing in more states and parks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/11/08/parks-trails-all-terrain-wheelchairs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/11/08/parks-trails-all-terrain-wheelchairs/ |
Jon Scheyer walks toward the court for the first time as head coach of Duke. (Lance King/Getty Images)
DURHAM, N.C. — It was 6:50 p.m. Monday night when Jon Scheyer walked onto the court where he “grew up,” as he put it later.
This time, though, was different. Scheyer didn’t jog out with his teammates, and he didn’t walk out with Duke’s other assistant coaches. The players and his assistants were already on the court, and ancient Cameron Indoor Stadium — which opened before World War II — was buzzing. As Scheyer walked calmly through the maelstrom of music and sound, the crowd spotted him and the cheers quickly grew very loud.
And then, from the student section, came this: “We want six, we want six.”
The reference was to the five national championship banners that hang at the north end of Cameron, all of them won during the 42 years that Mike Krzyzewski coached the Blue Devils.
So much for reasonable expectations.
“I didn’t hear it,” Scheyer said later. “But I’m not surprised.”
Scheyer understands exactly what he’s walked into. Succeeding an icon is never easy. Gene Bartow went to the Final Four in 1976 after succeeding John Wooden at UCLA and was judged a failure. A year later, he fled Westwood. Bill Guthridge went to two Final Fours in three years after succeeding Dean Smith at North Carolina — and there was dancing in the streets of Chapel Hill when he retired prematurely. Roy Williams, it should be remembered, was the third coach to follow Smith and had a six-year gap for protection.
Monday’s 71-44 victory over Jacksonville marked — finally — the beginning of the Scheyer era at Duke, 17 months after he was anointed to succeed Krzyzewski. Scheyer is 35, the youngest coach at a Power Five school this season. He’s also two years older than Krzyzewski was when he arrived here in 1980, seven years before Scheyer was born.
Most power schools like to open their seasons with a breather, but Jacksonville wasn’t exactly that. The Dolphins won 21 games a year ago and returned four of five starters. They were less likely than most to be intimidated by Cameron’s raucous atmosphere. They also have a distinguished basketball history of their own, having played against UCLA in the 1970 NCAA championship game in Cole Field House.
The star of that team, future Hall of Famer Artis Gilmore, was in the building doing color commentary for the Jacksonville radio broadcast on Monday. “He’s the mentor for all of Jacksonville basketball,” Coach Jordan Mincy said. “I rode to shootout with him this afternoon. I call him grandpa. I always feel better when he’s around.”
Gilmore is 73, Mincy 36, so it’s understandable.
Gilmore is two years younger than Krzyzewski, who wasn’t physically present Monday but whose legacy was impossible to miss, from the five championship banners — not to mention 13 Final Four banners and 15 ACC Tournament championship banners — to the giant banner at the south end celebrating his all-time NCAA record of 1,202 victories.
Krzyzewski’s final season produced 32 wins and a trip to the Final Four but ended on a down note when the Blue Devils lost to archrival North Carolina in the national semifinals. The Tar Heels return four starters from that team and were ranked No. 1 in the preseason. Duke returns two players — total — from last season, meaning Scheyer’s first team is bound to have ups and downs.
That was evident in the first 15 minutes. The Dolphins were clearly not intimidated by the atmosphere and trailed 25-22 with the ball with just under six minutes left in the first half.
But then, Kevion Nolan, their best player, took a rushed three-point shot and the game turned at that moment. “We grade our shots,” Mincy said. “A good one is an ‘A,’ an okay one is a ‘C,’ and a bad one is an ‘F.’ He came over to me afterwards and said, ‘Coach, I know that was an ‘F,’ shot. I told him he was right.”
A three-point shot a moment later by Jeremy Roach, Duke’s only returning starter, was the start of a 17-4 pre-halftime run that gave Duke a 42-26 margin and pretty much put the game on ice.
“I thought we needed a little time to settle in,” Scheyer said. “Jeremy’s shot was huge, his whole game was huge for us. We’re going to need that from him the whole season.”
Krzyzewski still has his palatial office in Cameron — he is technically a Duke “ambassador,” which means he is a fundraiser for the school. Scheyer went to see him Monday afternoon.
“I think he just wanted to talk,” Krzyzewski said. “Not a mentor to protege thing, just coach-to-coach. He wanted the game to start.”
Scheyer agreed. “You can get to a point when you have a lot of prep time where you begin to over-analyze,” he said. “I caught myself watching Jacksonville tapes from last season twice. At some point you just have to trust your instincts and go play.”
Before he walked to the court, Scheyer had a moment alone in his new office next to the team’s locker room to think about the evening ahead.
“I told myself to trust the work we’ve all done to get ready,” he said. “But I also reminded myself to enjoy this moment. I’m the coach at Duke — I mean, how lucky am I? I felt very good about where I was walking out there.”
When Scheyer was named Krzyzewski’s successor in June of 2021, Krzyzewski made the point that he was better prepared to coach at Duke than he was when he arrived from Army in the spring of 1980.
“He’s played in the ACC and coached in the ACC, he understands recruiting at this level,” Krzyzewski said. “I had none of those things.”
The difference is that Krzyzewski didn’t have to succeed Krzyzewski.
“A blessing and a curse,” Scheyer said, laughing. “I do think I’m better prepared because I learned from him as a player and an assistant coach. That should help me. I was the same age (33) as he was when I was named the coach. I feel ready. I know we’ve all done the work. My attitude last night was, “let’s go and do it.”
Scheyer has several blue-chip freshmen on his team and another top-rated recruiting class on the way. He also has four graduate transfers to lend some much-needed experience. He is now 1,201 wins behind Krzyzewski.
“Good to get the first one under our belt,” he said with a sigh. “If I said I wasn’t nervous beforehand, I’d be lying. I didn’t see them as a typical opener. They will give a lot of teams trouble.”
Krzyzewski, who watched the game from home and says he’ll never go to a game at Cameron — “where would I sit without being a distraction?” he said — wasn’t at all nervous. “I know they weren’t great shooters and our defense would wear them out,” he said. “I was very relaxed watching.”
Which is easy to say when the spotlight is shining brightly several miles away, on the seat where you sat for 42 years. | 2022-11-08T17:44:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jon Scheyer starts his Duke career with a win, in the shadow of Coach K - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/jon-scheyer-duke-coach-debut/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/jon-scheyer-duke-coach-debut/ |
Madeline Miller’s fans want more. Here it is: A very short story.
Review by Rachelle Hampton
Madeline Miller’s “Galatea,” a short story first published in 2013 now available in a slim 60-page stand-alone edition, begins with an intriguing question: What if Ovid’s Pygmalion was the first “incel?” It’s a provocative premise. Definitionally, the term incel — a portmanteau of the words involuntary and celibate — doesn’t include Pygmalion, whose celibacy is self-imposed out of disgust for “the myriad faults that nature gave women’s minds.”
In Ovid’s telling, Pygmalion is a gifted sculptor whose encounters with sex workers leave him so disgusted that he forgoes female companionship. Instead he carves a woman out of ivory and quickly falls in love with it, ultimately praying to the goddess Aphrodite to bring his sculpture to life. The goddess hears his plea, the statue comes to life, the two marry and have a child for whom the city Paphos is named. They presumably all live happily ever after.
For centuries, Pygmalion has provided inspiration for writers from George Bernard Shaw to Richard Powers to Pete Wentz, and according to Miller’s afterword “numerous makeover movies, like ‘Pretty Woman,’ clearly owe it a debt.” Notably, most of the story’s most famous adaptations have been written by men.
A classics scholar, Miller has long been comfortable wedding modern concepts of identity to ancient stories in ways that make them feel new. Her 2011 debut “The Song of Achilles” is an adaptation of “The Iliad,” told from Patroclus’s point of view. It’s a stunning piece of work that explores themes of fate and family, love and class, in lovely and propulsive prose that easily matches the mythic proportions of its source material.
But perhaps what captured contemporary audiences the most is the choice Miller made to reframe the familiar tragedy as a love story, a choice that grounds the epic in a poetic, firelit intimacy. Her 2018 novel “Circe” reimagines the titular goddess’s story as a pursuit of selfhood in a world that denies it to you due to circumstances of birth. It tracks, then, that Galatea came to Miller in the same writing session as “Circe.”
Miller’s Galatea is as matter of fact as the stone she came from. She is keenly aware of the motivations of those around her in the way that children, unencumbered by preconceptions or politesse sometimes pierce the heart of things, to our discomfort. She spends much of her time indulging her husband’s fantasies. One in particular requires her to re-create the moment she was “born.” In the kind of gently placating tone a parent takes with a child, she narrates how she must first open her eyes “like a dewy fawn” before making “a little gasping noise of wonder and gratitude.”
But her guilelessness doesn’t mark her as an ingenue. She’s equal parts perceptive and playful, brave and calculating. She is everything her husband resents in women and the story of their marriage will come as a surprise only to those who saw romance in Pygmalion’s devotion to his stony creation rather a cautionary tale of what happens when women don’t live up to the delusions of men. Fans of Miller will find “Galatea” a captivating, if brief, return to the worlds that she so richly conjures.
They also might find “Galatea” to be her most personal work. Miller admits as much, writing in the afterword that while “in ‘Circe’ and ‘Achilles’ I drew on many traditions, cross-referencing and interweaving multiple sources. ‘Galatea’ was a response, almost solely, to Ovid’s version of the Pygmalion myth in the ‘Metamorphoses.’ ” In this response, we see more of Miller’s disposition take shape, we see her reaction to and interpretation of the male-centered narratives that her work springs from and pushes against.
But the responsive nature of “Galatea” doesn’t stop at the story. Miller has always enjoyed critical acclaim, winning the 2012 Orange Prize for “The Song of Achilles.” But it was almost a decade later that the novel started selling more than 10,000 copies a week, a phenomenon that shocked Miller and her publishers but not the denizens of BookTok who by that point were used to running the New York Times bestsellers list.
Miller is maybe one of BookTok’s biggest beneficiaries, along with Sarah J. Maas and, most recently, Colleen Hoover. Currently, the top two “The Song of Achilles” hashtags on TikTok have a combined 432 million views. The “Madeline Miller” hashtag has more than 70 million alone. And Miller’s publishers have clearly taken notice. “Galatea,” with its attractive midnight-blue cover and gold-embossed lettering, will look at home on many a BookTok bookshelf, where aesthetics are often a way into literature, and deep feeling a way through it.
It’s a clever, if somewhat cynical move on Miller’s publisher’s part. Unlike Hoover or Maas, Miller’s releases aren’t a yearly or even biyearly affair. Her next book, a retelling of Persephone’s trials and travails, doesn’t have a release date yet.
If her other writing timelines are anything to go by — she famously took 10 years to write “The Song of Achilles” — her fans have a while to wait before any book length project is ready to buy. The flashy release of a short story that’s been available for almost a decade could easily be read as an attempt to satiate BookTok’s ever-increasing demands for new content.
Thanks to an earlier British release date, we have some hints as to how this ploy might go over once “Galatea” is widely available for purchase. One of the most popular videos about the short story is from BookToker Abby Parker or @abbysbooks whose on-screen video caption reads “I knew it was gonna be small but I did not comprehend HOW small.”
Other videos are in the same key: Another BookToker wrote, “I really liked the story! And it’s good decor cause it’s so cute.” The former sentiment seems to be what Miller’s publishers are banking on: “Galatea’s” marketing materials include that the short story is “gifty.” The official TikTok account for the U.K. publisher of “Galatea” suggests that it’s perfect for the “Madeline Miller fan who has everything.”
It’s true that Miller’s clear references to feminist literature in “Galatea” are new in her oeuvre, if not surprising to close readers of her work. But perhaps what’s most revealing about the release of “Galatea” is less what it says and more what it signals: Miller’s ascendancy to the kind of literary stardom that transmutes her work into something to be possessed and displayed.
Ecco. 56 pp. $12 | 2022-11-08T17:57:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is "Galatea" by Madeline Miller worth buying? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/08/madeline-miller-galatea-review-tiktok/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/08/madeline-miller-galatea-review-tiktok/ |
Classical poetry is full of sexual violence. We shouldn’t hide that.
Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ is arguably the most canonical epic poem of sexual violence. It’s time to translate it that way.
Perspective by Stephanie McCarter
A statue of Ovid, author of the “Metamorphoses.” Stephanie McCarter writes that in her new translation of the poem, she attempted to treat rape and sexual violence as frankly as Ovid himself does. (iStock)
Stories of rape are uncomfortably prominent in the literary canon, and no canonical work includes more such tales than Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” Apollo, pierced by Cupid’s arrow, pursues the nymph Daphne, who becomes a tree to escape him. Jupiter, king of the gods, violently assaults Io, whom he then turns into a cow. The nymph Callisto endures sexual violence at the hands of Jupiter, then physical violence at the hands of Juno, his queen, who turns her into a bear. Nearly 50 acts of rape or attempted rape appear in the epic, and many of these in turn have inspired significant works of art and literature, such as Bernini’s “Apollo and Daphne,” Titian’s “The Rape of Europa” and Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus.”
Familiar as they often are, these stories present a challenge to translators: How should one render in English acts that are often grotesquely violent in Ovid’s original Latin? For decades, many have simply sidestepped the issue, obscuring violations with romantic euphemisms or even suggesting, through subtle turns of phrase, that the women in Ovid’s tales consented to assault. As a classicist, one of my principal goals as I set out to prepare my own new translation of Ovid’s epic poem was the clear and accurate rendering of these scenes of rape. It was, I thought, critical to treat sexual violence in the “Metamorphoses” as frankly as Ovid himself does.
These issues were central for me in part because I regularly teach the “Metamorphoses,” and the presence of sexual violence in it has made its place in classrooms fraught. In 2015, an op-ed penned by undergraduates at Columbia University went viral for its criticism of a professor who focused on “the beauty of the language and the splendor of the imagery” in the epic without adequately addressing the presence of rape. The piece launched a sprawling debate about “trigger warnings” that led to a string of think-pieces, some of which were sympathetic to the students’ concerns and some of which denigrated the undergrads as “snowflakes” who could not handle the difficult aspects of great literature.
It seemed to me that there was a fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of this debate. The Columbia students were not trying to censor material involving rape — they were simply asking that such violence be framed and scrutinized as violence. It was the unconsidered aestheticization that troubled them — the implicit premise that this was an unimpeachable work of beauty that could only elevate without ever doing harm. And this is true beyond Columbia. The idea that overly sensitive students are seeking en masse to censor such material runs counter to my two decades teaching in college classrooms. I have never had a student object to the frank discussion of rape in the text. If anything, contemporary students are much more prepared to discuss this difficult aspect of literature than many from my own generation. What they are not prepared to do is accept it uncritically.
In Madeline Miller's latest, a twist on a story from Ovid
Readers need editions of the epic that will facilitate such analysis. Notably, the translator’s role in communicating rape went unexamined in the larger trigger-warning debate that followed the Columbia op-ed, despite the fact that most of those who read Ovid’s text do so in translation. It was David Raeburn’s early-21st-century English, not Ovid’s Latin, that the Columbia students were reading. Translations that euphemize rape risk giving readers the impression that Ovid was unambiguously flippant about sexual violence when in fact he underscores the psychological and physical trauma it produces.
In the case of Apollo and Daphne, one of the tales cited by the Columbia students, Raeburn adds details that are simply not present in Ovid’s Latin and that amplify the power of the male gaze. When Apollo runs his eyes over Daphne’s body, for instance, Ovid tells us simply that he looks at her “lips” and “fingers” and “arms,” yet Raeburn goes further. In his rendering, Daphne’s lips are “teasingly tempting,” her fingers “delicate” and her arms “shapely.” When the hard bark runs up Daphne’s soft torso, “mollia praecordia,” Raeburn has it surround her “soft white bosom.” The accumulation of these alterations distorts Ovid’s presentation of Daphne’s body, drawing readers into the role of voyeur and making it seem like the narrator revels in her objectification in ways the Latin does not justify. In Raeburn, it is as if her body simply invites Apollo’s assault.
In translating Ovid’s scenes of rape, I took care to use English words that reflect his own language of violence, which ties rape to the epic’s larger theme of abusive power. The most common Latin word Ovid uses for rape is “vis,” or “force.” This was indeed a legal term for rape in Rome, although it was also applied to other violent acts, such as armed insurrection or wielding weapons within the city’s bounds — acts that undermined the Roman citizen’s expectation of safety and bodily autonomy. The punishments for rape by “vis” ranged from personal retaliation to loss of citizenship and even death. If we judge the epic’s rapes by the standards of the Romans, they are appalling crimes.
When “vis” appears in the epic, whether in the context of rape or not, I consistently use the word “force” to enable readers to connect various types of violence. Ovid frequently pairs the word “vis” with the word “pati,” “to suffer,” which can denote being the penetrated partner in a sexual act. The phrase “vim pati” (“to suffer force”) becomes in Ovid an almost technical term for rape, as in Apollo’s rape of Dryope, which I translate, with Ovid’s own directness, as she “had suffered / a forceful rape.” In Ovid, a perpetrator may also “exert force” against another, as when he uses the phrase “vim tulit” to describe the river god Cephisus’s rape of Liriope or when Leucothoe accuses the sun god of raping her. Although translators do occasionally use the word “rape,” they are highly inconsistent, more often watering down Ovid’s language of force, with “vis” becoming “ardent wooing” or “advances” or simply disappearing altogether. In Stanley Lombardo (2010), for instance, Dryope “lost her virginity” to Apollo. In Allen Mandelbaum (1993), Cephisus “had his way” with Liriope. And in Horace Gregory (1958), Leucothoe says the sun god “dazzled” her.
Sometimes it’s necessary to deviate slightly from strict fidelity to Ovid’s exact verbiage to capture what the poet’s words would have meant to his original audience. Ovid’s other main Latin term for denoting sexual violence is “rapio,” from which the English “rape” is derived. Although the primary meaning of “rapio” is “snatch” or “steal,” Ovid uses it repeatedly in tales of sexual assault. The girl Mestra, for instance, identifies the god Neptune as her rapist by saying that he possesses the “raptae praemia virginitatis” — “the prize of her stolen virginity.” In such passages, I simply use the word “rape.” In my translation, Mestra says, “You who raped me — stole my prized virginity.” The most accurate translation is not always the most literal.
Jupiter’s rape of Io similarly calls for accuracy over literalness. Ovid here uses just two words to narrate the rape: “rapuit pudorem,” literally “he stole her chastity,” which I translate as he “raped her, chaste no more.” Translating this phrase too literally into English blunts its violence, making it sound old-fashioned or euphemistic when Ovid’s language is neither. Procne later uses a similar phrase when she threatens to castrate Tereus, her sister’s rapist, by slicing off the organ that “stole” her sister’s “chastity.” The violence of such theft is matched by the violence of her threat.
Translators have, of course, found ways to obscure and dilute such language. In Charles Martin’s 2004 translation, for instance, Jupiter simply “dishonored” Io, an act that leaves the specific crime unclear. Going beyond euphemism, Gregory rewrites the scene as consensual in his translation. Rather than “steal Io’s chastity,” his Jupiter “overcame her scruples,” a phrase suggesting seduction rather than rape. In his 1986 version, A.D. Melville uses the euphemizing “ravish,” a word that translators repeatedly employ in Ovid’s rape scenes. As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, this is now an archaic term for rape that more commonly implies “ecstatic delight” or “sensuous pleasure.” It appears frequently in the titles of romance novels.
Even the most horrific stories of “vis” have been euphemized in translation. In one especially brutal episode, both Apollo and Mercury rape a 14-year-old girl named Chione. Mercury makes her fall asleep with his wand, then rapes her. In my translation: “Unconscious from its mighty touch, she suffers / the god’s forced rape.” Other translators obscure the rape or give Chione agency she lacks. In Mandelbaum’s version, she “submits / in deep sleep, to his godly violence.” It is unclear how Chione can “submit” to violence in her sleep. Rolfe Humphries’s 1955 translation reframes Mercury’s “vis” as “power”: “Under his touch she lay, and felt his power.” The girl here seems awed into submission rather than bent to Mercury’s will by force.
If we want readers to consider the brutality present in great literature, we must give them the tools to do so. And with a writer like Ovid, a well-translated text is the first of those tools. Ovid is arguably the canonical poet of sexual violence, and as such he offers a rich space for considering how we think, speak and write about such trauma. We need to use and normalize the words “rape” and “force.” When translators refuse to back down from such language, they can treat sexual violence as violence, allowing readers to speak its name, scrutinize it, ponder how it works and recognize how it continues to transform too many of us.
Stephanie McCarter is a classics professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. Her new translation of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” is now available. | 2022-11-08T17:57:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Classical poetry is full of sexual violence. We shouldn’t hide that. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/08/ovid-metamorphoses-translation-sexual-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/08/ovid-metamorphoses-translation-sexual-violence/ |
‘Retrograde’: A sad chronicle of the war in Afghanistan’s last months
Oscar-nominated documentarian Matthew Heineman turns his attention to a subject he’s very familiar with: Another lost cause
A scene from "Retrograde," which documents the final months of the war in Afghanistan. (Matthew Heineman/OTP/National Geographic)
In such documentaries as “Cartel Land” and “City of Ghosts,” the filmmaker Matthew Heineman has put himself in harm’s way to chronicle the front line of the war on drugs and the work of Syrian citizen journalists attempting to document the predations of the Islamic State. With his latest film, “Retrograde” — which bears witness to the final months of the United States’ 20-year war in Afghanistan, also known as America’s longest war and sometimes, more poetically, the Forever War — he returns to administer a dose of the same bitter medicine. It is an impressive and yet enormously depressing achievement, if that’s the right word.
Matthew Heineman on ‘City of Ghosts’ and his affinity for picking (seemingly) futile battles
“Retrograde” opens with scenes of chaos at Kabul Airport in August 2021, as American forces try to evacuate as many Afghan HVIs (high-value individuals such as interpreters, informants and military partners in the Afghan National Army) as they can from among the thousands clamoring to escape from the fallen city. It then jumps backward in time eight months to January, as we watch American advisers trying to train Afghan recruits for the coming operations against the Taliban that they will have to carry out once the U.S. pulls out, as it has been made clear they will.
It can be frustrating — even infuriating — to watch trainees who obviously aren’t ready, and more so when the trainers ultimately do pull out, destroying massive amounts of ammunition and equipment in the process, rather than risk it falling into enemy hands. That’s the military definition of the word retrograde: Department of Defense speak for the burning of maps, the smashing of computers with a sledgehammer and the blowing up of countless bullets. But the film’s title has a double meaning, alluding to the loss of progress and ground that inevitably follows our pullout.
In Sami Sadat, a three-star general in the Afghan army, Heineman finds the perfect subject on whom to hang the emotions of this otherwise maddeningly clinical saga of attrition. After the training sequences and the 10-day retrograde operation that leaves Sadat and his forces to their own devices, Heineman shifts focus, zeroing in on Sadat, a baby-faced officer in his mid-30s who, it quickly becomes clear, is in way over his head.
Two weeks of chaos: A timeline of the U.S. pullout of Afghanistan.
From there on out, as the film winds its way back to August and the fall of Kabul, the documentary charts Sadat’s frustrations: with mounting casualties, with troops abandoning their posts, with the report of an officer getting stoned on hashish and then failing to lift a finger while under attack — and with the Kafkaesque decisions of his own higher-ups. Those bureaucrats approve his requests for weapons and supplies in the morning, as he puts it, only to cancel them by the end of the day. “I can’t fight the Taliban and the administration at the same time,” he laments, with barely concealed despair.
“Retrograde” is a handsome film, ironically, conveying a sense of the country that is at stake, and its people. And Heineman is smart to frame the story around a single individual, as he did in his fact-based drama about war correspondent Marie Colvin, “A Private War.” At times, however, it’s almost too slick and good-looking, with some scenes that resemble a first-person-shooter video game, shot — remarkably — from inside the cockpit of a helicopter firing missiles, or in a command post where officers give the order to light someone up while coolly watching grainy drone surveillance footage.
At other times, as when Sadat shows Heineman’s camera cellphone pictures of human body parts after a vehicle-borne IED accidentally self-detonated, the film serves as a potent reminder: War is never a game.
R. At the Angelika Pop-Up. Contains images of war injuries, some coarse language, smoking and mature thematic material. 96 minutes. | 2022-11-08T18:06:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Retrograde’: A sad chronicle of the war in Afghanistan’s last months - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/11/08/retrograde-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/11/08/retrograde-movie-review/ |
EU opens investigation into Microsoft, Activision Blizzard merger
Shannon Liao
The European Union has launched an investigation into Microsoft’s acquisition of video game publisher Activision Blizzard, citing concerns that the tech giant “may foreclose access” to Activision’s games.
Microsoft, which sells the Xbox line of video game consoles, announced its plans to acquire Activision Blizzard in January. So far, regulators in Saudi Arabia and Brazil have greenlit the deal. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have yet to issue a decision.
In its announcement, the European Commission outlined the factors that led to it opening an in-depth investigation. A preliminary inquiry raised concerns around the deal reducing competition in the video game and console distribution markets; the Commission also noted potential issues surrounding the market for PCs, writing that the merger might “discourage users [from buying] non-Windows PCs.”
“We must ensure that opportunities remain for future and existing distributors of PC and console video games, as well as for rival suppliers of PC operating systems,” wrote Margrethe Vestager, executive vice president in charge of competition policy. “The point is to ensure that the gaming ecosystem remains vibrant to the benefit of users in a sector that is evolving at a fast pace.”
The Commission has until March 23 to make a decision on the deal.
Analysis: Microsoft’s regulator-appeasing claims about Game Pass and competition are hollow
Sony, one of Microsoft’s primary competitors in the video game industry, has warned regulators that the merger could give Microsoft an unparalleled advantage in the industry by giving the company control of the lucrative Call of Duty franchise. Microsoft, in turn, has tried to assuage regulators’ concerns by saying it would not restrict access to Call of Duty games, and would pursue a strategy similar to the one it has followed with “Minecraft,” another popular game it owns. “Minecraft” is readily available on most popular consoles and platforms.
“We’re continuing to work with the European Commission on next steps and to address any valid marketplace concerns,” Microsoft spokesperson David Cuddy told The Washington Post. “Sony, as the industry leader, says it is worried about Call of Duty, but we’ve said we are committed to making the same game available on the same day on both Xbox and PlayStation. We want people to have more access to games, not less.”
Still, some antitrust scholars and regulators have grown wary of unenforceable promises.
“I don’t know for sure that Microsoft would remove Call of Duty from the PlayStation — it might not benefit them — but they might,” Mitch Stoltz, senior staff attorney for nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Post last week. “If they did decide to remove Call of Duty from the PlayStation, the antitrust enforcers couldn’t stop them unless they had made a binding promise not to do that. Essentially, the merger is the antitrust enforcers’ only opportunity to stop Microsoft from making Call of Duty exclusive to the Xbox, so I’m not surprised they’re raising it now.”
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick emailed employees Tuesday morning with an update about Microsoft’s pending acquisition, reaffirming his expectation that the deal would close in June 2023.
“We will continue to cooperate with the European Commission where, in the countries they represent, we have many employees,” Kotick wrote in a letter also posted to the investor relations website. “We have been working closely with Microsoft to actively engage regulators in other key countries to answer their questions and provide them with information to assist with their review. People from across our business units and functions have been involved in this regulatory work.” | 2022-11-08T18:10:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EU to investigate Microsoft, Activision Blizzard merger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/08/eu-microsoft-activision-acquisition-call-of-duty/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/08/eu-microsoft-activision-acquisition-call-of-duty/ |
This year marks the 60th anniversary of “Dr. No,” the James Bond film that launched the world’s most indestructible movie franchise.
For fans of Ian Fleming as wealthy as Goldfinger, the tour operator Black Tomato is offering private adventures inspired by the Bond films. While racing across Europe in fancy cars, yachts and helicopters, you and your Miss Moneypenny could stop to ride horses at Château de Chantilly from “A View to a Kill” or lose a few million at the baccarat table in the Casino de Monte-Carlo from “GoldenEye.” Why not? You only live twice.
But readers who would prefer to celebrate this diamonds-are-forever anniversary with a less peripatetic adventure might turn to the latest novel by Everett … Percival Everett.
This new “Dr. No” parodies Fleming’s bombastic thrillers with a meditation on nihilism. That may sound like a dangerous mission, but Everett’s previous novel, “Trees,” is a brutal comedy about lynching. Clearly, nothing frightens this author. Which is the theme — and oft-repeated joke — of “Dr. No.”
Will Percival Everett’s 23rd novel finally bring him fame? He really doesn’t care.
Everett’s deadpan narrator is a 36-year-old Black man who is on the autism spectrum and goes by the name Wala Kitu. His first name is Tagalog for “nothing”; his last name is Swahili for “nothing.” (Longtime fans will recognize him as the brilliant baby narrator of “Glyph,” Everett’s 1999 satire of academia.) Now, as a distinguished mathematics professor at Brown University, Wala knows that nothing + nothing = nothing. In fact, Wala is the world’s greatest expert on nothing. He’s spent his career searching for nothing. “I have not found it,” he confesses. “I work very hard and wish I could say that I have nothing to show for it.”
It turns out there are more jokes about nothing than one could fit into a 22-minute “Seinfeld” episode. A lot more.
At the start of “Dr. No,” Wala is contacted by the African American billionaire John Milton Bradley Sill, a name which manages to invoke the great Renaissance poet and the great board game maker. (No, I don’t know why. Such flecks of cerebral silliness are one of Everett’s charms.) Sitting in a coffee shop, Wala realizes immediately that Sill is “certifiable, but jolly.” His backstory is steeped in racial violence: His father was murdered — collateral damage in the government’s plot to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. And Sill’s mother, a preschool teacher turned madam, was shot 12 times by a White policeman serving her for unpaid parking tickets.
With a passion ignited by rage and grief, Sill has dedicated his life to becoming “a cultural disease, an enemy of the system.” He tells Wala, “I want to be a Bond villain ... the sort of perpetrator of evil deeds that might cause the prime minister to dispatch a double-naught spy to thwart me.”
To prosecute his evil schemes, Sill needs Wala’s help. Inspired by “Goldfinger,” he wants to break into Fort Knox and steal a top-secret box of nothing. “How much power must there be for anyone who can possess nothing,” Sill says. He gives Wala $3 million to serve as his special consultant. “All you have to do is advise me. . . . I want your pure honest confusion.”
It’s an offer Wala can’t refuse, but he knows how dangerous this kook could be. “Nothingness is not emptiness any more than it is the absence of something, some thing, some things or substance,” he explains, bafflingly. “The actual Big Bang is coming, as what the universe came from is catching up to what it will become. To experience the power of nothing would be to understand everything; to harness the power of nothing would be to negate all that is.”
It’s only a coincidence in the quantum mechanics of literary fiction, but there’s some spooky action going on between “Dr. No” and two new novels from Cormac McCarthy: “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris.” Energized by the “endless nothing,” McCarthy’s books compress a great number of scientists’ names and esoteric terms under intense heat in hopes of creating a fusion reaction that will release tremendous profundity. Everett is no less sophisticated or grim, but the vibe of “Dr. No” is a lot less Werner Heisenberg and a lot more Pussy Galore. (When a sexy mathematician climaxes in Sill’s embrace, she screams, “Assume x is a Kähler manifold.”)
Most of “Dr. No” is a goofy anti-thriller that revolves around Sill’s evil schemes and Wala’s halting efforts to thwart them. Yes, there are gorgeous robots, a devastating space laser, a pool of man-eating sharks under the dining room and lots of diabolical chuckling. But needless to say, Wala is no Sean Connery. He knows nothing. He’s never touched a woman. And forget the Sunbeam Alpine Series II. Wala doesn’t even know how to drive. All of which Everett exploits to parody both the Bond films and the bizarro world of physics and mathematics in the outer limits of reality.
Instead of Schrödinger’s cat, Wala has a one-legged dog named Trigo, whose condition and position are always known. “My dog met me at the door,” Wala says. “He had no choice. That was where I had left him.” The professor carries Trigo, or what remains of him, on his chest in a baby carrier called a Björn, which is not standard-issue equipment for super-agents.
This is all amusing. But having recently read “Trees,” which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, I wish that “Dr. No” zeroed in on America’s racial environment with the same comic intensity. Defanged by its own silliness, this new novel merely hints and feints. The racially motivated murders that sparked Sill’s revenge fantasy quickly feel irrelevant. Near the very end, a side character notes how much Black people have contributed to America. “We have given everything to it,” he says. “I think it’s time we gave nothing back.”
The power of that point is greater than zero, but it comes buried in a bit of wordplay that we’ve already heard here dozens of times. It risks feeling flip, almost like nothing. The result is a story unlikely to leave you shaken or stirred.
Graywolf. 262 pp. $16 | 2022-11-08T18:36:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Percival Everett's 'Dr. No' book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/08/percival-everett-dr-no-novel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/08/percival-everett-dr-no-novel/ |
Winning $2 billion Powerball ticket sold — the largest American jackpot
A customer buys lottery tickets late last month in Hawthorne, Calif. (Mark J. Terrill/AP)
After 40 drawings without a jackpot winner, there was one winner of the estimated $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot — the largest grand prize in the game’s quarter-century.
The winning numbers (10, 33, 41, 47, 56 and the red Powerball 10) were drawn Tuesday after an unusual delay of several hours due to a technical problem.
The drawing, originally scheduled for Monday night, was delayed, the Michigan Lottery announced on Twitter, because one participating lottery was “still processing its sales and play data.”
Powerball requires all 48 participating lotteries to send in key information before the drawing, the statement said.
“Powerball has stringent security requirements to protect the integrity of the game and remains committed to holding a drawing that gives all players a fair chance to win,” it added.
The winning ticket was sold in California.
The jackpot surpasses the $1.586 billion won in January 2016 and split by three people.
The Powerball organization started in 15 states and now operates in 45 states, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, changed the game’s format in October 2015, The Washington Post reported the following year.
The association upped the number of those white balls that fill the tumbler from 59 to 69, which doubled the combinations of white balls, The Post reported. Odds of winning the jackpot went from 1 in 175 million to 1 in 292 million. But the group did make it easier to win non-jackpot prizes, by decreasing the number of red Powerball balls to 26 from 35 — jackpot winners must correctly guess five numbers and the final red ball.
Top 10 Powerball Jackpots, according to a Powerball news release:
1. $2.04 billion — Nov. 8, 2022 (Calif.)
2. $1.586 billion — Jan. 13, 2016 (Calif., Fla., Tenn.)
3. $768.4 million — March 27, 2019 (Wis.)
4. $758.7 million — Aug. 23, 2017 (Mass.)
5. $731.1 million — Jan. 20, 2021 (Md.)
6. $699.8 million — Oct. 4, 2021 (Calif.)
7. $687.8 million — Oct. 27, 2018 (Iowa, N.Y.)
8. $632.6 million — Jan. 5, 2022 (Calif., Wis.)
9. $590.5 million — May 18, 2013 (Fla.)
10. $587.5 million — Nov. 28, 2012 (Ariz., Mo.) | 2022-11-08T18:37:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Winning Powerball numbers drawn for record $2 billion jackpot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/08/powerball-record-winning-ticket/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/08/powerball-record-winning-ticket/ |
The disingenuous effort to cast suspicion on vote-counting
Election ballots go through the adjudication phase after being counted at Denver Elections Division on Monday in Denver (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
It was the kind of innocuous statement that White House press secretaries are there to offer.
“We may not know all the winners of elections for a few days,” Karine Jean-Pierre said at Monday’s press briefing. “It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner. That’s how this is supposed to work. And it’s important for us to all be patient while votes are being counted.” It was a reminder being offered not just to the press, she said, but “for the folks who are watching.”
Votes are cast; you count them until you’ve counted them all. It’s not that this is “supposed” to take several days. It’s just that, because of the process that states and counties use to count votes, the process often can take that long.
But, particularly since 2020, any recognition that vote-counting isn’t instantaneous is perceived as something ranging from partisan to nefarious. Because Donald Trump knew he was losing his reelection bid and, because he was eager to convince people he didn’t lose and/or to retain power despite that loss, he amplified baseless questions about the vote-counting process. That included claims that slow tallying wasn’t simply introducing an opportunity for illegality but alleging explicitly that this was happening.
It wasn’t. Trump and his hangers-on have tried for two years to suggest that something happened in the post-election period (and the pre-election period and on Election Day) that illegally swung the vote against him. They’ve entirely failed to do so. But they managed to convince millions of Americans, most of them Republicans, that something nefarious was afoot — and to convince those same Americans that results showing Democrats as victorious should be dismissed.
Trump didn’t invent this. In 2018, in fact, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) used this same tactic to try (unsuccessfully) to shut down vote-counting in two heavily Democratic counties in the state. The count continued, as it should have, and Scott narrowly won election to the Senate. Later analysis confirmed that there was nothing suspicious about the vote-counting that Scott had suggested was riddled with fraud.
Scott’s efforts were hailed by Trump, who began elevating the idea that mail-in or absentee votes shouldn’t be counted.
“The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere,” he claimed on Twitter, falsely, “and many ballots are missing or forged. An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with election night!”
Again, entirely false. But you can see how the seed was planted.
By 2020, the situation was even more dramatic. The coronavirus pandemic led to a huge spike in mail-in voting and an amplification of the pattern that Scott and Trump had complained about in 2018. A wide gap in how partisans voted — Democrats by mail or early; Republicans on Election Day — meant that Trump and other Republicans could be expected to be doing better in the hours after polls closed.
After all, in most states voting in-person outsources verification and digitizing of each vote to the person casting the ballot. Millions of people (voters) put in a minute of work to cast a ballot at a polling place. Mail-in ballots, though, generally need to be validated and digitized by elections officials. So even with thousands of people working 8-hour days (staff), the sheer scale of the effort means it takes more time. Say it’s 10 million minutes of work. For 10 million voters, that takes one minute apiece. For 10,000 election workers, it takes 1,000 hours.
The divergence between election-night and final totals came to be known as the “red mirage”: the impression that Republicans had leads that were being eroded by Democrats instead of the running totals simply reflecting the order in which ballots were counted. And Trump decided that, like Scott, he would weaponize it.
In the early hours of Nov. 4, 2020, Trump addressed the media, suggesting that his election-night totals reflected an actual victory. “Frankly,” he told them, “we did win this election” — something the reporters were generally smart enough to recognize as nonsense. Trump was using the mirage to position himself as the winner whose election was being stolen instead of as a guy benefiting from how his smaller base of support cast their ballots.
That brings us to this year. Polling suggests that the divide in voting methodology may not be as wide as it was in 2020, thanks in part to the shift in the pandemic. YouGov polling conducted in early October found that about half of Republicans plan to vote in-person on Election Day, compared to a third of Democrats. About 4 in 10 Democrats planned to vote by mail, compared to a quarter of Republicans.
But Jean-Pierre’s comment still evoked a backlash, helpfully compiled by Fox News. Many of the complaints suggested that election results were once known on Election Day itself, unlike now. Which, of course, is largely a straw man. We still know most results on election night, just not particularly close results. And in an era of sharp partisanship, we have a lot of close, high-stakes races. At the same time, we have expanded the ability of people to vote by mail, thereby making it easier to vote, though it means that many votes are counted more slowly. But whether this matters also depends on how close the race is. California has notoriously slow counting, but we still know a lot of results on election night because the days of counting mail ballots won’t affect results.
Again, there is nothing inherently suspicious about counting votes over a span of hours instead of minutes, and there has been no evidence offered to suggest that anything nefarious occurs. Even the most popular debunked theories from Trump and his allies about 2020 center on alleged “fraud” that occurred on or before Election Day.
But by elevating the post-election counting as suspicious or nefarious, those who are disadvantaged by post-Election-Day shifts can cast doubt on that disadvantage. In 2020, you’ll recall, Trump was all for continuing to count in Arizona for days on end, hoping that Joe Biden’s lead in the state would crumble. (It almost did.) Generally, though, Republicans are eager to make post-Election Day counting seem dubious because it amplifies the idea that the original, friendlier results are the ones that should count.
It’s also important to recognize that, in some places, Republicans actively make the counting slower. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake summarized this in an article last week, showing how Republican legislatures had often implemented rules preventing election workers from getting mail ballots ready in advance. (In other words, to shift some of those millions of hours of work earlier in the process.) That happened in Pennsylvania both in 2020 and this year.
Consider the warning offered by the sole Republican commissioner on Philadelphia’s elections board.
“I want to be very clear that when there are conversations that occur later this evening about whether or not Philadelphia has counted all of their ballots,” Seth Bluestein said, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, “that the reason that some ballots would not be counted is that Republicans targeted Philadelphia — and only Philadelphia — to force us to conduct a procedure that no other county does.”
In other words, be wary if there are questions raised about the security of the vote in Philadelphia as votes from the city are slowly counted. They would have been done counting sooner had they been allowed to by Republican officials.
Tom Fitton is an activist who has been energetic in bolstering Trump’s politics. He offered a succinct response to Jean-Pierre’s articulation of the need to be patient in waiting for election results.
Counting ballots after Election Day undermines voter confidence. https://t.co/fqjYuq1RTa
Counting ballots after Election Day erodes voter confidence if you use the counting of ballots after Election Day as a tactic for eroding voter confidence. There is no practical difference between waiting three hours for 100 percent of precincts to report and waiting 24 hours for 100 percent of votes to be counted. There is a political difference, and that’s why Fitton and others insist on elevating it. | 2022-11-08T18:37:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The disingenuous effort to cast suspicion on vote-counting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/disingenuous-effort-cast-suspicion-vote-counting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/disingenuous-effort-cast-suspicion-vote-counting/ |
Oxon Hill volleyball represents for Prince George’s; a defending champ in soccer is disqualified
Oxon Hill poses with its Prince George's County Championship trophy after beating Bowie in three straight sets. (Hayley Salvatore)
The Oxon Hill volleyball team defeated Bowie in three straight sets last week to repeat as Prince George’s County champions and then started preparing for a 3A state tournament that promised uncertainty.
In addition to competing in a less competitive league, the Clippers, as the only 3A school located in Prince George’s, would face teams they had never seen before. To prepare for the tougher competition, they invited the boys’ basketball team to their practice in preparation for the bigger blocks they will see.
They received a first-round bye and then continued their winning ways by sweeping Chesapeake in Monday’s semifinals. Next up is second-seeded Crofton on Wednesday night.
“I’m really excited to see what my team can get into and how they can overcome adversity,” junior Kennedy White said entering the tournament. “The true champions are the ones that come out during the hard times, and I think my team can execute that really well.”
Prince George’s may be an ‘untapped market’ for volleyball, but it lacks resources to flourish
Unlike other counties in Maryland where volleyball is largely introduced to girls before they reach high school, the sport is still developing in Prince George’s. Athletic Republic Stars Volleyball Club, run by Alva Amaker and James Jackson out of District Heights, created a club program for middle-schoolers in the hopes of generating more competitive play.
So winning the county title and earning a shot to represent on the state level was especially meaningful for the Clippers (16-0).
“The way they played tonight gives us great momentum going into the playoffs,” Coach Andria Bynum said after the county championship. “It’s huge for P.G. County, it’s huge for my girls and our school because volleyball is not traditionally great in PG.”
Last postseason was a dream for Northwestern. After tussling through a hard-nosed Prince George’s County, the Wildcats got hot in the playoffs and rode momentum all the way to a 3-2 win over Northwest in the Maryland 4A championship. It was the program’s third state title and first since 1995.
This fall, the reigning champions looked to be in good shape. Despite losing key starters to graduation, Northwestern seemed to maintain some of last year’s magic, and the team entered the postseason as the undefeated champions of Prince George’s County.
But last week, ahead of a region final meeting with DuVal, Northwestern’s title defense ended in heartbreak as the program was disqualified from the state tournament. According to Coach Victor Ramirez, the decision stemmed from the team’s use of an ineligible player. Ramirez said he and his coaching staff were unaware of the ineligibility.
“The students are devastated,” Ramirez said by text. “I wish the person who knew the information would have contacted me directly and I would have reported it myself. Instead, my team, who has worked so hard and was undefeated, did not got the opportunity to complete their season.”
Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association officials did not respond to a request for comment.
With Northwestern out, DuVal advanced to Friday’s state quarterfinal game, where the Tigers lost to Urbana on penalty kicks. Urbana will face Bowie in this weekend’s Maryland 4A semifinals, with Severna Park facing Blair in the other semifinal.
As Crofton junior Avery Landez headed into the woods at the Maryland 3A South Region championship course in Chesapeake on Thursday, a spectator yelled to watch out for deer. A few weeks earlier, a teammate had shared a video of a deer hitting a cross-country runner.
But, she thought, runners don’t actually meet that fate. Until a startled deer, one she initially caught out of the corner of her eye and then tried to speed up to avoid, ran directly into her side.
“From that point on, all I could think was, ‘Ugh, I hate deer,’ ” Landez said with a laugh.
Landez got up, dusted herself off and crossed the finish line in 21 minutes 46.2 seconds, just eight seconds off a personal record. Her 10th place finish helped Crofton, which earned second place, qualify for the state championship meet.
“I was just thinking, ‘I kind of want to quit right now,’ ” Landez said. “But I’m not going to let this deer be the reason I don’t finish this race. I had a goal of breaking 21 minutes, and I didn’t do that, but I think I did pretty okay for getting hit by a deer.”
At school the next day, an announcement arrived. They will be naming that section of the course after Landez — and adding a deer crossing sign.
With Georgetown Day trailing Episcopal for most of the Independent School League A division final Friday afternoon, the question on the Hoppers’ sideline wasn’t if they would knot the score; the question was when they’d equalize.
Georgetown Day had fallen behind early in other games this season before rallying for victories. Those heroics reemerged at Potomac School in McLean.
Senior Maya Ryu tied the score at four with 4:19 remaining. In the final seconds, Georgetown Day forward Dionne Harris netted her third goal for a 5-4 victory.
“They all had a belief that they could come back,” Coach Katie Redmond said. “That’s something special to be able to come back every time when you’re down; to just believe in yourself enough and put yourself out there on the line, giving everything you’ve got, just for the possibility of winning that game.”
After a rare losing record last year, Georgetown Day (14-3-1) fell to the ISL’s lower division. The Hoppers aspired to return to the ISL AA division with a regular season and tournament title. They accomplished that while finishing undefeated against division opponents.
“It’s been a really fun year with them,” said Redmond, whose squad will compete in this week’s D.C. State Athletic Association tournament. “That tends to make the difference when things are fun; the kids tend to play better.”
After suffering an upset during last month’s ISL semifinals, Potomac School immediately got back to work rebuilding the squad before the state tournament.
Facing a different tournament format in the Virginia Independent School Athletic Association, the Panthers have been hosting team-wide round robins to fill two additional singles spots on the lineup. But before any squad shake-ups are finalized, their first priority is making sure their morale is in good shape.
“It’s pretty difficult to bounce back from a loss, especially earlier in the ISL tournament than we wanted,” senior captain Maia Phillips said. “But we kind of just jumped right in. Literally the day after ISLs were over, we made it a point to get to the courts and work on everything that we could have done better.”
Phillips says having nearly two weeks between the tournaments helped her and her teammates reset mentally as they eye a VISAA title. A slew of lineup changes have also made a difference for the Panthers. Unlike in the ISL, the state tournament allows players to sign up for slots in both singles and doubles. For Phillips, that means preparing to play doubles for the first time this season, in addition to her role as fourth singles.
“It’s getting the chemistry with your partner, that’s the most important thing,” Phillips said. “I feel like it’s not as much of a strategy or technique or skill thing. It’s mostly just getting used to playing with other people.”
This week’s VISAA tournament, which will wrap up Saturday, could feature a finals rematch between Potomac and state rival Collegiate, as the Panthers seek redemption after last year’s loss.
After its first practice this year, Coach Leslee Brady could tell Spalding was jelling. In addition to returning six sophomores who earned an Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A championship as freshmen, she had a feeling this group would be just as strong off the field.
The Cavaliers (17-4) were indeed a tough out, but their season came to an end Sunday in Owings Mills with a 3-1 loss to Garrison Forest in a rematch of last year’s conference title game.
Spalding scored 68 goals in the regular season while holding opponents to just 11. Most of the team should return next year, as only two seniors were in Spalding’s starting lineup. Junior Sam Pratt scored the Cavaliers’ lone goal Sunday, an equalizer that helped the title game remain a 1-1 battle into the fourth quarter.
Despite the loss, it was a successful year for Brady, who completed her 26th season guiding the Cavaliers. In September they defeated Washington Catholic Athletic Conference champion St. John’s, 7-0, and beat eventual Independent School League champion Stone Ridge, 4-0. | 2022-11-08T18:38:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oxon Hill volleyball represents for Prince George’s; a defending champ in soccer is disqualified - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/oxon-hill-volleyball-represents-prince-georges-defending-champ-soccer-is-disqualified/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/oxon-hill-volleyball-represents-prince-georges-defending-champ-soccer-is-disqualified/ |
An election worker scans mail-in ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on Nov. 7 in Phoenix. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“The AP is not a news organization. It is a propaganda factory. American Pravda should not be allowed to ‘call’ elections. That should be up to the Department of State in each state, in a timely and transparent manner.”
— Christina Pushaw, rapid response director, Ron DeSantis campaign, in a tweet, Oct. 27
The Fox affiliate in Phoenix last month accidentally aired during a live broadcast a test election result from the Associated Press showing the Democratic candidate for governor winning that state’s hard-fought election. The incident drew outrage from Republicans on social media, including the tweet above, although the station quickly acknowledged the mistake: “This graphic was never meant to go on air — the numbers were only part of a test. The station has taken steps to make sure this cannot happen again.”
Pushaw’s tweet misrepresents what happens. In fact, the AP reports election results that are provided by state and local officials, using its vast network of employees and affiliates. At a certain point, based on how many votes remain to be counted, AP may conclude that a candidate is the winner because no other candidate can catch up. That’s newsworthy. But the AP does not engage in speculation or projections. And no election is official until all of the votes are counted and the election results are certified.
The AP’s singular place in conveying U.S. election results dates back to the mid-19th century. Here’s an explanation about how, and why, its role emerged.
The AP was created in 1846 largely as a result of the invention of the telegraph by Samuel Morse a couple years earlier. Historian David Walker Howe, in his Pulitzer-Prize winning “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848,” traces the formation of mass political parties to this revolution in communications. At the time, newspapers were organs of political parties. They “quickly enlisted the telegraph in their quest to gather and distribute information,” he wrote.
But there was a problem. The new instrument could handle only a certain number of messages at a time, creating a logjam in the distribution of news, Howe said. Six newspapers in New York in 1848 joined to form the AP to ease the congestion — but also because they feared competition from Morse’s landline telegraph network, according to Richard R. John, a professor of history and communications at Columbia University.
Meanwhile, in 1845, Congress passed a law that for the first time set a national Election Day, replacing a previous 34-day window.
Thus the first presidential election that took place on a single day was the 1848 contest between Gen. Zachary Taylor, a Whig, Sen. Lewis Cass, a Democrat, and a former Democratic president, Martin Van Buren, running on a third-party ticket. The AP was in place to report on the news, spending the then-astronomical sum of $1,000 on telegraph tolls to pool information on election results from local newspapers in the 30 states that voted then.
According to Howe, “counting the votes proceeded so slowly it took a week to reveal the outcome” — that Taylor had defeated Cass, 163 electoral votes to 127.
The AP reported the outcome but “was not formed to ‘call’ elections,” John said, adding that he has seen no evidence the AP “called” either the 1848 or the 1852 election — “or that anyone would have paid attention if it had.” But from that point, the news organization took on the responsibility of collecting information about election results — a 2007 history of the AP recounts how the Pony Express was used to collect California’s results in 1860 so it could be dispatched via telegraph — and announcing who had won.
To this day, the United States has no central election authority, with elections run by more than 8,000 local governments. That has kept the AP central to the reporting of news on elections.
“We have 4,000 stringers reporting the vote, in addition to 1,000 vote entry clerks, and AP’s regular staff,” said Lauren Easton, AP’s vice president for communications. “It’s a significant investment.”
According to the AP, in the 2020 election, the news organization declared the winners in more than 7,000 races. “AP does not make projections or name apparent or likely winners. If our race callers cannot definitively say a candidate has won, we do not engage in speculation,” the AP’s website says. “AP did not call the closely contested race in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore — we stood behind our assessment that the margin in Florida made it too close to say who won.”
In 2020, the AP says it was 99.9 percent accurate in all of its race calls — and perfect in declaring presidential and congressional races in each state. The AP no longer uses exit polls to assist in making its election decisions, believing interviewing voters at polling places no longer yields a complete picture of the electorate. Instead, it supplements the vote count with a massive survey of registered voters taken in the days before polls close.
David Greenberg, a Rutgers University history professor, said that in many ways, the United States is moving back to a political system in place when the AP began tracking election results nearly 175 years ago. Some news organizations have become more partisan and closely associated with political parties — and, with the advent of mail and absentee voting, the vote count is taking longer to yield a winner.
“There was not an expectation that the winner of the election would be quickly known until the 20th century,” Greenberg said. “We now may have to live with the fact that results are going come in after a week or two.”
Will Democrats regret boosting far-right candidates in the primaries?
7:05 PMDispatch from Michigan: Voting for GOP because of abortion, covid rules
7:03 PMRarity in California, it’s raining on Election Day | 2022-11-08T19:20:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here’s why — and how — the Associated Press ‘calls’ elections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/heres-why-how-associated-press-calls-elections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/heres-why-how-associated-press-calls-elections/ |
D.C. gang member describes shooting that killed college-bound teenager
Philip McDaniel testified against two of his friends who are on trial in connection with the death of Jamahri Sydnor
Jamahri Sydnor, 17, was shot in the head by a stray bullet as she passed through a Northeast Washington intersection in 2017. (Courtesy of A’Mee Barnes)
Philip McDaniel took the witness stand in D.C. Superior Court wearing an orange D.C. jail jumpsuit, his wrists and ankles shackled. His two friends are on trial in connection with the fatal shooting of a college-bound 17-year-old, who was struck by a stray bullet one August afternoon five years ago. And McDaniel, who admitted to driving the men away from the scene, is prosecutors’ star witness.
The shooting, McDaniel said, was an attempt to get revenge against a rival neighborhood gang in Northeast Washington, though the teen, Jamahri Sydnor, was not the target. A day earlier, McDaniel said, a man in the Saratoga Crew shot at him and his two friends in the Langston Park Crew: James Mayfield and Robert Moses. They set out for payback, not caring who in the other neighborhood would be shot, McDaniel testified.
McDaniel described how he drove his gold Honda Accord into the intersection of Saratoga and Montana avenues, stopped the car and left the ignition running with his foot on the brake. He said he watched as Mayfield and Moses pulled masks over their faces, hopped out of the car and casually walked away through some bushes.
McDaniel said he knew what was about to happen, so he turned the radio volume up.
“I wanted to relax myself a bit,” he told Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberley Nielsen. “I was feeling kind of nervous. I kind of had butterflies, you know. It was something that was going to happen.”
Their college-bound daughter was killed by a stray bullet. Then their act of kindness touched thousands.
McDaniel said he couldn’t see anything from inside the car. But about a minute later, he heard as many as four gunshots. He said he then saw his two friends “jogging” back to the car.
Mayfield, holding a .45 caliber handgun, McDaniel said, got into the back seat. Moses, now holding a .40 caliber, McDaniel said, also returned to the car. One of the men — McDaniel couldn’t remember which — yelled, “Go.”
McDaniel said he lifted his foot off the brake and pressed down on the gas pedal.
McDaniel, 26, is critical to prosecutors’ case against Mayfield and Moses, the two 23-year-old men who authorities allege hid in the bushes and indiscriminately fired multiple bullets into a busy intersection on the afternoon of Aug. 10, 2017. One of those bullets shattered the window of Jamahri’s car as she was driving her 12-year-old nephew home from a barbershop.
A graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School in upper-Northwest Washington, Jamahri was less than two weeks away from her freshman year as a communications major at Florida A&M University. She was struck in the head, and died two days later. Her mother, a former D.C. police detective, has described racing to the scene after relatives called to tell her Jamahri had been shot.
She testified about murders as a detective. Then she had to do so as a mom.
McDaniel, who was arrested just hours after the fatal shooting, eventually told homicide detectives that he was the getaway driver. Authorities said that he alleged that it was Moses and Mayfield — two of his lifelong friends — who fired the shots.
During some of McDaniel’s testimony, security in the courtroom was heightened, with six U.S. marshals positioned throughout the room.
Defense attorneys argued that McDaniel was one of the shooters, and has been lying to authorities since his arrest. They allege he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and a conspiracy charge to secure a lighter prison sentence than Mayfield and Moses, who are charged with first-degree murder and face more than 40 years in prison if convicted.
Under cross examination by Moses’s attorney, Steven Kiersh, McDaniel admitted to telling one of his former girlfriends that he hopes to be out of prison in about seven years due to his cooperation, having already served five years in the D.C. jail. And under questioning by Veronice Holt, Mayfield’s attorney, McDaniel acknowledged that Mayfield was never thinly built with dreadlocks or plaits — which is how a witness had described one of the shooters. That description is more aligned with McDaniel himself.
Defense attorneys also argue that McDaniel was too high on drugs to remember details of the events. McDaniel conceded using a wide range of drugs and selling guns and stolen cars since he was a teen, and he acknowledged he had taken Percocet and smoked marijuana on the day of the shooting. He also admitted to lying to detectives several times after his arrest, including about selling a gun to an undercover police officer after signing his cooperation agreement.
“I didn’t want to get into more trouble,” he said.
McDaniel described how he had been close with Moses and Mayfield before the shooting. After his mother died of a heroin overdose when he was a teen, McDaniel said that he, his then-girlfriend and their baby daughter moved in with Moses, Moses’s brother and their mother. McDaniel said he has known Moses since he was 12 years old, and referred to him as his “brother.” He referred to Moses’s mother as “mom.”
As McDaniel testified, Moses stared straight ahead. McDaniel said he considered Mayfield “like a brother, too.”
McDaniel said all three were part of the Langston Park Crew, and the day before the deadly shooting, they spotted a member of the rival Saratoga Crew on the sidewalk.
“We plotted to catch him on the next street,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel said they drove past the man, jumped out of the car and grabbed him by his jacket. “My intent was to assault him,” McDaniel said. But then, the man pulled a gun out of his waistband and fired three or four rounds into the air above them. They let the man go, and he ran off.
“I was laughing,” McDaniel recalled. It was then the three men planned a “get back,” as McDaniel called it. They agreed to drive to the 1400 block of Saratoga Avenue and begin shooting “at no specific person” he said. “They shot at us, so we was going to do the same thing back,” McDaniel said.
The case, which is in Judge Maribeth Raffinan’s courtroom, could go to the jury for deliberations as early as Nov. 15. | 2022-11-08T20:08:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. gang member describes shooting that killed college-bound teenager - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/shooting-jamahri-sydnor-gang-retaliation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/shooting-jamahri-sydnor-gang-retaliation/ |
Bring Austin Tice home
Marc and Debra Tice, the parents of Austin Tice, who has been missing in Syria, at a Dec. 4, 2018, news conference at the Press Club in Beirut. (Bilal Hussein/Associated Press)
The Nov. 4 Sports article “Griner meets with American officials” reported that U.S. Embassy officials in Russia met with Brittney Griner. That’s good news. Austin Tice deserves the same commitment of U.S. diplomacy.
It has been more than six months since President Biden directed his national security adviser to establish direct contact with Syrian government officials to bring Mr. Tice home. Mr. Tice, a Georgetown University alumnus who was preparing for his final year at Georgetown Law, traveled to Syria as a freelance reporter to report on the effects of the conflict there on Syria’s children. Mr. Tice is an Eagle Scout who served with distinction as a Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since Mr. Biden’s directive, the 10th anniversary of Mr. Tice’s captivity has come and gone. Mr. Tice has reached his 41st birthday.
It is heartening that the U.S. government remains confident Mr. Tice is alive. But it is time to redouble efforts to reach out directly to Syrian government officials without further delay.
As we think about the families of Ms. Griner and Paul Whelan, we pray for them to be reunited soon. But they would be the first to say they could not endure the idea that they might have to wait 10 years to see their loved ones. That is what the Tices have been forced to endure. The U.S. government is simply not bringing sufficient urgency or force of will to this task.
If our government can negotiate with Russian officials in pursuit of Ms. Griner and Mr. Whelan, it makes no sense that we can’t engage with Syrian officials to secure Mr. Tice’s safe return.
Scott S. Fleming, Falls Church | 2022-11-08T20:09:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Bring Austin Tice home - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/bring-austin-tice-home/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/bring-austin-tice-home/ |
How to fix inflation without killing the middle class
Regarding the Nov. 2 editorial “The high price of beating inflation”:
Congratulations on figuring out the cure for inflation: The Federal Reserve must drive “down demand” because the poor and middle classes have too much money and just won’t stop spending! Ergo, the poor and middle classes must give up their ill-gotten gains; the Fed must force them to lose their jobs and to pay more in the form of credit card interest, student-loan interest, car-loan interest and mortgage interest (which will cancel out any benefit from reduced gas and food prices). Their wages also must be suppressed because, in the view of employers, higher wages just cause them (oh so reluctantly) to charge higher prices, creating a “wage-price spiral.” The rich, on the other hand, who were never affected much by inflation in the first place, also — for the most part — do not borrow to finance their lifestyles and will not be much affected by higher interest rates.
Why not try something new — i.e., not so reliant on trickle-down monetary policy? Impose an “excess profits tax” on the oil, pharmaceutical and other companies and an income tax surcharge on the wealthy. Doing so would have the dual benefits of removing excess money from the economy and reducing the national debt without forcing the poorest 95 percent to bear the brunt of the “cure.” We might even avoid a recession.
Deborah Beers, Glen Echo | 2022-11-08T20:09:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How to fix inflation without killing the middle class - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/how-fix-inflation-without-killing-middle-class/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/how-fix-inflation-without-killing-middle-class/ |
What we can learn from the data on nonfatal police shootings
Protesters march in the street in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 20, 2014. (Jeff Roberson/AP Photo)
After Michael Brown, an unarmed Black man, was killed in 2014 by police in Ferguson, Mo., Post reporters set out to answer a simple question. Exactly how many people are shot and killed by police? The FBI collects data but reporting by police departments is voluntary and many don’t participate. The Post investigation found that nearly 1,000 people — more than twice the number listed by the FBI — died in police-involved shootings in 2015. But those startling numbers (which sadly have remained unchanged each year since The Post started its database) were only part of the story. Also important is how many are shot by police and survive. A new Post investigation finds those numbers are equally startling.
The Post’s investigation examined 156 police departments that recorded five or more deadly police shootings from 2015 to 2020 and found that in addition to the 2,137 people who were killed, 1,609 were shot and wounded. The departments examined by The Post, ranging in size from small rural ones to those in major metropolitan areas, account for just a fraction of the more than 18,000 federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies in the United States, and so the figures provided only a narrow look at what is clearly a much wider problem. That there are no good numbers and no real scrutiny of nonfatal police shootings hinders the ability to devise strategies to address — and hopefully reduce — the use of lethal force.
Only a handful of states have requirements for the collection and public reporting of nonfatal police shootings, and the National Use-of-Force Data Collection established in 2015 has yet to release all of its information because one of its threshold requirements — at least 80 percent of law enforcement officers — has not been reached. That information gap makes all the more valuable the work of The Post in partnership with Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. Among the findings of reporters Brian Howey, Wesley Lowery and Steven Rich: nearly all those shot were men and many struggled with addiction, homelessness and poverty. At least 1 in 5 who were shot was experiencing mental health crises and racial disparities were pronounced, with Black individuals disproportionately affected.
The damage in the way of debilitating injuries, trauma and legal problems is profound. But also put at risk in these encounters are police officers. Of the 3,746 fatal and nonfatal shootings examined by The Post, there were 246 in which at least one officer was shot; in those, 28 officers were killed and 279 were wounded.
The glimpse into nonfatal shooting provided by The Post should spur states to adopt policies in which any use of force — whether fatal or nonfatal — undergoes timely and meaningful review and the data is made available to the public. “That kind of information is necessary to develop strategies to reduce officer-involved shootings,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum. “What matters is it was a shooting, whether they died or not. The real question is, what can we learn from that?” | 2022-11-08T20:09:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What we can learn from the data on nonfatal police shootings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/nonfatal-police-shootings-investigation-data/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/nonfatal-police-shootings-investigation-data/ |
A student types code on a laptop computer during a cyberdefense programming class at Korea University in Seoul in 2015. (SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg News)
Ransomware is expensive. The scourge of malicious software designed to block access to computer systems until money is paid for their release is expected to cost the world an estimated $265 billion annually by 2031. This global problem requires global solutions, which is why the international summit that the White House convened last week should be seen as a welcome start.
President Biden’s administration brought together 36 countries and the European Union for the second round of the Counter Ransomware initiative. This year, the private sector was included, too. The event represents the closest, most concrete collaboration among nations on an issue that none of them can tackle alone. The key to stopping criminal hacking gangs is to turn their trade unprofitable. But these groups won’t decide to retire when their jobs become more difficult in, say, Belgium if they’re still making easy money in Brazil. The good news is, any country’s effective anti-ransomware measures have the potential to help protect all its peers.
This challenge comes in two parts: avoiding attacks and catching attackers. The most obvious thing businesses and governments can do to thwart ransomware groups is to bolster their defenses. Participants in the summit have agreed to create a task force that will put together best practices for shoring up systems generally. The task force will also exchange intelligence on cyberthreats, so that systems will also be better equipped against specific incursions. A vulnerability discovered anywhere, with the right kind of communication, can be patched everywhere. Criminals who hold computers hostage for cash will also be discouraged if they can’t move the money they demand. Hence the summit’s well-placed focus on anti-money-laundering standards for the cryptocurrency ecosystem, including know-your-customer rules.
The cryptocurrency questions require not only potent defenses but also offensive strategies. Ideally, countries will share information about “wallets” that bad actors use to launder their gains, as well as ways to trace stolen funds to ransomware actors’ accounts — with savvier nations instructing the less experienced in how to follow the money.
Perhaps the most important decision from the summit is tucked into a single sentence: Members, the official readout declared, will “work together to increase political costs on countries that harbor and enable ransomware actors.” The statement reveals the inherent challenge that could impede the success of any conference like this. Willing nations have come together to take action, but without some help from the as-yet unwilling, progress will prove difficult. China, Iran, North Korea and especially Russia, as well as others, are known for offering haven to ransomware actors; none of these participated in the summit, and they’re unlikely as well to sign on to any of the more formal multilateral agreements that would enshrine its recommendations.
Last week’s pledge to increase costs on countries that won’t uphold the rule of law was open-ended, but there are plenty of options for carrying it out, from imposing sanctions, to naming and shaming, to quieter, behind-the-scenes cajoling. The job ahead for summit participants isn’t only to hold themselves to account for their commitments, but to hold the rest of the world to account as well. | 2022-11-08T20:09:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The ransomware threat demands global answers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/ransomware-white-house-global-summit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/ransomware-white-house-global-summit/ |
Stop changing clocks, but don’t keep it standard
The Nov. 6 news article “Why daylight saving time is worse for your body than standard time” noted that “our internal clock” is “in sync with the solar day.” Though I agree that switching our clocks causes disruptions to our internal clocks that far outweigh any benefits, we should be converting to year-round daylight saving, not standard, time.
Yes, year-round standard time ensures that the solar day is centered on 12 p.m. But our schedules don’t center on 12 p.m. — the center of the 9-to-5 workday is actually 1 p.m. Year-round daylight saving, not standard, time, would keep our internal clocks aligned with society, placing the middle of the solar day at 1 p.m., the middle of our workday. It would minimize the number of days where 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. commuters have to drive in the dark, and, according to a 2012 Stanford study, the evening brightness would significantly reduce violent crime. Year-round daylight saving is the safest and most logical choice, giving us sunlight when we need it the most.
Vincent K. Trang, Ashburn
It really should be called daylight taking time. In addition to the health consequences detailed by Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright in their Nov. 4 op-ed, “Let’s say a permanent good night to daylight saving time,” shifting the clocks twice a year is redistributive and coercive.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that at 7 a.m. on a typical weekday, 50 million Americans are on the clock. That means that their workday begins at 7 a.m. or earlier. These workers don’t get more daylight when we fiddle with the clocks in the spring; they get more darkness. They end up spending more of their waking hours in gloom.
These workers are high school teachers, bus drivers, doctors, nurses, orderlies, cops, firefighters and baristas who make sure the coffee is hot when the 9-to-5 workers show up at Starbucks. Shifting the clocks takes daylight from them and awards it to those who get up later.
If the latter wish to enjoy summer’s long days, they can choose to get up earlier without forcing everyone else to do so as well.
Jim Klumpner, Silver Spring | 2022-11-08T20:09:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Stop changing clocks, but don’t keep it standard - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/stop-changing-clocks-dont-keep-it-standard/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/stop-changing-clocks-dont-keep-it-standard/ |
Taiwan is on the frontlines of China’s worldwide cyberwar
As China ramps up its cyberattacks on Taiwan’s democracy, the island’s leaders are building both the infrastructure for defense and the capabilities to fight back. One of the Taiwanese government’s major projects is preparing a backup system to keep the country online if China tries to cut it off from the internet altogether.
Beijing is deploying cyber campaigns in many countries but nowhere as intensively as in Taiwan. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Taiwan in August, the Chinese government took its tactics to a new level. Beijing coordinated conventional retaliatory measures, such as missile tests, mock bombing runs and military exercises that mimicked a blockade, with a cyberwarfare and disinformation campaign meant to disrupt Taiwan’s democracy and undermine its people’s grasp on reality.
Taiwan is responding by bolstering its cyber resilience. The Ukraine war has heightened Taipei’s sense of urgency by demonstrating that a country under attack can’t necessarily rely on foreign governments or foreign billionaires — such as Elon Musk — when the crisis hits. And the reality is that China and Taiwan are already locked in online conflict on many fronts.
“It’s not like we’re preparing ourselves for something in the future,” Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s first “digital minister,” told me in an interview in Taipei. “What we’re facing now will probably continue for a while, and we need to prepare ourselves for it, much like we prepare our infrastructure for earthquakes.”
Tang’s Ministry of Digital Affairs, which opened just this August, is central to Taiwan’s effort to build cyber resilience among the population and update government institutions.
Taiwan’s most ambitious project is building a network of non-geostationary satellites to keep the internet going if Beijing cuts the undersea internet cables. The project is still in its early stages. The goal is to have 700 satellite receivers deployed in low- or mid-earth orbit, connected to mobile 5G towers on the ground. Applications for vendors are set to open this month.
One possible applicant could be Musk’s company SpaceX, which operates the satellite communications network Starlink, with more than 3,000 small satellites in low-earth orbit. Starlink has been crucial to Ukraine’s ability to keep its broadband capabilities intact so both the government and journalists can do their jobs and fight Moscow’s disinformation.
But Musk threatened to stop providing Starlink for Ukraine after Ukrainian officials criticized his public proposals for a Moscow-friendly negotiating platform. Taiwan’s government wants a system that can’t be cut off by any foreign firm or business executive. Taiwan’s leaders know that in the first days of a Chinese attack, Taiwan’s ability to communicate directly with the world will be crucial to its survival.
“A lot of international correspondents are in Taiwan now,” said Tang. “If we don’t provide them with a broadband link in the event of a disaster, natural or unnatural, then of course, the disinformation will win the war.”
Musk has also proposed that Taiwan rejoin China under the one-country, two-systems model, an idea that Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, told me was exactly the same as Beijing’s line.
“It’s a Chinese proposal,” Wu said. “The people of Taiwan … they are not interested in this.”
In the meantime, Taipei is already fighting a daily battle against Chinese hybrid cyberwarfare and disinformation campaigns. Beijing has used its information warfare machine to undermine Taiwanese people’s confidence in their government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Chinese influence campaigns promote pro-Beijing candidates in Taiwanese elections. Most recently, China is focused on convincing Taiwanese people that their democracy is a facade and that their leaders are controlled by the CIA.
Increasingly, Tang said, Beijing is integrating disinformation and cyberattacks to powerful effect. After the Pelosi visit in August, cyber attackers disabled the website of the Taiwanese president’s office and its Ministry of National Defense. While the websites were offline, propagandists spread disinformation about the Taiwanese government’s actions, knowing people could not refer to the official sources. Hackers took over an electronic billboard at a rail station and broadcast an anti-Pelosi, pro-Chinese Communist Party message.
“Pelosi’s visit, that’s like a drill, that’s like a taste of what’s to come,” Tang said.
Tang, 41, represents a generation of Taiwanese people who have never experienced being ruled by China and don’t want to be. Both of her grandfathers fought against the Chinese Communist Party for the Republic of China Armed Forces, also known at the time as the Nationalist army. Her father was a journalist in Tiananmen Square in the runup to the June 1989 massacre of students.
She rose to prominence during the 2014 Sunflower Movement, in which she used her hacker skills to help student protesters occupying the Legislative Yuan broadcast their message. That led to her helping the government implement media literacy programs in Taiwan’s schools. The island’s first transgender cabinet minister, she often wears a shirt with Ukraine’s coat of arms on it.
Tang’s personal mission is to use technology to decentralize government and increase civic engagement. For example, Taiwan created an online contest to allow people to vote for their favorite vaccine, as an attempt to turn vaccine skepticism into vaccine adoption. A “humor over rumor” campaign helped fight covid disinformation in an engaging way.
Not all of Taiwan’s solutions will apply to the United States, where disinformation often comes from within our political system. But China’s tactics are increasingly being used inside America. Chinese hackers are attacking U.S. government websites. Beijing’s influence operations are widespread on American social media platforms and in the American media.
The good news is that China’s favored narrative about the superiority of autocracies is being undermined by Xi Jinping’s faltering economy, “wolf warrior” diplomacy and unpopular domestic crackdowns. Democracies such as Taiwan, Ukraine and the United States are “natural allies” in fighting China’s cyberwarfare strategy, Tang said, but they must do more to prove that their model can work better in a digital world. | 2022-11-08T20:09:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Taiwan is on the frontlines of China’s worldwide cyberwar - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/taiwan-internet-resilience-china-cyberattacks-disinformation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/taiwan-internet-resilience-china-cyberattacks-disinformation/ |
Problems with voting machines in Arizona’s Maricopa County trigger unfounded fraud claims
The issue was affecting about 20 percent of machines, officials said. No one was being prevented from voting, and lines were short in many locations.
On Nov. 8, Maricopa County elections officials said tabulators at about 20 percent of the 223 voting locations in the county were experiencing problems. (Video: The Washington Post)
PHOENIX — Problems with machines at some voting locations in Maricopa County, home to more than half of Arizona’s voters, became grist for prominent right-wing voices who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election to claim without evidence that Tuesday’s vote was also fraudulent.
“Right now we’re focused on making sure that voters are able to participate today and we can have further conversations tomorrow and in the future … as we look to find that root cause,” she said.
Critics of Arizona’s voting systems seized on the tabulation machine problems on Twitter and conservative social media sites, offering them as examples of a need to overhaul the state’s voting systems. One post included a video of a poll worker advising voters of their options and had already been viewed more than a half-million times. It was posted by Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer of the political arm of the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA. That group supports in-person voting at individual precincts on Election Day, and Bowyer has been critical of the state’s early-voting system.
“The fix is in!” wrote the Gateway Pundit, a blog that was a key spreader of false claims about the 2020 election. “Why are tax payers money being used to pay for tabulators that don’t work? Looks like it’s time to go back to what worked on Election day. Paper Ballots & Hand Counting!” wrote an account for Diamond and Silk, a comedy duo.
Those preemptively suggesting something nefarious was occurring included Blake Masters, Arizona’s Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. Masters, who is vying to unseat Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), was the most prominent candidate to amplify the suspicions, painting isolated incidents of mechanical errors as a Democratic ploy. “Hard to know if we’re seeing incompetence or something worse,” he wrote. “All we know right now is that the Democrats are hoping you will get discouraged and go home.”
Researchers tracking the spread of online misinformation said problems with voting machines were among the most common drivers of conspiracy theorizing early Tuesday, with the narrative stretching beyond Arizona and reaching Michigan and Pennsylvania as well.
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7:51 PMDispatch from Wisconsin: A Trump-like gubernatorial candidate wins over one voter | 2022-11-08T20:09:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Problems with voting machines in Arizona’s Maricopa County trigger unfounded fraud claims - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/problems-with-voting-machines-arizonas-maricopa-county-trigger-unfounded-fraud-claims/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/problems-with-voting-machines-arizonas-maricopa-county-trigger-unfounded-fraud-claims/ |
Ice hockey preseason rankings: St. John’s boys and girls begin No. 1
St. John’s goalie Chase Hornbecker makes a save against Landon during the Mid-Atlantic Prep Hockey League championship last season. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Last year, St. John’s boys and girls both took home the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference championship ice hockey titles, as well as the Mid-Atlantic Prep and Girls Hockey League trophies. The perennially strong Cadets are set on repeating.
Though the boys lost All-Met Player of the Year Andrew Kurowski, Aidan Foster and Matt Grisius to graduation, the rest of the team remains mostly intact.
Chase Hornbecker is returning for his senior season in net, this time with a captain’s “C” on his sweater. Though it’s unconventional for a goalie to be named captain, for the Cadets it was a no-brainer. Hornbecker had an incredible postseason that earned St. John’s its championship titles.
“He’s a four-year leader for our team, and the guys really rally around him,” assistant coach David Sauer said.
The Cadets have started this season with wins against Bishop O’Connell and Mount St. Joseph, and are looking forward to playing WCAC rival Gonzaga, who they will see for the first time just after Thanksgiving and again in February.
On the girls’ side, the Cadets return sophomores Caroline Lokken and Margaux Nicholson, who netted a hat trick to help clinch the MAGHL title last season. Because of an increase in interest, the Cadets will have two smaller teams — varsity 1 and varsity 2.
Two top players in the area from last year, Stone Ridge’s Katherine Khramtsov and Jen Albero of St. John’s, have both graduated.
“I think the entire landscape of the MAGHL will be different,” Sauer said. “There’s no more Katherine and no more Jen, so things will be different.”
Records from last season
1. St. John’s (20-2-1)
The reigning Mid-Atlantic Prep Hockey League and Washington Catholic Athletic Conference champions have already started the new season on a winning note.
2. Gonzaga (11-9-3)
The annual inter-squad Dominik Pettey Purple and White game showed just how competitive the Eagles will be this season.
3. DeMatha (17-11-1)
Early losses to St. John’s (in a scrimmage) and Archbishop Spalding don’t mean the Stags should be counted out in the MAPHL. The team has an ambitious offense that is just getting started.
4. Archbishop Spalding (2-7-1)
The Cavaliers opened the season with big wins over DeMatha and Mount Saint Joseph to set the tone as competitors within the MAPHL.
5. Langley (10-3-1)
The reigning Northern Virginia School Hockey League champions opened the season with a decisive 10-0 victory over Adams division rival Oakton.
6. Yorktown (11-1-0)
A win against the Heritage/Tuscarora co-op team to open the season puts the Patriots in a good spot as they try to repeat last year’s undefeated regular season and improve upon a first-round exit in the NVSHL tournament.
7. Landon (13-6-1)
With a new coach at the helm and much of their starting lineup returning to the ice, the Bears are hoping to make it back to the MAPHL finals, this time with a win.
8. West Potomac (6-3-1)
The Wolverines have beaten their opponents by six or more goals in their first two games this season.
9. Glenelg (5-4-2)
Despite a short bench, the Gladiators defeated Marriotts Ridge, 4-1, and sit atop the Howard division of the Maryland Student Hockey League.
10. Churchill (13-2-1)
The Bulldogs are seeking their 11th MSHL title, but will have to do it without longtime coach Sam Mvros, who retired at the end of last season.
On the bubble: Stone Bridge, Colgan, Bishop O’Connell, Marriott Ridge, St. Albans, River Hill, Washington-Liberty.
Top 3 girls’ teams
1. St. John’s (8-2-3)
Despite graduating seniors Amelia Haywood and Jen Albero — who helped the team to its first MAGHL title in the Red division — the Cadets are returning the rest of their championship-winning team.
2. Georgetown Visitation (7-2-1)
With Harvard commit Lucy Thiessen returning for her junior season, the Cubs are poised to make an impact in the MAGHL.
3. Stone Ridge (3-2-1)
The Gators will have to work hard to fill the gap created by the departure of Khramtsov, who now plays at Princeton. | 2022-11-08T20:10:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ice hockey preseason rankings: St. John’s boys and girls begin No. 1 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/ice-hockey-preseason-rankings-st-johns-boys-girls-begin-no-1/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/ice-hockey-preseason-rankings-st-johns-boys-girls-begin-no-1/ |
Washington Capitals forward Nicolas Aube-Kubel made his debut in Washington on Monday. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Nicolas Aube-Kubel came to Washington looking for a second chance. He failed to make a lasting impression in Toronto early in the season and the Maple Leafs placed him on waivers last week. It was a disappointing start to the season for Aube-Kubel, who was coming off a career year with the Stanley Cup-winning Colorado Avalanche.
When Washington scooped him off waivers, though, Aube-Kubel immediately saw potential for his game to flourish. Aube-Kubel made his Capitals debut on Monday night in a 5-4 win over the Edmonton Oilers. He recorded 10:19 of ice time and had two shots on goal.
Aube-Kubel, 26, is expected back in Washington’s lineup Wednesday, when the Capitals face rival Pittsburgh at home.
“I already felt better on the ice,” Aube-Kubel said after Monday’s game. “Way more confident … I’m pretty satisfied with 10 minutes, which is not that much but still, it’s easier to get in the game when you play that much.”
With so many injuries in Washington, Aube-Kubel is expected to stay in the Capitals’ lineup for the foreseeable future.
Washington’s injury woes have only worsened in the last week: Dmitry Orlov (lower body), Beck Malenstyn (finger), Nicklas Backstrom (hip), Tom Wilson (knee), Carl Hagelin (eye, hip), Connor Brown (knee), T.J. Oshie (upper body) and John Carlson (lower body) are all out of the lineup.
Aube-Kubel said he struggled with a lack of ice time in Toronto. He felt like he did not get enough chances to show the type of player he is and how he could contribute in the long run.
“I had a slower training camp and preseason, there was a quick turnaround with the Stanley Cup summer and I felt like I was ready but … I didn’t think I played bad,” Aube-Kubel said. “Maybe I didn’t show up enough. They had really good guys there, guys that did the job. My spot got taken away from me.”
Aube-Kubel played on a line with Anthony Mantha and Lars Eller on Monday night. The trio did not get a chance to practice together before the game but still had multiple offensive zone shifts with numerous high-danger chances.
Aube-Kubel had some familiarity with Mantha; he played with the powerful winger in juniors.
“It was nice to have some ice time and play with those two guys,” Aube-Kubel said. “They’re really good. I think we did a really, really good [job in the] first period and of course there was a lot of power play and penalty kill which I stay on the bench, but overall it was a really good game.”
Notes: Orlov practiced Tuesday for the first time since suffering a lower-body injury in Saturday’s loss to Arizona. Washington had an optional practice Tuesday, but Orlov skated in a full-contact jersey. It is unclear if he will be ready to play against Pittsburgh. He is officially listed as day-to-day.
Carlson also participated in the optional practice. He was hurt Oct. 29 at and remains on injured reserve with a lower-body injury. He was eligible to return from IR to play in Monday’s game and has been skating over the past few days but has not been medically cleared. His status for Wednesday is unclear.
The Capitals also recalled defenseman Alex Alexeyev from a conditioning loan with the American Hockey League’s team in Hershey, Pa. He still remains on long-term injured reserve. | 2022-11-08T20:10:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Capitals' Nicolas Aube-Kubel looks to contribute - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/nicolas-aube-kubel-capitals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/08/nicolas-aube-kubel-capitals/ |
“Tulsa King” is a new Paramount+ mob drama starring Sylvester Stallone and created by Terence Winter and Taylor Sheridan. On Thursday, Nov. 10 at 2:00 p.m. ET, Winter joins Washington Post Live to discuss his new show and storied career behind the camera.
Executive Producer, Showrunner & Writer, “Tulsa King”
In Partnership with Paramount+ | 2022-11-08T20:10:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Terence Winter on new show ‘Tulsa King’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/11/10/sylvester-stallone-terence-winter-new-show-tulsa-king/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/11/10/sylvester-stallone-terence-winter-new-show-tulsa-king/ |
How well will Biden’s low approval explain the midterm results?
President Biden speaks at a campaign rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore at Bowie State University on Nov. 7 in Bowie, Md. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
This tweet from FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich was intended mostly as a joke.
Congratulations to Republicans on their victory in the 2022 midterms!
Note the date. He posted that on Nov. 6, 2020, the day Donald Trump’s reelection loss became obvious but even before it was formalized. Back then, more than two years ago, Rakich was making a sort-of-tongue-in-cheek prediction: because first-term presidents almost always see their party lose seats in the first midterm election of their terms, a victory by Joe Biden in 2020 augured a loss by Democrats in 2022.
This could certainly have been wrong. Biden could have been unusually popular and the recovery from the pandemic unusually robust. Lots of things can happen over two years’ time that upend expectations. But this particular expectation, that Republicans will do better in the midterms than Democrats, seems almost inevitable as the final votes are counted.
Raising a question that candidates and consultants and many other observers would rather not ask: To what extent was the outcome of the midterms baked in for most of the past two years?
It is the afternoon of Nov. 8, 2022, as I write, meaning we don’t yet know what the midterms will bring. But we can look at what has happened in past midterms to get a sense.
FiveThirtyEight has historic approval rating averages that allow us to compare apples to apples here — or at least, as close to apples-to-apples as we’re likely to get. If we look at the last 100 days preceding the first midterm election of a new president’s term in office (excluding those who took office under unusual circumstances) we see a few patterns emerge.
One is that there is much less variation in the average now than there used to be. This is largely a function of polarization: Partisans love presidents from their party and hate presidents from the opposing party. We also see that the president whose pre-midterm approval pattern Biden best matches is Ronald Reagan’s, something that the president might find heartening as he considers a 2024 bid.
But what we mostly see is that the level of support for a president’s party in the midterm (indicated with a horizontal dotted line) doesn’t correlate very well with approval. After all, the period before 1994 was one in which Democrats consistently held large majorities in the House even if they didn’t in the Senate or if Republicans controlled the White House. That’s a main reason that the national Democratic House vote in that top row (that is, in 1962 and 1978) is above 50 percent, while the Republican vote (in 1954 and 1970) is below 50 percent — even though Dwight D. Eisenhower was much more popular on Election Day in 1954 than Jimmy Carter was in 1976.
So let’s instead consider the change in seats held by the president’s party in each midterm. Here we see a much sharper correlation.
In only one election — 2002 — did the president’s party gain seats in the midterm. That was largely a function of George W. Bush’s popularity, boosted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In each of the other nine elections since 1954, the president’s party has lost seats. And the less popular the president, the bigger the loss.
The trend line displayed there shows how approval correlates to seat loss or gain, but it is not predictive. For example, it’s not the case that because Biden’s approval average is just north of 40 percent (shown with the horizontal blue dotted line), we can expect Democrats to lose more than 60 seats in the House. Other factors come into play, including how many seats have been drawn to be safe for one party or the other.
In the two previous elections in which presidents have been about as unpopular as Biden, 1982 and 2018, their party lost dozens of seats. Democrats’ losing even one dozen this year means Republican control of the House. In other words, looking only at Biden’s approval, we would expect the GOP victory that Rakich jokingly predicted. Even if Biden’s approval were higher, in fact, his party’s narrow House majority would mean that Republicans probably would gain, given the precedent illustrated above.
There will be a lot of discussion over the next few weeks about what happened and why. Candidates will insist it was their specific qualities that led to their victories; consultants will insist it was their own wily tactics. This is what happens.
The reality is that certain patterns occur in politics over and over again. One of them would suggest that Democrats are in for a bad night Tuesday — as could have been predicted two years ago. | 2022-11-08T20:56:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How well will Biden’s low approval explain the midterm results? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/how-well-will-bidens-low-approval-explain-midterm-results/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/how-well-will-bidens-low-approval-explain-midterm-results/ |
Abortion, inflation, parental rights: Voters tell us what matters
Early on Election Day, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) votes along with his family at Rancho High School in Las Vegas. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Angela Chapman took her 7-year-old to vote, to show him that it’s important to turn out.
Lisa Kerns showed up in person, even though she wasn’t sure that her polling place would accommodate her wheelchair, because she wanted people to “know that I am here to use my voice.”
Joyce Rayle greeted voters who passed by her lawn chair with a wave and a message: “It’s a beautiful day to vote.”
Across the United States, millions of Americans headed to the polls today. They showed up because they’re concerned about abortion access. Many are anxious about the state of American democracy. Some worry about voter fraud, though there is no evidence that widespread fraud has affected election results. Others say they are concerned about inflation and the economy or want to see more spending on education.
Washington Post reporters fanned out around the country, talking to voters as they cast their ballots. Here’s what they told us.
PHOENIX — Matt Kroski doesn’t see his views accurately represented by either major party, and he has supported both in the past. But lately, he said, it’s Republican policies that scare him most — from chipping away at abortion rights to eroding democratic guardrails.
For Kroski, who lives in a neighborhood north of downtown Phoenix, Tuesday was about voting against candidates on the right more than anything else.
Kroski, 43, usually votes early, but after seeing reports of armed observers at local ballot drop boxes, he decided to cast his ballot in person on Election Day. “It’s just voter intimidation,” he said. “Emotionally, it made me fearful, because it’s our one chance to make our voice heard.”
— Reis Thebault
ADA TOWNSHIP — Kyle LaLone, 32, a Republican and a medical sales representative, voted at a quiet church in an exurb of Grand Rapids on Tuesday morning.
He backed Tudor Dixon, the far-right gubernatorial candidate, because she’s antiabortion — but especially because of his frustrations with covid safety precautions under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D).
“I’m really for just letting people choose what is best for their own lives. I don’t think big government should come in and tell us when we can’t go to sporting events, go to school, can’t go to your gym,” he said. “So that’s what’s motivated me the biggest to get out and vote.”
— Sam Easter
Indiana: ‘It’s a beautiful day to vote’
ELLETTSVILLE — Joyce Rayle, 87, sat in her lawn chair in Ellettsville, Ind., campaigning for her grandson Nathan Williams, who is running for Monroe County sheriff. Rayle greeted every voter, saying “Good afternoon, it’s a beautiful day to vote.”
Rayle became “doubtful” about the integrity of elections after 2020. “I believe Trump was cheated,” she said.
Another issue she’s passionate about: immigration. “I think we should close the border,” she said. “We got homeless people right here in this town, and we’re giving [immigrants] schooling, telephones, flying them places, taking them on buses. We got people right here who need food.”
— Samantha Latson
Alabama: ‘I’m still hopeful’
TUSKEGEE — For Doris McGowan-Coleman, 79, a trip to the Tuskegee Municipal Complex to cast her vote in Tuesday’s midterm elections brought reminders of the years of civil rights history she has lived through.
Her trip to the polls also came on the heels of watching her great-nephew, actor Jalyn Hall, portray Emmett Till in the film “Till.” “We haven’t made the progress that I would like for us to have made since [the death of Emmett Till],” said McGowan-Coleman. “I’m still hopeful.”
She sees voting as one way to move the needle of progress.
“I was always one that felt like my vote mattered and that is what has inspired me all these years to vote,” she said.
McGowan-Coleman supported Democratic congressional candidates this year because of their commitment to education, reproductive rights and their desire to “[save] our democracy.” She also hoped for a smooth Election Day process, acceptance of the voting outcomes and that “everyone plays fair.”
— Gheni Platenburg
Louisiana: ‘Human issues. That’s what I vote on’
NEW ORLEANS — Lines were short at the Blessed Francis Seelos Parish polling location in the colorful Bywater neighborhood Tuesday morning, with just a handful of voters taking turns on the site’s two electronic voting machines.
Cornelius Bentley Sr., 78, rolled up to the polling station on his bicycle, wondering aloud whether he needed a mask to go inside. Bentley, who is retired, said he doesn’t cast his ballot along party lines but rather by his sense of how candidates feel about people.
“Human issues,” he said. “That’s what I vote on.”
Bentley said he has ignored any conversations around voter fraud that have circulated in advance of today’s election. “If we don’t have a system, we’re in trouble,” he said. “I try not to get caught up on that, and I just go ahead and vote. For me, coming from where I’m coming from, the right to vote is what matters.”
— Ashley Cusick
Virginia: ‘We need Trump back’
WOODBRIDGE — Niaz Ali, 29, walked out of an elementary school after casting his ballot in deep blue Northern Virginia and stopped to take a selfie.
He wanted to record the day when he switched parties, from Democrat to Republican. Ali, who is from Pakistan, said he has long supported Democrats but has lately been frustrated by inflation and illegal immigration.
“They [messed up] everything,” he said of Democrats. “We need Trump back.”
— Antonio Olivo
Idaho: ‘I immediately just burst into tears’
BOISE — When Lisa Kerns rolled up the polls in Boise, a pair of silver earnings that read, “VOTE,” caught the early morning sunlight, and a single tear rolled down her cheek.
Kerns, 58, who uses a wheelchair, arrived early in case she needed help getting into the polling location. The insurance claims manager voted at Hawthorne Elementary School and said that over the past 35 years, she has usually needed help getting through the door to cast her vote.
Today was different.
“I pulled up, and I saw this ramp, and I immediately just burst into tears,” she said.
“People always ask me, ‘Well, why don’t you absentee vote? It would be so much easier.’ And I say, ‘I want to make sure that people see me and know that I am here to use my voice,” she said.
The lifelong Democrat said education is the most important issue to her. “They’re so worried about cutting taxes that they don’t put that money toward educating our youth,” she said.
— Carissa Wolfe
South Carolina: ‘I try to pick the people I like the best’
ELGIN — Stacy Goff, an accountant in Elgin, tends to vote Republican. This time, she had a mixed ballot. “I try to pick the people I like the best,” she said.
One of them was Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Morgan Reeves. Abortion rights was a major issue. “I have a young child, and I think that she should have the option, if things happen to her, to make the choices over herself physically,” she said.
— Rodney Welch
West Virginia: ‘Republicans have planted a seed’
CHARLESTON — After making her selections at her local polling place in Charleston, the state’s capital and largest city, Becky Johnson had an experience unlike any other in her nearly 30 years of voting.
Before turning in her ballot, Johnson looked at it closely, but not for an error of her making. The criminal defense attorney, a Republican who describes herself as fiscally conservative, said she was surprised to find she was “checking to make sure that who I voted for was on there.”
“That’s not anything I’d ever thought about before. I never even contemplated looking to see that my answers were recorded correctly,” the 47-year-old said.
“Unfortunately,” she added, “Republicans have planted a seed” of doubt about election results in cities and towns across the country, though she herself has always felt confident in them.
— Molly Born
DES MOINES — Leaving a polling place at a church here, Enisa Kuburas-Kazazic said she voted an all-Democratic ticket to try to preserve reproductive rights.
The 50-year-old said that although she was not directly impacted by the fall of Roe v. Wade, she worried about others who are — especially minorities. “Personally, I would not choose an abortion. But I don’t think anybody else has the right to dictate,” she said, adding that what is right for one person “is not necessarily right for everybody else.”
— Brittany Shammas
Sketches of early voting in Wisconsin
8:24 PMAlaska Sen. Murkowski said final results will take awhile
8:12 PMBiden calls Democratic leaders individually to express gratitude | 2022-11-08T20:56:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abortion, inflation, parental rights: Voters tell us what matters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/midterm-2022-voter-voices/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/08/midterm-2022-voter-voices/ |
Telemedicine has improved health-care access. Let’s keep it that way.
A patient sits in the living room of her New York City apartment during a telemedicine appointment with her doctor in January 2019. (Mark Lennihan/AP)
Telemedicine has emerged as one of the several crucial innovations coming out the coronavirus pandemic, making it easier for many people to access health care. But as the crisis phase of the pandemic comes to an end, these gains could be rolled back. Policymakers should try to preserve them.
Before the pandemic, virtual medical visits were somewhat of a novelty. Telemedicine was mainly envisioned as a service for patients living in remote areas who couldn’t travel to see a specialist physician.
That changed with stay-at-home orders. In March 2020, the federal government gave providers broad — but temporary — flexibility to deliver health-care services by two-way video and telephone. Many doctors’ offices quickly shifted in-person appointments to virtual ones.
The ability to continue virtual visits is tied to the federal government’s public health emergency for the pandemic. While there are bipartisan efforts to continue telehealth flexibilities once the emergency ends, policy analysts have expressed concern that reimbursing providers the same amount for virtual as in-person visits could make health-care spending harder to rein in.
These are reasonable concerns, but we know the sudden and unprecedented expansion of telemedicine during covid fulfilled an unmet need, especially for underserved communities. That’s the main takeaway from a recent report from the Bipartisan Policy Center. (I am a member of the BPC board but was not involved in the research.)
The report’s authors analyzed federal Medicare data and found a dramatic uptake in telemedicine. In 2019, less than 1 percent of people who had Medicare for their insurance participated in a telehealth visit. In 2020, a whopping 44 percent did. There was some leveling off in 2021, with 28 percent seeking a telehealth visit in the first three quarters of that year.
The dominant specialty utilizing telehealth was primary care. Nearly all of these patients — 95 percent — sought virtual care from providers with whom they already had a relationship.
That finding is not surprising. My colleagues in primary care have told me how much some patients appreciate the convenience of a quick phone check-in to manage chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes. A virtual visit doesn’t involve the hassle of taking half a day off from work and asking relatives for a ride to the clinic.
The next most commonly sought-after specialty for telehealth was behavioral health. This also makes sense, as mental health counseling lends itself more naturally to virtual interactions than conditions that require a physical exam.
The BPC study found that nearly half of all behavioral health visits in 2021 were conducted via telehealth. Unlike with primary care visits, 65 percent were new treatment relationships, in which the patient saw that mental health specialist for the first time.
Clearly, telehealth utilization has dramatically increased. And there’s an indication that the care delivered from virtual appointments is not just extra care: The total visit volume — the combination of in-person and virtual appointments — was lower in 2020 and 2021 compared with 2019, suggesting that virtual care replaced rather than added to in-person care.
The one notable exception is mental health, where many who sought tele-behavioral health were new patients. This could probably be explained by lack of access; about 150 million Americans live in areas with a shortage of mental health professionals, and telehealth likely opened up mental health support for people who otherwise wouldn’t have received it.
Perhaps most surprising is who benefited from these gains. Before the pandemic, those most likely to use digital health technologies tended to be younger, Whiter and wealthier. The BPC report found the opposite. Those most likely to utilize telehealth services in 2020 and 2021 were people with disabilities, minorities and seniors with multiple underlying medical conditions.
Taken together, the research points to the expansion of telemedicine during covid as either replacing care that could be delivered more conveniently as a virtual visit, or enabling services that otherwise wouldn’t be accessible.
Of course, telemedicine cannot and should not replace in-person care, as there are many diagnoses that require physical exams, tests and procedures. Plus, a lot of patients prefer in-person visits now that the covid risk is manageable. It’s also not clear whether virtual-only providers can deliver the level of high-quality care offered by traditional practices that have both in-person and telehealth services. And it remains to be seen as to which conditions telehealth is a cost-effective measure to reduce more expensive care such as emergency department visits and hospitalizations.
While researchers seek these answers, policymakers should keep in mind the large numbers of patients who have sought telehealth as a result of covid. It would be a shame if the gains made to increase access were rolled back as suddenly as they were implemented, especially considering the vulnerable populations who have benefited from virtual care. | 2022-11-08T21:05:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Telemedicine has improved health-care access. Let’s keep it that way. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/telemedicine-public-health-emergency-covid-pandemic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/08/telemedicine-public-health-emergency-covid-pandemic/ |
King Charles III is seen during a visit to Leeds, England, on Tuesday. (Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images)
LONDON — Is the made-up version of “The Crown” bad for the real version of the crown?
Review: ‘The Crown,’ good as ever, may change your opinion of Charles and Diana
Whereas Queen Elizabeth II was widely adored, Charles is merely liked — by 44 percent of the British public. The rest are neutral to hostile.
The new season of “The Crown” being “beamed around the world at a time when Charles and Camila are looking to establish themselves as the king and queen — it couldn’t be worse timing,” said Anna Whitelock, professor of the history of monarchy at City, University of London.
Some television critics have wondered if the show may perversely increase public affection for Charles, who — although portrayed as a committed adulterer who can be cold and cruel to his wife — receives fairly sympathetic treatment.
Can King Charles III win over people's hearts?
Actor Dominic West, who plays Charles in the new season, told Entertainment Weekly that even the show’s depiction of one of most scandalous moments of the prince’s life — the leak of a sordid conversation between Charles and his then-mistress Camilla — “made me extremely sympathetic towards the two of them and what they’d gone through.”
The real-life Major wasn’t having it. In a letter to the Telegraph last month, he wrote: “Netflix may well take the view that any publicity is good publicity. But I assure them it is not — most especially when it disrespects the memory of those no longer alive, or puts words into the mouths of those still living and in no position to defend themselves.” | 2022-11-08T21:22:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'The Crown' season 5 revives the past for the real King Charles III - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/crown-season-five-king-charles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/crown-season-five-king-charles/ |
Sanaa Seif, sister of Egypt's jailed leading pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, who is on a hunger and water strike, speaks to members of the media at the U.N. Climate Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Tuesday. (Nariman El-Mofty/AP)
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Egypt hoped that hosting this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP27, would bring positive attention and prestige. But an outburst at a news conference Tuesday showed the country is struggling to stage manage the global event and keep the lid on domestic controversies.
Sanaa Seif — a sister of British Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abdel Fattah, who escalated his months-long hunger strike by giving up water on Sunday — had just finished speaking about her brother’s case in front of dozens of international journalists on Tuesday afternoon when Egyptian lawmaker Amr Darwish stood up in the audience to berate her.
“You are here summoning foreign countries to pressure Egypt,” Darwish said in Arabic. “You are here to call for a presidential pardon for a criminal inmate,” he continued.
He repeatedly interrupted Seif as she tried to translate his remarks into English, shouting as U.N. security escorted him out of the building: “Don’t touch me! You are here in the Egyptian land. I asked her a question; she should answer me.”
His disruption may have been an attempt to defend the government’s jailing of Abdel Fattah, a prominent activist during the country’s 2011 revolution. Instead, human rights advocates said it perfectly exemplified to a crowd of foreign observers a side of Egypt that officials here have tried to conceal from COP27 delegates.
Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard, who visited Abdel Fattah’s mother in Cairo before flying to Sharm el-Sheikh, confronted Darwish during his outburst in the conference hall. Later, she tweeted that his comments gave “us all a small sense of the regime of fears and silencing in the country right now.”
The incident didn’t surprise Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, who was sitting just a few rows ahead of Darwish at Tuesday’s event.
“This kind of intimidation and harassment is the least we have to experience. The only reason we actually had the news conference at all is because it happened in the area under U.N. control,” he said. “A news conference for Sanaa Seif would have been unimaginable in Cairo or anywhere else had it not been for COP27 taking place in Egypt.”
President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s government, he added, “has been fully stacked with pro-regime parliamentarians, handpicked by security agencies, and this is what is expected of them.”
Bahgat, who has repeatedly faced charges in Egypt and was fined last year over a tweet, traveled to Sharm el-Sheikh with accreditation from a German NGO. Every Egyptian human rights organization that applied for accreditation through the government was denied, he said, forcing local activists to go through foreign groups.
Amid complaints from COP delegates that certain websites are blocked in Egypt, including Human Rights Watch, the ban appeared to be lifted on Tuesday. WhatsApp calls, normally blocked here, also started to go through.
Activists have long raised concerns about tight security and a lack of transparency at climate conferences. In Glasgow, Scotland, last year, they criticized conference organizers for limiting observers’ access to negotiating rooms. But one civil society representative, who has been assisting fellow activists this year with security issues and other rights concerns, said the situation in Egypt is uniquely worrying.
“This is the most repressive COP probably in the history of COP,” said the civil society representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her organization’s members.
There have been relatively few demonstrations inside the conference venue. And outside the “Blue Zone” — the main conference area overseen by the United Nations — there have been none.
For attendees accustomed to seeing raucous demonstrations surrounding COP meetings, the silence in Sharm el-Sheikh is deeply unsettling — and may amount to a “breaking point” for civil society’s trust in the COP process, the representative said.
“There is such an intrinsic connection between human rights and climate justice,” said Jean Su, a board chair for Climate Action Network International.
“The credibility of COP27 and its outcomes will be at stake if Egypt fails to respond to the call for the release of Alaa and other prisoners of conscience,” she said.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who is also serving as president-designate of COP27, told CNBC in an interview this week that Abdel Fattah “is receiving all the necessary care in prison.” But Abdel Fattah’s family has raised concerns that Egyptian officials are force-feeding him against his will. His mother, Cairo University professor Laila Soueif, has waited for two days in a row outside his prison but has not received any proof of life.
In one of the most direct statements yet from a Western leader on Abdel Fattah’s case, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Tuesday for his release “so that this hunger strike does not end in death.”
He described the situation as “very depressing.”
Tuesday evening, at an event hosted in the conference’s German pavilion, so many people packed in to see Seif speak alongside human rights groups that the crowd overflowed into the hallways and neighboring pavilions.
As the event drew to a close, a half dozen young protesters rushed the stage.
Wearing white T-shirts that read, “#FreeAlaa #FreeThemAll,” they began to chant: “Free Alaa! Free Alaa!” Soon members of the crowd joined in. But one woman began shouting back in an apparent effort to counter the protest.
U.N. security hustled Seif off the stage.
Wiktoria Jedroszkowiak, a 21-year-old activist from Warsaw, was among the protesters. She said she felt obligated to use her “privilege as an E.U. citizen” to call out human rights violations in a way Egyptian citizens can’t do safely. “We cannot talk about climate justice without talking about freedom of speech and human rights,” she said.
As she spoke, an organizer of the protest hurried over to urge Jedroszkowiak to take off her T-shirt before leaving the conference venue. Inside, she was protected by the United Nations. Outside, it wasn’t clear what the Egyptian government might do.
“It’s absurd,” Jedroszkowiak said. “There’s only about five places in the venue to protest. We can’t do our jobs as climate activists here.” | 2022-11-08T21:22:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alaa Abdel Fattah hunger strike threatens to overshadow climate at COP27 in Egpyt - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/08/egypt-cop27-alaa-hunger-strike/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/08/egypt-cop27-alaa-hunger-strike/ |
Police arrest youth, 13, in killing of teen in Northeast Washington
The scene where 15-year-old Andre Robertson Jr. was fatally shot Oct. 13 in Northeast Washington. Police have arrested two youths, ages 13 and 15, in the killing. (Emily Davies/The Washington Post)
D.C. police on Tuesday arrested a 13-year-old in the fatal shooting of another teenager who was killed last month in Northeast Washington, according to the department.
The youth, who was not identified because his case is in juvenile court, was charged with first-degree murder while armed. Last week, police said they arrested a 15-year-old in the killing. He also was charged as a juvenile with first-degree murder.
Police said the victim, Andre Robertson Jr., a 15-year-old student at Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools, was shot on a porch with others about 3:40 p.m. on Oct. 13 in the 500 block of 48th Place NE. Police have not divulged a possible motive but said it appears to be a targeted shooting.
Two other teenagers — another 15-year-old and a 14-year-old — have been fatally shot in the District since then. | 2022-11-08T21:31:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police arrest boy, 13, in killing of teenager in Northeast Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/police-arrest-homicide-teen-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/police-arrest-homicide-teen-dc/ |
The training at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School follows a lockdown in September over reports of a student with a gun
Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School had a lockdown drill last month to enforce safety procedures after a student was reported to have a gun at the school in September. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School Principal Shelton Mooney went over the lockdown scenario with the school administrators again: “You hear gunshots in your hallway. You also hear screams and see students running past your door.”
The scenario would be given to all 2,000 or so students in the school for them to decide what to do. Ideally, the students would be hiding in their classrooms and locking their doors, Mooney explained. Meanwhile, administrators would be patrolling the hallways to see if they could spot any students or gain entry to classrooms.
The school in Montgomery County scheduled the scenario-based drill last month after a report of a student with a gun sent the school into a lockdown for an hour in September. No gun was found, but the incident stunned the school community.
In the aftermath, students reported that not all of them immediately went into lockdown the day the gun was reported on campus since the announcement couldn’t be heard via the intercom in some areas of the school building. Others shared that substitute teachers didn’t know how to lock the classroom doors and some teachers didn’t follow lockdown protocols at all. Some students continued with quizzes rather than hiding in classrooms. While that was happening, a group of parents who were getting texts from their children showed up and stood outside the school hoping to get more information, an action both the police and the district have since asked parents not to do.
The incident caused Montgomery County Public Schools to revisit training for its students, staff and teachers. As an additional component, the training will also include education sessions for parents and guardians to learn lockdown protocols. Members of the school system’s television station filmed portions of Bethesda-Chevy Chase’s drill to potentially use as part of the education campaign.
“When we hit covid, that’s when everybody got a little rusty,” Ed Clarke, the district’s director of school safety and security, said. “Now, what we’re trying to do is ‘refresh, reset’ training.”
All Maryland schools are required to teach lockdown training. In Montgomery County, students learn “lockdown with options,” which teaches students to hide in a classroom, flee from the building if they need to, or — when age appropriate — be prepared to defend themselves as a last resort.
The glitches during Bethesda-Chevy Chase’s September lockdown are common issues within other school districts, and part of why lockdown training drills are so important, said Kenneth S. Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services.
“When things go wrong, they tend to be a lot of small pieces combined that create the perfect storm,” Trump said, emphasizing that drills help reduce the risks. School districts should be communicating expectations with parents and students in advance of a lockdown happening, he said, especially because trust in law enforcement’s response has dropped after a May shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., where police waited over an hour before confronting the gunman.
How a school lockdown — even when there’s no gun — can terrify
Mooney said in his 26 years as a principal, the incident in September was the only time he’d been in an actual lockdown. Afterward, it was clear to him that changes needed to be made to the school’s planning process, which included running the scenario-based drill. The school repaired its intercoms that had been faulty during the lockdown and hosted a town hall with parents to understand more of the issues. Many parents complained that the school was slow with communicating what was happening that day.
“I don’t care if I never have another one, but I want to be prepared for it if there is one,” Mooney said in an interview.
Lyric Winik, the school’s parent-teacher association president, said that when the lockdown went into place in September, her phone was filled with texts from other parents trying to understand what was happening. Her son and his friends had started to piece together that there was not an actual gun well before there was an official announcement from the school district. She said she wished that the school system would have communicated more frankly with parents the severity of the threat earlier on, and prioritized talking with families over members of the media.
She was disappointed when the school system asked parents not to wait outside of the school. Many of those parents’ children were in classrooms where proper lockdown procedures weren’t being followed, she said.
“What I really wish is that the first response coming off of the incident was not such a reflex to the community of, ‘Well you didn’t follow the procedures as we wanted you to do it, and you weren’t willing to wait an hour or more for us to give you the information,’ ” Winik said. “But rather, ‘What can we do to step up so that we are making sure what we know, you know, and that way everybody can make better decisions.’ ”
Some of the same problems happened during a shooting that critically injured a student at Magruder High School in January, said Cynthia Simonson, who has a sophomore at the high school in Derwood, Md. Then, parents similarly voiced concerns about crisis communications and teachers who didn’t observe the lockdown. When the lockdown at Bethesda-Chevy Chase happened, “We felt like we were reading our diaries again,” she said.
“It’s a crisis, everything’s not going to be perfect and mistakes are going to be made,” Simonson said. “You just don’t want to make the same mistakes.”
‘What if someone was shooting?’
The school system began developing a new joint crisis communication plan with the county’s police and fire departments. One piece of the communication plan is specific to individual schools on their practices, which will be coming out within the month, spokesman Chris Cram said. Part of the updated plan includes “a commitment to communicate early on what we know.”
At Bethesda-Chevy Chase’s drill, Mooney relayed the scenario to students through the intercom system, adding at the end, “This is a lockdown drill.” He was sure to be specific. When the actual lockdown happened the previous month, he read verbatim from a script given by the school system. Many teachers assumed that the lockdown was a practice scenario. “What I should have said last time was that this is not a drill,” he explained.
During the drill, Mooney watched administrators monitor the hallways via the school’s cameras. He watched staff members approach doors to verify they were locked. As administrators checked the hallways, they confirmed via the radio system that each part of the building was clear. After a few minutes, the school went into “a public safety shelter,” in which classroom instruction could resume but students had to remain under adult supervision at all times.
After Mooney lifted the shelter, administrators gathered in a conference room to debrief. Some of the teachers let students out of class before Mooney called off the shelter, but that was likely because they followed the time-stamped drill schedule they were given in advance, administrators said. Some teachers needed help getting their door locked. The school has a complicated system — doors in the newer part of the building require two keys, while other teachers primarily rely on magnet strips to keep their doors open during the day. At times, students could be heard talking in classrooms when they were supposed to be silent.
One of the staff members shared that she watched the training in a classroom where students are learning English as a second language. During it, the staff member helped interpret specific words, since there was terminology the students didn’t understand. The school system rush-ordered training presentations in additional languages.
But there were also improvements. The repaired intercom system was clearly audible in areas where it was hard-to-hear during the actual lockdown. In one of the building’s wings, teachers reported students could be seen through the blinds, but during the drill, administrators found no students could be seen.
Mooney said that the simulation would never be the same as an emergency, but he wanted students, staff and teachers to develop muscle memory through the drills.
“My goal is that everyone who comes in here safe,” he said, “leaves exactly the same way we came in.”
The latest: In protest of Gov. Youngkin’s transgender policy, Virginia students walked out of classes across the state. Some of Virginia’s trans kids fear being outed by Youngkin’s policy.
K-12 classrooms: Fairfax County students with disabilities are disproportionately suspended, a new report has found. The XQ Institute’s $25 million grant will help D.C. students redesign their high schools.
On campus: To ease tuition costs, George Mason University has approved a tuition credit for in-state undergraduate students. At the University of Maryland, two dorms will be named after Black students who broke barriers on campus. Additionally, the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings have been facing questions, complaints and competition. | 2022-11-08T21:31:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bethesda-Chevy Chase school lockdown prompts 'refresh, reset’ training - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/08/montgomery-county-schools-safety-training/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/08/montgomery-county-schools-safety-training/ |
Fulton County prosecutor picked up on House Jan. 6 committee allegations that Gingrich advised Trump administration officials on steps to reverse result
Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker, at the America First Agenda Summit in July. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican who represented Georgia, is scheduled to appear in a Fairfax County courtroom Wednesday morning to fight a demand that he testify before a Georgia special grand jury investigating possible attempts in that state to manipulate the 2020 presidential election.
Gingrich, 79, resigned from the House in 1999 and lives in Northern Virginia. He has remained politically active, including a run for president in 2012, and recently attracted the attention of the House panel investigating the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. The committee alleged in a September letter that Gingrich urged Donald Trump and his team to spread false information about supposed election fraud in Georgia, and that he was involved in the scheme to have “fake electors” submitted to Congress during the electoral college vote to have Trump declared the winner, though Joe Biden was certified as president.
Gingrich has agreed to testify Nov. 21 before the committee about his actions. But in Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani T. Willis is also investigating “criminal disruptions” related to the election in Georgia, through a special grand jury. After seeing the Jan. 6 committee’s letter to Gingrich, Willis sought Gingrich’s testimony before the Fulton County special grand jury, court records show, and a judge there last month certified the need for the out-of-state witness.
Willis, a Democrat, has also sought the testimony of Trump supporters including Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and members of the former president’s legal team. Giuliani testified for six hours in August, but Graham and others are still contesting Fulton County’s requests. Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, lost an attempt in South Carolina last month to block his testimony in Fulton County, with the judge ruling that Meadows was “material and necessary to the investigation and that the state of Georgia is assuring not to cause undue hardship to him.”
The process for state courts to summon a witness from another state, first created by states in 1931 as the “Uniform Act,” involves presenting a “certificate of material witness” from the requesting state to the state where the witness lives. Gingrich’s attorneys are asking a Fairfax judge to reject the certificate, saying that the Uniform Act doesn’t cover special grand juries, like the one Willis is using in Fulton County, only regular grand juries.
Gingrich’s lawyer, John A. Burlingame, noted in a filing Monday that Georgia’s special grand juries do not have the power to indict, are not required to administer the criminal oath and are prohibited from issuing subpoenas to targets of investigations or out-of-state witnesses. The Fulton County grand jury may only issue a report and recommendations based on its investigations. Willis will then decide which individuals, if any, to seek charges against.
“The Uniform Act,” Burlingame wrote, “has never been amended to expand its applicability beyond traditional grand juries that have the power to indict. … Because the Uniform Act does not extend to a Georgia special purpose grand jury, this court should decline to compel Speaker Gingrich to travel to Georgia to testify.”
Instead, Burlingame suggested, Gingrich is willing to supply the grand jury with a transcript of his interview with the Jan. 6 committee. A spokesman for the Fulton County state’s attorney did not return a call seeking comment Tuesday. Burlingame declined to comment on the case Tuesday, and Gingrich did not respond to a message seeking comment.
The Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney will argue that Gingrich’s testimony is necessary and legally requested, court records show, but had not filed a brief in reply to Gingrich by Tuesday. Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano did not respond to a message seeking comment. The case will be heard by Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Robert J. Smith.
The argument that the Uniform Act doesn’t apply to special grand juries was accepted in September by a majority of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which rejected a request for Texas lawyer and podcaster Jacki Pick Deason to appear before the Fulton County special grand jury. States such as Texas and Virginia signed on to the Uniform Act in the 1950s or earlier, and Georgia did not create its special grand jury until 1974. Virginia’s law makes two references to a “grand jury investigation,” but not a special grand jury.
A three-page letter signed by Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, revealed a number of actions the panel claimed had been taken by Gingrich to assist in overturning the 2020 presidential election. Thompson’s letter said Gingrich provided “detailed input” to Jared Kushner — the president’s son-in-law — and adviser Jason Miller for television ads aired in the days leading up to Dec. 14, 2020, when each state created its slate of electors. The ads encouraged viewers to pressure state officials “to challenge and overturn the results of the election.”
Thompson said that Gingrich urged Trump’s campaign to broadcast commercials “promoting the false narrative that election workers had smuggled suitcases containing fake ballots” into an Atlanta election site. “You provided line edits to the scripts,” Thompson wrote to Gingrich, and “You specifically pushed for national advertisements to include false allegations about what you called the ‘suitcase scandal.’ ”
The letter quoted a Gingrich email that advised Kushner and Miller, “The goal is to arouse the country’s anger through new verifiable information the American people have never seen before.” The claims about the suitcases were repeatedly disproved by independent reviews.
Gingrich’s emails also indicated that he was “involved in the fake elector scheme,” Thompson wrote, in which slates of electors who were not chosen by their state legislatures would also be submitted to Congress. On Nov. 12, 2020, Thompson alleged, Gingrich asked Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, “Is someone in charge of coordinating all the electors?” Trump would later use the existence of the “fake electors” to encourage Vice President Mike Pence to reject certification of the election results on Jan. 6, Thompson wrote. | 2022-11-08T21:40:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gingrich resists testifying before Ga. grand jury in election probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/gingrich-testimony-georgia-election-probe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/gingrich-testimony-georgia-election-probe/ |
Accused Capitol rioter goes on trial in theft of Pelosi office laptop
Riley June Williams. (Dauphin County Prison/AP)
A woman charged in connection with the theft of a computer from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was alternately described in court Tuesday as a zealous election denier intent on disrupting democracy and as a naive young person who excitedly boasted about crimes she did not commit because she “wanted to be somebody,” as a defense attorney put it.
“Riley Williams doesn’t look dangerous,” prosecutor Michael M. Gordon told jurors in his opening statement in U.S. District Court in Washington. “She’s young. … She doesn’t look capable of violence. … She doesn’t look like a rioter. But looks can be deceiving. On January 6th, 2021, Riley June Williams was all of those things.”
Woman charged with helping to steal laptop from Pelosi’s office during Capitol riot
In addition to encouraging the laptop theft, she is accused of impeding police officers during the Capitol breach, obstructing a congressional proceeding, disorderly conduct, and entering and remaining in the Capitol illegally, among other crimes. A defense lawyer acknowledged in court that Williams joined a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump in storming the building while Congress was meeting to confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
The laptop was stolen by an unidentified man, seen on video in the conference room, and authorities have not asserted that Williams knew who he was. However, Gordon said, she can be heard egging him on in the video, saying, “Dude, take the f---ing laptop,” and, “Dude, put on gloves.”
Williams was “obsessed with the idea that the election had been stolen” from Trump, the prosecutor said. He indicated that the government’s case will rely heavily on video recordings of Williams during the attack and numerous social media and text messages she sent afterward, bragging that she had taken part in looting Pelosi’s office. “You’ll hear it was all she could think about,” the prosecutor said.
Defense attorney Lori J. Ulrich, in her opening statement, described her client as an unremarkable person caught up in a historic event — “a girl who wanted to be somebody” and was “living in a fantasy world of sorts.” Scoffing at the list of charges against Williams, Ulrich summed up the prosecution’s strategy as, “basically, let’s throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.”
When Williams told the unidentified man to take the laptop, he was already in the process of doing so, Ulrich said. The man and his companions, she said, “don’t even acknowledge her. … They don’t even know she’s there.”
Gordon said Pelosi (D-Calif.) used the laptop for video meetings with U.S. and foreign leaders.
According to an FBI affidavit filed in court, Williams, in the days immediately after the riot, boasted of committing crimes in typo-ridden text and social media messages, telling friends: “STOLE S-T FROM NANCY POLESI,” and, “I TOOK HER GRAVEL HAMMWR TBING,” and, “I DOMT CARE I TOOK NANCY POLESIS HARD DRIVES I DON’T CARE KILL ME.”
In previewing his case in his opening statement, Gordon showed jurors numerous other, similar messages sent by Williams. But Ulrich said Williams, who meant “gavel” when she wrote “gravel,” sent the messages only after she realized that the riot had seized world attention and she became excited about her participation.
“Because now she’s a big deal,” the defense attorney told the jury. “Because she was there. And now she’s bragging to her friends that she took the laptop. But guess what: She didn’t.” Referring to prosecutors, Ulrich said: “They know she didn’t take the laptop and they know she didn’t take the hard drive, and they’re guessing about the gavel.” Williams, the defense attorney said, was not charged with stealing anything.
Before the Capitol attack, Williams attended Trump’s incendiary rally on the Ellipse at which he repeated his debunked claim that rampant voter fraud had led to his defeat in the 2020 election. Afterward, according to Ulrich, Williams got separated from her traveling companions and made her way to the Capitol, where she followed rioters into the building.
Although Gordon showed the jury video of Williams in the building, waving her arms and directing rioters to “go up the stairs” toward Pelosi’s office, Ulrich said her client had no knowledge of the building’s layout and did not even know she was in the Capitol. “We’re storming the White House,” Williams told friends on social media at one point, according to Ulrich.
“She was shocked herself when she found herself in Nancy Pelosi’s office,” the defense lawyer said.
After leaving the House speaker’s suite, Williams scuffled with police officers in the building’s Rotunda, trying to force her way past a security line, Gordon told the jury. But Ulrich said video evidence from the Rotunda “will not prove Riley Williams had forcible contact with the police.”
In what authorities have described as the most sprawling investigation in the Justice Department’s history, more than 880 people from across the country have been arrested in connection with the Capitol riot, the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington said. More than 270 people have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement officers.
Williams’s trial, before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, is expected to last several days. | 2022-11-08T21:40:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Accused Capitol rioter goes on trial in theft of Pelosi office laptop - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/pelosi-laptop-trial-jan6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/pelosi-laptop-trial-jan6/ |
This booking photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Corrections via their Flickr page shows Byron Black. Tennessee’s conservative attorney general and Nashville’s liberal district attorney are at odds over the possible commutation of a death sentence, in this case whether an inmate is intellectually disabled, precluding him from being executed. The case involves Black, a 66-year-old inmate convicted in the 1988 shooting deaths of girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters, Latoya, 9, and Lakeisha, 6. (Tennessee Department of Corrections via AP) (Uncredited/Tennessee Department of Corrections) | 2022-11-08T21:40:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Appeals Court weighs death row inmate's disability claims - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/appeals-court-weighs-death-row-inmates-disability-claims/2022/11/08/5a2c52ae-5fac-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/appeals-court-weighs-death-row-inmates-disability-claims/2022/11/08/5a2c52ae-5fac-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
By Pierre-Richard Luxama | AP
A member of the armed forces patrols the area of the Varreux fuel terminal in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Nov. 7, 2022. Authorities seemed to have gained control of the key fuel terminal a day after a powerful gang leader announced that he was lifting a blockade that has strangled Haiti’s capital for nearly two months. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Dozens of trucks lined up at a main fuel terminal in Haiti’s capital Tuesday to fill up their tanks for the first time since a powerful gang seized control of the area nearly two months ago. | 2022-11-08T21:42:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Key fuel depot in Haiti reopens for 1st time since September - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/key-fuel-depot-in-haiti-reopens-for-1st-time-since-september/2022/11/08/7633efca-5fac-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/key-fuel-depot-in-haiti-reopens-for-1st-time-since-september/2022/11/08/7633efca-5fac-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Maryland votes on whether to legalize recreational marijuana
Maryland early voters cast their ballots at the Silver Spring Civic Building. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Maryland voters on Tuesday are deciding whether to legalize recreational marijuana, a growing national question with broad implications for the state’s economy and criminal justice reform.
If passed, the initiative — listed as Question 4 on the ballot — will allow adults over 21 in Maryland to possess up to 1.5 ounces of marijuana and grow two plants out of the public view beginning July 1, 2023. It would also add Maryland to the growing list of states — 19 and three territories, including both D.C. and Virginia — that have legalized adult recreational use of the drug.
The referendum was what had Kristen White, 29, most excited to get out and vote Tuesday in Silver Spring. Legalization was overdue in Maryland, White said, and she hoped it would end some of the continued stigma around marijuana use.
“The amount of people who are comfortable using cannabis has increased,” said White, an event planner. “Less people are afraid of it.”
Voters in more conservative Arkansas, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota will also vote on recreational legalization this year, signifying the increasing support for a once-liberal issue. And while success is not certain everywhere, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted in late September found that about 73 percent of registered Maryland voters, across every demographic group, supported legalization in deeply Democratic Maryland.
Majority of Md. voters favor legalizing recreational pot, Post-UMD poll finds
With such high apparent support, the campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in Maryland was subdued in the months and weeks leading up to Election Day. The “Yes on 4” campaign, partly funded by medical cannabis giant Trulieve, released a couple video ads and hosted a few small rallies.
Instead, many advocates in the state looked ahead to how the state could be a leader in cannabis social equity, an increasing priority for advocates around the country who hope legalization can lessen the impacts of the War on Drugs on minority communities. An American Civil Liberties Union study found that between 2010 and 2018, Black people were arrested at 3.64 times the rate of White people nationally for having marijuana, even though Black and White people use marijuana at similar rates. In Maryland, the ACLU found, Black people were more than 2.1 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than White people.
“For us to take a stand and say that we no longer want the criminalization of cannabis, it’s also an opportunity for us to create an economy around cannabis that has more jobs and is more equitable than any other state in this country,” state Del. Stephanie M. Smith (D-Baltimore City) said at a rally in Baltimore in late October.
Follow our full midterms coverage
In the decade since Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, few states have implemented a successful model for social equity. The Maryland House of Delegates’ Cannabis Referendum and Legalization work group reviewed a report earlier this month that estimated 81 percent of cannabis business owners nationally are White.
For Shayne Richmond, a senior at the University of Maryland, issues of social equity were top of mind when he voted in favor of legalization. Standing outside the Ritchie Coliseum in College Park handing out fliers, Richmond, who is Black, said he was excited at the prospect of Black entrepreneurs to open in the space.
Criminalization “is another reason for disproportionate incarceration rates of African American males, and that’s something I definitely want to not see anymore,” Richmond, 22, said. “I think that there’s a lot of business opportunities and entrepreneurial opportunities for the Black community as well.”
After Virginia legalized pot, majority of defendants are still Black
Maryland decriminalized possession of up to 10 grams of marijuana in 2014, with the punishment of a $100 civil fine. Then, the state opened its first medical dispensaries in 2017, under its medical marijuana program, which has generated more than $420 million in dispensary sales so far this year. But the state received criticism for the initial lack of diversity in licensing.
When lawmakers voted earlier this year to put Question 4 on the ballot, they authored a companion bill that includes resentencing and expungement provisions for those with past marijuana-possession convictions. The companion bill, which will go into effect if voters pass the referendum, requires the state to conduct a study on the public health impact as well as a disparities study to help prospective women- and minority-owned businesses enter the new industry.
Other provisions include creating a cannabis business assistance fund and a community reinvestment and repair fund, requiring at least 30 percent of the revenue from adult-use cannabis to be reinvested in the communities that historically have been most affected by marijuana prosecutions.
“My biggest hope is that this passes with an overwhelming majority and it’s not something that’s close,” said “Yes on 4” Chair Eugene Monroe, a former Baltimore Ravens player. “I hope that the voice of Maryland is heard and we are able to use that momentum to establish regulation and policies that will set Maryland apart from how it’s been done in other states.”
City council member Martin A. Mitchell toured precincts around the state Tuesday chatting with voters about issues, including Question 4. Mitchell, who has been nicknamed “the Cannabis Councilman” for his openness about marijuana use, reform and advocacy, said he’s looking forward to the economic opportunities that legalization could bring if it passes.
“Imagine if we use $2 million from legal cannabis to fix the Boys and Girls Club,” Mitchell said in Laurel, gesturing to the buildings behind him where voters were casting ballots.
But for some voters less familiar with the nuances of social equity, licensing and reinvestment, the decision to vote for legalization came down to shifting national perspectives on the once vilified drug, even if they themselves were not users.
That’s how Kathy Baer, a 64-year-old retired public school teacher, saw the issue when she cast her ballot in favor of legalization in College Park on Tuesday morning.
“There’s less of a stigma to it. So many people enjoy it. Why not let them?” Baer said. “In my mind, legalizing it and having dispensaries makes it a little safer.”
Most Americans support weed legalization. He hoped a jury would, too.
Yet public opinion on cannabis usage is far from unanimous. Groups against legalization cite concerns around regulation, environmental impacts, potency and increased use among young people. A report funded by the National Institutes of Health found that young people used marijuana and some hallucinogens at record levels last year.
Federico Rodriguez said he was “kind of torn” on Question 4 as he headed into the polling booth Tuesday in Silver Spring. He thought about his family members who benefited from medical marijuana. He worried about security and crime concerns.
“Even while I was casting my vote on that particular issue, I was still having doubts. So, I think I’m not the only one,” Rodriguez, 51, said. He didn’t disclose his decision.
John Horowitz, a 64-year-old retiree in College Park, said he doesn’t particularly like legalization. He dislikes the smell of marijuana wafting through the Metro, and he doesn’t look forward to more of it. But Horowitz, a Democrat, still voted in favor of legalization, he said.
“I feel like it’s an issue of people being allowed to do what they want to do,” Horowitz said.
Shwetha Surendran and Ian Duncan contributed to this report, which will be updated. | 2022-11-08T22:01:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland voters deciding whether to legalize marijuana with Question 4 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/maryland-marijuana-legalization-results-question-4/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/08/maryland-marijuana-legalization-results-question-4/ |
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