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Big Ben bongs again five years and $95 million later
LONDON — The Great Bell of the Great Clock at the Palace of Westminster, known to all as “Big Ben,” is scheduled to return to full-time service on Sunday, after being mostly silent for the past five years, during the most ambitious renovation project ever undertaken at the crumbling Houses of Parliament.
On Friday, at 11 a.m., the keeper of the Great Clock and his team of horologists tested the bells, and crowds, gathered nearby at Whitehall to honor Armistice Day, heard the old boy bong again. All went well.
“Marvelous, wonderful, been a long time,” said Art Wallace, 56, visiting the capital city with his mother, down from Yorkshire in north England.
Westminster is rotting from within
Big Ben is back — we hope — and will gong on, striking the hour with the big bell and chiming in the quarter hours with its smaller companions, in what is known as the “Westminster Quarters,” with the notes G sharp, F sharp, E and B.
The BBC and other broadcasters carried the bells ringing live on Friday. It is a bit of good news for Britain, resetting its iconic clock, getting some normal back. It’s been a head-spinning ride since the summer — with three prime ministers playing musical chairs — Boris Johnson out; Liz Truss in; Liz Truss out; Rishi Sunak in.
Since 2017, when the $95 million renovation project began, the Elizabeth Tower and clock face have been largely swaddled in scaffolding, and the 24/7 bells silenced — except to peal (with a replacement mechanism) on New Year’s Eve and to mark the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September, when it rang 96 times, once every minute, for each year of the monarch’s long life.
The tolling of the bells has been a part of the soundtrack of London life since the Victorian-era clockworks began to tick in 1859, when the assembly was the largest, most accurate four-sided striking timepiece in the world.
‘Sad, but a happy sad’: Londoners fret about four years without Big Ben
Big Ben gonged throughout War War II, a symbol of defiance in the face of the bombing of London known as the Blitz, even if the lights of the clock dial were turned off at night so as not to help the German Luftwaffe find its targets.
The renovation of the tower and its gilded spire, the glass dials and stonework, the clock and bell mechanism in the belfry has been complex, and it was only after the conservationists erected the scaffolding that they saw how badly the repairs were needed.
The ironworks were rusty, the roof leaked. The stones were crumbling, victim of pollution, and also the black paint used around the clock dials, which didn’t allowed the stonework to breathe. Cheap repairs done in the postwar 1950s made things worse.
The clock mechanism and strikers for the bells — the entire mechanism, weighs 25,000 pounds — were removed and taken to clock specialists the Cumbria Clock Company in England’s Lake District, where more than 1,000 separate parts were cleaned and repaired, the U.K. Parliament media office reported.
During Remembrance Day weekend, a video projection of falling poppies — the flower that symbolizes the Britons lost to war — will be projected on the refurbished tower. | 2022-11-11T14:23:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Big Ben bongs for Remembrance Day after long renovation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/11/big-ben-london-britain-renovation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/11/big-ben-london-britain-renovation/ |
Ukraine live briefing: Russia claims Kherson city withdrawal complete; Kyiv...
Ukraine says troops have entered Kherson city after Russian retreat
Civilians transferred from the Russian-controlled part of Kherson region of Ukraine arrive at a local railway station in the town of Dzhankoi, Crimea on Nov. 10, 2022. (Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)
Ukraine announced on Friday that its troops were spreading out in the southern city of Kherson and retaking control of the regional capital from Russian forces after months of fighting.
“Kherson is returning under the control of Ukraine. Units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are entering the city,” the intelligence directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The Ukrainian announcement came soon after Russia said Friday that its troops had finished withdrawing from the west bank of the Dnieper River in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, claiming that no soldiers or military equipment were left behind.
Losing Kherson would mark a major military setback for the Kremlin in Ukraine and a blow to its efforts to consolidate its grip over swaths of the country’s south.
Friday’s withdrawal came sooner than Western officials had forecast. U.S. Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicted Tuesday that a Russian pullout from the city in southern Ukrainian would take “days and maybe even weeks.” Ukrainian officials had also expressed skepticism that Russia could withdraw quickly from Kherson.
“At 5 a.m. Moscow time, the redeployment of Russian troops to the left bank of the Dnieper River was completed,” Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday. “Not a single piece of military equipment and weaponry was left … and there were no losses of personnel, weapons, equipment,” the statement said.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on Kherson, describing it as a matter for the Russian Defense Ministry, but he said the “Kherson region is a subject of the Russian Federation. This status is fixed.”
A Ukrainian official, who was not authorized to speak to the press and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said earlier on Friday that Ukrainian forces had entered three parts of Kherson city, including the central Suvorovsky region.
Officials in Kyiv had voiced concern this week about whether some Russian forces could be hiding in the city and accused departing troops of destroying infrastructure.
Footage and a picture shared by a Ukrainian government adviser and the public broadcaster on Friday appeared to show damage to the strategic Antonovsky Bridge, which links Kherson to territory in southern Ukraine controlled by Russian forces. The Washington Post could not immediately verify the footage. | 2022-11-11T14:23:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine says it has entered the city of Kherson after Russian withdrawal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/11/ukraine-kherson-russia-withdrawal-complete/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/11/ukraine-kherson-russia-withdrawal-complete/ |
Oregon quarterback Bo Nix is climbing in the Heisman Trophy discussion after transferring from Auburn. (Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP)
Bo Nix attended Oregon’s season-opening men’s basketball game Monday night on the campus where he has become somewhat of a celebrity despite having arrived a relatively short time ago as the centerpiece of the football team.
The reception the quarterback received at Matthew Knight Arena was predictably welcoming, given the Ducks’ eight-game winning streak behind consistently robust performances that have vaulted the senior transfer into the Heisman Trophy conversation. Nix, in return, has embraced the community in Eugene, Ore., thousands of miles from his boyhood home in Arkansas.
The mutual admiration stands in stark contrast to the unpleasant scrutiny Nix faced during the final season at his former school, Auburn, which contributed to an acrimonious parting of ways.
“It’s been unbelievable. I’ve never really felt anything like it,” Nix told reporters Tuesday. “It’s just very supportive and nothing but love from everybody, and I just enjoy getting to learn a new atmosphere and going to new things. That was my first basketball game, so I got to enjoy that, just to see over there they’re cheering just as loud for basketball games as football games. It’s a great place.”
The decibel level at Autzen Stadium is expected to reach unprecedented levels Saturday afternoon when Oregon (8-1, 6-0 Pac-12), ranked sixth in the College Football Playoff rankings, hosts Washington (7-2, 4-2, No. 25 CFP) in one of the conference’s more contentious rivalries.
At stake for the Ducks is remaining in first place in the Pac-12 and firmly in control of a berth in the conference championship game. In the longer term, a victory would continue Oregon’s trajectory toward a potential spot in the College Football Playoff.
Nix has emerged as the driving force behind the Pac-12’s best shot at CFP representation after a third straight game with at least five total touchdowns in a 49-10 thumping of Colorado last weekend, leading to a third straight Pac-12 offensive player of the week award. Only two others in Pac-12 history have equaled that feat.
“Bo did what we expect him to do,” Ducks Coach Dan Lanning told reporters after Saturday’s game. “He has set a standard for himself now. Now if he doesn’t operate at that standard, then there’s an expectation, and I think he has higher expectations for himself than anybody else. Really proud of his performance, really proud.”
Nix’s prolific statistics, which presumably have caught the attention of Heisman Trophy voters, include leading the Football Bowl Subdivision with 36 total touchdowns and a completion percentage of 73.3. His passer rating of 173.0 is sixth in the country.
Nix is one of three quarterbacks since 2000 with at least 22 passing touchdowns and 13 rushing touchdowns over his team’s first nine games. The others were Lamar Jackson (2016, Louisville) and Jalen Hurts (2019, Oklahoma). Jackson won the Heisman Trophy in 2016, and Hurts finished second in 2019.
Before last weekend, Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker seemed to have ascended to Heisman front-runner. Then the Virginia Tech transfer had his worst showing this season in a 27-13 loss at top-ranked Georgia, failing to direct a touchdown drive until late in the fourth quarter.
Nix posted 274 passing yards and two touchdowns while completing 20 of 24 attempts without an interception, rushed for two touchdowns and caught an 18-yard scoring pass from wide receiver Bucky Irving late in the first quarter in Boulder, Colo.
“I haven’t really felt the stress or pressure I think because we’re so functional right now as an offense,” Nix said. “I don’t have to have all the pressure. I don’t have to make a play ever. I’ve just got to do the right thing, do what I’m supposed to do, make the common play over and over and over, and that’s what we’ve done offensively.”
Nix’s rapid resurgence comes less than a season after he left Auburn, where he had been the starter for three seasons, following in the footsteps of his father, Patrick, also a quarterback for the Tigers.
But former Auburn coach Gus Malzahn, who recruited the younger Nix, was dismissed with one game left in 2020. His replacement, Bryan Harsin, and Nix were unable to establish much of a working relationship, compelling Nix to reveal this season in an interview with CBS Sports he was miserable during his final year with the Tigers.
Auburn’s circus consumed Bryan Harsin
A season-ending injury against Mississippi State last November marked the last time Nix played for Auburn. He wound up, however, reuniting with a former Tigers assistant when Lanning named Kenny Dillingham as his offensive coordinator.
Dillingham, the offensive coordinator at Florida State in 2020 and 2021, helped Nix to his most prosperous season at Auburn when it went 9-4 in 2019, including a memorable 48-45 win against Alabama and an Outback Bowl appearance. That year Nix threw for a career-high 2,542 yards and 16 touchdowns with six interceptions.
The partnership has continued to flourish in the Pacific Northwest for a program that is second nationally in total offense (520.6 yards per game) and tied for third in scoring (43.1 points).
“Coach Dillingham is probably calling it as good as anyone in the country,” Nix said. “I think he’s just in a very good rhythm, very smart, puts us in great situations. ... Our offense as a whole, I mean, we’re so dynamic and guys are doing so many different things — you can’t really say it’s me.” | 2022-11-11T14:40:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oregon's Bo Nix in Heisman, CFP mix after escaping Auburn - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/bo-nix-oregon-heisman-auburn/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/bo-nix-oregon-heisman-auburn/ |
Christian Pulisic's dad, Mark, and mom, Kelley, both played college soccer at George Mason University. (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
Of all the eyeballs fixing to fixate on Christian Pulisic in his first World Cup as “Captain America,” one small group might luxuriate the most. It’s the group with the untold privilege of the long story arc. They’re the people who happened to intersect with Pulisic’s story before it began.
They’re the women’s and men’s soccer players of George Mason University from the late 1980s and early 1990s, and they romped the Fairfax pitches in Northern Virginia around the time of a George Mason heyday. Yet by nowadays they might marvel at more than the you’re-kidding-me national title the women’s team won in its fourth year of existence, or the way the men frequented NCAA tournaments and wrecked those of others. No, they’ve got a multigenerational doozy to consider.
One of their female defenders, Kelley Harlow, wound up marrying one of their male forwards, Mark Pulisic, and the two had a son, Christian.
So yeah, they’ve got observations, even beyond their volunteered raves for the unobtrusive turns of parenting that holler from the Pulisic bio on a planet rife with crummy sports parenting.
“Just some of his mannerisms,” said Debbie Fine (George Mason 1986-89), can transport her to “when Kelley would attack out of the back” because of “just the way he moves, his stride.”
They’ve got the chops to know the absurd rarity of what has happened with a George Mason offspring lodged at a gigantic Chelsea. “It’s amazing particularly when you understand that to reach the success he’s reaching, it’s not ‘difficult,’ ” said Martin Dunphy (George Mason 1986-89). “It’s just almost impossibly difficult.”
They’ve got a hunch that old George Mason had a good root in the most coveted American player to date even if he didn’t bother being born until 1998. “They had Gordon Bradley, from the U.K.; he was the men’s soccer coach,” said Stephanie Hylan Recupero (George Mason 1987-90). “He was from Europe. He had coached Pelé. Think about what he brought to George Mason University. Coming from Europe. Having coached at a high level and some of the best players in the world. Think about how high he set the bar. So that’s what Mark Pulisic was exposed to.” And coach Hank Leung’s smashing women’s program, “That’s what I stepped into. I stepped into a culture of winners, right? And when I say I did, Kelley did, too.”
That’s Kelley Harlow (1989-92), later known as Pulisic, later known as Mom.
Or, they’ve got a long raft of memories — of Pulisic in the backyard kicking, or in the driveway shooting, or at the golf course chipping, or being the tiniest sprite on the team yet charging, or being in the unforgiving academy of Dortmund in Germany as a teen, overcoming. That’s how it goes with a groomsman from the Pulisic wedding, Bob Lilley (George Mason 1984-87), who also happens to have played and coached with Mark Pulisic (1986-89).
As he noticed along the way, “A lot of players went over to Italy, or Portugal, or one of these countries, and I saw a lot of kids that were in their national teams’ setup, go over and chase the dream in Europe. And come back having failed. You know what I’m saying? And in some cases those players are never the same. And I think that’s happened to a lot of players, they go over there and they’re not really ready for it.”
That’s the normal story, right?
“Absolutely. And it’s a very high percentage.”
Now they’ve got a 24-year-old Pulisic coming up on their TVs from Qatar, four years after the American non-qualification Hylan calls “heartbreaking” and Lilley calls “devastating.” They’ve got that coming even as they’ve got their memories of when playing soccer was sort of an eccentric pursuit in the American construct, of when Lilley and Mark Pulisic shared a house with some other players, of when Fine, well: “For four years, it was blood, sweat and tears with his mom,” she said, speaking from the Dallas-Fort Worth entanglement where she helms a school special-education program. “For four years, she was the anchor of our team.”
So the kind of demanding and stalwart defender every team needs to avoid misery (Kelley), still fifth in consecutive George Mason games started (72), wound up marrying a forward who arrived as a “journeyman” (Dunphy’s word) and toiled his way to sixth all-time in George Mason goals (35), especially with “garbage goals” (as Lilley calls them). “I would drive up to George Mason on weekends in the summer,” Hylan said, speaking from near Boston where she’s a vice president of recruiting for a law firm. “I would train with the guys. And Mark was always there, because he was committed to the game.”
Once wedded, they proceeded to raise something else.
“My father arranged for them to go to the local under-10s” in Waterford, Ireland, on a Pulisic family visit with the lad still 7 or 8, Dunphy said as an Irishman in London, where he founded an investment company. “It was obviously something that really resonated with him,” the way the kid had “the close control, a comfortableness on the ball. My father had played football all his life.”
“He’s at Dortmund with other German national team players,” Lilley said, having visited when Christian was 16 and the sacrifice included Mark shepherding Christian to Europe while Kelley stayed back teaching school. “Those guys are talking to each other, they all speak the same language, and you’ve never been in that environment before.” They’re probably talking about you, and they might say, “ ‘Why is this American kid playing?’ ” as Lilley surmised, while saying, “You’re not going to play ahead of a kid that’s German if you’re for Dortmund unless you’re clearly better than him.”
“When I went over there to visit the first year, Christian would be out the door early, going over to school,” Lilley said from Pittsburgh, where he manages the Pittsburgh Riverhounds of the American second tier. “Mark’s going to get him from school, over to the training center. He’s doing homework. Then he’s meeting with the adviser. Then he’s training. Then it’s like 7 at night, 7:30 at night. ‘Want to get something to eat?’ This kid’s been going since 7:30, 8 in the morning, and you’re doing that every day, you’d better have soccer in your blood. You’re either gonna hit the mark or a big club like Dortmund’s gonna move on.”
Meanwhile, in came players from Asia, Africa, all over footballing creation …
“Thirty kids maybe brought in and maybe only two end up playing with Dortmund’s first team. Some end up playing for Stuttgart or Schalke. It’s hard to make it through the academy system all the way to the top of the academy system when you’re with a big club. He never gets to transfer to Chelsea if he’s not showing that he can impact one of the teams.”
And now …
“And now, you’re at Chelsea.”
And now, you’re really captain, America.
View it this way, as does Dunphy: The Ireland under-15 squad for which Dunphy played backup goalkeeper won in Europe in 1982, a great-big hell of a breakthrough. “And what happened?” Dunphy said. “Not one of the guys made it. All of those players, which were fantastic, not one guy made it. There’s so many factors that can affect it.” Here’s one: “Football, also, there’s so many people playing it.”
So it’s no wonder they feel a sort of a wow even if the whole thing does make sense, as Hylan believes it does given the parents, and even if there can be that occasional disconnect of, Really? It’s no wonder that after a 17-year-old Pulisic left Fine a ticket to a United States vs. Ecuador friendly in Frisco near Dallas, Fine kept the envelope with the words, “ ‘Left by Christian Pulisic,’ with his handwriting on it.” It’s no wonder that with Hylan and her three accomplished teenage players, the first already booked to play at Duke, “We talk about him in our household from a learning standpoint.”
In a house that boasts its various Pulisic jerseys … in an era when kids can get up on Saturdays and watch Europe … in an era when her 12-year-old son can rev up the iPad and watch videos of matches and techniques that preceded his birth, they observe how Pulisic “keeps overcoming odds, which I love, and I actually talk about that often with my own children.” It becomes a moment in their house across the Atlantic when he enters matches as a backup and she tells them, “ ‘Watch, he’ll have five minutes to produce, and he will. He’ll make the most out of the minutes he gets, which I find very impressive.’ ”
“If he hits a roadblock,” Lilley said, “he keeps working, keeps his head down, and that very much reminds me of Mark and Kelley where they have that work ethic.” So here come the parenting reviews. Lilley: “They would always say, ‘You know, we’re not gonna push this on him.’ ” Fine: “It’s not like they forced him to go outside and kick a soccer ball 195 times.” Lilley: “They didn’t have him just playing. He was training and they were measuring — rather than having him get over his head. It was always about, ‘Is he able to express himself,’ rather than throwing him in the deep end. They were always patient.”
But then, Dunphy: “He plays nothing like his father did. The father was just built like a brick s---house. Gigantic legs and thighs, not particularly fast, but just barreling.”
The son, though: “Just so dangerous.”
Three different humans have forged this arc.
“What I love about him the most,” Hylan said, “is he’s very explosive. And his ability to attack opportunities and take people one-on-one, is a game changer. He makes things happen out of nothing, actually.”
And so: “I hold my breath.”
A lot of that might go around shortly. | 2022-11-11T14:40:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Christian Pulisic, son of soccer players, leads USMNT into the World Cup - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/christian-pulisic-family/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/christian-pulisic-family/ |
Hi Damon: Is it okay to let my White kids listen to and sing “Weird Al” ’s “White & Nerdy?” For context, they love the song, and whenever we hear it, they end up humming it for days. I’m worried that my little White 6-year-old is going to sing it to their little Black friends on the playground, and inadvertently reinforce the “White and nerdy go together, you can’t be Black and nerdy” stereotype. If all the kids involved were older, I’d be less worried, but I’m not sure 6-year-olds understand satire, parody and reading the room/context enough for the song to be the harmless fun I want it to be.
What do you think? Am I being a humorless worrywart, or is this a legit concern?
— White and Nerdy Mom
White and Nerdy Mom: A conversation this week with my wife, who is in a PhD program:
Me: What are you doing?
Her: Some research on quantitative methods and linear regression analyses. You?
Me: I’m researching too!
Her: On what?
Me: I’m listening to “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “White & Nerdy”
I forgot that this song, a parody of Chamillionaire’s 2005 hit “Ridin,’ ” exists. When I think of “Weird Al,” I think of “Smells Like Nirvana” and “Fat” — both of which I loved as a kid, and both of which aged like milk in the sun. Thank you for reminding me.
So, I will admit that while I found “White & Nerdy” to be clever at times, I cringed much of the way through. Now, I watched the video on YouTube instead of just listening to it, and so my cringing is somewhat due to some of the visual and casting choices he made instead of just the song. But the lyrics fit the aesthetic, and neither have aged well. That’s not the worst thing in the world, though. Most comedy doesn’t. Along with being funny, jokes are mostly meant to be snapshots of moments in time. The humor comes when established cultural norms and expectations are exaggerated or subverted.
When the zeitgeist shifts, comedy does too. (Well, comedy should.) This has been a sore subject with some comedians and fans of comedy, who seem to believe that, um, all jokes matter. But some more conscientious comics say otherwise. While on the subject of “cancel culture” during a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Patton Oswalt said “ … pushing the envelope doesn’t mean digging your feet in while the envelope moves forward — you should be ahead of that envelope, that’s how you should be pushing it.”
Anyway, while “White & Nerdy” positions White guys as awkward and oblivious try-hard geeks, that’s not the only cringeworthy stereotype. They are “White and nerdy” in comparison to the Black guys, who are depicted as thuggish, hypermasculine, and preternaturally cool. A grown-up knows that these are inaccurate representations of race. (Well, a grown-up should know.) A 6-year-old probably doesn’t.
Unless, the next time you listen to the song, you want to have a very complex conversation with your child about satire, the arbitrarily shifting rules of comedy, racial microaggressions, and the sartorial choices of mid-aughts Houstonian rappers, I think the best option here is to just find some new fun songs that don’t find humor in stale stereotypes. I’m not as concerned about him mindlessly humming the song around a Black friend, and the friend feeling weird, as much as his taking the message at face value. (Also, for his own sake, if he wants to have friends, the Baby Shark theme or “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” might be better choices than him singing “I’m White and nerdy” at school and on playgrounds.)
You still should have the race conversation, though, if you haven’t yet. It’s never too early for kids to know that while some people look or talk or walk in a different way than they do, it’s just because they’re different. Not because who they are or how they look is better or worse. (Just imagine how boring the world would be if everyone looked the same?) And, also, he should know that race doesn’t dictate behavior. White kids can be cool, Black kids can be nerdy, and White and Black and Latino and Asian kids can be cool and nerdy at the same time. | 2022-11-11T15:15:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Damon: Is it ok to let my White kids sing 'Weird Al'’s 'White & Nerdy'? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/11/ask-damon-weird-al-white-nerdy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/11/ask-damon-weird-al-white-nerdy/ |
U.S. regulatory probe of the exchange’s collapse could unearth array of problems
Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and chief executive officer of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, after an interview on an episode of Bloomberg Wealth. (Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg)
FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, announced on Friday it will file on bankruptcy, with its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, stepping down in the wake of a trading scandal that has embroiled the firm in regulatory inquiries.
The company’s dramatic unraveling, which intensified in the past few days, marked a stunning collapse of what was believed to be one of the world’s most stable crypto firms. Instead, there are now angry investors and a growing number of government entities trying to determine what happened.
Authorities initiated an investigation of FTX last year, examining whether the crypto giant’s trading and lending programs were properly registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC and Commodities Futures Trading Commission are also probing connections between FTX International, FTX.US and Alameda Research, FTX’s sister trading firm, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the work is ongoing.
The 30-year-old Bankman-Fried, one of the Democratic Party’s top donors in this election cycle, had emerged in recent months as the industry’s self-appointed ambassador to Washington, a major force in advocating for a bipartisan Senate bill that would hand significant authority over crypto to the CFTC.
Cryptocurrency, after seeing a surge in popularity during the pandemic and drawing in millions of new investors, has faced a painful reckoning this year. Prices of bitcoin and other tokens have fallen precipitously leading to a rush in clients trying to withdraw money. The value of bitcoin has fallen from roughly $68,000 a year ago to $17,000 now.
Bankman-Fried, who also runs Alameda Research, allegedly used $10 billion worth of FTX customer deposits to fund transactions by the trading firm, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Bankman-Fried, in a since-deleted tweet on Monday, said FTX did not make bets with customers’ assets. FTX is headquartered in the Bahamas, but Bankman-Fried has spent much of the year working to gain influence in Washington, both on Capitol Hill and with regulators.
FTX entered a tailspin Sunday, when Changpeng Zhao, CEO of rival crypto exchange Binance, announced he would sell off $530 million worth of an FTX-issued crypto token. Bankman-Fried was leaning on the native token to secure his firms’ sizable debts.
Bankman-Fried on Thursday blamed FTX’s collapse on his own faulty math about its ability to cover its liabilities. “And so we are where we are. Which sucks, and that’s on me,” he tweeted. “I’m sorry.”
The collapse of FTX, which was valued at $32 billion during a round of fundraising earlier this year, has drawn comparisons to failures — and impropriety — among mainstream financial institutions, including investment banking firm Lehman Brothers and convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff.
“Ultimately to most of the investors, it was a black box,” said Lou Kerner, founder of Web3 advisory service CryptoOracle. “To me, it doesn’t appear any different than the people who lost money with Bernie Madoff. Any time you invest in a black box, you run the risk of that being true.”
“This is a very interconnected world in crypto with a few concentrated players at the middle and one of those players had the toxic combination of lack of disclosure, customer money, a lot of leverage, meaning borrowing, and then trying to invest with that,” Gensler said. “And then when markets turned on them, it appears that a lot of customers lost money.”
Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, which invested more than $210 million in FTX, told limited partners in a letter on Wednesday that it was marking down the entire amount. The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, Canada’s third-largest pension fund, said it had a $95 million stake in the company but any loss would have a “limited impact” on the overall health of the plan.
The fate of measure pushed by Bankman-Fried — sponsored by Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and John Boozman (R-Ark.), the top lawmakers on the Senate Agriculture Committee — is now in doubt. In a Thursday night statement, Stabenow said FTX’s collapse “reinforces the urgent need for greater federal oversight of this industry.” She said she will keep pushing to move the measure through her committee.
Yet congressional aides to lawmakers from both parties said support for the bill appears to be cratering. “Sam was trying to pick his own regulator,” one aide said. Another warned that while legislators appeared eager to take up consumer protection measures, “Congress does bad things when they have knee-jerk reactions.”
“I think that’s where he developed a long list of enemies in the sector,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post. “It looked like he was trying to carve out a space for FTX, and then use the regulation to carve out a moat for his position.”
Devlin Barrett and Steven Zeitchik contributed to this report. | 2022-11-11T15:15:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sam Bankman-Fried resigns as FTX files for bankruptcy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/11/ftx-bankman-fried-bankruptcy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/11/ftx-bankman-fried-bankruptcy/ |
WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 10: US President Joe Biden speaks during an event hosted by the Democratic National Party at the Howard Theatre on November 10, 2022 in Washington, DC. The President and Vice President are speaking after the Democratic Party had a historically successful midterm election, fending off what was predicted to be a Red Wave. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images) (Photographer: Samuel Corum/Getty Images North America)
President Joe Biden has had a very good week. The midterms turned out better for Democrats than anyone expected and went unusually well for an incumbent president’s party. Russia retreated further in Ukraine. And new data suggested that inflation was moderating, increasing the chances that the US can avoid a painful recession.
So much for the easy part. Biden now will have to maneuver shrewdly if he is to advance Democrats’ priorities and set the stage for the 2024 presidential campaign, whoever the Democratic nominee is. He could start by using the lame-duck session to push for a couple of critical pieces of legislation. But there is plenty more Biden should keep on his agenda despite a likely ( but not certain) Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Since the Force seemed to be with the White House this week, I’m invoking the wisdom of Star Wars to make my case for bold action.
Great, kid. Don’t get cocky. I’ll give Biden the same advice I would have offered had the elections gone badly: This had very little to do with you. Biden was entitled to his victory lap news conference Wednesday, but by Monday he will go back to being an unpopular president with an incoming Republican majority in at least one chamber of Congress.
The good news is that his unpopularity wasn’t directly linked to what he has done well or poorly. But the last thing that Biden should do after the midterms is to read the results as an endorsement for either his policy agenda or how he has organized the presidency. Nor should Biden give in to the temptation to shoot off his mouth about how much of a success he is or to taunt former President Donald Trump.
Instead, the halfway point in his term is an excellent time to take a hard look at what’s worked well and what hasn’t. Generally, Biden and White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain have run a smooth operation — but there is always room for improvement, whether it’s on messaging about Covid booster shots or pushing the Senate harder on judicial and executive branch confirmations.
One Way Out! There is urgent business — a “crazyproofing” agenda — that Biden should tackle during the lame-duck session of Congress. The top priority is to pass a reform of the Electoral Count Act. The legislation, which has the support of a few Republicans in addition to the Democratic caucus, would protect against interference in the certification process that we witnessed in 2020.
Second, to fend off potential economic disaster, Biden needs to press the current Congress to raise the debt limit, or, preferably, eliminate it once and for all.(1) Biden has expressed some reluctance to do so, but it’s clearly good politics and good policy.
There are other important things Biden could accomplish with this Congress’s slim Democratic majorities, before extremist flamethrowers such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Jim Jordan get to work next year. Among them, notes the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, are immigration legislation, locking in aid to Ukraine and protecting legitimate Justice Department investigations into the Jan. 6 attack from future House interference. Another action that’s unlikely but is a good idea nonetheless: Remove members of Congress from the line of presidential succession to ensure partisan continuity in the executive branch.
Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them: Faced with divided government, presidents often focus on executive action to get things done. We can expect Biden to do plenty of that, as all presidents have.(2)
But choosing policy is only part of the president’s job. Implementing laws once they are passed is extremely important. Laws aren’t self-executing; the sprawling federal bureaucracy has to draft regulations, select projects, hire contractors and all the rest of it, and presidents can push them to do so quickly and efficiently — or, as too many presidents have done, allow bureaucratic inertia to impede the process.President Lyndon Johnson, for example, tended to act as though signing a bill into law ended his responsibilities — and some Great Society programs floundered as a result.(3)
Biden succeeded in getting big-ticket legislation passed and had real implementation accomplishments such as the launch of user-friendly websites for obtaining coronavirus tests and student loan forgiveness. But there is more to be done. For instance, he could help get infrastructure projects started before a hostile House tries to cut off funding. It’s always easier to rally a coalition around partially built roads, bridges and cable lines than to drum up support for prospective ones.
My allegiance is to the Republic. To Democracy! Biden made defense of democracy a key part of his build-up to the midterms. He was correct to do so. Now that the election is over, he should try to assemble a bipartisan group of past and present elected officials who would support broad pro-democracy policies, including the voting rights reforms that were blocked by Republicans in the current Congress. I have little hope it would yield national legislation with a Republican majority in the House, but even rhetorical support for democratic initiatives would be helpful.
This gives him plenty to do. Meanwhile, the country awaits Biden’s decision on whether he will run again in 2024. Biden shouldn’t let the midterm results fool him into thinking the path to re-election would be smooth. The economy will still likely be the single biggest factor in whether he is popular in 2024, and if he isn’t, then Republicans — even Trump — would have a good chance of winning. Presidents can’t control much about the economy, especially in the short and medium term; if they could, recessions and inflation would be very rare! But what he can do, he should.
• Republicans May Not Be Able to Stop Biden’s Agenda: Bobby Ghosh
(1) There are multiple ways to do this. Simple legislation to just get rid of the debt ceiling would be fine, but it’s unlikely that there are 10 Republicans who would join Democrats to overcome the inevitable filibuster preventing a final vote on the matter. There are various ways the limit could be eliminated through the reconciliation procedure, which would only require a majority of both houses. My personal preference would be to raise the limit to a preposterous number, but the best method is whatever can get the votes. Also, Biden could moot the whole thing by minting the coin. That works, too.
(2) Expect controversy over Biden’s authority, with some objections based on legitimate questions about what presidents can do on their own - and some based on the theory many Republicans held from Jan. 20, 2009 through Jan. 19, 2017 that the president’s powers are limited to pardoning turkeys at Thanksgiving. That theory wasn’t heard from much since then, but expect it to come charging back next year - perhaps with the support of some Republican judges.
(3) Medicare, Medicaid, and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were generally implemented well, but a whole lot of other programs never really took off before a more conservative Congress starved them of funds after the 1966 elections and then Richard Nixon’s presidency killed them with neglect. | 2022-11-11T15:15:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden Mustn’t Squander the Lame-Duck Session - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/biden-mustnt-squander-the-lame-duck-session/2022/11/11/d2057f74-61c5-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/biden-mustnt-squander-the-lame-duck-session/2022/11/11/d2057f74-61c5-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Understanding the Ups and Downs of US-Saudi Relations
Analysis by Iain Marlow | Bloomberg
More than seven decades ago, the US and Saudi Arabia, despite differences on human rights and the Arab-Israeli conflict, established a close alliance. It was based on an exchange: The US gave security guarantees to Saudi rulers, and they promised access to the kingdom’s vast oil reserves. The arrangement has withstood periodic conflicts over the years. Of late, however, the relationship’s moorings have weakened, with the US no longer as dependent on Saudi oil and the Saudis less trusting of US protection. As a result, disputes that once might have been papered over can now seem like potential ruptures.
1. Where does the relationship stand?
It remains strained over the 2018 murder by Saudi agents of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom’s government, in Istanbul. US intelligence agencies concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto Saudi leader, approved the operation. (The crown prince denied any involvement in the killing while accepting symbolic responsibility for it as the country’s unofficial ruler.) US President Joe Biden, while a candidate in 2019, pledged to treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” for the murder, and while he didn’t go that far once in office, he did refuse all contact with Prince Mohammed. But in July 2022, Biden swallowed his pride, flew to Saudi Arabia and publicly bumped fists with the prince, hoping the kingdom would increase oil production and thus reduce prices, which had spiked as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
2. Did it work?
The Saudis agreed to a small hike in output. However, in October, the Saudi-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries announced the biggest production cutback since 2020. OPEC members defended the cuts as necessary to protect their economies from a global economic slowdown. Biden treated the move as a betrayal by the Saudis and threatened unspecified consequences.
3. How dependent is the US on Saudi oil?
The shale boom has made the US the world’s largest producer of oil and thus less reliant on foreign supplies. For the crude it does import, Canada rather than the Middle East is now the primary source. But as Biden’s hat-in-hand trip showed, Saudi Arabia has considerable influence over the price of oil as the biggest producer within OPEC, which pumps about 60% of internationally traded crude.
4. Why has Saudi faith in the US eroded?
Saudi officials complain that the US has become an unreliable protector. They cite the US exit from Afghanistan in 2021 that precipitated its government’s fall and, a decade earlier, the withdrawal of support from US ally Hosni Mubarak during widespread protests that led to the Egyptian president’s downfall. They lament what they call US “disengagement” from the Middle East, arguing that Washington has done too little to contain the expanding influence of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s rival for regional dominance.
5. What’s the history of the relationship?
In 1945, US President Franklin Roosevelt and Saudi Arabia’s founder King Abdulaziz ibn Saud held a historic meeting. While they disagreed vehemently on one point — the American supporting the establishment of Israel and the king opposed — they nevertheless laid the groundwork for the security-for-oil arrangement. Over the years the US complained, but not loudly, about the constraints on civil rights and the unequal treatment of women and minority Shiite Muslims in the kingdom. Riyadh and Washington got cozier after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, which overthrew a US-backed monarch. US forces came to the rescue in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia next door.
6. What about previous discord?
In 1973, Saudi Arabia led an Arab oil boycott of the US and other countries that supported Israel in that year’s Arab-Israeli war, contributing to a recession in the West. Ties were strained again in 2001 when it became clear that the Sept. 11 attacks on the US were masterminded and mostly orchestrated by Saudi nationals. In recent years, Prince Mohammed’s abandonment of the kingdom’s usual, cautious foreign policy has made Saudi Arabia a vexing ally for the US. He launched a disruptive blockade of Qatar, which hosts the largest US military base in the region, and a bombing campaign in Yemen that’s killed thousands of civilians. When Donald Trump was US president, he looked past the friction and embraced the Saudis. Not Biden, who ended US support for Saudi offensive operations in Yemen, including related weapons transfers.
The Biden administration has pledged to “recalibrate” the relationship, but has few good options. US lawmakers have called for a revival of a bill called the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act,” known as NOPEC. It would empower the US Department of Justice to file an antitrust lawsuit against OPEC, though it’s unclear how a US court could enforce a decision against cartel members. Other lawmakers have suggested curtailing arms shipments to the Saudis. Both of those options risked escalating tensions with the kingdom. For its part, Saudi Arabia has enlarged its friend circle, increasing trade ties with China. China, however, is an unlikely substitute for the US as protector, as it has close relations with Iran. | 2022-11-11T15:15:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Understanding the Ups and Downs of US-Saudi Relations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/understanding-the-ups-and-downs-of-us-saudi-relations/2022/11/11/30540b04-61d0-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/understanding-the-ups-and-downs-of-us-saudi-relations/2022/11/11/30540b04-61d0-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
At the request of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, the US and its regional partners have been exploring a possible armed intervention to restore stability and deliver humanitarian aid. They should think twice. Haiti’s rich neighbors must do more to help, but sending foreign troops into such a chaotic environment risks an even greater disaster.
Last month, the US co-drafted a resolution seeking United Nations authorization for an international security mission to Haiti. In hopes of limiting the involvement of US troops, President Joe Biden’s administration has proposed that a “partner country” lead the effort. Possible candidates include Mexico and Canada.
The US and its partners have an interest in preventing Haiti’s collapse. But under the current conditions, any foreign military intervention would likely do more harm than good. There’s little chance the operation would remain limited and “carefully scoped,” as the US intends; a previous UN peacekeeping mission to Haiti lasted 13 years and was ridden with scandals. Attempts to secure ports, roads and warehouses to enable the flow of humanitarian relief will inevitably produce clashes between foreign troops and heavily armed local gangs. And because the international force would be acting on behalf of a government that lacks popular legitimacy, its ability to earn the trust and cooperation of the Haitian people would be compromised from the start.
Better to focus on building the capacity of Haitians themselves. The State Department has pledged $48 million in assistance this year to Haiti’s 14,000-person national police force, which is a good start. The US should expand similar programs that have shown promise, such as a joint effort with France to train anti-gang SWAT teams, and press partner governments to increase contributions to a UN fund focused on bolstering Haitian law-enforcement capabilities. More humanitarian relief should be provided directly to government agencies with a proven record of distributing funds effectively.
In response to Henry’s request for an international security mission, meanwhile, the Biden administration should rule out putting US boots on the ground, but offer to deploy additional maritime assets to Haiti’s ports to curb drug and arms smuggling. In return, Henry should commit to hold new elections; bring opposition groups into the government; and work with business leaders, labor unions and other civil-society groups to develop plans for an orderly democratic transition.
• The US Should Tread Carefully on Haiti: James Stavridis
• Cascading Global Disasters Aren’t a Coincidence: Niall Ferguson
• Must the US Kiss Latin America Goodbye?: Eduardo Porter | 2022-11-11T15:15:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sending Troops to Haiti Would Make a Bad Situation Worse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/sending-troops-to-haiti-would-make-a-bad-situation-worse/2022/11/11/40875730-61c9-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/sending-troops-to-haiti-would-make-a-bad-situation-worse/2022/11/11/40875730-61c9-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Servings:8 to 12 (makes 8 cups)
I thoroughly enjoy the turkey at Thanksgiving, but I’m really there for the sides. I wait all year to dig into the spread of hot dishes — the sugary sweet potatoes, creamy green bean casserole and cheese-y gratins. But this stunning side, which graces my family’s table every year, appeals to me because of the way it contrasts the others, providing a counterpoint of fresh simplicity while also being festive and tasty. More than any other dish on the table, these jewel-toned roasted vegetables represent the bounty for which I am most grateful — the wealth of color, flavor and nutrition inherent in seasonal produce.
It’s also a dish that is very easy to make. The only catch is that the vegetables — beets, pearl onions, carrots and Brussels sprouts — need to be roasted separately to ensure that each is perfectly cooked, before they are warmed together with a sprinkle of fresh thyme and a coating of balsamic vinegar.
Luckily, the initial roasting, which is mostly hands-off, can be done days ahead. It’s just the beets that require a bit of extra attention, as they need to be peeled and diced after roasting. Although, you could take the shortcut of purchasing peeled, roasted beets, which are sold in vacuum-sealed packages in the produce section of the market.
When you are ready to serve, you toss the roasted vegetables together on a sheet pan with the thyme, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper and roast them until they are warmed through and beautifully glazed. Conveniently, you can do this step at whatever temperature the oven is set to for the other dishes being served (in the 350-425 degree range). They are even good at room temperature if your timing isn’t just right.
It’s a splendid side, festively colorful and brimming with fresh flavor, that is totally stress-free to make and serve. Now that’s something to be thankful for.
Per serving (2/3 cup), based on 12 | 2022-11-11T15:15:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Roasted vegetables recipe makes a splendid and colorful side any time of year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/11/11/roasted-vegetables-recipe-thanksgiving-healthy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/11/11/roasted-vegetables-recipe-thanksgiving-healthy/ |
White Southern women are holding us back
Pour one out for us in Texas. We’re really hurting this week. So this newsletter is a little on the short side. …
The state voted overwhelmingly Republican during Tuesday’s midterm elections, even more so than in 2020. Incumbent GOP Gov. Greg Abbott soundly defeated his Democratic challenger, former congressman Beto O’ Rourke. Republicans also retained all of the major statewide positions, including Attorney General Ken Paxton — who has long been under legal indictment. Sigh.
Before I begin, I know what many of you think. That Texas should be given back to Mexico. Or at the very least that none of y’all would miss us if we seceded. Yeah, I read your comments on my pieces!
It’s true that Texas’s statewide outcomes seem even more hopeless for Democrats here, considering that a “red wave” slaughter of Democrats did not materialize nationally, as many pundits predicted. But to be honest, it’s hard to feel happy about a smaller-than-predicted national tide, when Texas’s red ocean levels only seem to be rising.
The question a lot of non-Texans are asking is: “Why?” Why would the state reelect the same leadership after our deadly power-grid failure, after the Uvalde school shooting, after the criminalization of reproductive rights?
I don’t have all the answers. Voter suppression is a factor, and there’s the sheer size of the Republicans’ war chest. Voter polarization is a powerful force. It’s tough to overcome all of that.
White men vote Republican; we all know that. But there is another group that consistently supports the GOP’s anti-woman, do-nothing-about-dead-kids stance, and that is White women. Seriously, what gives?
Voter Ethnicity/Race & Gender in #TX2022 #TxGov
White W. Abbott (64%) Beto (36%)
White M. Abbott (69%) Beto (30%)
Latino W. Beto (62%) Abbott (36%)
Latino M. Beto (53%) Abbott (45%)
Black W. Beto (90%) Abbott (9%)
Black M. Beto (78%) Abbott (22%)
via @CNN #txlege https://t.co/hUlCnJ2uvW
White women (64 percent) voted for Abbott in about the same numbers that White men did (69 percent).
Black women, on the other hand, went 90 percent for O’Rourke. We held it down. As usual.
A similar story played out in Georgia’s gubernatorial race, in which White women overwhelmingly voted for Republican incumbent Brian Kemp and Black women voted for his challenger, Democrat Stacey Abrams:
Exit polls in the race for Georgia Governor – Stacey Abrams in blue, Brian Kemp in red: https://t.co/GqCk3CXu3h pic.twitter.com/wEUvIulRxs
And, of course, we all remember that a majority of White women voted for President Donald Trump in 2020.
There is a lot of focus in media circles on how Latinos will vote. There has long been an assumption that an increase in the number of non-White voters could dislodge the GOP’s stranglehold on my home state. But the reality is, Southern White women are the lady foot soldiers of the GOP’s agenda. We will not get free until that changes.
There is, of course, a long history of White women serving the conservative agenda of the Southern patriarchy. I mean, the United Daughters of the Confederacy and their funding are a large part of why many Confederate monuments still stand in the United States.
If there was ever a time for White women to mobilize at the ballot box, it should have been the year that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned abortion rights. I’ve seen and reported on Black women who are fighting for all women’s rights, children’s rights and better education. And yet those favors and efforts are not returned to us. And the polls consistently show that.
White women’s political behavior, especially in the South, makes it difficult, if not damn near impossible for meaningful change to occur. The racists, misogynists and anti-LGBTQ forces in the GOP have been banking on this for a long time — and they are clearly still reaping the rewards.
Home front: Slavery on the ballot
Speaking of the Confederacy, slavery was apparently on the ballot this week in five states.
Progress is progress, I suppose? Does this mean the Civil War is a little closer to being over?
All right, the votes were designed to close a loophole in the 13th Amendment that allows “involuntary servitude” as a punishment for crime — prison labor, in other words.
But seriously, I have questions for all those who voted “yes” to keeping slavery in their state’s constitution in 2022.
Global radar: Twitter’s global blues
Elon Musk is mucking everything up on Twitter, it seems. He announced an $8 subscription for blue-check verification, only for the company to try to roll out “official” badges for certain accounts and news organizations. The company then haphazardly laid off half its staff, only to scramble to hire some of them back.
While much of the fuss has been about the United States and English language users, I worry about the global implications of Musk’s machinations.
For starters, it’s clear that Musk doesn’t give a damn about Africa. He laid off the staff at the Twitter office in Ghana, the company’s only (!) office for a continent of more than 1 billion people. Twitter has played a huge role in many African countries, including Nigeria’s massive 2020 #EndSars protests against police brutality.
SCOOP - CNN has obtained the termination notice sent to staff at Twitter's only office in Africa - in Accra 🇬🇭
It is probably too early to tell what this will mean, but it would be a shame if the moves degrade people’s ability to understand and learn directly from Africans about the issues that matter to them.
This is personal for me, actually. I got my start on Twitter more than 12 years ago in Ghana. I was there in 2009 covering the country’s elections, and Ghanaian journalists showed me how to use Twitter to keep up with news and political developments in real time. And now, workers at the Twitter office in Ghana are scrambling to figure out what to do next.
This does not augur well, especially combined with the fact that Western media organizations are downsizing their investments in Africa: Britain’s BBC has announced that it is also laying off a number of its Africa coverage staff.
A lesson in all of this for the continent: It is beyond time for Africa to invest in its own social media platforms and journalism houses.
Fun zone: The zen of Corn Kid
Here’s Corn Kid again, explaining his “retirement” and going back to school. Please protect this little boy at all costs. He is a national treasure!
The baby said he was retired while he was in school, but now that he can travel again he got his “attitude back”🥺🥺🥺 pic.twitter.com/I0avcLxvzh
— CiCi Adams (@CiCiAdams_) November 7, 2022
Do you have questions, comments, tips, recipes, poems, praise, or critiques for me? Submit them here. I do read every submission and may include yours in a future version of the newsletter. | 2022-11-11T15:16:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Many White Southern women voted Republican, despite Dobbs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/white-southern-women-voters-texas-georgia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/white-southern-women-voters-texas-georgia/ |
Trump’s wild claim about using the FBI to stop 2018 vote-counting, explained
Election workers and observers manually count votes for Florida's U.S. Senate race at the Broward County supervisor of elections headquarters on Nov. 16, 2018, in Lauderhill, Fla. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Donald Trump told his supporters that they ought to tune in next week for a special announcement — almost certainly some sort of formalization of his months-long winking about seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. But Trump is not waiting for that announcement to begin taking shots at the man generally considered his most formidable opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Over at the social media platform Trump helped start, the former president has been on a tirade against DeSantis, very clearly out of frustration that DeSantis sailed to reelection on Tuesday while Trump-endorsed candidates were battered. So Trump is offering up context like “shouldn’t it be said that in 2020, I got 1.1 Million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 Million to 4.6 Million?”
Most of this was just part of the ambient Trump noise that Americans generally tune out. But then there was another claim, a new one, that raised eyebrows. As part of a thread claiming credit for nearly every aspect of DeSantis’s political career (not completely unfairly), Trump brought up the aftermath of the 2018 election in Florida that DeSantis narrowly won.
This is a really remarkable claim, that as president he leveraged the Justice Department to intervene in an election. It is also almost certainly false.
It’s useful to remember what happened that year. In an echo of the midterm elections just ended, 2018 was a remarkably good year for Democrats — except for Florida. There, Democratic advantages in the gubernatorial and Senate races evaporated, leading to narrow Republican victories. DeSantis won by about 30,000 votes; incumbent Gov. Rick Scott won election to the Senate by about 10,000.
Those margins were close enough that attention turned to the counting of mail ballots in the days after the election, a process that is by now deeply familiar to political observers. So was the context in which that counting took place: Scott alleged that the slow process of counting votes in Democratic-heavy counties like Broward offered the opportunity for illegal ballots to be injected. There was no actual evidence of this; he and his allies insisted that ballots were appearing out of nowhere to be included, which wasn’t true. But it was a way to cast doubt on the vote and, potentially, to shut down a vote count that had consistently eroded his advantage after Election Day.
This is what Trump appears to be referring to. But the timeline of what happened makes clear that none of this had anything to do with DeSantis.
Scott first made his allegations about fraudulent voting in a news conference on the evening of Nov. 8, 2018. This was the first moment at which this idea that the vote count was suspicious was introduced (beyond rumblings for a few hours prior). But notice that it was Scott who was making these allegations, not DeSantis.
There’s a good reason for this: DeSantis’s race had already been called! The Associated Press declared DeSantis the winner of the gubernatorial race nearly two days before.
BREAKING: Republican Ron DeSantis wins election for governor in Florida. #APracecall at 11:27 p.m. EST. @AP election coverage: https://t.co/miEWlbTVZW #Election2018 #FLelection
Vote counting did continue to reduce DeSantis’s lead, but there were not enough outstanding votes to potentially alter the outcome. So the call was made, and there was no question whether he would have “the votes necessary to win,” as Trump put it.
You may also recall that a potentially related incident occurred at the same time: Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, resigned his position. Was this a function of resistance to pressure to influence the outcome in Florida?
Probably not. Sessions’s resignation was announced on the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2018, before there was any public question about the vote-counting in Florida. What’s more, there had been months of animosity between Sessions and Trump over the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. There was plenty of reason to think that Trump wanted Sessions gone unrelated to any purported FBI pressure.
The question then becomes: Did Trump ask the FBI to shut down the vote count in Florida on Scott’s behalf?
There’s no evidence that he did. By all accounts, the process of counting ballots in the targeted counties continued slowly — and not without contentiousness — until all of the votes were tallied. The AP called the race for Scott on Nov. 20. An investigation later determined that a number of problems had surrounded the counting in Broward County, but that none of them affected the outcome of any races. There was no evidence of rampant illegal voting.
That, not some belated admission from Trump, will likely be the lasting legacy of the 2018 contest in Florida. Scott alleged illegal voting, without evidence — a claim certainly aimed at putting pressure on Democratic counties as the vote-tallying was underway. Trump elevated those claims. Conservative media seized upon them. Pressure ensued.
Republican protest crowd doubles to about 60. Chant of lock her up breaks out pic.twitter.com/PfBHkbokha
— Alex Harris (@harrisalexc) November 9, 2018
In other words, it was a preview of what was to follow two years later. Which, of course, is a point in favor of the theory that Trump’s claims this week were baseless and simply aimed at taking credit for DeSantis’s 2018 win. We know that Trump worked very hard to get the FBI to intervene in the 2020 election results, but that no intervention followed.
There’s no reason to think that the Bureau was influenced more successfully two years prior. | 2022-11-11T15:32:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump’s wild claim about using the FBI to stop 2018 vote-counting, explained - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/11/trump-desantis-2018-election-fbi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/11/trump-desantis-2018-election-fbi/ |
LSU and quarterback Jayden Daniels (5) slipped past Alabama and linebacker Dallas Turner (15) to keep open a possibility that the Tigers could make the playoff as a two-loss team. (Tyler Kaufman/AP)
Rather than fret about rankings at this time of year, it’s best to remember the basic math that has come up time and again in the playoff era.
An undefeated power conference team isn’t getting left out of the semifinals, unless there is somehow more than four of them (which there won’t be this year). A one-loss power conference team has a chance. And a two-loss power conference team needs a really good profile and plenty of help to overcome its stumbles, and it hasn’t happened yet.
So how does it translate to the present situation? There are no more than 13 plausible playoff candidates remaining, and the number is probably smaller in reality.
Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State and TCU will be fine if they win out. Clemson, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, Southern California, Tennessee and UCLA all have the potential to get to 12-1 (though Mississippi needs some help to win the SEC West even if it finishes 11-1).
And is there a two-loss spoiler? It might be LSU, which has defeated Alabama and Mississippi and could face Georgia in the SEC title game. Win that, and the Tigers might have a compelling case even with losses to Florida State and Tennessee (especially if they don’t have to leapfrog an 11-1 Tennessee team to get in).
A longer shot? Alabama, which would need to beat Mississippi and Auburn and have LSU lose to both Arkansas and Texas A&M just to get to an SEC title game. That’s asking a lot, though the Crimson Tide will probably land a New Year’s Six nod if it gets into the barn at 10-2.
Pandemic’s impact on coaching
There was no shortage of predictions made early in the pandemic that proved to be off the mark. It’s tough to make a forecast while lacking information in the middle of a once-in-a-century public health crisis.
One that resonates with a bless-your-heart vibe more than two years later is how the disruption would cause schools to become more cautious about paying massive buyouts to struggling coaches. Such thinking went out the window around the time South Carolina dismissed Will Muschamp in the middle of the 2020 season.
Perhaps a more telling pandemic consequence is just how much of an influence the disruption had on coaches just hired in the months before the world shut down. Of the 24 Football Bowl Subdivision coaches who were in their first season in 2020, six have been jettisoned before the completion of their third season.
South Florida’s Jeff Scott was the latest casualty of that class after going 4-26 with the Bulls and getting pink-slipped this week. Karl Dorrell was dismissed last month at Colorado, and Steve Addazio (Colorado State), Todd Graham (Hawaii), Jimmy Lake (Washington) and Nick Rolovich (Washington State) didn’t make it past a second season.
There are some mitigating circumstances. Rolovich was fired for failing to comply with a vaccine mandate. Addazio, a Connecticut native who had never coached west of the Mississippi, seemed like an odd fit in the Mountain West from the start. And, of course, schools do tend to pull the plug faster than in the past.
Still, losing pretty much all of the spring of a first season, then dealing with pandemic protocols to make it through the summer and fall had to have an impact. Not being able to host recruits on campus probably had a significant impact, too. It’s tough to fulfill the cliched promise to “change the culture” when the opportunity to do so is narrow.
Colleges are more willing than ever to pay football coaches not to coach
That might have helped derail Scott, a former Clemson co-offensive coordinator who in two-plus years managed to beat three Football Championship Subdivision opponents and a Temple team that was well on its way to mailing in the second half of its season in 2021.
(An aside: Since a 7-0 start in 2018, South Florida is 8-40 overall and 3-30 in the American. There are definite challenges at the Tampa school, including playing off-campus, and its blink-and-you-missed-it random rise to No. 2 in the country for in 2007 will be hard to replicate and thus is a talking point that grows wearisome. But the Bulls’ floor ought to be higher than this).
It’s not as if Dorrell, who was hired less than a month before the world went haywire, had much of a chance, either, at Colorado. He replaced Mel Tucker, who jumped to Michigan State, which struggled in his first season. Tucker then used an 11-2 run last year to get a massive contract extension before the Spartans sputtered this fall.
There are counterexamples, of course. Lane Kiffin has done just fine at Mississippi. The same can be said for Kalen DeBoer, who spent two years at Fresno State before replacing Lake at Washington. Jeff Traylor at Texas-San Antonio also comes to mind.
It remains inescapable that the pandemic was a variable no one’s rebuilding plan accounted for in the early weeks of 2020. And rather than creating an extra cushion of job security, it might have had the reverse effect for some who found themselves playing catch-up almost from the day they were hired.
1. TCU. Forget whatever ranking the Horned Frogs were granted during the weekly playoff infomercial (they were No. 4) and focus on a more important number: Zero. That’s how many losses Sonny Dykes’s team has, and if they can navigate the next four weeks, they’ll be a playoff team. The closing stretch starts with Saturday’s trip to No. 18 Texas (6-3, 4-2 Big 12), which has won four of five.
2. Oregon. The No. 6 Ducks (8-1, 6-0 Pac-12) haven’t had a misstep since their opening loss to Georgia, and have only been remotely threatened once since then (Sept. 24 at Washington State). A challenging closing stretch begins Saturday against No. 25 Washington (7-2, 4-2), and another lopsided victory will only help Oregon cement its status as the most imposing one-loss team outside of Knoxville, Tenn.
3. Mississippi. The No. 11 Rebels (8-1, 4-1 SEC) come off an open date and can ill-afford a loss if they want to stay in the playoff or SEC title hunt. A slight problem, though: A cranky No. 9 Alabama team that saw its own playoff hopes almost entirely dashed with a loss at LSU last week is headed for Oxford.
4. Tulane. The No. 17 Green Wave (8-1, 5-0) is probably the best Group of Five story this season, recovering from a 2-10 record last season to sit atop the American with three weeks to go. Tulane welcomes Central Florida to New Orleans for the program’s most anticipated home game since … maybe the 1998 regular season finale against Louisiana Tech, when the Green Wave cemented an undefeated regular season? Thing is, No. 22 UCF (7-2, 4-1) is pretty good, too, and this is arguably one of the two or three best games of the weekend.
5. North Carolina. The No. 15 Tar Heels (8-1, 5-0 ACC) probably aren’t going to reach the playoff even if they win by 50 in each of their remaining games. However, as a one-loss power conference team, there’s at least a chance that could happen if chaos reigns elsewhere. Chaos, of course, is endemic to the ACC’s Coastal Division — except in its swan song. North Carolina can clinch a spot in the ACC title game with a victory at Wake Forest (6-3, 2-3).
1. QB C.J. Stroud, Ohio State (2,453 yards, 29 TDs, 4 INTs passing; 75 yards rushing). Everyone is allowed a dud, especially if it comes in a victory. Stroud rushed for more yards (79) than he threw for (76) in a victory at Northwestern on a windy day. But let’s face it: His Heisman-deciding moment, one way or the other, awaits at the end of the month when Michigan comes to Columbus. (Last week: 1)
2. QB Hendon Hooker, Tennessee (2,533 yards, 21 TDs, 2 INTs passing; 355 yards, 4 TDs rushing). There’s no shame in having an unremarkable day against Georgia (23 of 33 for 195 yards and an interception). But it was a bit of a missed opportunity. (LW: 2)
3. QB Caleb Williams, Southern California (2,742 yards, 28 TDs, 1 INT; 287 yards, 4 TDs rushing). The sophomore shredded California nearly as much as he did Arizona the week before. A Friday night meeting with Colorado is a mixed blessing; Williams can probably put up some good numbers, but he probably won’t be needed the entire night. (LW: 5)
4. QB Bo Nix, Oregon (2,495 yards, 22 TDs, 5 INTs passing; 457 yards, 13 TDs rushing). The Auburn transfer collected his customary five touchdowns last week, throwing for two, rushing for two more and tacking on a receiving score in a blowout of Colorado. (LW: 6)
5. QB Max Duggan, TCU (2,407 yards, 24 TDs, 2 INTs passing; 282 yards, 4 TDs rushing). Threw for 195 yards and two scores while rushing for 6 yards on 12 carries against Texas Tech. Not a bad day, but not a distinguishing one, either. (LW: 3)
6. QB Drake Maye, North Carolina (2,964 yards, 31 TDs, 3 INTs passing; 513 yards, 4 TDs rushing). At some point, it’s hard to ignore the numbers, and the redshirt freshman’s stats are off the charts for the Tar Heels. (LW: Not ranked) | 2022-11-11T16:42:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LSU one of 13 teams still alive for the College Football Playoff - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/college-football-playoff-hopefuls-heisman-watch/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/college-football-playoff-hopefuls-heisman-watch/ |
Why the crypto bubble has finally imploded
Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and chief executive of FTX, appears at a Senate committee hearing in D.C. in February. (Bloomberg News)
Adam Lashinsky is a former executive editor at Fortune magazine and the author of “Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired — and Secretive — Company Really Works.”
Before and after their bubble burst in the mid-1600s, tulips were still pretty flowers. American railroads begot massive (and positive) change well before the Panic of 1873 and are still vital almost 150 years later. The promise of email in the 1990s — and its dot-com derivatives — was real and epochal. Even badly abused subprime mortgages were a lamentable innovation on hard-to-get loans for home purchasers — a market that survived the financial crisis of 2008.
“Crypto,” a still poorly understood catchall phrase for digital currencies and other securities not controlled by a government, won’t be able to make the same claim. Crypto was supposed to be a haven in inflationary times, the way hard-metal commodities such as gold often are. Yet confections like bitcoin and ethereum have plummeted as inflation has skyrocketed. They promised a way to store value. Clearly, they do not.
More egregiously, crypto was supposed to have all sorts of other uses, from easy cross-border remittance to pegging a value for newly created forms of digital art. None of this has come true at any scale worth bragging about.
In our system, entrepreneurs, and the investors who back them, provide a valuable service by taking risks on unproven ideas. Without them, we wouldn’t have Apple or Google — or Post-it notes. But we now know the crop of swaggering financiers who dreamed up the new category of investments casually known as web3 have been kidding themselves.
A common justification for these investments has been that they captured the fascination of software coders and entrepreneurs, leading to the dreamy conclusion that a real market for digital assets of all kinds was emerging.
What emerged instead is another example of one of the worst ills that afflicts Sand Hill Road, the heart of Silicon Valley’s venture-capital industry: confirmation bias. The enthusiasm the VCs mistook for an investment thesis was often just the result of too much cash chasing too few truly good ideas.
Nerds aren’t stupid: If someone offers them oodles of money to chase a fad, they’ll start coding. Hence, crypto.
The past 15 years or so of venture-capital investing can be in many ways explained by the low-interest-rate environment in which it exploded. With endowments and pension funds (and many an ordinary multimillionaire) unable to earn safe returns in bonds for more than a decade, their money managers opted instead to place riskier bets.
Consider the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Canada’s third-largest. Three years ago, it set up a special fund to make venture-capital-stage investments. It invested $95 million in FTX, a leading crypto trading platform. On Thursday, it noted that “not all of the investments in this early-stage asset class perform to expectations.” It added that its FTX investment — presumably none of which it will ever see again — represents a tiny percentage of overall investments.
For years now, the folly of such investment strategies translated, essentially, into free money for entrepreneurs. It didn’t take a genius to spin up a company when the cost of capital was next to zero.
Now, that era is over. Higher interest rates will allow pension funds such as the one in Ontario to seek safer investments. As a result, the flow of funds to VCs and start-ups will slow. Only the best companies and VCs will emerge on the other side. | 2022-11-11T16:46:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why the crypto bubble has finally imploded - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/crypto-bubble-implode-ftx-bitcoin-ethereum/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/crypto-bubble-implode-ftx-bitcoin-ethereum/ |
Heavy rain will fall from the Gulf Coast to Canada
Rainfall forecast from the National Weather Service through Saturday night. (WeatherBell)
Nicole struck eastern Florida early Thursday as the nation’s first November hurricane in 37 years, and though it’s now far removed from warm ocean waters, it’s not done yet. The remnants of the tropical cyclone will deliver a strip of heavy rainfall from the southeast United States to Canada, all the while contributing to a rare late-season tornado threat for parts of the Mid-Atlantic.
All tropical storm, hurricane and storm surge alerts have been dropped, the system disintegrating into a tropical depression — a leftover swirl of low pressure. Now the concern shifts to a risk of tornadoes in the Mid-Atlantic. A tornado watch was issued for much of the Carolina Coastal Plain and Piedmont, as well as southeast Virginia, until 3 p.m. Eastern time. Additional watches will probably be hoisted through the evening.
A tornado watch has been issued for parts of North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia until 3 PM EST pic.twitter.com/9mXTarF637
Nicole officially made landfall near Vero Beach, Fla., around 3 a.m. Thursday as a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 75 mph. As the storm blasted ashore, it unleashed peak gusts of 84 and 80 mph near Daytona Beach and in Melbourne. An elevated weather station at Cape Canaveral, 120 feet off the ground, clocked a gust to 100 mph.
On Thursday morning, up to 350,000 customers in the Sunshine State had lost power, but PowerOutage.us reports that service had been restored to all but 40,000 customers as of Friday morning.
A storm surge, or rise in ocean water above normally dry land, of 3 to 4 feet brought minor to moderate flooding along Florida’s Atlantic-facing shoreline, but erosion from large battering waves proved a bigger problem. At least a dozen structures in Daytona Beach were rendered uninhabitable as angry seas undercut the cliffs on which they were perched.
The storm unloaded about 3 to 6 inches of rain in eastern and northern Florida.
As of 10 a.m. Eastern time Friday morning, Nicole was a tropical depression with maximum sustained winds of 30 mph. Centered 35 miles north of Atlanta, it was zipping to the north-northeast at 23 mph.
Nicole’s air pressure was rising as the low pressure center “fills in” with air. It’s akin to how a stirred-up eddy in your morning cup of coffee eventually slows down and the dip in the fluid flattens.
Because of that, there isn’t as much of a gradient, or change of air pressure with distance, to support strong winds. That’s why all the winds associated with Nicole are below tropical storm force. It’s like sledding; you’ll accelerate faster if the gradient, or slope, is greater and the hill is steeper. Since Nicole’s gradient is weakening, its winds are diminishing.
That said, it’s still a blob of moisture that is working northeastward, and an unseasonably warm, humid air mass is moving north ahead of it. Dew points in the mid- to upper 60s will surge as far north as the Mason-Dixon Line, setting the stage for a few dangerous thunderstorms Friday afternoon.
Growing tornado threat
Dry air is entering Nicole’s circulation from the west, the same direction from which a cold front was approaching. That influx of dry air is a blessing and a curse: On one hand, it erodes Nicole’s circulation from the inside out and hastens the demise of its core. On the other hand, that dry air helps to kick up the warm, humid air in advance of Nicole, generating strong to severe thunderstorms.
Those thunderstorms will build into a highly “sheared” atmosphere. In other words, Nicole is inducing a change of wind speed and/or direction height. That will encourage downpours and thunderstorms to rotate and perhaps even produce a few tornadoes.
The Storm Prediction Center has highlighted a Level 2 out of 5 risk for severe weather to account for this potential. Charlotte, Raleigh, Richmond, Virginia Beach and Wilmington, N.C., are included. A Level 1 out of 5 marginal risk encompasses Charleston and Columbia, S.C.
D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia present a bit more uncertainty. They’re in the Level 1 risk zone, too. That’s because they’re facing a classic HSLC, or High Shear Low Cape, setup — infamously tricky for meteorologists to forecast. On the one hand, wind dynamics strongly support rotating thunderstorms and a tornado threat. Conversely, instability, or fuel for thunderstorms, will be rather limited. How exactly these ingredients combine, and in what ratio, remains to be seen.
Off and on, storms will continue throughout Friday afternoon and evening. There’s a likelihood that additional tornado watches will be needed to accommodate this potential, especially in Virginia, during the evening. More targeted warnings will be issued on a local level if it’s suspected by meteorologists that a tornado is imminent or occurring.
Isolated flash, urban, and small stream flooding will be possible today across the southern and central Appalachians. Heavy rain and isolated flooding impacts will extend north through parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New England by tonight into Saturday. pic.twitter.com/mNpDvtMSTS
That tornado risk occurs in the “warm sector” of the storm. To the west, temperatures won’t be as warm, but the impending cold front will help to focus Nicole’s moisture and squeeze it out of the air — analogous to wringing out a washcloth.
It appears the bulk of the heaviest rainfall will be west of the Acela Corridor and Interstate 95, leaving places like D.C., Philadelphia, New York and Boston walking a fine tightrope. Considerably higher amounts of rain will fall to the west, with a broad 2 to 3 inches over the Appalachians. To the east, only a quarter to a half inch will fall near the coast.
The greatest rain totals will accompany “upslope flow” in western North Carolina, or where air is forced up the mountains. That will drop up to 6 inches on the eastern slopes of the southern Blue Ridge.
“Isolated flash, urban, and small stream flooding will be possible today across the southern and central Appalachians, particularly in the Blue Ridge Mountains,” the National Hurricane Center wrote. “Heavy rain and isolated flooding impacts will extend north through eastern Ohio, west central Pennsylvania, into western New York and northern New England by tonight into Saturday.” | 2022-11-11T16:46:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nicole’s remnants to bring heavy rain, tornado threat to eastern U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/11/nicole-tornado-watch-east-midatlantic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/11/nicole-tornado-watch-east-midatlantic/ |
For the first time in U.S. history, LGBTQ candidates were on the ballot in 50 states.
From left to right: Sharice Davids, Leigh Finke, Zooey Zephyr, Mauree Turner, James Roesener, Becca Balint, Maura Healey (Ed Zurga/AP; August Schultz; August Payton; Qazi Islam; Courtesy of James Roesener; Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post; Michael Dwyer/AP; iStock/Washington Post illustration)
When James Roesener answered the phone to speak to a reporter on Thursday, it was impossible not to hear his smile.
Roesener, a 26-year-old high school graduate and store manager in Concord, N.H., was two days removed from making history: becoming the first out transgender man to ever be elected to a state legislature.
He had seen plenty of enthusiasm for his campaign in the months leading up to his election, Roesener said: “Actually, a lot of people didn’t know that there weren’t any trans men in legislative office yet, so they were really hyped to be part of that.”
Still, the outpouring of attention — “overwhelmingly positive,” he said — took Roesener by surprise.
He’s still coming to terms with the gravity of his historic achievement.
“We can move mountains as a community and we’re just kind of getting started,” Roesener said. “I’m excited to be in a time where I get to see the people who do that.”
He had to be reminded that he was one of those people. Roesener laughed in response, “That’s true. ... Maybe it hasn’t sunk in.”
Roesener was part of an unprecedented “rainbow wave” of LGBTQ candidates who ran for office in record numbers and won in record numbers. According to the Victory Fund, an LGBTQ political PAC that tracked queer and trans candidates across the country, out of 714 out LGBTQ candidates who appeared on Tuesday’s ballot, 436 won their races, with the possibility of even more gains in the coming days. (As of Friday morning, 25 races were undecided.)
It was also the first time out LGBTQ candidates were on the ballot in all 50 states — as well as D.C., Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. But their unprecedented success comes at a time when LGBTQ rights are at risk across the country.
Some of these trailblazing candidates will work in statehouses that have made curbing the rights of LGBTQ people a legislative priority. Others will be in a position to help codify more LGBTQ protections. As many of these barrier breakers come to terms with their historic success and what it means to their communities, they must also look ahead to what’s next.
The midterms brought more good news beyond record LGBTQ wins. Nevada voters passed an Equal Rights Amendment that is considered the most comprehensive in the nation, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and “gender identity or expression,” among other attributes. And there were cisgender candidates who pledged to protect queer and trans people, such as Pennsylvania Governor-elect Josh Shapiro, who were embraced by large shares of voters.
Leigh Finke, representative-elect for Minnesota, expected she and other LGBTQ officials would “have to fight like hell to protect the rights we have.” Finke is the first out trans woman to be elected to the Minnesota state legislature. Her run was inspired by fears that the statehouse would move in the direction that others have — toward curbing the rights of trans people.
But this week, Democrats notched major wins in Minnesota, maintaining their majority in the Minnesota House, flipping the Senate and reelecting Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. What’s more, all the out LGBTQ candidates on the ballot (11 total) won their races, said Finke.
“What I expected to be the case in Minnesota was a new group of queer people would come into a minority situation in the House or Senate and we would have to fight like hell to protect the rights we have. And that didn’t happen,” Finke said.
Now, Finke said, LGBTQ groups in the legislature can focus on protecting and advancing their rights, not defending them.
“The landscape has just completely changed,” she said. “I’m so excited and so eager to get in and do the work for our community.”
This is a big part of the value of having equitable representation of LGBTQ people in politics, especially in state and local races, said Fuji.
“Congress gets a lot of attention, but at the end of the day, the policy that really directly impacts LGBTQ folks is at the local and state level,” he said. “It’s school boards, it’s city councils, it’s state legislatures. That is where LGBTQ freedoms are fought and won.”
And they’re happening in places some wouldn’t expect.
When Montana state representative-elect Zooey Zephyr got on a plane from New York to Montana on election night, she was flanked by people who had voted for her, she said.
“They were about a half-dozen people on the plane who were asking me about the results as it was going,” Zephyr said. Not long after her flight landed, Zephyr became the first trans woman in Montana’s state legislature.
Zephyr knows she will face challenges when she takes office next year. Republicans are poised to have a supermajority in the statehouse, where they have advanced a slew of anti-LGBTQ laws, including one that bars trans girls from competing in girls’ sports from kindergarten up through college.
But those policies are the reason Zephyr decided to run in the first place. And, buoyed by the show of support from her Missoula community and people across the country, Zephyr is excited to get to work on housing issues as well as LGBTQ protections, like banning conversion therapy.
She’s also nervous — not necessarily a bad thing, Zephyr said. She’s been channeling the advice of a former wrestling coach, said Zephyr: “If you’re not nervous, you’re not ready.”
Those nerves are signaling to your body that what you’re doing is important to you, Zephyr said. “Every fight that will be going on in the legislature will be important to me, and it will be worth fighting for, and that means it’s worth being nervous about.”
These LGBTQ battles in conservative strongholds are important to highlight, advocates and scholar said. This is especially true for trans and nonbinary people, who have seen an uptick in laws eroding their rights.
“No matter where you live in this country, there are trans people fighting for their own safety and dignity,” said Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union. And they’re picking up allies along the way.
A run for public office can have an especially powerful ripple effect for marginalized groups, said TJ Billard, an assistant professor at Northwestern University and executive director of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies.
“I do think [it] plays a major role in how civically engaged people are in their local communities,” Billard said.
Mauree Turner broke barriers in 2020 when they were elected to the Oklahoma legislature, becoming the first publicly nonbinary person to do so in the country. Turner was also the first Muslim in Oklahoma history to serve in the statehouse. They were reelected Tuesday, earning nearly 80 percent of the vote.
Turner, a progressive Democrat, has seen their work galvanize grassroots political campaigns across Oklahoma County — the only county that saw major Democratic wins this election cycle. And Turner can see that energy spreading: “Some of the most progressive conversations I’ve had have been in rural Oklahoma.”
But after serving their first term, Turner is also aware of the costs of being the first. During their term, Oklahoma passed a law banning the use of nonbinary gender markers on state birth certificates and a bill withholding public funds from the Oklahoma University Children’s Hospital on the basis of providing gender-affirming care.
Being a trailblazing representative can be “very toxic work,” Turner said. “You get that vitriol first and foremost before other folks really see it,” they said. “I’m like, ‘oh God,’ this is so much worse than I think people expect or understand.”
Turner battles internally with encouraging other members of their community to get into the arena with them, “to say, ‘Do this, too. Take these lashings too and we get to go so much further.’ ”
Still, Turner feels deeply indebted to their community, which keeps Turner going.
“I’m just so thankful that I’m alive today and I get to do this work because there’s so many in the community who don’t get to be,” Turner said. “I get to do that because of everybody in my life that is attached to me.” | 2022-11-11T16:47:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A ‘rainbow wave’ of candidates made history. What’s next for them? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/11/lgbtq-midterms-2022-candidates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/11/lgbtq-midterms-2022-candidates/ |
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus poses for a photograph during an interview in his office on Feb. 8, 2022, in Washington. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
A clash between two top Homeland Security officials became public on Friday when U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asked for his resignation a day after the mid-term elections.
“I want to make this clear: I have no plans to resign as CBP Commissioner,” Magnus said in a written statement. “I didn’t take this job as a resume builder. I came to Washington, DC — moved my family here — because I care about this agency, its mission, and the goals of this Administration.”
Magnus, 62, is clashing with a cabinet member less than a year since the Senate confirmed him mostly along party lines. Record border apprehensions have fueled Republican anger over the Biden administration’s immigration policies, they have criticized both Mayorkas and Magnus.
Republicans criticized the Biden administration over the border in the run-up to the Tuesday’s elections, calling for Magnus’ resignation and threatening to impeach Mayorkas, who is scheduled to testify before a Senate committee next week.
President Biden nominated Magnus in April 2021 to lead CBP, a massive agency with more than 60,000 border agents, customs officers and other employees who patrol the nation’s ports and borders and oversee billions of dollars in cross-border trade and travel. The Senate confirmed Magnus in December.
Magnus arrived with a reputation as a seasoned leader and reformer, and he became CBP’s first Senate-confirmed chief since 2019. He was also CBP’s first openly gay commissioner. He had served mostly in smaller law enforcement settings, as police chief in Fargo, N.D., Richmond, Calif., and Tucson, where he took over in 2016, and he struggled to acclimate to CBP.
Sixteen House Republicans wrote Biden on Nov. 1 demanding that he call for Magnus’ resignation, citing a Politico report portraying him as an isolated, disengaged leader who sometimes nodded off during meetings. Magnus told the news outlet that he experienced spells of fatigue as a side effect of multiple sclerosis, a neurological condition he was diagnosed with 15 years ago, and adjusted his medication to address those effects.
“I haven’t been afraid to ask “why” things are done in certain ways and want to continue to do so,” he said. “In addition to focusing on Border (sic) security and critical issues associated with irregular immigration, I’m also committed to carrying out common-sense law enforcement reforms to improve the agency’s culture and our standing with the public — while still respecting and supporting our workforce as they carry out our important mission.”
Magnus promised during his confirmation hearing to take a nonpartisan approach to enforcing immigration laws and told senators in prepared testimony that he was a “pragmatic and bipartisan problem-solver.” Immigration is also personal, he said. His father was an immigrant from Norway, and his husband, Terrance Cheung, came to the United States from Hong Kong.
Magnus also acknowledged during his confirmation hearing the difficulties he’d face at CBP. Immigrant advocates constantly criticize the agency for allegedly abusing its authority, while the Border Patrol’s labor union openly supported the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies and complained loudly when the Biden administration tried to rescind them.
CBP also struggled with internal resistance to covid vaccines and suffered a rash of officer deaths.
Magnus told senators at his confirmation hearing that his goal was to enforce the laws in a “humane” and “conscientious” manner.
“More than a few colleagues, friends, and family members have asked me, “What are you thinking?” Why would I choose to take on the important but challenging responsibility of leading CBP at this moment?” Magnus said at his confirmation hearing more than a year ago. “And here is my answer, which [is] the same answer I gave when I started my public safety career in 1979: I want to make a difference." | 2022-11-11T16:47:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | CBP commissioner says he refused resignation request from Homeland Security secretary - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/11/cbp-homeland-magnus-mayorkas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/11/cbp-homeland-magnus-mayorkas/ |
Former president Donald Trump answers questions from reporters during an election night party at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday in Palm Beach, Fla. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/For The Washington Post)
A federal judge on Thursday fined lawyers for former president Donald Trump more than $66,000 and admonished them for filing frivolous and baseless claims in Trump’s defamation case against Hillary Clinton and her allies, stemming from the 2016 presidential election.
The fines levied by Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, a President Bill Clinton appointee in the Southern District of Florida, include a $50,000 sanction to the court and an additional $16,274.23 payment to one of the 29 defendants in the case, Charles Dolan, for expenses he incurred as a result of the suit, which the judge dismissed in September.
The defamation suit accused 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her allies of harming Trump with an orchestrated plan to spread false information that his campaign colluded with Russia. Middlebrooks, in dismissing the suit in September, had written that there were “glaring structural deficiencies in the plaintiff’s argument.”
Two of the Trump lawyers — Alina Habba and Peter Ticktin — signaled that they would appeal.
“We attempted to right a wrong, and our reward is a kick in the teeth,” Ticktin said in an email. “Ultimately, this will be decided by a panel of three judges of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, as we believe that the dismissal and the sanctions which followed will ultimately be reversed.”
The other lawyers, Michael T. Madaio and Jamie Alan Sasson, did not immediately respond to email messages from The Post.
The fines are the latest legal setback for Trump. Federal officials are investigating him for taking sensitive government documents after leaving the White House, and officials in Manhattan are scrutinizing the financial records of his sprawling real estate business. Last month a federal judge in a separate case said Trump signed legal documents that he knew included false voter fraud numbers
The fines also comes as Republicans and conservative media outlets have openly blamed Trump for Republicans’ underperforming in Tuesday’s midterm elections, which Trump had hoped would demonstrate his electoral clout ahead of an expected announcement next week that he would run for president in 2024.
In the lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers had inaccurately described Dolan in court papers as a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a senior official in the Clinton campaign and a close associate and adviser of Clinton. Trump’s lawsuit also accused Dolan, a public relations executive, of helping create a “dossier” of false information intended to smear Trump.
In response, a lawyer for Dolan demanded that his client be removed from the lawsuit, noting in court papers that Dolan did not participate in the creation of the dossier, had never been a chairman of the DNC, and said that his role in the campaign was, as Middlebrooks wrote, “limited to knocking on doors as a volunteer.”
Hillary Clinton, through a spokesperson, denied even knowing him, Middlebrooks wrote.
Trump’s lawyers then amended their complaint but did not substantively change their claims about Dolan, the judge wrote. The amended complaint referred to Dolan as a former chairman of a “national Democratic political organization,” and a “senior Clinton campaign official,” Middlebrooks wrote. Criticisms about this amended complaint were “unheeded,” the judge wrote.
In levying the fines against Trump’s lawyers, Middlebrooks cited Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which, the judge wrote, is meant to deter “attorneys and litigants from clogging federal courts with frivolous filings.”
Middlebrooks wrote that penalties under that rule are necessary when a party files a pleading “that has no reasonable factual basis,” is “based on a legal theory that has no reasonable chance of success,” or when a pleading is filed “in bad faith.”
“Here, all three are true,” Middlebrooks wrote. Later, he added, “The pleadings in this case contained factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth.”
As an example, Middlebrooks highlighted a detail presented by Trump’s lawyers that said Dolan was a resident of Florida. Dolan’s lawyer noted his client was a resident of Virginia and did not do any campaign work in Florida.
Trump’s lawyers responded, bizarrely, in the amended complaint that Dolan was a resident of New York and that “Charles Dolan is an incredibly common name, and Plaintiff’s counsel’s traditional search methods identified countless individuals with said name across the country, many of whom reside in New York.” | 2022-11-11T16:47:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge fines Trump lawyers in Clinton case thrown out in September - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/11/trump-clinton-lawyers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/11/trump-clinton-lawyers/ |
White voters remain a key demographic for the Republican Party, but voters of color showed some decline in Democratic support
Cecia Alvarado trains young canvassers at a get out the vote gathering in Las Vegas the weekend before the election on Nov. 5. Alvarado is also the Nevada Executive Director for Somos Votantes. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
The red wave pundits predicted did not materialize, but support for Democrats slipped across the board, including among voters of color integral to the party’s political future. While more than 8 in 10 Black voters supported Democrats for Congress, their level of support fell between four and seven percentage points during the midterms compared with 2018, according to network exit polling and the AP VoteCast poll, respectively. Among Latinos, support for Democrats declined between nine and 10 percentage points, with between 56 percent and 60 percent backing Democrats.
In the 2018 midterms, 77 percent of Asians voted for House Democratic candidates, according to network exit polls, compared with 58 percent this year — although data from AP VoteCast showed a smaller decline in Asian American support for Democrats from 2018 to 2022: 71 percent to 64 percent. Separately, AP VoteCast and Edison Research found a majority of voters who are American Indian or Alaska Native favored Republicans this year.
White voters accounted for more than 7 in 10 voters and remained the Republican Party’s greatest source of support, with nearly 6 in 10 voting for GOP candidates for Congress, according to exit polls and AP VoteCast.
How different groups voted according to exit polls and AP VoteCast
“Black and brown voters, particularly Black and brown women, continue to be the base of the party, but the Democrats cannot take their support for granted. They need to take action,” said Aimee Allison, president of She the People, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for women of color in politics. “Because the battle for the White House is happening, starting now.”
Republicans, meanwhile, found mixed midterm success with their efforts to expand their largely White coalition. They fielded the most diverse slate of candidates in the party’s history and poured millions of dollars into demographically diverse parts of the country.
But Wang says she has been disappointed by Democrats’ approach to rising crime rates and efforts to strengthen gun laws. They are not doing enough to crack down on crime, particularly at a time when Asian Americans have been the targets of violence, Wang said.
“For the past two and a half years I’ve seen an exponential increase in Asian hate crimes … but we have such soft laws in California. It did not protect, not just Asians, it did not protect our community,” she said. “I feel like the Republican Party is going to do what they can to make it safer in regards to crime.”
Who will win the Senate?
Trump did not help matters when he referred to the coronavirus as “kung flu,” Wang said. Researchers found a single Trump tweet calling it the “Chinese virus” was followed by an avalanche of tweets using the hashtag #chinesevirus, among other anti-Asian phrases.
“If you see a top world leader saying the ‘kung flu’ and all that, it’s just like — he definitely did not help the situation. But did he cause Asian hate? Absolutely not. That’s irresponsible thinking in my opinion,” Wang said, adding she would vote for Trump if he was the Republican candidate in 2024.
On “a lot of the issues, our voters actually side with the Democrats. So, that has been going for them for a long time,” Chen said. “But I would say in the last decade the Republicans have really been upping their game.”
In Miami-Dade County, a longtime Democratic stronghold, where Hispanics make up almost 60 percent of the electorate, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis flipped the county for the first time in 20 years. It’s a stunning turnaround in a county that Hillary Clinton won by almost 30 percentage points just six years ago. DeSantis himself lost the county by more than 20 percentage points four years ago and won by 11 points this year.
DeSantis’s victory with Florida Hispanics came after the party focused on deepening support from conservative-leaning Cuban Americans, who make up almost a third of the state’s Hispanic electorate — and making further gains with the state’s growing Colombian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and other Hispanic groups. A majority of Puerto Ricans, the state’s second-largest Hispanic group, who historically lean Democratic, voted for DeSantis, according to network exit polls.
The circumstances in Florida, however, are unique. Across the country, Mexican Americans — who make up 60 percent of the U.S. Latino population — favor Democrats.
“If there’s one thing for sure … Latinos are no longer a sleeping giant,” Chuck Rocha, a longtime Democratic strategist who focuses on Latino voters, said, referring to a label often used to describe the Latino electorate.
Democrats weren’t able to significantly cut into gains former president Donald Trump and the GOP made with Latino voters in 2020, said Mike Madrid, a veteran GOP strategist who follows Hispanic voting trends. Instead, the margins in districts with a high population of Hispanics tightened even more compared with past elections, he said.
Exit poll data found that Latino support for Republicans in House votes nationally reached 39 percent, the most since 1978 and up 10 percentage points from 2018. That performance is probably the “new baseline,” said Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project.
Nazareth Jimenez, 18, of Las Vegas voted for the first time this year, supporting Democratic candidates. But she and her family are frustrated there aren’t better options. Her mom, Francis Garcia, is a Honduran immigrant in the United States under TPS, or temporary protected status, and cannot vote. They are waiting for President Biden to fulfill his campaign promise to work with Congress to reform the immigration system, Jimenez said.
“I can see where the [disillusionment] is coming from. Because what are Democrats thinking, that they’ll continue promising and we’ll continue voting for them?” Jimenez said, adding that her brother opted to sit out this election because of his discontent with both parties.
Republicans had mixed results in other Hispanic-heavy areas that they poured money in hoping to build on Trump’s 2020 inroads.
In South Texas, the GOP was bullish about its chances of winning three House seats after spending millions in Spanish-language advertising. Republicans ultimately won only one, Texas’s 15th Congressional District, which was redrawn in redistricting to be a Trump-leaning district.
Baudilia Rodriguez, 70, says voting for Democrats has always been related to her deeply held beliefs on abortion and the treatment of immigrants. She has been directly impacted by the Trump administration’s immigration policies: Her family’s land was threatened by the border wall.
“There are some Hispanics who are Republicans now. And I guess my feeling is, why don’t you treat everybody the same? You know, we’re all human. They say they’re Christian but I mean, to God, everybody is precious. Everyone, even the dog,” she said, pointing to her small white dog in a McAllen park.
Any small slippage in the community’s vote for Democrats is overshadowed by the White vote, which continues to vote Republican, he said. White voters were even more supportive of Republicans this year than in 2018.
“That’s a shift. And that shift needs to be discussed,” Albright said. Instead “we’re having the discussion of ‘What are the Black men doing?’ Well, we’re doing the same we’ve always been doing — voting for democracy.”
“I don’t know what people expect from a politician,” said Thomas, who is in her early 70s and owns a flower shop. “If you vote for me today, I’m not going to make your life better tomorrow. But people do want that instant gratification. I don’t know what you can do about that, but we just have to start with making sure they know this is their civic duty to go out and vote.”
But Kimberly Nicely, 30, of Gainesville, Ga., said she’s long felt as if politicians forget about people like her. In 2020, she went out to vote for Joe Biden after hearing her family and friends were doing the same, but, two years later, she admits she does not know what he has actually done.
“I’m just living my life the way I know how,” Nicely, a food service cashier, said, adding that this election she was moved to back Republican Gov. Brian Kemp because she felt he was more attentive to the community’s needs: “For me, it’s about being able to have a stable job, job security. And who’s going to help me monetarily. He has.”
Nicely’s fiancee, Christine Thirkield, 39, had never voted before — and she did this year just to support Kemp, too. Thirkield, who works at Home Depot, said she’s never felt that politicians genuinely care about improving her life and chose not to get caught up in politics. Now, that’s shifting for her.
“Everyone is out here just trying to do their best,” Thirkield said. “And I’m doing my part … because I love my country.” | 2022-11-11T16:59:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In midterms, Democrats slightly lost support from voters of color - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/11/black-asian-latino-voter-turnout/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/11/black-asian-latino-voter-turnout/ |
She spent 37 years on the staff of U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and served as a spokesperson and gatekeeper to one of the most powerful dynasties in American politics
Melody J. Miller was a longtime aide to U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. (Chris Maddaloni/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)
Melody J. Miller was 18 years old, just shy of graduating from high school in Arlington, Va., when President John F. Kennedy invited her to meet him at the White House.
She had recently sculpted a bust of Kennedy in art class, but her work shattered in the kiln. When she painstakingly restored her piece to the president’s likeness, a local newspaper took note of her effort. A clipping of the article reached the president’s desk, and before she knew it, Ms. Miller found herself in the Cabinet Room, her sculpture of Kennedy in tow. Precisely how the visit came about she would not learn for years.
“ ‘Incandescent’ was the only word I could use for him,” Ms. Miller recalled years later of her meeting with the president. Kennedy complimented her handiwork, signed her copy of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Profiles in Courage,” posed for a photograph and asked if she might like to run for Congress someday. When Ms. Miller volunteered to work on what was to be Kennedy’s 1964 reelection campaign, he replied, “Absolutely.”
That visit — six months before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 — accounted for what Ms. Miller described as perhaps “the most treasured 20 minutes” of her life. She went on to work for the Kennedy family for four decades, including 37 years on the staff of U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), becoming a trusted assistant to one of the most powerful dynasties in American politics.
A self-described “jock,” Ms. Miller was planning to be a gym teacher before President Kennedy ignited her interest in public service with his call in his 1960 inaugural address to “ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
She recalled Kennedy’s assassination as “probably the greatest grief I’ve ever known in my life.” It was also “a shock,” she said in an oral history with the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate, “because at 18 … life is all before you and everybody is invincible.”
After Kennedy’s death, Ms. Miller worked as a college student in the office of former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, filing the sympathy letters that poured in from across the country and sorting the toys mourners had mailed to the slain president’s children, Caroline and John, she told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.
Ms. Miller subsequently worked as a press aide to U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.), the late president’s brother, and on his 1968 presidential campaign. After Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June of that year, she joined the Senate office of Ted Kennedy, the youngest Kennedy brother.
Ms. Miller served on his staff over the years as a press and legislative aide, as well as deputy press secretary for his unsuccessful campaign for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination. But her role with the senator and his family was by all accounts what she described as “staff-plus.”
“There was nobody more well-versed on everything ‘Kennedy’ than Melody Miller, and nobody more devoted,” Eleanor Clift, a longtime Washington journalist and friend of Ms. Miller, said in an interview.
Ms. Miller was frequently on hand — whether in Washington, at their compound in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod or elsewhere — in times of celebration and loss.
Three years later, when the couple and Bessette’s sister died in a plane crash near Martha’s Vineyard, Ms. Miller acted as a spokesperson, responding to the flood of press inquires about the latest tragedy to befall the Kennedy family. She became intimately acquainted with their grief, especially Ted Kennedy’s.
“Edward Kennedy has not been able to form scar tissue that lasts very long, because he is required — doing his duty and following the demands of people — to speak on the anniversaries of all of these losses: on the anniversary of John Kennedy’s loss, on the anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s loss … on the anniversary of all of the different things that are set up in their memories,” she said in the oral history.
“Every time he does that, the scar tissue breaks again, because it’s very emotional,” she continued. “Whereas you and I have scar tissue that gets stronger and stronger, and the pain gets less and less as the years go by and we are able to cope more easily with the loss, it’s been the reverse for him. As he got older and older, his scar tissue got thinner and thinner, and he was less able to contain his emotions.”
Ted Kennedy long struggled with alcohol and during periods of his life developed a reputation for womanizing. When the senator went on vacation, Ms. Miller told Roll Call, she reminded him that he was always in the media glare and admonished him to “remember two words: telephoto lenses.”
He emerged in later years as one of the most influential senators of his era, and when Ms. Miller retired in 2005, he credited her with having made “an enormous difference for me and for all the members of the Kennedy family” with her “ability, dedication, and friendship.”
Of her boss, Ms. Miller told The Washington Post when Ted Kennedy died in 2009, “he wasn’t perfect, he’d be the first to tell you that. But he worked harder and tried harder than any man I have ever seen.”
As a high school senior, Ms. Miller got her first job in politics working weekends as a “girl Friday on Saturdays” for U.S. Rep. Joseph Montoya (D-N.M.).
Ms. Miller knew that Montoya had helped arrange her meeting with President Kennedy. But only after her retirement, she said, did the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston send her a copy of the correspondence exchanged in advance of the visit. On the letter, in what she said was Kennedy’s script, was a note that read: “Have Melody come and visit me at the White House.” | 2022-11-11T17:00:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Melody Miller, trusted assistant to Kennedy family, dies at 77 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/melody-miller-kennedy-aide-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/melody-miller-kennedy-aide-dead/ |
Chico Harlan
A child sits in a cardboard box aboard the Ocean Viking rescue ship on Thursday in the Tyrrhenian Sea between Italy and Corsica. (Vincenzo Circosta/AFP/Getty Images)
PARIS — A weeks-long ordeal for asylum seekers who had been stranded at sea concluded on Friday, as the French government granted safe harbor for the Ocean Viking rescue ship in the southern city of Toulon.
But it was not the end of the fight between French officials and Italy’s new right-wing government, which had earlier refused to let the ship anchor. And there could be bigger rifts to come as new Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni follows through on campaign pledges to adopt a hard line on illegal immigration, reviving an issue the European Union has never fully resolved.
The more than 230 people on the Ocean Viking, including over 50 children, were rescued by the nonprofit SOS Mediterranee in mid- to late-October while trying to cross the Mediterranean in smaller vessels. France evacuated three sick passengers by helicopter on Thursday, before French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said his government would make an “exceptional” decision to allow the rest to disembark and have their asylum claims assessed in France.
Right-wing victory in Italy expected to bring swift changes to migration
But French officials said it was “reprehensible” for Italy to have ignored repeated requests from the ship for port access. They accused the Italian government of violating international obligations to accept boats in distress at the nearest port. And they threatened “severe consequences” for France-Italy relations — starting with the suspension of France’s participation in a redistribution plan under which it had agreed to take at least 3,000 immigrants from Italy.
On Friday, Meloni called the French reaction “incomprehensible and unjustified.”
Italian governments have argued for years that their country shoulders a disproportionate burden as a gateway for immigrants trying to get to the European Union, and that other E.U. members haven’t sufficiently stepped up.
Meloni appears to be willing to press the issue far more than her predecessor, centrist Mario Draghi.
One of her key campaign promises calls for a European-led “naval blockade” of the Mediterranean, as well as the designation of places outside the E.U. where potential refugees and asylum seekers could be vetted without making the dangerous journey that has claimed thousands of lives in recent years.
But restricting port access is the first manifestation of her position on illegal immigration.
European countries reluctantly resolve what to do about rescued migrants — until next time
In addition to denying the Ocean Viking, Italian authorities engaged in prolonged standoffs with three other rescue ships this month — Humanity 1, Rise Above and Geo Barents — first ignoring their distress calls, then selectively allowing only the most vulnerable to disembark, before ultimately allowing people off.
Rescue groups have threatened legal action.
French President Emmanuel Macron, a centrist, is not as extreme in his position on immigration as Meloni is, but he draws a line between economic migrants and those who are truly refugees. And he is under pressure from the far-right in his own country.
Far-right politician Éric Zemmour described the decision to accept Ocean Viking as a “terrible signal to smugglers” that will encourage more crossings via the Mediterranean Sea. Marine Le Pen’s far-right party called for a special commission in the European Parliament to investigate possible links between smugglers and NGOs that rescue immigrants in distress.
Officials in Paris appeared mindful of the domestic far-right criticism this week, choosing the optics of a military port as the ship’s destination, publicizing that arrivals would be interviewed by the counterterrorism security service, and vowing to swiftly deport anyone who does not meet asylum or residency criteria. Two thirds of the people on board will be transferred to other host countries.
France recalls ambassador to Italy, an unusual rift among European allies
The E.U. has been unable to agree on a comprehensive plan for addressing immigration, instead putting together a fragile patchwork of rules and more informal commitments to redistribute immigrants within the 27-country bloc.
France’s earlier agreement to take at least 3,000 people from Italy was part of an effort “to provide Italy with guarantees” and to make progress on negotiations that had stalled because of resistance from Hungary and Poland, said French immigration researcher Matthieu Tardis. “Now, everything is being called into question.”
The tensions also bode ill for broader Franco-Italian relations, which had blossomed under Draghi to such an extent that some already hoped they would become a new centerpiece of European politics. A meeting last month between Macron and newly elected Meloni suggested that they might be able to build a solid working relationship, despite their political differences. Both countries have a high debt burden, which has made them natural allies on many economic issues.
But this week shifted “the trajectory in an almost dramatic way,” said Luigi Scazzieri, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform, adding that an escalation of the current disagreements could throw relations back into “the darkest phase in Italian-French relations” in recent memory.
In 2019, France recalled its ambassador to Italy after a range of disagreements that included immigration, as well as an Italian deputy minister meeting with “yellow vest” protesters. While relations between Rome and Paris calmed, some analysts expect a trickier dynamic with Meloni in power, given that members of her party have long lamented what they see as disproportionate French and German control of Europe.
Rome may also become more vocal about what some are calling double standards of the French government.
Calais, notorious for its refugee tent camps, hosts Ukrainians at a hostel by the beach
After years of pursuing a strategy to deter undocumented immigrants, including by dismantling their camps in Calais or sending them back to Italy, France can’t claim the moral high ground to the extent it would like to, human rights groups say.
“Everyone is being hypocritical,” said Paolo Modugno, an Italy-focused researcher at the Parisian Sciences Po university. “But then again, it’s a problem that’s really, really difficult to tackle.”
Harlan reported from Venice. | 2022-11-11T17:26:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | France accepts Ocean Viking migrant rescue ship Italy rejected - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/11/migration-italy-france-ocean-viking/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/11/migration-italy-france-ocean-viking/ |
Sheila Hixson, former powerful delegate in Annapolis, dies at 89
She became the longest-serving woman in the Maryland House of Delegates and chaired the powerful Ways and Means Committee for nearly 25 years
By Louie Estrada
Del. Sheila Hixson in her Annapolis office on 2017. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Sheila E. Hixson, a Montgomery County Democrat who became the longest-serving woman in the Maryland House of Delegates and the first woman to chair its tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, a powerful post she held for 24 years, died Nov. 6 at a hospital in New Smyrna Beach, Fla. She was 89.
Her daughter Lynne Hunter confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.
Known as the “Grand dame of Annapolis” for her long and influential tenure in the General Assembly — 42 years before retiring in 2018 — she advocated for increased public school funding, gun safety regulations and gay rights legislation. As chair of the Ways and Means Committee, a post she held from 1993 to 2017, she wielded clout over legislation involving taxation and assessments, education, elections, and gaming. Her panel helped open Maryland to casino gambling in 2007 and further expansion in 2012.
She successfully led efforts to enact a sexual harassment policy for elected officials, to expand an earned income tax credit program for low-income families, and to adopt measures to help curb the rising cost of state university tuition.
Her public service career began in 1976 when Montgomery County Democratic Party leaders named her to fill a vacant seat in the State Assembly, representing the Silver Spring-Takoma Park-based District 20, one of the most liberal legislative districts in the state.
It was supposed to be a temporary post, lasting no more than two years. At the time, the divorced mother of four children was a member of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee. She worked as an administrative assistant for the Democratic National Committee at the time of the 1972 Watergate break-in.
In her early years at the General Assembly, men held more than 90 percent of the legislature and had access to a private bathroom in the statehouse. Women only had access to public restrooms across a concourse. Ms. Hixson and the handful of other female lawmakers were eventually successful in getting their own private bathrooms.
She recounted the story at an event in 2017 when she announced she would not seek an 11th term in the House of Delegates.
“I know this sounds so trivial now, but it was pretty important at the time,” Ms. Hixson told The Washington Post. “They listened to us after that when other issues came up. It was more than us getting potty parity, they let us into meetings, and they listened.”
Ms. Hixson, who rarely missed a legislative session, had to become an expert in old-school politicking, which sometimes meant becoming a presence at alcohol-fueled functions with lobbyists and other legislators after hours, Del. Kathleen Dumais (D-Montgomery) told The Post in 2017.
In 1983, she pleaded guilty to driving while under the influence of alcohol after an evening out in Washington with her brother and a family friend, The Post reported. She was ordered to pay a $250 fine and take an alcohol education course.
She also endured health problems and family tragedies. She underwent medical treatment for colon cancer in the early 1990s. Her two sons died, one from suicide.
“I do not know how my mother withstood the pain of losing two children,” Hunter, her daughter, wrote in a statement for the passage of a Maryland grant program supporting services for veteran and military member suicide prevention. “But she remained strong and we followed her shining example. If she could stay so strong so could we.”
Sheila Kathleen Ellis was born in L’Anse, Mich., on Feb. 9, 1933. Her father was a mail carrier, and her mother was a homemaker.
She briefly attended Northern State Teachers College (now Northern Michigan University) in Marquette and was a Head Start teacher in Detroit. She then worked as a campaign manager and, later, as an aide to Rep. William D. Ford (D-Mich.).
A complete list of survivors could not be confirmed.
“She was a fierce politician,” said Maryland State Sen. Nancy J. King (D-Montgomery), who previously served in the House of Delegates and with Ms. Hixson on the Ways and Means Committee. “I learned so much from her because she knew how to manage people and get things done. She could smile and be very nice but you knew she was going to get things done, and done her way. She had a good moral compass, and when she made up her mind that something needed to happen, she made it happen.” | 2022-11-11T18:18:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sheila Hixson, former powerful delegate in Annapolis, dies at 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/sheila-hixson-montgomery-delegate-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/sheila-hixson-montgomery-delegate-dead/ |
Chinese military vehicles carry DF-17 ballistic missiles during a parade in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2019. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
Every president since the end of the Cold War has published a review of the U.S. approach to nuclear weapons: their purpose, scope and prospects. President Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review, completed some time ago but declassified late last month, forecasts dark clouds on the horizon. What was a competition between two nuclear superpowers, the United States vs. the Soviet Union and then Russia, is growing to three.
The newcomer is China, whose President Xi Jinping will have his first in-person meeting with President Biden on Monday. Other nations have joined the atomic club — there are now nine — but China’s ambitions put it in the first rank. “By the 2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries,” the report says. In more than a bit of understatement, it adds: “This will create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control, and risk reduction.”
Both the United States and Russia have deployed 1,550 nuclear warheads on strategic or long-range delivery vehicles. This was allowed under the 2010 New START accord, the last of the major arms control treaties still in force, which expires in 2026. China, which for many years kept a nuclear arsenal in the low hundreds of warheads, now appears to be heading toward at least 1,000 by the end of this decade, and is building a land-sea-air triad of delivery vehicles similar to that of Russia and the United States. All three nations are also pushing ahead with weapons in other domains, including hypersonic glide vehicles and cyberweapons, and both the United States and Russia maintain short-range or tactical nuclear weapons that have never been covered by treaty.
For much of the Cold War nuclear age, the two superpowers accepted arms control treaty limits to preserve some kind of stability. But now the United States faces a duo of nuclear adversaries who might prove far less willing to sign up for new treaty limits. The Biden posture review notes that while there is substantial past experience with crisis management with Russia, Washington “has made little progress” with China, which has refused to engage in negotiations about its nuclear forces. The review adds that “the scope and pace” of China’s nuclear weapons expansion, “as well as its lack of transparency and growing military assertiveness, raise questions regarding its intentions, nuclear strategy and doctrine, and perceptions of strategic stability.”
This bodes ill for the years ahead. Without arms control treaties, verification and crisis management channels, the United States might find itself in a dangerous three-way nuclear arms race with reduced visibility into Russian and Chinese nuclear forces. Such unbridled competition could bring with it the potential for miscalculation and misperception. President Vladimir Putin’s recent unsettling nuclear threats with regard to Ukraine are just a taste of what might erupt in a broader arms race. The State Department confirmed Nov. 8 that the United States and Russia will soon return to talks about resuming inspections under the New START accord. That’s a promising sign, but a three-way nuclear arms control negotiation is still a long way off. It will require leaders to exert political willpower that is lacking at present. | 2022-11-11T18:18:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Nuclear arms race grows from two to three major competing powers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/nuclear-posture-review-three-powers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/nuclear-posture-review-three-powers/ |
Kelli Masters smiles during an Oct. 27, 2022, interview over Zoom, from her office in Oklahoma City. In 2010, Kelli Masters became the first female agent to represent a top-5 pick in the NFL draft. Masters has now represented more than 40 NFL players on active rosters. Her clients also include MLB players, Olympians and professional golfers. (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-11-11T18:20:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kelli Masters overcomes critics, among few female NFL agents - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/kelli-masters-overcomes-critics-among-few-female-nfl-agents/2022/11/11/6d53738e-61e2-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/kelli-masters-overcomes-critics-among-few-female-nfl-agents/2022/11/11/6d53738e-61e2-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Let’s get politics out of the FBI site-selection process
The J. Edgar Hoover Building in 2015 in D.C. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
There is an adage: When you can’t compete, change the rules.
Unfortunately, that is what some seem to be doing as the General Services Administration (GSA) nears the end of a decades-long procurement process for a new, modernized FBI headquarters. Just last week, elected leaders of one jurisdiction implored President Biden to personally intervene in the process on their behalf and overturn the current criteria.
Imagine that: a president intervening in a GSA federal property decision. That would be a scandal. We know it because it was one of many during the Trump administration.
In 2019, my government operations subcommittee uncovered efforts by the Trump administration to obscure Oval Office meetings between then-President Donald Trump and then-GSA Administrator Emily W. Murphy in which they plotted to keep the FBI headquarters in its current D.C. location.
At that time, Democrats in Congress condemned such unethical actions. Count me consistent. I do not think the president should be putting a finger on the scales of a multibillion-dollar federal property decision — whether the last name is Trump or Biden.
The Biden administration should be lauded for getting this procurement back on track, not coerced into an 11th-hour intervention that further erodes trust in the process. We need to quit playing politics and let this process be decided on the merits and what’s best for the FBI, not what benefits our respective local jurisdictions.
Here are the merits for Virginia’s proposed headquarters site in Springfield. It is 58 acres of prime real estate already owned by the federal government and hopelessly underused. Northern Virginia is home to critical national security partners, including the FBI Academy at Marine Corps Base Quantico, the Pentagon, the CIA and other intelligence assets. This location is at the transportation nexus of Interstates 495 and 95 and is served by Metro and the Virginia Railway Express. Virginia and the federal government continue to make infrastructure investments here, and the suburban location also offers a level of security for the bureau and its employees that cannot be replicated in an urban location in D.C. It meets all the FBI’s needs.
The commonwealth has made a strong and united case for the Springfield site. Our regional partners in Maryland made a noble case for their sites, and the benefits of economic development and equity will be considered in this process as part of the major selection criteria.
Let’s not prejudge a decision and allow our parochial interests to derail a new FBI headquarters. Our national security and protecting and equipping the men and women at the FBI should be our top priorities.
Gerald E. Connolly, Washington
The writer, a Democrat, represents Virginia in the U.S. House. | 2022-11-11T19:24:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Let’s get politics out of the FBI site-selection process - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/lets-get-politics-out-fbi-site-selection-process/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/lets-get-politics-out-fbi-site-selection-process/ |
Maryland’s gas companies are thwarting the will of the people
The Nov. 4 news article about the worldwide rebound of fossil fuel infrastructure projects, “Fossil fuel industry has many irons in the fire,” hit close to home. Here in Maryland, the General Assembly passed the most aggressive climate plan in the nation: 60 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from 2006 levels by 2031, net zero by 2045. The legislation declared support for “broad electrification” of its buildings, tracking a state study that found electrifying buildings to be the most cost-effective way to achieve its goals.
But every day, the state’s gas utilities are locking in millions of dollars in fossil-fuel infrastructure investments and are pushing back against efforts to slow their aggressive spending. The state’s largest gas utility is spending at a rate of $1.2 million each day, which costs customers more than three times that amount after accounting for investor returns. That spending happening today is a generational commitment, paid for over as long as 70 years.
My office, the state’s residential customer advocate, recently conducted an analysis showing that Maryland customers are exposed to tens of billions of dollars in gas infrastructure spending, much of which is likely to become stranded as customers adopt lower-cost electrification technologies and the state acts to meet its climate goals. So far, despite the climate bill, the utilities have proved effective in thwarting all efforts to curb their spending. But if the state is to achieve its climate goals without exposing Maryland ratepayers and taxpayers to billions in costs for stranded fossil-fuel infrastructure, it must act now.
David Lapp, Chevy Chase
The writer is Maryland people’s counsel. | 2022-11-11T19:24:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Maryland’s gas companies are thwarting the will of the people - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/marylands-gas-companies-are-thwarting-will-people/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/marylands-gas-companies-are-thwarting-will-people/ |
Missing in Congress: Science education
I eagerly walked my eyes down the bar graph depicting the distribution of congresspersons across 18 fields of study with the Nov. 6 Business article “The differences between what congressional Republicans and Democrats studied in college.” Conspicuous in their absence was most science fields. It is generally considered that chemistry, physics and mathematics would fall under this heading.
I was astonished to find that not a single one of those disciplines was listed. This perhaps accounts at least partially for the invention of the term “alternative facts” famously uttered by Kellyanne Conway and since picked up by others as a standard point of rhetoric. It might also explain why there are those among them who cannot or will not entertain the seriousness of the damage we humans are doing to our planet and, by extension, to ourselves.
Finally, as a holder of degrees in mathematics and computer science, I admit I have a bias toward science — but, only because it has served me well for more than five decades as a computer programmer, researcher, and teacher of mathematics and computer science.
David Hugo Barrett, Ellicott City | 2022-11-11T19:24:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Missing in Congress: Science education - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/missing-congress-science-education/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/missing-congress-science-education/ |
Here’s the real tragedy of the Roberts court
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Oct. 21 at the Supreme Court. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Ruth Marcus’s excellent Nov. 6 Opinions Essay, “The tragedy of John Roberts,” invited undue sympathy for a chief justice who has seen the court over which he presides fall into unprecedented disrepute. But “tragedy” is not the right term here. Tragic heroes, whether from ancient Greece, Shakespeare or otherwise, are figures with noble traits done in by a fatal flaw. Here, there is no fatal flaw; there is only intent and success.
Since his appointment, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has played a long game in slowly moving the Supreme Court away from the judicial “liberalism” of the Warren court. He has brilliantly played the hand he has been dealt, and the result — however unpopular it may be — is a remarkable success for his conservative judicial philosophy. If there is a tragedy here, it is that of the American people.
Victor M. Glasberg, Alexandria | 2022-11-11T19:24:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Here’s the real tragedy of the Roberts court - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/real-tragedy-roberts-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/real-tragedy-roberts-court/ |
The margin in House voting was right in line with polling
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) makes calls to Republican House members asking for support in his bid to be the next speaker of the House at his office on Capitol Hill on Nov. 9. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
On Sunday, The Washington Post and our polling partners at ABC News released our final pre-election poll.
“Voters’ intentions for the House are split about evenly, with 49 percent of registered voters saying they will vote for the Republican candidate in their district and 48 percent saying they will vote for the Democrat,” The Post’s Dan Balz, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin wrote. “Likely voters split 50 percent Republican and 48 percent Democratic.”
This was close to the margin seen in polls from other established pollsters. It seemed to be at odds with the confidence expressed by Republican politicians and leaders, certainly, but it was what it was: a relatively narrow gap for the GOP.
And a narrow margin favoring the Republicans is what we saw Tuesday.
This isn’t meant to be gloating, really, though obviously it is a credit to our pollsters. It’s particularly not meant to be gloating given that 1) not all of the votes have been counted and 2) it is never wise to assume that polls will be perfectly accurate. When we consider polls we should recognize that they include uncertainty, both measured in the margin of error and by the nature of asking questions about an election in which things might change. But, particularly given questions about polling in recent election cycles, it’s worth pointing out that the predictions of that final Post-ABC poll reflect what happened.
Cook Political Report tracks the results of House contests as they come in. On Friday morning, those numbers reflected a national total of 51 million votes for Republican candidates and 45 million for Democrats — which, if you include third-party votes, give the GOP 52 percent of the total. But there are still as many as 4.6 million votes to be counted in California, a state where the Democratic Senate candidate is getting 60 percent of the vote (both Election Day and mail-in). So that difference will narrow.
More interestingly, the Cook Political data allow us to compare where races are with how those places voted in 2020. Using DailyKos’s analysis of the presidential vote in each of the districts of the 118th Congress (and excluding House races where candidates ran unopposed), we see that the average shift across House seats was about 5.1 points. Joe Biden won the 2020 election nationally by 4.5 points — in line with a 1-point Republican advantage in 2022.
On Wednesday, we noted that the likely Republican majority in the House would be narrow enough that it could be credited to the redistricting process — both in newly drawn maps (as in Florida) and in maps that were blocked by the courts (as in New York). Curious whether there were obvious patterns in redistricting and the election results, I made this excessively complicated graph showing all 435 districts. The short orange line shows how the 2020 margin of the district before redistricting shifted after redistricting. The purple lines show how the margin (as of Friday morning) compares to the new 2020 margin.
Put more simply: Purple lines pointing right shifted to the GOP relative to the 2020 vote. Purple lines pointing left shifted to the Democrats.
In most cases, you’ll notice, the redistricting didn’t change the lean of the district very much, and the 2022 results generally reflect that lean. There are a lot of districts with big shifts, though you’ll notice those often go all the way to the edge of the chart: candidates getting 100 percent of the vote in 2022, because they ran unopposed.
We don’t yet know what the final margin in House voting will be. We don’t even know whether Republicans will have taken the majority! But we do know that, as with Senate polling, polls showing that the contest for the House was close were, in fact, accurate.
A noteworthy discovery, to be sure. | 2022-11-11T19:36:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The margin in House voting was right in line with polling - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/11/house-republicans-elections-polling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/11/house-republicans-elections-polling/ |
The president’s visit to the annual summit was less triumphant than last year, when he was cheered for turning the U.S. away from Trump’s climate denialism
President Biden leaves after speaking at the U.N. Climate Change Conference on Friday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (Peter Dejong/AP)
COP27, the U.N. Climate Change Conference
The Conference of the Parties, or COP, is an annual meeting of world leaders, diplomats and activists to discuss climate change. This year’s conference is the 27th such event and is being held over the course of two weeks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Here are 5 key people to watch at this year’s meeting.
At COP26 in Scotland, leaders agreed to “revisit and strengthen” their national climate targets over the coming year — but few have done so. Expect renewed focus on climate pledges and progress. There’s also discussion over who should pay the financial costs of climate change, with flood-battered Pakistan leading the charge against wealthy nations.
Biden’s address
In prepared remarks, Biden pledged that the U.S. will do its part to avert a “climate hell.” He touted the Inflation Reduction Act, which is projected to lower U.S. emissions by 40 percent — but didn’t address topics of financial support to other nations impacted by climate change.
New studies released Friday illustrate the urgency of the challenge. Nations are likely to burn through their remaining carbon budget in less than a decade if they do not significantly reduce greenhouse gas pollution, one study shows. And another showed that the bevy of new gas projects would consume 10 percent of that remaining carbon budget, making it all but impossible for nations to meet the Paris agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
The U.S. delegation’s main offering so far in Egypt is a new proposal from major philanthropies and companies that would funnel private money to developing countries for clean-energy development. The group hopes to lure more than $100 billion by the end of the decade, but its plan, reliant on voluntary participation from private companies, has drawn skepticism.
Puko reported from Washington. | 2022-11-11T19:50:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At COP27, Biden says U.S. will 'shift the paradigm’ on climate change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/11/biden-climate-change-egypt-summit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/11/biden-climate-change-egypt-summit/ |
Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) makes his way to the stage to address supporters at an election night event at Gambrill Mountain Food Co. in Frederick, Md. Trone held off a challenge from Del. Neil C. Parrott (R-Washington) for the seat. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) is projected to win his reelection bid, holding off a challenge from Del. Neil C. Parrott (R) in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, which for the first time in years emerged as the state’s most competitive congressional race, leading Trone to invest millions of his personal fortune in defending the seat.
Parrott called Trone to concede on Friday afternoon, both campaigns confirmed.
Trone’s victory allows Democrats to notch one more win in the still-closely fought battle for control of the U.S. House, which remains unresolved. Republican hopes of a big red wave collapsed spectacularly after Democrats defied expectations to hang onto seats in numerous tough districts while avoiding slews of upset-surprises in others, like Maryland’s 6th, where most political analysts considered Trone the favorite despite Parrott’s spirited challenge.
The rematch between Trone and Parrott was seen as Maryland’s most exciting congressional race, where Parrott hoped a strong grass roots game and broad dissatisfaction with the economy and President Biden could overpower Trone’s enormous personal wealth and incumbent advantage.
But, after Trone, the co-founder of Total Wine & More, invested more than $12 million of his money into his campaign, he largely dominated Parrott on the airwaves, painting him as “extreme” on abortion and other social issues while having large latitude to showcase his personal mission. Trone’s huge financial advantage largely deterred any major investment from national Republicans, leaving Parrott to try to pull off an upset with minimal resources. Parrott had raised roughly $800,000 this year.
Trone had routed Parrott, an engineer and longtime Maryland delegate, in 2020. But the race became more competitive this year after redistricting made the 6th District redder — largely thanks to Parrott’s own personal crusades against partisan gerrymandering in Annapolis. He and several other Republicans won a lawsuit that led to a new congressional map this year that gave Republicans a shot in the Western Maryland district.
But even though the district lost some bluer D.C. suburbs, it retained a significant portion of populous deep-blue Montgomery County, where Trone clobbered Parrott, who couldn’t make up the difference despite his apparent popularity in redder — but less populous — Western Maryland.
Trone was first elected in 2018, projecting an image as a centrist wanting to use his business chops in Congress to strike bipartisan deals. “You can’t just pass a bill with only messaging. That won’t do anything. That’s a waste of my life,” Trone told a roomful of Democratic voters in Gaithersburg last month, before cracking: “So I go in there, I eat the chili-cheese dogs with the Republicans. The Democrats — our cloakroom is mostly veggie burgers.”
He became the co-chair of the Bipartisan Task Force on Mental Health and Addiction, devoting much of his service in Congress to issues that have been personal to him. His nephew died of a fentanyl-related overdose in 2016, an experience Trone has said made him want to lead bipartisan legislation boosting mental health and addiction resources to aid people struggling with substance abuse to find treatment. He’s also sought to steer the criminal justice system away from jailing people as a solution for the drug addiction crisis, something that had happened with his nephew.
Some of the local allies he has worked with on that mission appeared in emotional campaign ads for Trone. Western Maryland has had its own challenges with the opioid epidemic, particularly in the pandemic. “David believed in us,” Kevin Simmers, who lost his daughter to an overdose and has connected with Trone, said in one ad. “For every person who is suffering from substance abuse disorder, there’s no bigger champion than David Trone.”
Trone had also talked up his backstory as the son of a farmer in numerous ads; he’s often told the story of the foreclosure of his father’s farm, seeking to forge connections in rural areas of the district. His work on some agricultural issues in Congress helped Trone earn support from Maryland’s Farm Bureau, along with several other Maryland incumbents. But some conservative voters were still skeptical. “You see these commercials, people would think he’s this country slicker — that’s not even close,” a Frederick County voter rooting for Parrott, James Parise, had said at the rally Cruz held for him last month. “But that’s not to say he didn’t work hard and build a business, Total Wine & More, and it funds his campaign.”
Numerous conservative voters said they were excited for Parrott’s competitive bid considering it has been a decade since a Republican has represented this region of the state. Parrott, one of the most conservative members of the Maryland State House, pumped up supporters with pledges to rein in government spending, close the U.S.-Mexico border, empower parents in their children’s education and create a “place where life is protected from the beginning to the end of life.”
Trone had gone after Parrott’s staunch opposition to abortion in ads that spoke to post-Roe concerns about abortion rights. Parrott, a social conservative who has sought to repeal the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage, had previously led a 20-week abortion ban proposal and said he would support a 15-week ban in Congress.
But while political analysts considered the overturn of Roe and Parrott’s social conservatism to be benefits for Trone in purple turf, they also saw Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox as a drag on Parrott, potentially depressing Republican excitement that would be needed to carry Parrott to victory.
Cox lost to Gov.-elect Wes Moore (D) by more than 20 percentage points. | 2022-11-11T19:50:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | David Trone projected to win reelection in Maryland’s 6th District - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/11/maryland-6th-results-trone-wins-parrott/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/11/maryland-6th-results-trone-wins-parrott/ |
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) arrives to speak at an event on Nov. 9 in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP)
It will take weeks for all the votes to be counted, but one thing is becoming clear: Regardless of which party wins control of the House, its majority will be narrow — likely among the narrowest in history.
What can the past tell us about what happens when Congress is so closely divided? This is not the first time an American Congress has been nearly evenly split in the modern era of a 435-seat House. And the two slimmest House majorities came at times with stark parallels to today: One convened amid a war in Europe that the U.S. hadn’t (yet) entered; the other was elected amid painful economic upheaval. Here’s what we can learn from them.
65th Congress (1917-1919)
Republicans took the House majority by only one seat in 1916 midterms — sort of. This was an era with a lot of other political parties, so while Republicans were elected to 215 seats and Democrats to 214, there were also three members of the Progressive Party, one Independent Republican, one Prohibitionist and one Socialist. (The Socialist, Wisconsin’s Victor Berger, was not permitted to take his seat; it was a whole thing.)
Because some of those third-party members aligned with the Democrats, the House kept its Democratic speaker, Missouri’s James Beauchamp Clark, despite the technical Republican majority. (This was the before the party realignment of the mid-20th century, so the Democrats were considered the more conservative party and the Republicans the more progressive party.)
Such an even and chaotic split might sound like a recipe for gridlock, but there was a major difference between then and now: World War I. Though President Woodrow Wilson had tried to keep the United States neutral in the European war, Germany’s sinking of U.S. ships added up, uniting Republicans and Democrats against a common enemy. The United States entered the war in April 1917, only a month after the 65th Congress took its seats. (Inaugurations for members of Congress and the president took place in March until the adoption of the 20th Amendment in 1933.)
The 65th Congress was remarkably productive — not only did it authorize a declaration of war by a 373-50 vote, it also passed the 18th Amendment prohibiting alcohol, which requires a two-thirds majority in the House. This Congress also included the first woman elected to the House, Montana Republican Jeannette Rankin. Rankin was one of the few members of Congress to vote against the war, essentially dooming her chances of reelection.
As a vote on entering World War I approached, the only woman in Congress faced an agonizing choice
72nd Congress (1931-1933)
After the midterm election in November 1930, Republicans were set to have a small majority in the House, 218-216, along with one member of a third party. Then a truly insane thing happened: Between the election and the start of the 72nd Congress in March 1931, 14 members-elect died, including the incumbent speaker, Republican Nicholas Longworth. The resulting special elections to replace them shifted the balance of power to the Democrats, 219-212.
That still wasn’t much of a margin, and with the GOP holding a one-seat majority in the Senate and Republican Herbert Hoover in the White House, partisanship doomed the government’s productivity at the worst time possible. This was in the early years of the Great Depression, and the two parties had very different ideas about how to respond to the crisis. Congress passed public works legislation that might have provided some relief, but Hoover vetoed it, and there wasn’t a large enough coalition to override his veto. Then, when World War I veterans were desperate for “bonus” checks they had been promised, Congress didn’t deliver. Nearly 20,000 unemployed veterans, the so-called Bonus Army, descended on Washington in protest.
The voter backlash against these failures fell on Republicans, and it was so harsh that they wouldn’t hold a majority in either the House or the Senate for 14 years. They wouldn’t regain the White House for 20.
107th Congress (2001-2003)
This Congress convened with just an eight-seat Republican majority in January 2001, the same month President George W. Bush took office despite having lost the popular vote. That might have spelled partisan gridlock, but then came the 9/11 terrorist attacks, spurring a momentary unity not unlike the 65th Congress amid World War I. On big votes, like the Patriot Act, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the authorization for use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan, the party split didn’t matter at all: The vote margins were overwhelming.
117th Congress and beyond
It may come as no surprise that the current Congress also has one of the narrowest party splits in history. It started in January 2021 with a 10-seat Democratic majority, 222-212, not to mention a 50-50 split in the Senate.
Time will tell how narrow a majority the winning party will have in the next Congress, but it is almost certain to be fewer than 10 seats. | 2022-11-11T19:50:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tiny House majority? Here's what history says could happen. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/11/11/narrow-majority-congress-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/11/11/narrow-majority-congress-history/ |
FILE - Kevin Conroy participates during a Q&A panel at Wizard World on Aug. 24, 2019, in Chicago. Conroy, the prolific voice actor whose gravely voice on the “Batman: The Animated Series” was for many Batman fans the definite sound of the Caped Crusader, died Thursday after a battle with cancer. He was 66. Warner Bros., which produced the series, announced Friday. (Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK — Kevin Conroy, the prolific voice actor whose gravely delivery on “Batman: The Animated Series" was — for many Batman fans — the definite sound of the Caped Crusader, has died at 66. | 2022-11-11T19:50:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kevin Conroy, a defining voice of Batman, dies at 66 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/kevin-conroy-a-defining-voice-of-batman-dies-at-66/2022/11/11/7392390c-61f5-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/kevin-conroy-a-defining-voice-of-batman-dies-at-66/2022/11/11/7392390c-61f5-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
In country music, nostalgia is the one thing everyone still agrees on
During CMAs week in Nashville, the divisions of the present took a backseat to the increasingly common practice of celebrating the past
Jon Pardi, Dierks Bentley and Lainey Wilson perform during a tribute to lifetime achievement award winner Alan Jackson at the 56th annual CMA Awards on Nov. 9 in Nashville. (Mark Humphrey/AP)
NASHVILLE — On any given Thursday night in Nashville, you can stand on a neon-soaked, tourist-packed block of Lower Broadway and hear Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart” blasting from a band at Layla’s Honky Tonk. Brooks & Dunn’s “Red Dirt Road” from Legends Corner. Clay Walker’s “If I Could Make a Living” from Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman” from a passing car. Big & Rich’s “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” from the speakers of a pedal tavern filled with bros, who loudly boo when they pedal past and you decline to give them a high-five.
And just up the street, if you step out of the party zone and into the historic Ryman Auditorium, you can hear the audience’s ear-shattering screams at Carly Pearce’s Oct. 28 concert when Trisha Yearwood stops by to croon “How Do I Live,” Ronnie Dunn arrives to sing “Cowgirls Don’t Cry” and Kelsea Ballerini shows up to cover the Chicks’s 1999 classic “Cowboy Take Me Away.”
It doesn’t really matter where you are: In country music, the genre’s iconic ′90s and early 2000s hits — and the acts that sing them — continue to reign supreme. After all, it was the era when country’s biggest acts became chart-topping, stadium-filling superstars, bringing country music to its widest audience ever — so it makes sense that singers, songwriters, executives and even fans cling to that time.
“That might be the loudest thing I’ve ever heard,” Martina McBride said to the roar of the sold-out crowd the following night across the street at Bridgestone Arena, where she was the opening act for Wynonna Judd. McBride sounded choked up as thousands gave her a standing ovation after she belted out “A Broken Wing,” her famous ballad from 1997. “God, I love Nashville,” she said.
“You have no idea how much you mean to the world,” Yearwood, the concert’s special guest singer, told Judd, who collected 14 No. 1 hits between 1984 and 1991 with her mother and duo partner, the late Naomi Judd. The noise level at Bridgestone was only rivaled the next night at the tour stop at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., where Judd’s guest singer was Faith Hill. Her husband, Tim McGraw, watched the show from the floor seats, and briefly entertained the audience by dancing between sets to Brooks & Dunn’s 1991 line dance anthem “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.”
Spend some time in Nashville and you will see this nostalgia obsession play out repeatedly and eventually televised on a national platform at Wednesday’s 2022 Country Music Association Awards. The three-hour broadcast on ABC came alive about a half-hour in when Jo Dee Messina strolled onstage during Cole Swindell’s performance of his five-week No. 1 single “She Had Me At Heads Carolina,” a reimagining of Messina’s 1996 smash “Heads Carolina, Tails California.” (“She’s a ′90s country fan, like I am,” Swindell sings approvingly in his song about a girl he meets in a karaoke bar.)
“Y’all give it up for Jo Dee Messina!” Swindell yelled at the end and bowed to Messina, who beamed and waved to the screaming crowd. A similar reaction occurred later when Chris Stapleton collaborated with Patty Loveless on “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” which she recorded in 2001. Ditto during the Alan Jackson lifetime achievement award tribute when the cameras could barely keep up with the number of country stars dancing in the audience, as various artists performed his hits spanning from “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow” (1990) to “Remember When” (2003).
While observing all of this, the question arises: If a genre is this fixated on the past, what does that mean for its future? After talking to many people in the industry, as well as those industry-adjacent who count themselves as superfans, the answer is complicated.
First, it should be noted that country is far from alone when it comes to being obsessed with the past. The broader culture is going through a ′90s and 2000s nostalgia craze, from re-watch podcasts to TV and movie reboots and band reunion tours. But country music stands out as a place that was already fixated on its past.
Countless songs reminisce about the good old days, like McGraw’s “Back When” — and wonder why things can’t be as simple as they used to be, even if it’s recalling a fictional problem-free town that never actually existed, such as Rascal Flatts’s “Mayberry.” As a result, country music’s determination to constantly pay tribute to past legends and celebrate its history can make it difficult to move forward, and particularly now as the industry that likes to bill itself as one big family is more divided than ever as it grapples with complex issues like the rest of America.
The unpleasantness that has rankled Nashville was successfully swept under the rug on the CMAs broadcast. Nominees Jason Aldean and Maren Morris were both in the audience just two months after a rare social media blowup when Aldean’s wife, Brittany, posted an Instagram video that Morris criticized as transphobic.
About six weeks later, Aldean leaned into the controversy as he sarcastically told the crowd at a Bridgestone concert that he might bring Morris up onstage, and flashed a smile when fans booed — and then proceeded to welcome to the stage Morgan Wallen, best known to mainstream audiences as the singer who was caught on TMZ video last year saying the n-word and only becoming more popular when fans (and some Nashville singers and industry executives) fretted he was being unfairly “canceled.”
Both controversies made national news and spotlighted the larger issues that the format has yet to fully deal with, from the overwhelmingly White genre’s extreme lack of diversity to how LGBTQ singers have been marginalized by the industry for decades. Such incidents are discussed at length behind the scenes, and has caused a lot of soul-searching in Nashville as some have realized they have to work closely with people whose views they despise — while others wish everyone could just focus on the music, because they are at a loss to solve these problems.
In other whispered conversations — where people furtively glance over their shoulders at events and restaurants, because you never know who might be standing right behind you in this industry town — there’s further anxiety over how to respond to these issues publicly. Multiple people in the industry were unimpressed by CMA co-host Luke Bryan’s defensive statement last month after he saw backlash for inviting the “very polarizing” (his words) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) onstage at a concert, seemingly trying to argue that it wasn’t a political statement because he was promoting awareness for hurricane relief.
And of course, it’s all compounded by the fact that country music, like all genres, is struggling to adapt to the future of streaming, confronting a touring industry that was crippled by the pandemic and struggling with how to break new music stars other than advising them to somehow go viral on TikTok — a frustration that has spilled into public as musicians vent about this new pressure placed upon them.
So it’s no wonder that the day before the CMAs at the BMI Country Awards (a star-studded private industry event that honors songwriters), everyone preferred to bask in nostalgic times. Toby Keith was awarded the BMI Icon Award, and stars from Eric Church to Carrie Underwood performed covers of his hits and raved about his rise to stardom. Discussion of the difficulties songwriters face as royalties dry up in the streaming era were left to another night.
“It was artists like you that taught kids like me that greatness was possible if you work hard, give it all you got,” Underwood said before putting her spin on “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” Keith’s first No. 1 single in 1993.
It was more of the same the following night when CMA voters awarded the entertainer of the year prize (for the second year in a row) to Luke Combs. He’s the genre’s newest megastar who speaks frequently about legendary ‘′90s duo Brooks & Dunn as one of his biggest inspirations — and has found massive success by combining modern production with (you guessed it) a traditional ’90s country sound. | 2022-11-11T19:50:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Country music's nostalgia factor still dominates Nashville - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/11/11/country-music-cmas-nostalgia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/11/11/country-music-cmas-nostalgia/ |
Mitch Daniels missed the basics of Modern Monetary Theory
The Department of the Treasury Bureau of Engraving and Printing in D.C. (Sarah Silbiger for The Washington Post)
We get it, Mitch Daniels really doesn’t like Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). He spent the bulk of his Nov. 9 op-ed, “Modern Monetary Theory, debunked,” hurling insults at MMT (“hogwash,” etc.), invoking authority figures who revile MMT (Lawrence H. Summers, Paul Krugman, et al.) and comparing MMT to phrenology. What he did not do, however, was explain why MMT fails as an economic theory. Simply put, MMT says that a “monetary sovereign” government, such as the United States, does not need to worry about budget deficits given that it prints its own currency.
Mr. Daniels wrote this about MMT: “The suggestion was that a government could borrow unlimited amounts of money in its own currency and repay it without risk simply by printing more of that currency.” Catch that? The U.S. government likes to “borrow” money and repaying it by “printing more of that currency.” Mr. Daniels did not address why the U.S. government needs to “borrow” money if it can simply print more of it. If you had a printing press in your basement that printed currency that everyone was compelled to accept (such as U.S. dollars), would you ever go to a bank to borrow currency? You wouldn’t. And neither does the U.S. government.
Francis Grab, Washington
Mitch Daniels was distraught about the fiscal recklessness of a “12-digit spending bill,” known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. But wait. Mr. Daniels failed to mention that the bill was fully paid for and provides for deficit reduction as well. The savings came from the establishment of a 15 percent minimum corporate tax, prescription drug pricing reform and Internal Revenue Service tax enforcement. That is known as “pay as you go.”
During Mr. Daniels’s time as director of the Office of Management and Budget for President George W. Bush, he relied more on borrowing money (debt financing) to pay the bills, not hard spending choices. He was a key architect of Mr. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which added about $1.9 trillion to the national debt. Similarly, Mr. Daniels was not reluctant to prepare deficit appropriation spending requests to Congress, as contained in the OMB’s annual President’s Budget.
Mr. Daniels’s actions speak louder than his words. He was a borrow-and-spend practitioner, not a fiscally conservative one.
Eric Murchison, Vienna | 2022-11-11T19:51:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Mitch Daniels missed the basics of Modern Monetary Theory - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/mitch-daniels-missed-basics-modern-monetary-theory/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/mitch-daniels-missed-basics-modern-monetary-theory/ |
Yes, please stop building on the Mall
The U.S. Capitol as seen from the National Mall at dawn on Tuesday. (Robert Miller/The Washington Post)
I agree with Philip Kennicott’s Nov. 7 front-page Critic’s Notebook essay, “Stop building museums on the National Mall. Extend it.”
When Congress established the Reserve — national park land on the cross-axis of the National Mall from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and the White House to the Jefferson Memorial — under the Commemorative Works Act in 2003, it considered that area a “completed work of civic art” in which no new memorials or buildings would be built.
The recommendation to situate the American Women’s History Museum and the National Museum of the American Latino in the Reserve directly conflicts not only with the 2003 act but also with the 2020 law authorizing those museums, which states that they “shall not be located in the Reserve.”
During my 22 years with the legislative affairs office of the National Park Service (NPS), I saw exception after exception made by Congress to build memorials or buildings within the Reserve to mollify one group or another. Unfortunately, I have seen few members willing to defend the Reserve, as political expediency continues to win out time after time over the intent of the law.
A former deputy director of the National Park Service once lamented that our nation’s capital was becoming like so many of the major cities of Europe, where buildings and memorials are stacked one after another, eliminating green space and scenic vistas. It appears Washington is headed in the same direction. Our national park lands, our nation’s capital and the American people deserve better than this.
Donald J. Hellmann, Annandale
The writer is vice chair of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks and former assistant director of legislative and congressional affairs for the National Park Service. | 2022-11-11T19:51:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Yes, please stop building on the Mall - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/yes-please-stop-building-mall/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/yes-please-stop-building-mall/ |
On Elon Musk’s Twitter, gaming offers a glimpse of a chaotic future
Drastic changes to Twitter are reverberating across the video game industry and its surrounding community
Nathan Grayson
(Washington Post illustration; iStock; Twitter)
Video games are a big topic of conversation on Twitter, generating 2.4 billion tweets last year. On new owner Elon Musk’s Twitter, where major executives and nearly half of the company’s workforce have been purged, and where generating revenue is the priority, gaming still has a place. But the drastic changes the company and its more than 200 million daily active users face are reverberating across the gaming community and industry.
In May, Twitter’s global head of gaming partnerships, Rishi Chadha, said in an interview with The Washington Post: “When people think about gaming, they’re thinking about the Twitches of the world, the YouTubes of the world. And it’s like actually, you can’t forget what Twitter is doing. Twitter’s been that home for conversation and it’s been silently there.”
But all of that may change. On Nov. 4, Musk laid off about 3,700 Twitter employees, almost half of the workforce. More employees resigned this week, following a sudden, mandatory return to office policy.
As part of a move to cut costs, Musk fired employees in marketing, content moderation, and other departments he has indicated would be less of a priority. Many members of revenue-generating teams like partnerships and sales were retained. The marketing side of Twitter Gaming, which spent company money to make indirect income, was let go. Chadha, who oversaw a moneymaking team, managed to keep his job, he confirmed last Friday.
“[It’s] the end of an era,” said a former Twitter employee with knowledge of how Twitter Gaming worked. “Bird ain’t gonna be the same.”
Twitter’s gaming strategy
If you’ve never heard of Twitter Gaming, that was on purpose, according to the former employee. Part of reaching gamers organically on social media meant not forcefully shoving a brand down their throats. Twitter Gaming used a lighter touch: consistently replying to tweets and promoting creators and large events.
Twitter Gaming’s original goals were to earn money for Twitter and gaming companies, keep the gaming conversation going, and to make video clips, live broadcasts and highlights more accessible to users, according to Chadha. Gaming is a multibillion dollar industry; this approach from Twitter mirrored attempts by tech companies like Apple, Meta, Google and most notably Microsoft (which owns Xbox and is in the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard) to earn a slice of the pie.
Analysis: Call of Duty made $800 million in one weekend. Here’s what that means.
While Twitter Gaming was not well-known across the company or to users, it planned to change that over time. Prior to Musk taking over and privatizing the company, Twitter published blog posts in January and July highlighting the presence of gaming on its platform. According to Twitter, there were 1.5 billion tweets about gaming in the first half of 2022, compared to 10.4 billion tweets about news.
“Whatever you follow on Twitter becomes a big presence for you. If you follow a bunch of people who think the Earth is flat, in your mind, whenever you open up Twitter, everybody on Twitter is going to think the Earth is flat. Gaming is the same thing,” said Zack, better known as Asmongold, a top Twitch streamer based in Austin, with over 800,000 Twitter followers. He declined to provide his last name, citing privacy reasons. (Twitch is owned by Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
The official Twitter Gaming social media account, first created in 2015, has been silent since Nov. 3, a day before the layoffs. It is unclear who, if anyone, will take over the account.
“We’re still committed to posting content on Twitter (even in turbulent times like these) because of how important it’s become to our community.”
— Joe Hixson, Riot Games spokesperson
The gaming initiative was started by Twitter employees on partnerships and on marketing, who were gamers themselves.
“I’ve been at Twitter now for almost five years, and when I got there, there wasn’t really a gaming strategy,” said Chadha in May. “There were a few deals that were in place where we had signed for some live rights. But that was really it. And so one of the first things I had to focus on when I started at Twitter was thinking about, what are we doing? What’s our narrative?”
Twitter Gaming employees directly interacted with gaming communities on the platform. Speaking to The Post, several creators who focus on games like “Destiny 2” and “Apex Legends” sang the praises of recently laid-off Twitter Gaming social lead Shiraz Siddiqui, who they say helped grow their audiences and looked out for them in challenging times.
“He wasn’t just another employee; he was very well connected with the gaming space and its creators,” said Malik ‘Crusader’ Forrester, a Twitch streamer and “Apex Legends” team manager at esports organization Team Liquid. “He’s gone out [of] his way to help creators during times like the record labels and music groups cracking down on music streamed on Twitch and on Twitter. He personally helped me with using Twitter’s media studio tool to filter out any media I uploaded with music.”
“Destiny 2” YouTuber and streamer Ryan ‘True Vanguard’ Wright spoke of Siddiqui and the Twitter Gaming team’s ability to make connections, recalling a time they spotted a small upcoming “Destiny 2” creator who goes by the handle DFlawless on Twitter, recognized his potential and quickly put him in touch with developer Bungie. Almost overnight, DFlawless was working directly with the studio to promote new in-game content to thousands of people.
“It’s stuff like that — creating catalytic moments for creators and developers — that we’re really going to be missing now with [Siddiqui] and that team out of the picture,” said Wright. “As an influencer who got his biggest boost in viewership from a catalytic moment like that, I really feel like this is a net loss for the industry as a whole.”
Twitter Gaming employees would also occasionally collaborate on bigger projects like the League of Legends World Championship, Summer Game Fest and the Game Awards. Riot Games said that its deal with Twitter involves earning a cut from advertiser spending on Riot esports videos. Twitter also benefits from the deal, as it earns advertising revenue on Riot’s videos.
“The only money right now is flowing from Twitter to Riot, not the other way around,” said Riot spokesperson Joe Hixson. He added that Riot’s last paid promotion was during the November 2021 launch of the Netflix “League of Legends” series, “Arcane,” during which Riot paid to promote certain tweets to reach a larger audience. “We’re still committed to posting content on Twitter (even in turbulent times like these) because of how important it’s become to our community.”
League of Legends esports still hasn’t turned a profit. That’s okay, says Riot.
Media entrepreneur and gaming event organizer Geoff Keighley declined through a representative to share any updates on how the December Game Awards, another moment where many in the gaming community gather on Twitter to react to news, would be handled on Twitter. Previously, Twitter promoted Summer Game Fest with a “hashmoji,” or a hashtag ending in an emoji, as well as Twitter Spaces. “One of the things we’ve found is really fun with Twitter is just the sense of community,” Keighley said in a May interview.
Amid Twitter’s week-long deluge of changes, the Game Awards announced on Thursday that it had a new partnership with gaming communications app Discord to watch and discuss the event together next month. It plans to take advantage of Discord’s Twitter Spaces-like features.
Wooing influencers with the promise of money
After purchasing Twitter for $44 billion on Oct. 27, Musk has sought to improve its profit margins. To that end, his pitch for upgrading an existing Twitter subscription product, called Twitter Blue, was simple enough: Users pay $8 a month for a blue verification check mark.
In practice, democratizing the blue check mark has given rise to an immediate host of problems. In response, on Friday morning, sign-ups for Twitter Blue have been suspended, citing “impersonation issues.”
Users in some countries with a lower standard of living have said that the fee is unaffordable. Other users who can pay have started buying check marks for accounts impersonating famous companies and personalities. (Earlier this week, a fake account posing as Nintendo of America posted a photo of Mario making a profane hand gesture).
“We’ve looked to verified accounts to provide us with legit and true information for years and it’s hard to look at these accounts suddenly and question if they’re legit or not,” said Melissa Prizzia, a 25-year-old Twitch streamer from Morristown, New Jersey who goes by the name XSET NuFo. “Especially for the people who don’t use Twitter regularly and are unaware of all of these changes.”
Prior to Musk taking over Twitter, the subscription service Twitter Blue cost $5 a month and gave people the ability to edit their tweets for thirty minutes after posting. It had no correlation with the blue check mark, which previously was reserved for news outlets, journalists, celebrities, politicians and other notable public figures who had to verify their identify with the platform.
Musk has said the check mark subscription will give Twitter a revenue stream for paying creators. Historically, Twitter has been one of the hardest platforms to earn money on. It has an ad revenue program that one creator noted he found impossible to join, and offers few other ways to convert a large following into consistent income.
“Any type of monetization would be an improvement for me,” said Asmongold, the popular Twitch streamer, who said he hasn’t received any money from Twitter and that he was willing to pay $8 a month to see if that would help.
The gamers still standing
Musk has made multiple reference to gaming when describing Twitter’s future. During the 2022 Baron Investment Conference in New York earlier this month, Musk said he wanted to set different user experiences, so that users could pick if they wanted “full contact battle” or to just look at “puppies and flowers.” In an Oct. 27 note to advertisers, Musk compared these options to video games, saying: “Our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play video games ranging from all ages to mature.”
A player-versus-player version of Twitter, or a proposed mode that would encourage free speech and dialogue, could look a lot like Reddit or Discord, said University of Oregon game studies professor Maxwell Foxman. In an environment like that, certain groups could flourish — such as gamers accustomed to online harassment. Twitter’s Trust and Safety Team, which handles content moderation, has faced cuts of about 15 percent of its staff, its then head of safety tweeted on Nov. 4, before stepping down six days later.
“If [Twitter users] were going to leave, they would already be gone. It reminds me of the 2016 election when people said if Trump won, they would move to Canada. Nobody moved to Canada.”
— Twitter user @ModernWarzone
“There’s concerns that Twitter becomes a more toxic, negative space, based on certain groups leaving and certain groups staying,” Foxman said. “Streamers and influencers in the gaming space have had to deal with that sort of behavior for a really long time. So for better or worse, they’ve built up resistance to some of that behavior.”
Mass layoffs and declines in advertiser spending, which hurt normal users’ experiences and those of influencers attempting to monetize the platform, have already prompted some users to leave Twitter or seek alternatives.
“The sad part is that when Nibellion leaves, somebody is gonna slide up to take his place and do exactly what he did,” said the person who runs a Twitter account called Modern Warzone, which often posts Call of Duty news to its nearly 700,000 followers. The person, who goes by the alias Doug, is a 27-year-old content creator based in Augusta, Georgia, and declined to share his name, citing security concerns. “That’s just how it goes. If I were gone tomorrow from Twitter, somebody would slide in to do my job. That’s the reality of the capitalist world we live in is that there’s always somebody next up willing to take less than you are to do exactly what you do.”
Over the past two years, the amount of users who are “heavy tweeters” has been in constant decline, according to internal slides viewed by The Post. (Twitter defines a “heavy tweeter” as someone who logs on six to seven days a week, and tweets about three to four times a week.) The number of esports users, streamers and YouTubers who are heavy tweeters has also declined.
The one exception is large accounts such as “Minecraft” content creator Dream and YouTuber Mr. Beast, who have seen an explosion in popularity. Twitter noted that them and other creators who attract similar audiences have found continued success.
“One of the reasons why I think Mr. Beast is extremely popular is he doesn’t really alienate a lot of viewers by having extreme political opinions,” Asmongold said. “Somebody like Mr. Beast is extremely careful to not have controversy … There’s a lot of fatigue from a lot of the extremist language that people use online and a lot of times people just want to sit back, relax and watch a video and chill out. That’s something that Mr. Beast is able to do well, and that’s why it captures a large audience.”
Dream, Mr. Beast and other accounts did not respond to a request for comment. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment; the majority of Twitter’s communications department has been laid off.
Analysis: Nibel gave Twitter a lot for little in return
“We always think about where our brands and communities show up. It’s an important consideration for us,” said Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Gaming, at a New York media event on Tuesday, when asked by The Post about his reaction to Musk buying Twitter. Spencer has over a million Twitter followers.
Ben ‘Cohh Carnage’ Cassell, a popular Twitch streamer who regularly uses Twitter to interact with fans and fellow streamers, plans to stick it out for now, but has fears about the future of the platform.
“My concern is that we’re going to wake up and it’s going to be gone, or [Musk] is going to wake up on the wrong side of the bed and decide he’s going to shut it down for two weeks and reset it,” Cassell told The Post. “Where do we go next? I left Facebook years ago. Twitch is great, but they got rid of their messaging system. Me and many, many, many other creators use Twitter as a form of communication with each other, and there’s not really a fallback right now that everyone’s using.”
Modern Warzone said that he and others were likely to stay on the platform. “If they were going to leave, they would already be gone. It reminds me of the 2016 election when people said if Trump won, they would move to Canada. Nobody moved to Canada.” | 2022-11-11T19:53:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elon Musk sees games as Twitter's future. Content creators aren't sure. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/11/twitter-gaming-elon-musk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/11/twitter-gaming-elon-musk/ |
Biden’s Asian summit partners hit by U.S. rate hikes, Chinese downturn
ASEAN leaders pose for a group photo Friday at a summit in Cambodia. (Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP/Getty Images)
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — When President Biden arrives here Saturday for a Southeast Asian summit, he will be greeted by leaders whose nations have largely escaped the turmoil that is enveloping the world’s largest economies.
But that relative calm may be ending.
The combination of a strong U.S. dollar and a weak Chinese economy are testing members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is holding its annual summit with the U.S. president this weekend.
Within the past month, central banks in Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia each raised interest rates, following a series of similar moves by the Federal Reserve. Higher credit costs are intended to cool inflation and discourage capital flight, but they will also slow ASEAN’s economic growth. A looming slump in Chinese orders for goods produced in the region will compound the damage, economists said.
“The environment is shifting for the worse,” said Trinh Nguyen, a senior economist with the investment firm Natixis in Hong Kong.
Higher U.S. interest rates draw investment away from places like Southeast Asia while the stronger dollar makes imported products such as oil more expensive. Over the past year, the dollar has risen about 14 percent against a basket of other currencies.
Since the Fed began raising rates, ASEAN’s largest economy, Indonesia, has suffered net capital outflows in five of the past seven months, according to data from the Institute of International Finance, an industry group. Investors have withdrawn funds from Malaysia in each of the past three months.
Heavily indebted countries also may struggle as the Fed continues lifting interest rates. Thailand’s foreign debt, for example, has surged to almost $195 billion, up from about $166 billion before the pandemic, according to the Bank of Thailand. The country borrowed heavily to make up for lost tourism income, with just one-quarter of the pre-pandemic number of foreign visitors expected this year.
Thailand could be faced with a lose-lose decision: raise interest rates and make debt repayment more onerous for businesses and consumers or allow its currency to sink further against the dollar, which would make imports more expensive and worsen inflation.
Still, even with the recent increase in consumer prices across the region, inflation is lower in many fast-growing ASEAN countries than in the United States. In October, Vietnam reported prices rose at an annualized 4.3 percent rate while U.S. prices are up 7.7 percent over the past year.
As a result, interest rates in ASEAN nations are not expected to rise as much as in Latin America or Eastern Europe, according to the International Monetary Fund. In Brazil, where annual inflation topped 12 percent earlier this year, the central bank has hiked borrowing costs by more than 10 percentage points since the spring of last year.
Senate race in Ohio is ground zero for hopes of more manufacturing jobs
Despite the mounting challenges, economic conditions are not expected to feature prominently in Saturday’s ASEAN summit or a separate meeting between Biden and a broader group of Asian leaders on Sunday. The president’s ASEAN discussions will focus on global governance, human rights and the ongoing crisis in Myanmar, U.S. officials said.
In particular, ASEAN leaders are unlikely to complain about the strong dollar to Biden, since the president has no direct control over the currency’s value.
“It’s not something the leaders will raise with each other,” said Josh Lipsky, an Atlantic Council analyst.
The region’s central banks today are better positioned to weather financial turbulence than they were during previous bouts of market turmoil, including the 2013 “taper tantrum,” when the Fed’s efforts to reduce its balance sheet by selling U.S. government securities triggered a bond market revolt.
Investors sold off Treasurys, sending bond yields soaring and causing investors to bolt from Asian markets. As regional currencies sank against the dollar, central banks were forced to hike rates to punishing levels.
Today, many ASEAN central banks have ample financial firepower to defend their currencies.
Bank Indonesia, the Indonesian central bank, reported earlier this month that its financial reserves topped $130 billion. That is enough to finance 5.8 months of imports, almost twice the international standard, or 5.6 months of imports plus interest payments on the government’s foreign debt.
The global economic situation, meanwhile, looks increasingly grim. Europe is suffering from a major energy crisis, resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The United Kingdom, which is on its third prime minister since September, is in the early months of a recession the Bank of England says will be the longest in a century. And the United States is grappling with its highest inflation in nearly 40 years.
Even China, which has been an engine of global growth for decades, is expected to grow barely 3 percent this year, down from more than 8 percent in 2021, according to the IMF.
“The global economy itself is heading into pretty troubled waters,” said Neil Shearing, chief economist for Capital Economics in London. “I still think ASEAN will be a relative bright spot. But if the global economy is slowing, Southeast Asia can’t just sail on. It’s not immune.”
The IMF last month said ASEAN’s annual economic growth — which exceeds the global average — would slow next year to 4.7 percent, down from 5 percent this year. The 10-nation group of developing countries includes commodity producers such as Indonesia and Malaysia as well as fuel importers like Thailand and export powerhouse Vietnam.
But if the global slowdown worsens, the economic toll — especially in Vietnam, Singapore and Cambodia — would be more serious, with individual country growth rates declining by up to an additional full percentage point, according to the IMF.
Falling global food and fuel costs offer poor countries little relief
For much of this year, ASEAN members such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam avoided the worst of the fallout from larger economies’ woes.
Government subsidies protected consumers from the full effects of higher energy costs. And Chinese manufacturers kept buying plenty of ASEAN-made parts to use in making consumer electronics and industrial equipment for customers in the United States and Europe.
Now both of those relationships are changing.
Government subsidies for energy products are proving unaffordable. As oil prices shot up following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Indonesia spent about $34 billion on fuel, natural gas and electricity subsidies in the first eight months of this year, up from $14 billion last year.
In September, the government reduced subsidies and allowed retail prices to rise by 30 percent, a decision that set off widespread protests.
The region’s exports to China — ASEAN’s largest trading partner — also are likely to dip. With Europe in recession, and the U.S. economy likely to weaken next year, Chinese exporters will need fewer parts from ASEAN suppliers, Nguyen said.
Already, Chinese factories in September shipped fewer products to the United States and Germany. If that decline continues, as economists expect, China will soon begin trimming its orders from suppliers in countries like Vietnam and Malaysia.
“Every part of the global economy is likely to slow in coming months,” Shearing said. “Everybody is facing head winds.” | 2022-11-11T20:20:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s Asian summit partners hit by U.S. rate hikes, Chinese downturn - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/11/asean-biden-asia-china-interest-rates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/11/asean-biden-asia-china-interest-rates/ |
The country group landed eight No. 1 songs on the country charts in the early 1980s
Jeff Cook of Alabama in 2012. (Mark Humphrey/AP)
Jeff Cook, a guitarist who co-founded the country group Alabama and steered them up the charts with such hits as “Song of the South” and “Dixieland Delight,” died Nov. 7 at his home in Destin, Fla. He was 73.
The cause was Parkinson’s disease, said Don Murry Grubbs, a representative for the band.
As a guitarist, fiddle player and vocalist, Mr. Cook — alongside cousins Randy Owen and Teddy Gentry — landed eight No. 1 songs on the country charts between spring 1980 and summer 1982, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame. That run included the pop crossover hits “Love In The First Degree” and “Feels So Right,” as well as “Tennessee River” and “Mountain Music.”
The band had a three-year run as CMA Entertainer of the Year from 1982-1985 and earned five ACM Award Entertainer of the Year trophies from 1981-1985. Mr. Cook stopped touring with Alabama in 2018, a year after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
A song he co-wrote in 2015, “No Bad Days,” took on new meaning after his diagnosis. “After I got the Parkinson’s diagnosis, people would quote the song to me and say, ‘No bad days,’ ” Mr. Cook told the Tennessean in 2019. “They write me letters, notes and emails and they sign ‘No Bad Days.’ I know the support is there.”
Jeffrey Alan Cook was born in Fort Payne, Ala., on Aug. 27, 1949, and graduated from Jacksonville State University.
Survivors include his wife of 27 years, the former Lisa Williams; his mother; a sister; and a brother, according to the New York Times. | 2022-11-11T21:17:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jeff Cook, founding member of band Alabama, dies at 73 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/jeff-cook-country-band-alabama-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/jeff-cook-country-band-alabama-dead/ |
Kevin Conroy, voice of animated Batman, dies at 66
‘It’s so much fun as an actor to sink your teeth into,’ he once said. ‘Calling it animation doesn’t do it justice. It’s more like mythology.’
Kevin Conroy during the 2021 Los Angeles Comic-Con. (Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images)
Kevin Conroy, the prolific voice actor whose gravely delivery on “Batman: The Animated Series" was — for many Batman fans — the definitive sound of the Caped Crusader, died Nov. 10 at age 66.
The cause was cancer, series producer Warner Bros. announced. No other details were immediately available.
Mr. Conroy was the voice of Batman for the animated series that ran from 1992 to 1996, often acting opposite Mark Hamill’s Joker. Mr. Conroy continued as the almost-exclusive animated voice of Batman, including some 15 films, 400 episodes of television and two-dozen video games, including the “Batman: Arkham” and “Injustice” franchises. He was a sought-after personality on the Comic-Con circuit.
Mr. Conroy was born in Westbury, N.Y., on Nov. 30, 1955, and raised in Westport, Conn. He attended the Juilliard School in New York and roomed with Robin Williams. After graduating, he toured with John Houseman’s acting group, the Acting Company. He later performed in Richard Greenberg’s play “Eastern Standard" on Broadway in 1989.
“Eastern Standard," in which Mr. Conroy played a TV producer secretly living with AIDS, had particular meaning to him. Mr. Conroy, who was gay, said at the time he was regularly attending funerals for friends who had died of AIDS. He poured out his anguish nightly onstage.
Mr. Conroy also acted in soap operas and had appearances on TV series including “Cheers," “Tour of Duty” and “Murphy Brown.” In 1991, when casting director Andrea Romano was scouting her lead actor for “Batman: The Animated Series,” she went through hundreds of auditions before Mr. Conroy came in. He was there on a friend’s recommendation — and was cast immediately.
He began the role without any background in comics and as a novice in voice acting. His Batman was husky, brooding and dark. His Bruce Wayne was light and dashing. His inspiration for the contrasting voices, he said, came from the 1930s film “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” about a foppish-seeming English aristocrat who leads a secret life as a dashing hero rescuing victims of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror.
“It’s so much fun as an actor to sink your teeth into,” Mr. Conroy told the New York Times of his Batman role in 2016. “Calling it animation doesn’t do it justice. It’s more like mythology.”
As Mr. Conroy’s performance evolved over the years, it sometimes connected to his own life. He described his own father as an alcoholic and said his family disintegrated while he was in high school. He channeled those emotions into the 1993 animated film “Mast of the Phantasm,” which revolved around Bruce Wayne’s unsettled issues with his parents.
“Andrea came in after the recording and grabbed me in a hug,” Mr. Conroy told the Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “Andrea said, ‘I don’t know where you went, but it was a beautiful performance.’ She knew I was drawing on something.”
Mr. Conroy is survived by his husband, Vaughn C. Williams; a sister; and a brother.
In “Finding Batman,” released earlier this year, Mr. Conroy penned a comic about his unlikely journey with the character and as a gay man in Hollywood.
The voice that emerged from Mr. Conroy for Batman, he said, was one he didn’t recognize — a voice that “seemed to roar from 30 years of frustration, confusion, denial, love, yearning." | 2022-11-11T21:17:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kevin Conroy, voice of animated Batman, dies at 66 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/kevin-conoy-batman-voice-actor-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/kevin-conoy-batman-voice-actor-dead/ |
Man killed in Great Falls area crash, Fairfax County police say
A man died Friday after crashing his vehicle into a tree in Great Falls, Va., Fairfax County police said.
The man, whom police have yet to identify, crashed near the intersection of Arnon Chapel Road and Arnon Lake Drive, police said on Twitter. He suffered severe injuries and was taken to a hospital, where he later died, police said.
Police have not announced the events that led up to the crash, which remains under investigation. It was the second fatal car crash Fairfax County police reported Friday after a driver died that morning in a two-vehicle crash in Springfield. | 2022-11-11T21:21:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man killed in Great Falls area crash, Fairfax County police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/11/great-falls-fatal-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/11/great-falls-fatal-crash/ |
The art of the concession speech: ‘You respect the will of the people.’
(Washington Post staff illustration)
The winners get the glory on election night, but losers have a vital role to play, too. The ritual of the concession speech — tested by the election denialism of 2020 — is a powerful and remarkable part of our democratic system. Here we offer a sampling from around the midterms.
Democratic nominee for Senate from Ohio
“I’m concerned that this country, as we move forward, it may get worse before it gets better. But we need good people who are going to honor the institutions of this country.”
Republican nominee for governor of Michigan
“I called Governor [Gretchen] Whitmer this morning to concede and wish her well. Michigan’s future success rests not in elected officials or government, but all of us. It is incumbent upon all of us to help our children read, support law enforcement and grow our economy. Thank you to our volunteers and supporters for working so hard to forge a better Michigan. We came up short, but we will never stop fighting for our families.”
Republican nominee for Senate from Pennsylvania
“We are facing big problems as a country, and we need everyone to put down their partisan swords and focus on getting the job done. With bold leadership that brings people together, we can create real change. As a Doctor, I always do my best to help others heal. That’s why I ran for Senate. I hope we begin the healing process as a nation soon.”
Republican nominee for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District
“We gave it our all but came up a little short last night. … I want to congratulate the Congresswoman on a hard fought win.”
Republican nominee for governor of Maine
“I accept the results of yesterday’s election. I continue to have grave concerns for the people of Maine over the need for home heating oil relief and efforts to handle inflation. I urge the Governor to take action.”
Republican nominee for governor of Minnesota
“We would have loved to have been victorious. We thought we should be victorious. We thought we spoke to the issues that could really be affected by this election. But in victory, I think humility would have been our choice. … But I have to speak to loss. …
“I thank all of you. Tim Walls is the governor for four more years. …
“Republicans quite frankly, we didn’t have a red wave. It was a blue wave. And we need to stop. We need to calibrate. We need to ask ourselves okay what can we learn from this, what can we learn from this, what can we do better?”
Democratic nominee for Ohio governor
“This is obviously not the result we were hoping for. A few minutes ago, I called Governor [Mike] DeWine to congratulate him and wish him and Fran good luck in another term.
“Even when we don’t get the outcome we hope for, its vital that we respect our democracy.”
Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia
“And tonight we must be honest. Even though my fight, our fight, for the Governor’s Mansion may have come up short, I’m pretty tall. This is a moment where despite every obstacle, we are still standing strong and standing tall, and standing resolute, and standing in our values. … I am suspending my campaign. I may no longer be seeking the office of governor, but I will never stop doing everything in my power to ensure that the people in Georgia have the choice to run government.”
Democratic nominee for New York’s 23rd Congressional District.
“While I regret not being able to serve you in Congress, I can assure you the effort to run was worth it. It is always important to provide the voters a choice, even when the odds are against you. …
“The results of today’s election will have consequences. My hope is that voters will not give up on the election process or our democracy but will rather recommit themselves to responsible government motivated by public service rather than by party, money, power, and ego. In the future, I hope we will be led by our better angels and principles, so that our country will truly become one nation indivisible, with the fulfilled promise of liberty and justice for all.”
Republican nominee for Colorado secretary of state
“Our message of professionalism and removing partisan politics from the office couldn’t be more important in this time. … Our elections serve as a battle of ideas, not a battle with the referees. …
“Elections officials and administrators, Republicans, Democrats, unaffiliated, all across our state and across our nation are your bipartisan friends and community members. The vast majority of them checked their partisanship at the door and performed their functions with integrity and purpose and duty and obligation.”
Incumbent Democratic nominee for New York’s 18th Congressional District
“I don’t like to lose, but my opponent won this race. He won it fair and square, and that means something. So I’m going to step aside, and I had a good run.”
Democratic nominee for mayor of North Las Vegas, Nev.
“The voters of North Las Vegas have made a decision. I respect that decision."
Democratic nominee for Oklahoma governor
“We have planted seeds all across this state to get back to a place of civility, back to a place where we unite.”
Incumbent, nonpartisan nominee for Virginia Beach City Council District 9
“I fully expect Mr. Shulman to be the certified winner of the District 9 seat on the City Council when the yet uncounted votes are counted.”
Republican nominee for governor of Connecticut
“Connecticut gets it right, we had a good election, a fair election and now we have to come together to get it done.”
Republican nominee for Connecticut state Senate
“Going into it, you knew that it was always going to be an uphill battle, but the process of good government and involvement is key.” | 2022-11-11T21:21:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | From Tim Ryan to Mehmet Oz to Trudy Dixon, election integrity shined - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/tim-ryan-mehmet-oz-trudy-dixon-concession-speech-integrity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/tim-ryan-mehmet-oz-trudy-dixon-concession-speech-integrity/ |
Nevada's count has taken several days partly because of the mail voting system created by the state Legislature in 2020 that requires counties to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day if they arrive up to four days later. Even after the counts are finished this weekend, voters have until the end of the day Monday to “cure” — or fix clerical problems with — their mail ballots, enabling those to be added into the final tally. There are 9,600 ballots in the “cure” stage in Clark County, home to three-quarters of the state’s population. | 2022-11-11T21:22:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nevada count enters Day 4 with Senate, governorship on line - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nevada-count-enters-day-4-with-senate-governorship-on-line/2022/11/11/d55120da-61fb-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nevada-count-enters-day-4-with-senate-governorship-on-line/2022/11/11/d55120da-61fb-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Edwin D�az’s $102M from Mets not fully paid until 2042
NEW YORK — Edwin Díaz’s $102 million, five-year contract with the New York Mets includes $26.5 million in deferred payments he won’t completely receive until 2042 and also has a club option for 2028 that could make the deal worth $118.25 million over six seasons. | 2022-11-11T21:22:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Edwin D�az’s $102M from Mets not fully paid until 2042 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/edwin-diazs-102m-from-mets-not-fully-paid-until-2042/2022/11/11/84bac332-61fc-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/edwin-diazs-102m-from-mets-not-fully-paid-until-2042/2022/11/11/84bac332-61fc-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Politicians probably don’t need your money
Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan with his wife, Andrea, after his concession speech to Republican J.D. Vance in Boardman, Ohio, on Tuesday. (Phil Long/AP)
The best elections analyst of 2022 wasn’t Nate Silver, Nate Cohn, Amy Walter or any of the familiar names.
It was personal finance writer Vicki Robin.
Okay, I don’t actually think Robin is the greatest political number cruncher alive. To my knowledge, she hasn’t written a word of elections analysis this year. But her basic ideas about personal finance illuminate everything you need to know about campaign cash and how politicians spend (read: waste) your heartfelt donations.
Politicians don’t need to win the money race — they just need “enough”
One of Robin’s key concepts is “enough.” When people understand their goals and values, they will find out how to spend “enough” to meet them — and any spending beyond that is a waste.
Progressive writer Ed Burmila illustrates the point:
In 2020, Amy McGrath burned $94,000,000 and got 38.2% of the vote in the Kentucky Senate race.
In 2022, Charles Booker spent $6,000,000 and got 38.4% of the vote in the Kentucky Senate race.
Democrat Amy McGrath ran against GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell in 2020, and she was a magnet for money. Rank-and-file Democrats badly wanted to believe that they could take out the top-ranking Republican senator, so they flooded her campaign with small-dollar donations. She spent almost $91 million of that $94 million.
Charles Booker, on the other hand, spent less than 10 percent of McGrath’s total in his bid to unseat GOP Sen. Rand Paul and got the same vote percentage.
Both Democrats spent “enough” to hire staff, run a campaign and win as many votes as they could in deep-red Kentucky. McGrath’s extra $85 million didn’t net her a single extra vote.
It’s not just Kentucky — every famous politician has “enough”
Kentucky politicians aren’t alone in having “enough” funds. In every competitive Senate race of 2022, both candidates had more money than they needed.
The proof is in the results.
In each state — where we have final calls, at least — the vote totals followed a simple formula. Results looked like the baseline partisanship of the state, adjusted up or down if either candidate was especially charismatic, with a small bonus for incumbent legislators. Both candidates had enough money, so we don’t need to cite the fundraising total to explain the result.
For example, in Ohio in 2020, Donald Trump won 53 percent of the vote. In the state’s 2022 open Senate race, Republican J.D. Vance also won 53 percent of the vote. There’s no need to account for Tim Ryan’s massive fundraising machine or the outside money men who helped Vance. Both had enough cash. The basic facts of the race (the state’s Republican tilt, the lack of an incumbent, etc.) shaped the result.
Similarly in Arizona, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly leads Republican Blake Masters and seems poised to win by a few points (though the race hasn’t been called). Kelly is a sitting senator and a former astronaut in a purple state, and Masters is a political newcomer with a deeply weird record of online posts. Without knowing that Kelly raised $79 million (and Masters raised $12 million), I would expect Kelly to win handily.
The same exercise works in other states. High-profile candidates always have enough money to hire a staff, hold rallies, fill the airwaves and maximize their vote-earning potential.
Politicians don’t need your money
Donations can make a difference in certain kinds of elections: local offices, sleeper races or presidential primaries. In these cases, some politicians really don’t have enough money to get every possible vote, or even make it to Election Day without dropping out.
But if Senate, presidential or gubernatorial candidates are on cable TV, they’re probably already awash in cash. They don’t need your money — by Vicki Robin’s standard, they already have enough. | 2022-11-11T22:35:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Politicians probably don't need your money - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/candidates-money-elections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/candidates-money-elections/ |
Metropolitan Police block traffic near the site of a midday shooting in the 1500 block of 23rd Street SE. on Monday. (Fredrick Kunkle/The Washington Post)
D.C. police last year seized 2,410 illegal firearms, a frightening number that has already been exceeded this year. With nearly two months still to go in 2022, police have so far recovered 2,755 guns. The city is awash in guns. So here’s a question for the D.C. Council: What message will it send if it goes ahead with plans to reduce penalties for firearm offenses?
Reductions in maximum-allowable penalties for some gun crimes would be part of a comprehensive overhaul of the city’s century-old criminal code. The 450-page bill sailed through committee last month and received a unanimous vote on first reading with no changes. A final vote is set for Tuesday.
There is much to commend the legislation, which gets rid of outdated language, clarifies the definitions of some crimes and brings more consistency to penalties. As we have noted, council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), chairman of the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, did admirable work listening to the concerns of stakeholders and greatly improving the recommendations of the independent Criminal Code Reform Commission.
Nonetheless, improvements are needed, and the council should carefully consider the potential impact of some of the proposed changes on public safety. Foremost is the reduction in maximum sentences for certain violent offenses and too-lenient treatment of gun crimes. Under the current code, for example, possession of a firearm by an unauthorized person who has been convicted of a violent crime is punishable with a three-year mandatory minimum and a maximum of 15 years. The proposed crime bill eliminates the mandatory minimum and sets the maximum sentence at four years. Fifteen-year sentences are rarely, if ever, handed down and mandatory minimums take needed discretion away from judges, but a four-year maximum represents a step back from current maximum sentencing practices, which average about six years.
In a letter to the council, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew Graves offered a primer on the significance of statutory maximum sentences. They do not, he wrote, “represent the community’s and legislature’s sense of what the minimum amount, or even average amount, of punishment for a crime should entail. Rather a statutory maximum — by definition — reflects the community’s and legislature’s belief as to what the sentence should be for committing the worst possible version of that offense, including when the person has a substantial criminal history.”
Mr. Allen has pushed back at criticism, arguing that judges will still be able to impose stiff sentences through penalty enhancements and other means. But council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, noted the increase in violent crime with guns across the city and has introduced an amendment to stiffen the allowable maximum penalties, arguing it would make these offenses more commensurate with the dangers guns present.
Other concerns about the legislation have been raised, including the impact on an already stressed Superior Court of broadening the right to a jury trial to almost all misdemeanor cases and expansion of the Second Look Act to allow more people serving long sentences to petition for release. We urge the council not to rubber-stamp this bill in haste but modify it to address the concerns of police, prosecutors and judges. If it doesn’t, we urge Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) to veto it.
Opinion|D.C. is considering legislation to let noncitizens vote. That’s a bad idea. | 2022-11-11T22:35:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | D.C. Council should not reduce penalties for firearm offenses - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/dc-council-gun-law-changes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/dc-council-gun-law-changes/ |
In Wisconsin, Tony Evers made a virtue of being dull
Gov. Tony Evers, center, celebrates his win with supporters in Madison, Wis., on Wednesday. (Harm Venhuizen/AP)
MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) won reelection Tuesday by 3.4 points. That’s a landslide in a state where four of the past six presidential contests were decided by less than one point and the first time since 1990 that a Badger State governor was reelected from the same party that controlled the White House. For a Democrat, it’s the first time since 1962.
Evers, a former schoolteacher who derives pleasure from euchre and polka music, was rewarded by independents for his stalwart defense of voting and abortion rights. “As it turns out,” Evers said in his victory speech, “boring wins.”
The race was a bit more complicated than that. Republican challenger Tim Michels, who won the August primary because of an endorsement from former president Donald Trump, promised to abolish the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission, sign nearly 20 restrictive voting bills that Evers had vetoed and opened the door to not certifying the 2024 presidential results. “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor,” Michels declared at a campaign stop on Oct. 31.
Evers said some Democratic strategists suggested that he not talk about democracy on the trail because the term is too broad and abstract, but he emphasized voting rights anyway. “I think Wisconsinites get it,” he said. The governor ran as a check and balance on GOP extremism, boasting that he vetoed a record 126 bills over the past two years, and warned that Michels would be a rubber stamp for a Republican legislature.
Independents made up 30 percent of the electorate, according to exit polling, and Evers won them by six points. Several said during interviews that they are uncomfortable with one-party rule at the federal or state level. Gerrymandering makes it virtually impossible for Democrats to win control of the state assembly or senate.
Abortion also mattered: An 1849 state law banning the procedure was dormant until the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June. With providers fleeing to Illinois, Evers offered clemency to anyone convicted of providing care and called special sessions to unsuccessfully pressure Republicans to update the law. Michels said he was unapologetically pro-life and that the 1849 ban mirrored his position. Later, he suggested he would sign a bill to add exemptions for rape and incest.
This issue drove a massive turnout spike in liberal Dane County, home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Evers won about 16,000 more votes from the county than in 2018.
Statewide, about one-third of voters identified abortion as their top issue, and Evers won 84 percent of them. According to exit polls, only 8 percent of the electorate said abortion should be illegal in all cases while 62 percent said it should be legal in most or all cases. Evers won women by 13 points.
Democrats benefited from Trump fatigue. While nearly 54 percent of voters disapproved of Biden, 58 percent held an unfavorable view of the former president. In fact, exit polling shows about 30 percent said opposing Trump was a reason for their vote, which is stunning when you consider that he hasn’t been president for two years.
Trump stumped with Michels in August, and Evers’s aides prayed that he’d return to the state for a pre-election rally. They didn’t get that lucky, but they said later that they were helped in the suburbs by Trump teasing his plans for 2024 the night before the election.
But trashing Trump didn’t play well everywhere, so the campaign tailored its message by region. The campaign produced over 2,000 ads all targeted locally. Evers didn’t run a single ad focusing on abortion on broadcast television in some north central counties, for example, while Madison received the most pro-choice content. Each of the 72 counties had bespoke communications that discussed how many local businesses Evers had helped.
The governor spent the final days of the race barnstorming around Wisconsin on a yellow school bus, just as he did when he toppled Scott Walker in 2018. He boasted of repaving more than 5,000 miles of highway since taking office. “The roads are smoother,” he said.
Highway maintenance — boring? Perhaps to some. But there’s nothing boring about the results. | 2022-11-11T22:35:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | In Wisconsin, a self-described "boring" Democrat beat the odds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/evers-wisconsin-governor-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/evers-wisconsin-governor-trump/ |
How my aunt’s village is celebrating liberation from the Russians
A Ukrainian soldier poses for a photo against a Kherson sign in the background, in Kherson, Ukraine, on Friday. (Dagaz/AP)
Now that the Russians have withdrawn from the western bank of the Dnieper River, Ukrainians have been liberating village after village on the way to Kherson. One of them is Stanislav, about 24 miles from Kherson itself, where my aunt and uncle live. They’ve been under Russian occupation since March.
“We survived, we survived!” Those are the words that my aunt Antonina, 67, a Ukrainian language and literature teacher, kept saying to me, over and over, when I called her. Thursday morning she woke up to find the Russian troops had abandoned her village. The soldiers left many of their belongings behind, as if their departure was completely unplanned.
Most of the Russian soldiers who were in the village came from Buryatia, a remote region on the border with Mongolia. One unit had parked its tank in the garden of one of my aunt’s neighbors. The soldiers smilingly told people they had come to “liberate them.”
“From whom? From what?” the villagers asked. In response, the Buryats just smiled.
The occupation was like a daily balancing act between life and death.
In the spring, when it was still possible to get a stable phone connection with my relatives, I could hear explosions in the background. When the blasts got closer, my aunt and uncle moved down to the cellar of their neighbors’ house. I don’t know whether the cellar would have actually protected them from a direct hit by a Russian shell.
Sometimes the Russians did stupid things. Once, they drove down to the part of the village overlooking the estuary and just started shooting into the water. I remember my aunt Antonina trying to understand why they were doing that. But she was afraid to ask the Russians themselves.
Over time, the occupiers began to cut off public services. First the internet disappeared, then the lights and then the water. By the time we talked late Thursday, they had nothing left, not even gas for heating. It had been that way for a week.
For a few months after the occupation begin, a local man named Ivan helped everyone by repairing their broken electrical appliances. At some point in the summer, the Russians detained him and gave him a brutal beating, so he left.
“Without him we were left to fend for ourselves,” my aunt told me, almost crying. “Nobody needs us here now.”
The Russians settled in the houses of the Ukrainians who had fled. “We’re going to stay here for a long time,” the Buryats told my aunt. “It’s a good city. We like it here.”
My aunt laughed at that one. Ukrainians know the difference between a village and a city.
In her career as a teacher, she has taught many generations of students. She lost one of them, a woman, when a fragment from a missile went through her kitchen window. The victim never even knew what happened.
My aunt and her husband, Roman, could not leave Stanislav because of his advanced age and poor health. He wouldn’t have been able to endure all the challenges of escaping, under Russian shelling, to the non-occupied territory of Ukraine. There was no guarantee they would have survived.
For months, we comforted each other by making plans for me to return to Stanislav, the village with its beautiful rock formations along the estuary, after liberation. But the long months of war made that seem like an impossible dream. And when the Russians left, we were worried they would leave nothing but destruction in their wake, just as they had done after retreating in Donbas.
But now, Ukrainian troops have moved into the village. They raised the blue and yellow flag above Stanislav, and several dozen villagers joined them in singing the Ukrainian national anthem. In one of many videos emerging over the past few days, I recognized my aunt hugging a Ukrainian soldier, crying and thanking him. She does not know that hundreds of thousands of people saw her online, because she still doesn’t have an internet connection. But she called again several times to tell me how Stanislav has been celebrating reunification with Ukraine.
“I’ve come such a long way,” my aunt said, crying. “This is a historic day for us. This is the best day of our lives.” | 2022-11-11T22:35:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How my aunt’s village is celebrating liberation from the Russians - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/ukraine-war-kherson-withdrawal-liberated-villages/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/ukraine-war-kherson-withdrawal-liberated-villages/ |
The evolution of Kratos
The creators of God of War discuss the themes that animate the iconic protagonist: brutality, fatherhood and redemption.
By Alyse Stanley
This story contains spoilers for God of War games throughout the series, with the exception of “God of War Ragnarok”
In the pantheon of video game protagonists, Kratos is up there with Mario and Master Chief. The original “God of War” in 2005 introduced players to the ruthless Spartan warrior molded by savagery and haunted by his past. Subsequent titles throughout the 2000s and early 2010s saw Kratos carve a bloody path through Greek mythos. The narrative in these early games often took a back seat to the theatrical boss fights and brutal combat. At their best, these games portray a deeply troubled man reckoning with the monster he’s become; at their worst, they cement Kratos as a caricature of barbarity.
2018’s “God of War” rebooted the series and marked the beginning of a more serious take on the brutal anti-hero — one that’s been met with near-universal acclaim for its portrayal of themes of fatherhood and redemption.
“I think a lot of people going in [to the reboot] had felt like Kratos was a pretty irredeemable character,” said Matt Sophos, narrative lead on the latest entry in the series, “God of War Ragnarok.” “Going into the last one and then ['Ragnarok'], you know, we evolved that hopefully in most people’s eyes.”
Longtime fans were quick to portray the franchise’s tonal shift as the “daddification” of Kratos; the change corresponded with the introduction of his son, Atreus, who accompanies his father through the realms of Norse mythology.
But the team behind the series at Sony’s Santa Monica Studio doesn’t quite see it as a transformation for his character. “Ragnarok” producer Cory Barlog and director Eric Williams, two of the leads behind God of War from day one, said in an interview with The Washington Post that the reboot marked less of a new direction and more of Kratos coming full circle. Sophos echoed this sentiment, noting that the character of Kratos has always been defined by his relationship with fatherhood.
“This was kind of a chance for us to really kind of examine parts of fatherhood that we didn’t before because in the last series, his being a father and a husband is what led to a journey of revenge,” Sophos said.
As shown in a flashback in the original “God of War,” the death of Kratos’ wife and daughter set the events of the series into motion, the first casualties in a string of betrayals that define his character arcs. After rising through the ranks to become a general, Kratos commands an army of soldiers to lay siege to Sparta’s enemies. But when his forces are overwhelmed in battle, Kratos pledges his life to Ares, the god of war, to turn the tide. Ares tricks Kratos into severing his last remaining connection to his humanity, his family, who Kratos slaughters in a blind rage while pillaging in the god’s name.
Once he realizes what he’s done, Kratos is overwhelmed by grief. Distraught and vengeful, Kratos serves the other gods of Olympus, who promise him an escape from his torment. But after obeying their command for years and eventually slaughtering Ares himself, he realizes this was yet another trick. The alliances he forges with titans, denizens of the underworld and other deities on his quest for revenge all end similarly: in a trail of destruction and slaughtered foes that leads Kratos no closer to finding peace.
While he forges forward unflinching throughout all this, Kratos is not as detached from the atrocities as he appears in these early games.
“He’s very aware of the fact that he wasn’t the good guy in his story,” Sophos said.
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By the end of “God of War III,” Kratos is clearly buckling after facing betrayal after betrayal while in service to the gods of his homeland. He uncovers the horrible truth of his lineage: That Zeus is his father, and the person who ordered his brother, Deimos, kidnapped as a child in an attempt to prevent the prophesied fall of Olympus. In his quest to kill Zeus, Kratos bonds with Pandora, who reminds him of his daughter, and through that bond begins to develop hope that he may finally be able to forgive himself, only to watch her die as Zeus mocks him for failing to save anyone who gets close to him.
After he finally defeats Zeus, Kratos is at his lowest point, Barlog said. The “God of War” reboot takes place an undetermined number of years later, after Kratos has built a family in the land of the Norse gods with his wife, a fellow warrior named Faye, and Atreus. Barlog said this relationship with Faye (which plays out off-screen) shaped the man players were reintroduced to in the 2018 reboot just as much as his newfound fatherhood:
“Kratos at the end of ‘God of War III’ fell into an exceptionally deep well within himself, a well that is miles and miles and miles and miles and miles deep. And then he spent … just a massive amount of time alone, falling deeper and deeper and deeper into that well. And Faye was the first person to throw a rope down. She started the process in concert with him, together, of crawling out of that well.”
That’s a process Kratos finds himself navigating alone once again in 2018’s “God of War,” which begins after Faye’s death, leaving Kratos to navigate single parenthood and the unanswered questions she left behind. Though it’s not under circumstances he would have ever hoped for, this gives Kratos the opportunity to rediscover himself and confront the emotions he ran away from in previous games.
“We were really focusing in on who he is, not in the grand scheme of mythology and all that kind of stuff, but just who the guy is, who Kratos is and what he’s dealt with and what he fears, and all those trappings,” Sophos said.
Earlier God of War games offered glimpses of this more complex world going on inside Kratos, Williams said. Particularly “God of War: Ghost of Sparta,” which shows a young Kratos as a caring and protective brother to Deimos even among the harshness and cruelty of their Spartan upbringing.
“Those parts have always been inside of him to do good, to do the right thing, it’s just that people broke him, and when he got broken, he couldn’t deal with his own guilt,” Williams said.
All three developers expressed that Kratos, after fleeing to the land of Norse gods, still thoroughly believes that his horrible past has forever stained him — like the ashes of his family have been cursed to stain his skin — but he doesn’t want to taint his son with that too. The 2018 reboot “is really about him learning to be a better person in general,” said Sophos, “and that kind of evolves from him really taking on the mantle of being a true father rather than someone who’s just provided the necessities for his family.”
The stakes in 2018’s “God of War” are high. There is no running away from his grief this time; to ignore his failings would mean to risk seeing them reflected in his son, Barlog said. Until Faye’s death, he had kept his own history and Atreus’s demigodhood a secret from Atreus. But faced with the reality of Atreus growing into powers he does not understand, he realizes he must open up about the sordid details of his past. This informs the core conflict at the heart of the reboot.
“It’s that idea of how much of ourselves do we show our children, especially the parts we’re not proud of, especially if those things can help them in some way to either guide them away from paths that you took,” Sophos said. “But you’re still ashamed of them and you don’t want to do it. And that was something that felt so perfect for Kratos as someone who really does have a lot of things he’s not proud of.”
A real-world element contributed to this part of Kratos’s development: Barlog, Sophos and Richard Gilbert, Sophos’s longtime writing partner and a narrative designer for the series, all had young sons around the time of the reboot’s development. The parallels in their lived experiences informed how they navigated Kratos’s transition from Greek to Norse mythology and, more importantly, from a vengeful soldier to a father once more.
“I think that’s the biggest thing that we did was make Kratos relatable in a way that he probably wasn’t before,” Sophos said.
While Kratos travels with Atreus to fulfill his wife’s last wish to spread her ashes at the top of the highest peak in the nine realms, the two secure something Kratos never had in the earlier games: an entourage. The father-son duo stumbles into a found family dynamic with the dwarven brothers Brock and Sindri and the Norse god of wisdom Mimir, a development Kratos initially resists. He distances himself, refusing to refer to them by anything other than reductive nicknames like “head” for Mimir (because, well, he’s a talking head). Even his own son is “boy” instead of Atreus. But their camaraderie chips away at these walls. By “Ragnarok,” that prickly demeanor has softened considerably — he calls Atreus, Mimir and the rest of his crew by their names throughout the game.
“He’s reliant, as much as he doesn’t want to be, on others,” said Barlog, revisiting the well analogy. “And those others are the muscle, the hands, on that rope that is pulling him out … they’re helping to pull the human side of him back out of a well that he dug for a long time.”
Part of this development stems back to the end of “God of War” when Kratos and Atreus spread Faye’s ashes and uncover yet another hidden lineage. Faye was a giant, which makes Atreus half giant and half god. A prophecy reveals that Kratos is not long for this world and that Atreus, known as Loki among the giants, will somehow be involved in his death. Understandably, Atreus has questions about his lineage. Kratos, blindsided by the revelation of Faye’s past just as much as Atreus, has to reconcile with the fact that he has zero answers. This is a problem he can’t fix.
“And that’s the hardest part for a parent when you can’t give them [your child] what they want,” Williams said.
On top of that, he knows he must quickly prepare Atreus for a world without him, and with that knowledge comes vulnerability. He’s grappling with his shortcomings and trying to make peace with knowing he must now lean on his newfound connections to fill in the gaps in Atreus’s development. That’s particularly the case when it comes to channeling his emotions and handling anger, Sophos said, since historically “when he lets out that emotion, it usually goes to a bad place.”
The looming specter of his death is at the front of Kratos’s mind heading into “Ragnarok.” To prepare Atreus to survive in a world without him, he’s forced to reckon with the shame he’s shouldered quietly since Greece so Atreus can understand how to avoid making the same mistakes. Kratos doesn’t want Atreus to be like him; he wants him to be better, and that means committing to his own personal growth.
“Kratos is just doing his best to kind of guide him on what he sees as the safest path, the path to where his son will survive, even if he doesn’t,” said Sophos. “Even if you aren’t a parent, you can still identify with wanting to be better for somebody, you know, wanting to do right by someone and hope for the best for someone.” | 2022-11-11T22:36:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | God of War: The series' developers explain Kratos's evolution - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/11/kratos-god-of-war-evolution-story/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/11/kratos-god-of-war-evolution-story/ |
Marvin-Alonzo Greer, lead historical interpretation officer for park and planning, stands in a WWI period uniform beneath the newly restored Bladensburg Peace Cross on Veterans Day in Bladensburg, Md. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
In its near century overlooking the small Maryland town, the Bladensburg Peace Cross has endured a lightning strike, flooding and multiple legal battles over ownership and location — one of which rose to the U.S. Supreme Court. But still it stands and, as of Friday, has been restored and rededicated.
People huddled under tents and umbrellas on a small stretch of highway median on Veterans Day to honor those who served in the military and celebrate the once-disputed cross, built to honor 49 fallen World War I servicemen from Prince George’s County.
“The people of this county first put up this Peace Cross, the people fought to keep it up, and now — thanks to the efforts of so many — it will forever be a permanent landmark and memorial,” Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said during the rededication ceremony.
Many of the roughly 100 people who showed up were veterans. They listened as Marvin-Alonzo Greer, lead historical interpretation officer for the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, read out the names of the fallen, inscribed on the memorial’s base.
The 40-foot cross, made of granite and cement, was built in 1925 and funded by local families, businesses and the American Legion to honor local servicemen who died in action overseas, mostly in France, or of disease, closer to home. It sits in the middle of busy highway median at the intersection of Baltimore Avenue and Bladensburg Road, just outside the District boarder.
The stories of the old warriors behind the Supreme Court challenge over Maryland’s Peace Cross
For 90 years, it stood sentinel in relative peace, weathering the occasional calamity — man-made or natural. The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission took ownership of the memorial in 1961 and pays for its maintenance and upkeep. Every Veterans Day, people come to reflect, as they did Friday.
“On this Veterans Day, we remember the 49 fallen soldiers from Prince George’s County,” said Peter Shapiro, chairman of the Prince George’s County Planning Board. “And we remember their loved ones who committed to building a structure that remains a symbolic resting place for our heroes who never returned home.”
In 2015, the cross became enthralled in a legal battle of the constitutionality of its existence on public land.
The dispute began with a legal challenge by the American Humanist Association, a nonprofit atheist organization, that argued the symbol of Christianity on government property showed favor of one religion over another and encroached on the separation of church and state. The association called to move the cross off public land and into private ownership.
A federal district judge ruled against the organization, then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit disagreed, characterizing the monument as an unconstitutional and “preeminent symbol of Christianity” and ordered the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission to remove, relocate or redesign the memorial.
The decision was appealed to the Supreme Court in 2018, placing the cross in the national spotlight as the high court considered the argument and weighed the fate of the cross — and the potential to set precedent for other public land crosses around country. Many Maryland officials and residents, both Democrats and Republicans, united around the effort to defend the cross’s location in Prince George’s County.
“As soon as I learned that a federal court appeals court had deemed this peace cross as unconstitutional, I was shocked and disgusted. And I immediately began to fight back,” Hogan said at the rededication Friday.
In 2019, the Supreme Court sided with the lower court and ruled that the cross could stay.
“The cross is undoubtedly a Christian symbol, but that fact should not blind us to everything else that the Bladensburg Cross has come to represent,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in the main opinion. “For some, that monument is a symbolic resting place for ancestors who never returned home. For others, it is a place for the community to gather and honor all veterans and their sacrifices for our Nation. For others still, it is a historical landmark.”
Supreme Court rules that Maryland ‘Peace Cross’ honoring military dead may remain on public land
In February 2021, the park and planning commission began fundraising to restore the crumbling and deteriorating cross. Baltimore-based Worcester Eisenbrandt began work this year. The project wrapped this fall with the new pink marble revealed to drivers through the busy highway intersection.
Susan Pruden comes to the Peace Cross every year to celebrate Veterans Day. A member of the Prince George’s County Historical and Cultural Trust, she marveled at the results of the restoration project.
“It’s gorgeous. Oh, my god,” she said. “They did such a beautiful job of it.”
Her husband, Joseph Pruden, served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War from 1969 to 1972. Growing up in Prince George’s County, he said he remembered always driving past the cross as a kid. Then he didn’t think of it as more than “just a thing in the middle of the road.”
Later, he saw its value. When the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the cross came down, he was thrilled.
“For many of us, it wasn’t a matter of: ‘Is this a religious or military memorial?’ ” Pruden said.
To them, it was a memorial to fallen soldiers — and a piece of history worth saving. | 2022-11-11T22:53:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bladensburg Peace Cross rededicated for Veterans Day - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/11/bladensburg-peace-cross-rededication/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/11/bladensburg-peace-cross-rededication/ |
This combination of photos show promotional art for the documentary treatment “Mickey: The Story of a Mouse,” debuting Nov. 18, on Disney+, left, the holiday comedy “Spirited,” a riff on “A Christmas Carol” starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds, debuting Nov. 18, on Apple TV+., center, and the fantasy adventure film “Slumberland,” debuting Nov. 18 on Netflix. (Disney+/Apple TV+/Netflix via AP) (Uncredited/Disney+/Apple TV+/Netflix) | 2022-11-11T22:53:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New this week: 'Spirited,' Pokémon, 'Nope' and 'Slumberland' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/new-this-week-spirited-pokemon-nope-and-slumberland/2022/11/11/872bd4aa-620e-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/new-this-week-spirited-pokemon-nope-and-slumberland/2022/11/11/872bd4aa-620e-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Race matters. But it didn’t decide the D.C. Council.
At-Large Council member Elissa Silverman on June 18, 2019, in D.C. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
The D.C. Council’s at-large contest in this week’s election featured eight candidates, with the clear front-runners being three incumbent council members — Anita Bonds (D), Kenyan R. McDuffie (I) and Elissa Silverman (I) — competing for two seats. Bonds and McDuffie are Black. Voters ousted Silverman, who is White. But I confess to doing a double take upon reading, deep in a Post article about the various factors contributing to Silverman’s defeat, “Many observed a racial element as well — Silverman is White and grew up in Maryland, and some voters expressed concern about preserving the council’s current Black majority.”
During my eight decades on this planet, and a lifetime spent mostly in this city, I have learned certainly, and irrevocably and in a hard way, that race does, indeed, matter. Not that it always smacks you in the face at first. On occasions, you figure it out only days after the blow has been landed. But it’s a lesson that can’t be unlearned.
So, race could have been in the picture in the at-large contest. But candidates, their character and performance, matter more. And some are better candidates than others. That, in my view, is what drove voter decisions, not preservation of a Black majority.
Now, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if most city voters are aware that more Blacks than Whites serve on today’s council. But in all the election-year buzz reaching my ears, fear of losing that Black majority was not a driving concern. Maybe it’s because D.C. has already been there, done that.
Veteran District observers know, as some newcomers might not, that as recently as eight years ago, the council had a White majority.
‘Tis true.
Then-Ward 8 Council member and former D.C. mayor Marion Barry took note of that fact at a D.C. Federation of Democratic Women fundraiser and book signing event on Aug. 24, 2014. “The Black population is now down to 49 percent,” he said. “When I was on the council in 1974, there were only two Whites — David Clarke representing Ward 1 and Polly Shackleton representing Ward 3 — and now there are seven.”
I, too, recall that period. The ebb and flow of council racial shifts, however, is not reflected in the city’s overall direction — in the decisions it makes about our city’s laws, housing and social policies. The mayor and a racially integrated council majority have been, are now, and will be in the days ahead, the deciders. And council vote casting strictly along racial lines is uncommon.
That’s not to ignore the reality that when a city flips from majority to minority Black, as occurred when the Black population that comprised 71 percent of D.C. in 1970 fell to just shy of 46 percent by the 2020 Census, things happen — including change in racial representation on the council. Neighborhoods change, council wards shift; most residents know that. How could they not? Similar dynamics are underway today in upper Northwest D.C.’s Ward 4 and in Ward 5, which encompasses much of the Northeast D.C. quadrant. Only folks with heads in the sand can’t see what’s taking place, and what might come one day down the line.
That said, and while many in this city (and beyond the Capital Beltway) see much of life through a racial lens, it doesn’t follow that political views and preferences automatically align with skin color.
Look at the numbers from Tuesday night.
Council chairman Phil Mendelson (D) who is White, outperformed (won more votes than) Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, who is Black, in each of the city’s eight wards, including heavily Black Wards 7 and 8, and even in Bowser’s home base, Ward 4.
Likewise, Silverman was outpolled by Bonds in every ward of the city, even predominantly White Ward 3, west of Rock Creek Park, which had been considered solidly safe terrain by her ardent supporters. But she lost it, albeit by a narrow margin.
In fact, Silverman performed more poorly in this year’s reelection bid (scoring 61,203 votes) than in her at-large reelection race four years ago when 90,589 ballots were cast in her favor. And in my view, that drop was a self-inflicted wound — largely due to a ruling that she had violated the Fair Elections Act by paying for a poll in a primary she was not a candidate in.
Once more — candidates count. It wasn’t Silverman’s race or place of birth, but judgments rendered on the character of her service and her politics that determined her political fate.
Bonds, notwithstanding my views on the effectiveness of her council chairmanship of housing programs, is highly regarded for her concerns for the underserved and as a deliverer of constituent services. In D.C. politics, as in much of life, it pays to be liked. That, not racial politics, is what put a much-admired, and personally respected by many, Bonds over the top.
And McDuffie, who had never won a citywide race, took his campaign of inclusiveness to parts of the city unaccustomed to hearing and seeing him, and found, to his delight and benefit, receptive audiences. That he came out of Ward 3 only slightly trailing Silverman (400 votes out of more than 20,000) helps tell the story.
Race, to repeat, has its place. But not in all ways, or in all things. Especially when it comes to political life in today’s District of Columbia.
Opinion|How D.C. voters altered the city’s political landscape | 2022-11-11T22:53:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Race matters. But not in determining the race for D.C. Council. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/race-dc-council-black-majority/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/11/race-dc-council-black-majority/ |
Gal Costa, central figure in Brazil’s Tropicália song movement, dies at 77
By Phil Davison
Gal Costa in 2006. (Gustavo Nacarino/Reuters)
Gal Costa, one of Brazil’s most revered singers and a central figure in the Tropicália counterculture artistic movement that emerged during the repressive military dictatorship lasting from 1964 to 1985, died Nov. 9 in São Paulo. She was 77.
Her press agent announced the death but gave no cause.
Until 1969, the highest-profile artists of the Tropicália movement — which sought to undermine military rule via art and peaceful disobedience rather than through the leftist guerrilla activity of the time — were singer-songwriters Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. When they fled the country, under threat of prison or worse from the regime, Ms. Costa made sure their music stayed in circulation through evocative performance.
In addition, Ms. Costa was a leading exponent of música popular brasileira, which blended regional folk music with samba, jazz and rock. She never considered herself a traditional protest singer, or even politically motivated until the last few years when she spoke out against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. But her choice of lyrically allegorical songs, which she interpreted with her crystalline mezzo soprano voice and her virtuoso playing of the violão (acoustic guitar), often targeted political corruption and Brazil’s junta.
Usually outrageously and often scantily-dressed as a young woman, her long, dark hair often tressed in curls or an Afro, Ms. Costa was a child of the sexual revolution that came to Brazil in the 1960s along with rock music from the United States and England. She became known as a muse of desbunde, an anti-military but also anti-guerrilla nonconformist zeitgeist.
Ms. Costa was initially inspired by bossa nova musician João Gilberto and later by Veloso and Gil. But she also became influenced by American rockers, soul men and blues masters — including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and James Brown — and later (thanks to her son, Gabriel) hip-hop.
Her best-known songs include “Baby” and “Coração Vagabundo” (Vagabond Heart) — both written by Veloso; “Aquarela do Brasil,” a 1939 composition by Ary Barroso popularized in English as “Brazil" during the big-band era; and “London London,” written by Veloso during his exile in the British capital. She sang the last, as he had written it, in English.
Her most controversial album was “Índia” (1973), less for its allegorical lyrics than for its cover image of a women’s torso with a red thong-like bikini. The military banned the album sleeve and ordered Ms. Costa’s record company to sell it only inside an opaque blue plastic cover. It was the best inadvertent publicity any artist could wish for. Brazilians queued at record stores to buy it, and Ms. Costa emerged as an unwitting feminist icon.
Maria de Graࣹça Costa Penna Burgos was born in Salvador, the capital city of the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, on Sept. 26, 1945. Her parents separated after her mother discovered that her husband had a secret second family.
After leaving school early to help her mother, Ms. Costa found work in a local record store and began singing along to the latest bossa nova releases. That brought her to the attention of customers including Veloso, Gil and a young singer called Maria Bethânia. They soon formed a musical group calling themselves Doces Bárbaros (Sweet Barbarians).
She recorded her first solo single in 1965 under the name Maria da Graça but soon settled on Gal Costa as her stage name. Her breakthrough album, “Domingo” (1967), also featured Veloso.
Ms. Costa said she didn’t have the financial means to go into self-exile like Veloso. Instead, in 1971, she launched a new Tropicália stage show called Fa-Tal, directed by her friend Waly Salomão, in which she performed with sexy clothes and brightly-painted lips.
As her fame grew, she continued with her hippie-hedonistic lifestyle in Rio, where she and her friends would sing and play on a stretch of the Ipanema beach which became dubbed the “Dunes of Gal.” In 1985, when she performed at the Carnegie Hall in her first performance in the United States, she told the New York Times, “I am not planning to conquer the United States market. I am a Brazilian singer, and I am kind of lazy about leaving Brazil.”
In 2011, Ms. Costa was awarded a Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Survivors include her son, Gabriel.
At the core of Ms. Costa’s music was a free-spiritedness. “Any kind of diversity, I am a defender," she once told an interviewer. “People have to respect differences. The other doesn’t have to be like you. You have to have freedom to be, to exist, whatever you may be. That’s implicit in me, in my way of being.” | 2022-11-11T23:05:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gal Costa, central figure in Brazil’s Tropicália song movement, dies at 77 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/gal-costa-brazil-singer-tropicalia-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/gal-costa-brazil-singer-tropicalia-dead/ |
Man charged in fatal stabbing in Pr. George’s in late October
A 24-year-old man has been arrested and charged in the fatal stabbing of Ian Persaud in Upper Marlboro in late October, Prince George’s County police said.
Joshua Molette Anderson of Upper Marlboro is charged with first- and second-degree murder, and is being held at the county jail without bond, police said.
Persaud, also of Upper Marlboro, was stabbed at about 3:30 a.m. Oct. 30 in a parking lot in the 5000 block of Brown Station Road, police said. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Police said in a statement that their investigation led to Anderson, though the motive remains unclear. “Multiple tips into Prince George’s County Crime Solvers assisted with the closure of this case,” police said. | 2022-11-11T23:40:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man charged in fatal stabbing in Pr. George’s in late October - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/11/man-charged-fatal-stabbing-pr-georges-late-october/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/11/man-charged-fatal-stabbing-pr-georges-late-october/ |
Pr. George’s man killed in shooting in Landover
A 30-year-old man was shot and killed in Prince George’s County just after midnight Thursday, police said.
County police were called to the 7200 block of E. Ridge Drive in Landover at 12:40 a.m. on Nov. 10 to investigate a shooting. Officers found Walter Billy Manning III with a gunshot wound, police said in a statement.
Manning, of Laurel, was transported to a hospital where he died, police said. | 2022-11-11T23:40:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pr. George’s man killed in shooting in Landover - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/11/pr-georges-man-killed-shooting-landover/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/11/pr-georges-man-killed-shooting-landover/ |
South Carolina's Aliyah Boston, the reigning national player of the year, is expected to be the top overall pick in the WNBA draft. (Nell Redmond/AP)
The Washington Mystics sent Natasha Cloud to New York with hopes of a magical repeat Friday night for the WNBA draft lottery. Last season’s league assist leader may have had her best delivery last December when she represented the team at the draft lottery, where the Mystics won the No. 1 overall pick.
She wasn’t quite as lucky this time around.
The Mystics had the third-best odds at earning the No. 1 pick but fell to No. 4. The Indiana Fever got the No. 1 pick, followed by the Minnesota Lynx and the Atlanta Dream.
The Fever (5-31) had a 44.2 percent chance to get the top overall pick, the Dream (14-22) sat at 27.6 percent and the Lynx (14-22) were at 10.4 percent. The Mystics (22-14), who had acquired the Los Angeles Sparks’ top pick in a trade with Atlanta, had a 17.8 percent chance.
“Obviously, we’d have loved to win the lottery, but we knew the odds were stacked with it,” Coach and General Manager Mike Thibault said. “The fact of the matter is that our trade moved us up to the fourth spot, and we’re in good shape.”
The expected No. 1 pick is South Carolina center Aliyah Boston, the reigning national player of the year, defensive player of the year and Final Four most outstanding player. The 6-foot-5 senior averaged 16.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 2.4 blocks last season for the Gamecocks while shooting 54.2 percent.
“I don’t think there’s a consensus beyond one player this year — who should be two, three, four or five,” Thibault said. “I don’t think there’s a consensus, but I think if you get a pick in the first round, you’re going to get a player that could play in our league.”
The trade with Atlanta led to the Mystics taking Shakira Austin with the No. 3 pick last year. Austin, a former All-Met at Riverdale Baptist, started 32 games and was named to the all-rookie team after averaging 8.7 points and 6.5 rebounds while shooting 54.7 percent.
The ability to infuse upper-echelon young talent onto a veteran roster has been a hallmark of Thibault’s Mystics, allowing the team extend its title window after going to back-to-back Finals in 2018 and 2019, winning it all on the second trip.
The WNBA draft is April 10. | 2022-11-12T00:24:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mystics drop to fourth in WNBA draft lottery; Fever draws top pick - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/wnba-draft-lottery-mystics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/wnba-draft-lottery-mystics/ |
Alan Rubin, co-founder of the Biograph Theater, dies at 85
He was a geologist before discovering art house movie theaters in San Francisco. With friends, he opened one in Georgetown.
Alan Rubin at the Biograph Theater in 1996. (Frank Johnston/The Washington Post)
Alan Rubin, a geologist who became the self-described “big enchilada” of the Biograph Theater, a single-screen art house in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood that eventually succumbed to the VCR era, died Nov. 6 at his home in Delaplane, Va. He was 85.
The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, Susan Rubin.
For nearly three decades before it went dark in 1996, the 270-seat Biograph was an oasis for a small but devoted class of film buffs who wanted to see movies by avant-garde French directors, up-and-coming filmmakers such as John Waters, and less-mainstream pictures ignored by bigger theaters.
“There are the big commercial movie chains, they got all of the big action movies,” said District documentary filmmaker Aviva Kempner, who hosted a Jewish film festival at the Biograph for several years. “And then there were those thoughtful, family-run art houses where the owners really cared about movies. They loved cinema, but more importantly, they loved filmmakers. That was Alan.”
Years after it closed in 1996, Mr. Rubin referred to the Biograph as 29-year-long film festival. The theater, located on M Street NW in a converted car dealership across from the Four Seasons Hotel, certainly had that vibe. To get in, moviegoers deposited tokens into a turnstile. The walls were lined with movie posters and paintings by local artists.
The milieu, Mr. Rubin told The Washington Post in 1986, was a “let’s-put-a-show-on-in-the-barn kind of thing.” Though it lacked sufficient parking — patrons would sometimes exit the theater to find their car ticketed or towed — the Biograph excelled in another important amenities.
“They had the best popcorn,” Kempner said. “And a very loyal staff.”
Alan Michael Rubin was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 2, 1936. He was an only child. His father managed a shoe store, and his mother was a homemaker. Mr. Rubin loved art, once proclaiming himself the best drawer in third grade. His parents discouraged him from becoming an artist, believing he would starve.
Mr. Rubin studied geology at Brooklyn College and, after graduating in the mid-1950s, moved to Washington, where he worked at the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Museum of Natural History. Later, while studying for his master’s degree in geology at George Washington University, he worked for the Army Map Service and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
“At some point, Alan realized that one of things he was doing was spotting the targets in Vietnam to bomb,” said his wife, Susan, whom he was with for 59 years but didn’t marry until 2011. “He couldn’t continue any longer.”
In 1963, while visiting friends in San Francisco, Mr. Rubin was introduced to something he had never seen in Washington — movie theaters showing art house-type films late at night. There were lines down the street. Mr. Rubin returned with the idea of opening something similar. With several friends — mostly lawyers — he opened the Biograph in 1967, playing a mix of new and old films.
Affable and quick with a joke — he published a book of illustrated puns titled “Gopher Broke” — Mr. Rubin was president and programmer. “The big enchilada,” he’d say. His first double feature was Jean-Luc Godard’s “Masculine Feminine” (1966) and Jean Renoir’s “A Day in the Country” (1946).
“We had eight weeks of French films, or six weeks of Bogart, and this was all pre-VCR,” Mr. Rubin told NPR in 1996. “And if you wanted to see ‘Casablanca,’ you saw it when I was playing it or you never saw it.”
Business was never easy, especially with the rise of video rental stores offering the same films Mr. Rubin was booking. To help pay the bills, Mr. Rubin showed pornography during the day. The Biograph never had a money-losing year but closed in 1996 after the landlord sold the building to the CVS pharmacy chain.
Mr. Rubin had a third act in life — art. He painted every day in a converted barn at his home in Delaplane, in Fauquier County. His paintings were bright homages to old films and magazines — “scenes from a movie without context,” he once said.
“All my stuff is half stolen and half made up,” he told The Post in 1996. “The piece called ‘Farewell’ was taken from a scene in ‘A Farewell to Arms,’ except I changed the background and a few other things. But I just love the long shadows.”
His paintings are now showing at the Booth & Nadler Studio & Gallery in Marshall, Va.
Mr. Rubin is survived by his wife, the former Susan Lloyd.
After his Parkinson’s diagnosis 16 years ago, Mr. Rubin continued to paint, joking that he’d become an “abstract expressionist” if his hands became too shaky. And anyway, he said, “an artist is one of the few occupations where death is a good career move.” | 2022-11-12T00:24:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alan Rubin, co-founder of the Biograph Theater, dies at 85 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/alan-rubin-owner-of-biograph-art-house-theater-in-washington-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/alan-rubin-owner-of-biograph-art-house-theater-in-washington-dead/ |
Known simply as Gallagher, he rose to stardom in the 1980s by pulverizing watermelons with a wooden mallet, spraying audience members
The watermelon-smashing comedian known as Gallagher at a 1981 performance in Rosemont, Ill. (Paul Natkin/Getty Images)
“I was the first one to allow a projectile to come off of the stage and into the audience. And I kind of take responsibility for the mosh pit,” Gallagher said in a 2009 interview with the A.V. Club. “Major amusement parks now have splash rides — you don’t even have to be a participant in the ride to get splashed, you can be on a bridge. … And I’m, you know, somewhat at fault here. But at least it’s my job as an entertainer to do something different.”
Gallagher also alienated himself from some of his peers by heckling his openers, amateur comedians whom he criticized for their posture, punchlines and attire. He was similarly scathing when it came to fellow stand-ups, criticizing the “C-level jokes” of Robin Williams and the “embarrassing” humor of Jim Carrey. When Comedy Central ranked him No. 100 on a list of the best comedians of all time, he was open about his frustrations.
“How could I be behind people I never heard of? How many of these people stayed in the business for 20 years?” he said in a 2005 interview with the Oregonian newspaper. Still, he added, “It could be worse. I guess I’m lucky I’m not the 101st person on that list. I might not be accepted in New York and L.A., but I have my fans and they’ve been very good to me.”
Gallagher studied chemistry and English at the University of South Florida, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1970. He later told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he worked for Allied Chemical in Chicago, wrote an unpublished novel, got a job as a night manager at a restaurant, and performed his first comedy gigs at a Tampa topless bar and a steakhouse. Neither venue invited him back.
For a time, he shared an agent with Stafford, who let Gallagher perform his comedy routine at concerts. Gallagher moved to Hollywood in the early 1970s and said he developed his sledgehammer bit at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, where he discovered that “by smashing a watermelon, I became a big draw.”
His younger brother Ron later took the stage with Gallagher’s blessing, performing a nearly identical comedy act in small-market clubs. But after Ron began performing as “Gallagher II,” confusing audience members who thought they were seeing Gallagher I, the original Gallagher grew irritated. He sued his brother in federal court, and in 2000 a judge prohibited Ron Gallagher from performing with “the use of a sledgehammer or other similar device to pulverize watermelons, fruits, food or other items of any kind.”
Three years later, Gallagher staged a satirical campaign for governor of California, running in a special election on the slogan, “Finally, a governor you can get drunk with.” His platform, which included instituting fines for talking loudly on cellphones, earned him more than 5,400 votes. (He lost to another veteran showman, actor and Republican candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger.)
Late in his career, Gallagher performed his melon-smashing routine in a Geico commercial and played an astrologer in “The Book of Daniel,” a 2013 movie. He continued touring until the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and was portrayed by Paul F. Tompkins in the newly released biopic parody “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” starring Daniel Radcliffe as musician Weird Al.
As Gallagher saw it, his career lasted so long in part because he knew what audiences wanted, and because he had a good sense of how they would react. Comedians “need to be empathetic,” he told the A.V. Club.
“I don’t say the things onstage that I want to say; I say the things I think the audience wants to hear and would enjoy,” he added. “You’re a servant of the audience. … I don’t do everything the audience wants, and I do try to surprise them. But it’s still a service business, and I think the fact that I’m still in business 30 years later proves that this is the proper way to think about things.” | 2022-11-12T00:24:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gallagher, hammer-wielding comic whose routine was a smash, dies at 76 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/watermelon-smashing-comedian-gallagher-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/11/watermelon-smashing-comedian-gallagher-dead/ |
Travis M. Andrews
In this image from video, Alec Baldwin talks to investigators about a fatal shooting last year on a movie set in New Mexico. (Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office/AP)
Baldwin alleges in the lawsuit that the shooting was caused by the negligence of armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was in charge of guns and ammunition on the set; assistant director Dave Halls, who handed the gun to Baldwin and said it was safe; Sarah Zachry, who was in charge of props; and Seth Kenney, who supplied the guns and ammunition on the set and assisted the armorer. Baldwin, who was sued after the shooting, “seeks to clear his name” and hold the defendants “accountable for their misconduct,” according to the counterclaim filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court by the actor’s attorney, Luke Nikas.
“This tragedy happened because live bullets were delivered to the set and loaded into the gun, Gutierrez-Reed failed to check the bullets or the gun carefully, Halls failed to check the gun carefully and yet announced the gun was safe before handing it to Baldwin, and Zachry failed to disclose that Gutierrez-Reed had been acting recklessly off set and was a safety risk to those around her,” Nikas wrote.
A New Mexico medical examiner ruled Hutchins’s manner of death an accident after she was shot in the chest. An FBI report suggested that the gun could not have fired without its trigger having been pulled.
FBI tests suggest gun in ‘Rust’ shooting could not fire without trigger pull
Matthew Hutchins, Halyna Hutchins’s husband, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit this year against Baldwin and other entities involved in the production, seeking compensatory and punitive damages. The defendants settled the lawsuit last month.
On Dec. 2, Alec Baldwin spoke with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos about the October 2021 shooting on the set of the film “Rust.” (Video: Julie Yoon/The Washington Post)
After news of the settlement, Matthew Hutchins called his wife’s death a “terrible accident.”
“I have no interest in engaging in recriminations or attribution of blame [to the producers or Mr. Baldwin],” Hutchins said in a statement last month after reaching a settlement with the actor. “All of us believe Halyna’s death was a terrible accident.”
Alec Baldwin, others reach settlement with Halyna Hutchins’s family in ‘Rust’ lawsuit
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office delivered its investigative report to local prosecutors in October, but the results of the investigation are not public. Local prosecutors have not filed criminal charges in the shooting.
Travis Andrews contributed to this report, which is developing and will be updated. | 2022-11-12T01:55:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alec Baldwin sues 'Rust' crew after Halyna Hutchins' death on set - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/11/alec-baldwin-sues-rust-crew/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/11/alec-baldwin-sues-rust-crew/ |
Democrat Sisolak concedes Nevada governor’s race to Republican Lombardo
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - NOVEMBER 8: Nevada republican gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo speaks during the GOP election watch party at the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa on November 8, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (David Becker for The Washington Post)
Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak said Friday night he had conceded to Republican Joe Lombardo in the tight Nevada gubernatorial race.
The Washington Post has yet report a projected winner in the race. But in a statement Friday night, Sisolak said it “appears we will fall a percentage point or so short of winning” and that he believes in “our election system, in democracy and honoring the will of Nevada voters.” He noted the struggles of the past four years — including the pandemic and inflation — and said he had reached out to Lombardo to wish him success.
During the campaign, Lombardo, the sheriff of Clark County — which includes Las Vegas — criticized Sisolak’s handling of crime and the coronavirus pandemic and tapped into voters’ economic struggles in a state where inflation has remained especially high. He said he would be a “pro life governor” but sought to downplay the issue and said he would follow “the vote of the people,” as Sisolak accused him of changing positions out of political convenience.
A Lombardo’s victory would mark the GOP’s first gubernatorial pick-up in a year where many Democratic incumbents defied GOP hopes of a red wave, prevailing in tight races in Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas and Oregon, where an independent candidate split the Democratic vote.
In contrast to others at the top of the GOP ticket in Nevada, Lombardo has rejected former president Donald Trump’s baseless claim the 2020 election was stolen and said at a debate that the falsehood bothered him. After prevailing over more than a dozen other candidates in a crowded GOP primary with Trump’s endorsement, he sometimes distanced himself from Trump but continued to campaign with the former president.
Lombardo also called to diversify Nevada’s tourism-dependent economy and criticized Nevada’s public education system.
Lombardo got extensive financial backing from Nevada businessman Robert Bigelow, the owner of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain, who put more than $13 million into political action committees promoting Lombardo. That helped Lombardo compete with Sisolak’s fundraising advantage.
While Democrats have seen success in Nevada in recent years, statewide races are routinely decided by a couple points or less, and both parties expected this year’s contests to be close. Nevada had a Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, from 2011 to 2019. | 2022-11-12T01:56:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrat Sisolak concedes Nevada governor’s race to Republican Lombardo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/11/nevada-governor-lombardo-sisolak/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/11/nevada-governor-lombardo-sisolak/ |
Washington Capitals center Aliaksei Protas (59) skates with the puck in the first period of an NHL hockey game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, Friday, Nov. 11, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
WASHINGTON — A brawl nearly erupted and a fight broke out during a video review of a head shot early in the second period of the Tampa Bay Lightning ’s game at the Washington Capitals on Friday night. | 2022-11-12T01:57:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fight breaks out during head shot review in Lightning-Caps - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nhl/fight-breaks-out-during-head-shot-review-in-lightning-caps/2022/11/11/fcaed2dc-622b-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nhl/fight-breaks-out-during-head-shot-review-in-lightning-caps/2022/11/11/fcaed2dc-622b-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
The Miami Heat and Miami-Dade County on Friday announced plans to rename FTX Arena following an announcement that FTX, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, will file for bankruptcy. (Megan Briggs/Photographer: Megan Briggs/Getty)
As investors, observers and government officials sort through this week’s stunning implosion of FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, the Miami Heat on Friday announced plans to end its relationship with the firm and rename its home venue, FTX Arena.
“Miami-Dade County and the Miami Heat are immediately taking action to terminate our business relationships with FTX, and we will be working together to find a new naming rights partner for the arena,” the team said in a statement, calling reports of FTX’s demise “extremely disappointing.”
Sports fans may recognize FTX from its logo on MLB umpires’ shirts or the wing of Lewis Hamilton’s Formula One Mercedes. The Golden State Warriors have a deal for FTX to be the club’s official cryptocurrency platform and NFT marketplace, and the firm was less than two years into its 19-year, $135 million arena naming rights deal with the Heat.
Such efforts, meant to boost consumers’ faith in the crypto industry, have become increasingly prevalent in the sports world.
FTX also has partnerships with athletes, including NFL star Tom Brady, who appeared in ads for the platform. FTX in March inked tennis star Naomi Osaka to a long-term deal in a bid to draw more women onto its crypto platform. MLB star Shohei Ohtani is almost a full year into his FTX partnership, which called for the company to make annual contributions to Ohtani’s preferred charities. | 2022-11-12T03:09:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miami Heat to rename FTX Arena after cryptocurrency exchange collapses - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/ftx-arena-miami-heat/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/ftx-arena-miami-heat/ |
A video of former president Donald Trump is played on a screen during a hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. (Alex Wong/Bloomberg)
Former president Donald Trump filed suit on Friday against the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in a bid to block the panel’s subpoena for testimony and documents issued last month.
The 41-page complaint filed in federal court in Florida argues that the subpoena is invalid because it lacks a “valid legislative purpose,” is overly broad, and “infringes on executive privilege” and Trump’s First Amendment rights. The suit also argues that the committee lacks the authority to issue subpoenas — an argument that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and several other judges have already rejected.
“Consistent with the constitutional separation of powers and learned opinion of the Department of Justice, as stated for the past fifty years and reiterated just this past September, President Trump asserted his absolute immunity from compelled testimony before Congress regarding his actions while serving as President,” Trump’s lawyers write.
The lawsuit, filed a few days before the date the subpoena required Trump to appear before committee for a deposition, claims that Trump “offered to consider responding in writing to specific written questions submitted to him by the committee.”
The panel’s subpoena requested Trump to provide documents regarding 19 different topics, including his communications with Roger Stone, former Secret Service agent Anthony Ornato, attorneys John Eastman and Sidney Powell, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and over a dozen other officials and associates.
A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment and it’s unclear what the panel will do next to try to enforce the subpoena. | 2022-11-12T03:10:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump sues to block subpoena from Jan. 6 committee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/11/trump-sues-block-subpoena-jan-6-committee/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/11/trump-sues-block-subpoena-jan-6-committee/ |
No. 1 South Carolina 81, No 17 Maryland 56
South Carolina's Sania Feagin gets a hand on a shot from Maryland's Lavender Briggs during Friday's 81-56 Gamecocks win at Xfinity Center. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Diamond Miller stepped onto the Xfinity Center floor Friday night and went through her normal pregame routine, warming up with teammates, shooting around the horn, dribbling and crossing sideline to sideline and going through team stretches. Fans kept a close watch on the senior guard’s every move, most with some form of the same question: Would Maryland’s top threat, previously listed as a game-time decision, play against No. 1 South Carolina after suffering a knee injury in the season opener?
The scene was a detailed exercise in gamesmanship by Maryland Coach Brenda Frese. Shortly before tip-off, the team announced Miller wouldn’t play. The Terrapins sorely missed her in an 81-56 loss to the reigning national champions.
The Gamecocks continued to look every bit like the best team in the country, never trailing as they followed the lead of Aliyah Boston, who swept the sport’s most prestigious awards last spring and is widely expected to be the first player chosen in April’s WNBA draft.
Boston, buoyed by a vocal contingent of Gamecock fans in College Park, scored six of South Carolina’s first nine points and never relented, finishing with 16 points, 13 rebounds, two assists and a block. She made seven of her eight shots from the field.
The No. 17 Terrapins (1-1), though they never led, only trailed by six at halftime after holding South Carolina (2-0) to 13 points in the second quarter. But things got away from them in a second half in which Maryland was outscored 49-30.
Abby Meyers had a game-high 21 points to pace Maryland. She was the only Terrapin in double figures. Shyanne Sellers, who suffered a late ankle injury, had nine.
Zia Cooke scored 18 points to lead South Carolina, Kamilla Cardoso added 13 and Laeticia Amihere finished with 10.
Things get a bit easier for Maryland on Sunday when it hosts Fordham.
Here’s what else to know about the Terrapins’ loss:
More help on offense
Meyers was a one-woman scoring crew early, but she didn’t get much help from her teammates. The Terps shot just 30.3 percent from the field as a team and Meyers took 13 more shots than any other Terrapin.
South Carolina’s defensive adjustments played a role in Maryland’s second-half struggles, especially the way the Gamecocks keyed on Meyers, who scored just five points in the second half.
“Basketball’s definitely a streaky game,” Meyers said. “Give credit to South Carolina, their defense is amazing. Their players are really active, they’re long. I definitely dried up a little bit. That’s a personal thing I’ve got to work on. But credit South Carolina, they played great defense in that second half."
Big after big after big
Frese expected her team would have its hands full with South Carolina’s size. She wasn’t wrong. At one point, the Gamecocks had Cardoso (6-foot-7), Boston (6-5) and Amihere (6-4) on the floor together. The Gamecocks ran certain sets with Cardoso at the elbow lobbing an entry pass to Boston in the post. Fourteen of South Carolina’s first 19 points came in the paint and it outrebounded Maryland 55-32. The Gamecocks also had 11 blocked shots.
“Very difficult,” Frese said. “But again ... this group didn’t flinch. They didn’t hang their heads, they didn’t feel sorry for themselves. They just went to the next possession. And as long as we continue to play like that ... even in the fourth quarter, as big of a gap as there was, we just continued to keep scrapping possession by possession and just leaving it all out there.”
Things got chippy in the third quarter when Maryland freshman Bri McDaniel became vocal while setting up for a full-court press. Soon thereafter, McDaniel and South Carolina guard Kierra Fletcher had to be separated by officials as both teams engaged in some back-and-forth during a small scrum.
McDaniel and Fletcher were given technical fouls and Cardoso was called for an intentional foul. Maryland had crept within single digits, but the extracurriculars seemed to energize the Gamecocks, who upped their aggression and soon pushed their lead back to 17.
Boston nodded emphatically when asked if the moment gave the team a little more juice.
“Yeah, I think so,” Boston said. “We were just saying that the energy’s high for both sides. The crowd was feeding into it, but we just needed to understand that we needed to open up the game. We just figured it out."
Said Coach Dawn Staley: “We just focused a little bit more.” | 2022-11-12T03:28:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland women can’t hang with top-ranked South Carolina - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/maryland-south-carolina-womens-basketball/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/maryland-south-carolina-womens-basketball/ |
It was that kind of night at Capital One Arena, where the Capitals beat the Lightning, 5-1, and things got plenty chippy. (Scott Taetsch/Getty Images)
Sonny Milano picked a fine time to score his first goal as a Washington Capital. His second was just icing on the cake of a heated 5-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning at Capital One Arena — a victory that came with Coach Peter Laviolette away from the team while in the NHL’s health and safety protocols.
Milano raced out of the penalty box moments after the Capitals kept the visitors at bay on a five-minute penalty kill early in the second period. A loose puck found his stick, and he was soon in all alone with Tampa Bay goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. A few stick dekes, then a forehand flip of the puck, and the Capitals had doubled their lead to 2-0, seizing momentum that they never relinquished.
Milano, signed as a free agent less than a month ago, added a second goal with 2:15 remaining in the third that accounted for the final margin.
Aliaksei Protas gave the Capitals a 3-0 advantage late in an eventful middle period, and Conor Sheary finished a short-ice breakaway early in the third to push the lead to 4-0. Nick Perbix broke up Washington goalie Darcy Kuemper’s shutout bid with his one-timer from the left circle with 7:51 left in regulation. Kuemper finished with 28 saves.
Milano’s first goal changed the contest. Five minutes prior, Nicholas Aube-Kubel was ejected for an illegal check to the head on Cal Foote. The hit left Foote bloodied in the face, and Aube-Kubel was assessed a match penalty, given when the referee decides a player “attempted to or deliberately injured his opponent with an illegal check to the head.”
“Whenever you can kill off a five-minute major like that, regardless of the goal — which was kind of a cherry on top coming out of the box there — it kind of changed the tide in the game and something that the whole team builds off,” Kuemper said.
As the officials reviewed Aube-Kubel’s hit, tensions on the ice reached a boil. Multiple players left the bench, with Washington’s Garnet Hathaway and Tampa Bay’s Pat Maroon both assessed five-minute fighting majors and 10-minute misconduct penalties. The fighting didn’t stop there. A line brawl broke out late in the third, with three Capitals players put into the box for a combination of major and minor penalties.
“Tonight was definitely a little nasty,” Milano said. “I’m sure it will carry over to next game [Sunday, when the teams meet again]. … Those are always fun. It’s hockey; it’s definitely physical. Definitely fun.”
Foote did not return after the hit. Asked about the defenseman’s status afterward, Lightning Coach Jon Cooper said: “Not great. He obviously couldn’t come back. That’s a tough hit. That defines the word blind-side. It’s too bad we’re playing them again [Sunday] because I doubt he will be around to see the game.”
Aube-Kubel probably will face a hearing from the NHL’s Department of Player Safety on Saturday. All match penalties are automatically reviewed by the league for a possible suspension.
Aube-Kubel has never been suspended in his five-year NHL career but has been fined twice.
Protas notched his third goal of the season when he punched in a rebound at 14:25 of the second before Sheary scored his fifth. Sheary converted a nice feed from Anthony Mantha, who scored the opener with 9:28 left in the first.
Friday marked the last of four games on the Capitals’ longest homestand of the season; Washington went 2-2-0.
“If we play the game like how we want to and how we’re capable of, we’ll win a lot of games,” John Carlson said. “Doesn’t matter how many guys are out, how many guys are in, who it is and who we’re playing. And I think that’s what you see.”
Here is what to know about the Capitals’ win:
Laviolette in protocols
Laviolette was placed in the covid-19 protocols Friday morning, and he will also miss Sunday’s game against the Lightning in Tampa.
The protocols require Laviolette to take another coronavirus test Monday. If that test turns up negative, he will be able to coach Tuesday against the Florida Panthers in Sunrise, Fla.
Assistant Kevin McCarthy, who took over head coaching duties Friday, will stay in that role until Laviolette returns. Friday was his first game acting as a head coach in the NHL. The last time he was a head coach was with the New Haven Beast in the American Hockey League in 1998-99.
Carlson returns
Washington’s injury situation improved with Carlson playing in his first game since he was hurt Oct. 29 at Nashville. Carlson, usually a model of durability, missed six games.
“It is difficult because I have been in the lineup a lot, so it does not feel normal to me,” Carlson said. “Certainly when the team isn’t doing too well and guys are out, those are the times when leaders lead, and everyone has been doing a good job picking up the slack for guys that are out. But it is not a good feeling knowing you are not there to help.”
Carlson notched his 600th career point Friday with a primary assist on Milano’s first goal. He is the fifth Capitals player to reach that plateau.
Penalty kill delivers
Washington’s penalty kill was stellar against the Lightning, killing off two power plays, including the five-minute penalty in the middle frame. Players were diving to stop pucks and aggressively using their sticks to poke away the puck.
The Capitals have now killed off 11 straight power plays and 31 of 34 over their past 11 games. | 2022-11-12T04:45:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Capitals thump Lightning in a chippy one as Sonny Milano turns tide - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/capitals-lightning-sonny-milano-fight/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/capitals-lightning-sonny-milano-fight/ |
Grasshoppers top Cadets, 3-1 (26-24, 25-19, 15-25, 25-23)
Georgetown Day's Leia Levine sets the ball during the DCSAA championship match against St John's at the University of the District of Columbia. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post)
With a chance to serve for the match Friday, the Georgetown Day Grasshoppers could hardly contain themselves.
Players on the bench squeezed each other a little tighter and implored those on the court to lock in. In the stands, a rabid student section chanted back and forth with parents on the other side of the court.
Just as the Sports Complex at the University of D.C. was nearing its fever pitch, the place quickly went silent as a serve careened into the net. But after another point for St. John’s, the Cadets suffered a serving error of their own to give the Grasshoppers their first D.C. State Athletic Association volleyball title, 26-24, 25-19, 15-25, 25-23.
“Oh, man, that was tough,” Georgetown Day Coach Brandon Wiest said. “I don’t think I was physically able to take a breath [during the fourth set] until that final point was over because things were so tight.”
After playing hot potato with the lead during the first set, St. John’s went on a 12-3 run to take a 21-12 advantage, prompting Wiest to call a timeout. Out of the break, Georgetown Day responded with a 14-3 run of its own to capture the set.
St. John’s (24-6) jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the second set, but the Grasshoppers answered again with a 10-2 run to take a lead they would never relinquish.
“Hats off to those ladies for forcing us to have an uncharacteristic night,” St. John’s Coach Bill Pribac said. “All year long, we’d been exceptional at building and maintaining leads. But tonight, they were just able to dig deeper than us, and with our back against the wall, we started to panic and force things a bit.”
In the first two sets, Georgetown Day (21-3) had accomplished its goal of keeping St. John’s senior star Pamela McCune away from the action. But in the third set, the Iowa State-bound middle hitter came to life, powering the Cadets to a 25-15 win.
The Cadets jumped out to an 8-3 lead in the fourth set and seemingly had momentum. But Georgetown Day leaned on the infectious energy of senior Izzy Evers and the dominance of tournament MVP Clara Yu to secure its third come-from-behind set victory of the night.
“She’s literally the heart and soul of our team,” Wiest said of Evers. “Always willing to sacrifice her body for the team. Whenever things aren’t going our way, she’s the first person to go up to the girls and just tell them to keep their heads up and just try to lift everyone’s spirits.”
Said Evers: “I think that volleyball is all about fun and being happy. And being able to win a state championship with this team was so fun — and I’m definitely happy.”
Coming into Friday night’s bout, the Grasshoppers had won nine of their past 10. Their one loss in that stretch was a 3-0 sweep to undefeated and No. 1 Flint Hill in the Independent School League AA title match Sunday. They turned around quickly to win three matches in three days in the DCSAA bracket, dropping just one set along the way.
“I think that most people would be worried about how their team would react to a loss like that, but we were honestly never worried,” Yu said. “Even in the loss we came away feeling like we’d played really well versus an incredible team, so we still kind of had momentum coming into this tournament.”
Georgetown Day fell just short of its first DCSAA title last year, losing to Jackson-Reed (then known as Wilson), 3-2, in the final. | 2022-11-12T04:59:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Georgetown Day volleyball beats St. John’s to win first DCSAA title - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/georgetown-day-volleyball-beats-st-johns-win-first-dcsaa-title/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/georgetown-day-volleyball-beats-st-johns-win-first-dcsaa-title/ |
Heroes abound as Westfield wins playoff opener in double-overtime
Bulldogs 31, Hornets 28 (2OT)
Westfield huddles after beating Herndon, 31-28, on Friday. (Spencer Nusbaum)
Postseason football invites heartbreak and heroics, but when it extends into two overtimes, as it did in Friday night’s first-round matchup between Herndon and Westfield, the heroics tend to spread to an array of players.
For Westfield (7-4) there was quarterback Matthew Jenks, who played on an ailing ankle and ran for the go-ahead touchdown in the first overtime; sophomore Duda Kennedy, who blocked Herndon’s go-ahead field goal attempt in the second one; and finally kicker Sean Mattfeld, who was swarmed and pushed all the way to midfield following a game-winning kick that gave his Bulldogs a 31-28 double-overtime victory.
“I was crying for a minute,” senior wide receiver DJ Baker said, “because that was amazing.”
2OT, postseason football. pic.twitter.com/0iMerEXZpE
— Spencer Nusbaum (@spencernusbaum_) November 12, 2022
The celebration fit the moment and the season for the Bulldogs. After Westfield entered the year as one of the youngest teams Coach Kyle Simmons has led, many on the staff anticipated a relatively steep learning curve for the roster. A six-game winning streak from September into October squashed some of the doubts, but a three-game tailspin at the end of the regular season seemed to confirm their worst fears.
And so Westfield entered the playoffs hampered, both by Jenks’s ankle and an outbreak of flu that spread around the school.
For Herndon, adversity was a familiar tale. The Hornets (6-5) hadn’t advanced to the playoffs since 2008 or won a playoff game since 1985 and carried a 28-game losing streak into September.
For Westfield, adversity was an anomaly. The Bulldogs won three state championships in the 2010s and hadn’t dropped three consecutive games since 2009.
The Bulldogs would have to lean on their grit and their quarterback.
Neither defense could find answers early.
“It’s becoming hard to find tough kids who are willing to work through injuries and illnesses,” Simmons said of Jenks. “You can tell he has some discomfort. But he’ll look you right in the eye and say, ‘I’m playing.’ ”
Baker and fellow Westfield receiver Connor Morin received a heavy dose of the team’s early offensive yardage while Herndon, favoring the triple-option and leaning on the exceptional play of senior running back Liam Wilson, finished its first three drives with a touchdown before Westfield defensive back Jay Rennyson’s interception with under a minute left and Baker’s acrobatic 20-yard touchdown with 20 seconds remaining knotted the score at 21 before halftime.
Quickly, the impetus fell to the defenses, which stiffened as the next two quarters came and went without a score. The teams traded rushing touchdowns in the first overtime before Kennedy’s block and Mattfeld’s kick sealed it.
“We had a lot of injuries, a lot of sickness; this just proves that we’re dedicated to do anything to come out on top,” Jenks said. “We’ve got to go back to work on Monday.” | 2022-11-12T04:59:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Heroes abound as Westfield wins playoff opener in double-overtime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/heroes-abound-westfield-wins-playoff-opener-double-overtime/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/heroes-abound-westfield-wins-playoff-opener-double-overtime/ |
St. John’s upsets Good Counsel to set up WCAC matchup with DeMatha
Cadets 14, Falcons 10
David Ojigebe, shown during last year's WCAC championship game, helped the Cadets get back for the third straight postseason. (Scott Taetsch for The Washington Post)
After St. John’s broke up Good Counsel’s pass with 75 seconds remaining Friday night, Cadets players’ cheers stalled when they saw the yellow flag hit the turf in Olney.
As the referee raised his arm toward Good Counsel’s side a few seconds later, signaling the Falcons committed the penalty, St. John’s players and coaches jumped and hugged across the field and sideline.
After a fast start and a final fourth-down stop, No. 7 St. John’s beat No. 2 Good Counsel, 14-10, in the WCAC semifinals. In their third consecutive WCAC finals appearance, the Cadets will play No. 1 DeMatha, which beat Gonzaga in the other semifinal, on Nov. 20 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
High school football Top 20
“We just had to believe,” St. John’s defensive end David Ojiegbe said. “Believe in the man next to you. We all love each other and have faith in each other to make a play.”
Friday’s matchup was a rematch of the past two WCAC finals. In 2019, Good Counsel beat the Cadets on a game-winning field goal. Last year, St. John’s defeated the Falcons, 30-14, to finish 11-0.
When Good Counsel (8-3) and St. John’s (7-4) met Oct. 28, the Falcons dominated, 24-0, while several St. John’s players sat with injuries. Both teams believed they were closer in talent than that score indicated. Entering Friday, Good Counsel was coming off its first WCAC loss, 28-14, to DeMatha. St. John’s had beaten Gonzaga for its first notable WCAC victory.
The WCAC’s teams are so competitive, results can vary week-to-week. Good Counsel was on the right side of that parity last year. DeMatha beat the Falcons, 28-0, in the regular season before Good Counsel defeated the Stags in the semifinals the ensuing week.
Sixty-five seconds into Friday’s game, St. John’s showed the rematch wouldn’t be another blowout. Quarterback Isaiah French threw a slant to wide receiver Sean Williams, who exploded 74 yards down the left sideline and high-stepped into the end zone. About six minutes later, French connected with Williams again for a 28-yard touchdown.
“We know we have a great defense,” St. John’s Coach Pat Ward said. “So we felt if we played with a lead, that would help us.”
In the first half’s final minutes, Good Counsel began to resemble the powerhouse it had been most the season. Quarterback Frankie Weaver threw a 25-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Elijah Moore with 25 seconds left. The Falcons added a field goal in the third quarter.
St. John’s adjusted its defense from last month to stop Good Counsel’s run. The Falcons drove down the field in the final minutes with quick passes. But when Good Counsel had first and goal on the 7-yard line, the Cadets deflected four consecutive passes.
“We played with our heart this time, I’m not going to lie,” Williams said. “This time it was kind of personal. We lost the first time with the blowout, so we had to come back and get the ‘W.’ ” | 2022-11-12T04:59:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | St. John’s upsets Good Counsel to set up WCAC matchup with DeMatha - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/st-johns-upsets-good-counsel-set-up-wcac-matchup-with-dematha/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/11/st-johns-upsets-good-counsel-set-up-wcac-matchup-with-dematha/ |
Ask Amy: I don’t go by my birth name, but my sister-in-law won’t stop using it
Dear Amy: I’m a 55-year-old man. I legally changed my (first) name when I was 25 years old, mainly because I was the fourth “John” in my family, with many of us sharing the same name. This change had nothing to do with gender or identity.
Traveling through Europe, I picked up a new, perfectly normal name (nothing wacky), and never looked back. I have used this name personally and professionally for over 30 years.
Everyone in my life calls me by my chosen name — except my sister-in-law “Wendy.”
She married my older brother when I was a teen and has become the matriarch of the family after our parents’ deaths. My younger brother and sister-in-law recently welcomed the first grandchildren into the clan. I was upset that Wendy objected when I referred to myself as “Uncle Chosen Name.”
She quickly corrected me, using my birth name, which I do not use in any capacity. Her own children call me by my chosen name, so there is no way this child will grow up using my birth name.
Why is she explaining ANYTHING for me? They don’t need to have my name explained. I have no other problem with Wendy and have always considered her family.
Ishmael: You don’t seem to have ever responded to “Wendy” directly when she refuses to use your legal name of three decades.
I suspect that her reaction may have to do with a previous “John” in your family (possibly your father) whom she would like to continue to honor, but given that this is a pattern with her, you should be able to anticipate her reaction and prepare a response — either directly to her in the moment, or privately with her soon afterward.
Wendy is a longtime family member. Your big sister, in a way. So, use your words!
Approximately three weeks ago, I received a friend request on social media (along with a private message) from a man I had not seen in over 40 years. I knew him briefly as a child, connected with him and his family one time after childhood, and didn’t even know he moved to this area. He expressed sadness for my loss, and we exchanged telephone numbers.
Now, he calls every day and asks me if I want to get together for lunch, coffee or anything my heart desires. I’m not ready for that and told him so. He says he will respect my wishes, and yet he continues to contact me every day. He lost his wife over a year ago, so I can understand he’s ready for more than I am at this point.
Sleepless: You should explain to this man that his persistence is not having the effect he might desire, and that it is actually delaying the healing you require.
Survivor: Connection is vital. Any person in crisis can connect with the Crisis Text Line: Text “home” to 741741. | 2022-11-12T05:20:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My sister-in-law won’t stop using my birth name - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/12/ask-amy-sister-in-law-name/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/12/ask-amy-sister-in-law-name/ |
Dear Carolyn: My husband left town this morning to go on a purely for-fun trip. In theory, I love that and think it’s important for each of us to be able to do things we love. However, I’m SEETHING today, because somehow it’s just connecting that I’m now stuck at home for SEVEN DAYS with a 2-year-old and two very active dogs and a full-time job. I wish I had spoken up earlier about the length of the trip. I’m feeling overwhelmed with all that I have to manage for the next week.
Is it worthwhile saying something after the fact? I honestly don’t know why I didn’t speak up more forcefully earlier; I guess the trip seemed farther off and less extreme in its length. I had in my mind four to five days, despite his sharing the flight info, etc.
Any tips on approaching him and on turning my terrible attitude around?
— Fuming Mad
Fuming Mad: Do not approach him in anger. You agreed to this, and it sounds as if he has every reason to believe you did so with your eyes open — even though they obviously weren’t. Don’t send him off on his break with the weight of your foul mood.
Instead, into every millimeter-size crack in your schedule in the next week, put in some planning for your own seven-day, purely for-fun trip.
Then take that trip. A conversation here without an actual rebalancing of responsibilities isn’t fairness; it’s just words.
Also, if you can afford for him to take a week-long funfest that involves air travel, then you can afford to hire a dog walker to cross at least that much off your list.
· I’m going to take Carolyn’s suggestions a few steps further.
Hire a neighborhood kid as a “mother’s helper” for the week. Schedule in some fun time: some with your toddler, some just for yourself. Get a sitter for an evening and hang out with your friends. Get a massage. Order a pizza for yourself with every topping your husband hates.
And start planning your week-long getaway where your husband will be home with the kiddo and the dogs.
· Okay, so you whiffed the “how long this trip is” part. But the truth is that, even if it was a four- or five-day trip, it’s a lot to leave one person to handle. So the point is not to be mad at him, but to say: “We didn’t do enough planning for how everything would get handled with just me available to take care of it. We need to do a better job of paying attention to that in the future and not just assuming that the person who is holding down the fort can handle it all for anything more than a day or two.”
Give it to him as a gift that you are not leaving him in the same position as you take off on your own funfest … of whatever length. | 2022-11-12T05:20:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Husband's solo trip was fine with spouse — till it wasn't - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/12/carolyn-hax-solo-trip-husband/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/12/carolyn-hax-solo-trip-husband/ |
Man slain in Prince George’s, police say
The shooting was on Madison Street, according to police.
A man was shot and killed Friday night in Prince George’s County, the police said.
He was found about 10 p.m. in the 1500 block of Madison Street. Officers went to the scene after a shooting was reported.
The man was found in the roadway and died at the scene, police said.
The site is a residential street in the Chillum/West Hyattsville area, between Sargent Road and Sligo Creek. | 2022-11-12T06:25:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man is killed in Prince George's on Veterans Day, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/12/man-killed-prince-george/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/12/man-killed-prince-george/ |
Fairfax man seized in death of neighbor’s dog, police say
The incident occurred in Centreville, according to police.
A Fairfax County man shot and killed a neighbor’s dog Friday after a dispute, the county police said.
The two were arguing Friday morning in a breezeway at an apartment complex in the 13300 block of Connor Dr., in Centreville. Both had dogs with them.
During the argument one man drew a gun and shot the neighbor’s dog, according to police.
The neighbor picked up the wounded dog and walked away with it. When he put it down, the other man shot the dog again. The dog, a year-and-a half old Labrador mix, was fatally wounded.
It appeared that the two men knew each other, but it was not known what led to the argument.
Police said they took a man into custody, but it was not clear if he had been charged. No name was provided from the incident. | 2022-11-12T06:52:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fairfax man shoots dog after argument, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/12/fairfax-kills-neighors-dog-shoots/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/12/fairfax-kills-neighors-dog-shoots/ |
Iranians protest in Tehran to decry the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the "morality police." The nationwide protests are now in their eighth week. (AP)
A young Iranian man accused of lighting a trash can on fire during a protest could face death row for “waging war against God.”
Two female journalists who helped break the story of Mahsa Amini — the 22-year-old woman who died in the custody of Iran’s “morality police” — have been in jail since late September, accused without evidence of being CIA agents.
In a hearing without his lawyer, a 22-year-old protester was sentenced to death for committing “corruption on earth,” his mother said in an online plea. After an uproar, the judiciary denied that a sentence had been issued.
This is what justice looks like in Iran, where the trials of protesters, bystanders and chroniclers of the current uprising have begun. There is little expectation of due process in a judicial system dominated by the security services and stacked against the accused.
More than 15,000 Iranians have been arrested and several hundred killed in nearly two months of protests, the activist news agency Hrana estimates. The demonstrations that began in response to the alleged police killing of Amini have cascaded into a broad movement against the country’s clerical leaders. Authorities have demanded harsh punishments for protesters, whom they call “rioters,” and have sought to blame the unrest on foreign powers.
Some of the detained are released with a fine. Others are tried in a criminal court. But political prisoners typically face the feared revolutionary courts, a parallel system created to protect the Islamic republic, said Hadi Enayat, a political sociologist specializing in Iranian law.
The revolutionary courts are notorious for “egregious violations of due process,” said Tara Sepehri Far of Human Rights Watch. The state “uses the trials as another element of shaping their narrative about the protests.”
In late October, Iran’s judiciary said it had indicted about 1,000 people in Tehran and would hold public trials in the coming weeks. As in the past, rights groups expect they will be sham trials, relying on fabricated evidence and confessions made under duress or torture. Detainees have been accused of committing violence and killing Iranian security forces with little or no evidence, they say.
How these trials unfold could offer hints about Tehran’s political calculus — whether it will continue with its crackdown to contain the protests, or further escalate its repression in an effort to stamp them out completely.
There is debate within Iran’s security circles, said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, over whether “to shock and awe the streets to scare them away from protesting,” or prioritize “containing the threat without having to resort to the mass executions that we saw in the 1980s” during post-revolution purges.
“I think the system is sort of stuck between what is the right approach,” she said.
This tension broke through on Nov. 5 when hard-line lawmakers, who dominate Iran’s parliament, issued a statement calling on the judiciary to “deal decisively” with the “instigators of recent riots” and punish “enemies of God” — a legal charge that can carry the death penalty.
Iranians were outraged. Three days later, the parliamentary spokesperson backtracked, claiming that “Western media” had misconstrued the lawmakers’ words; the harshest punishments — which could include the death penalty — would be reserved for those who “spilled blood,” he said.
Iran is one of the world’s leading executioners. At least 314 people were executed in 2021, according to Amnesty International, though the true figure is likely higher. Death sentences issued for political prisoners are sometimes commuted or never carried out, though the threat remains.
Iran’s legal system is based on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. Corruption and abuse are rampant in the criminal courts, though years of international advocacy have led to some incremental reforms, said Hossein Raisi, a former lawyer in Iran and now a human rights professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.
But ultimately the “Iranian judiciary system is the ‘supreme leader’ judiciary system,” he said, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the head of Iran’s theocratic government.
Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, created the revolutionary courts as a stopgap system to purge opponents after ousting the country’s ruler, the shah, in 1979. They have since become a key feature of the Islamic republic, allowing regime loyalists to control the levers of justice. The revolutionary courts work closely with the intelligence wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, the supreme leader’s parallel security force.
The revolutionary courts rely on one judge, instead of the panel of judges used in criminal courts. Judges are typically clerics or have been trained at a state-run university. Political prisoners have limited or no access to their lawyers and cannot see the alleged evidence against them.
The Intelligence Ministry and the IRGC’s intelligence wing are often involved in interrogations and evidence collection, in violation of Iranian law, said Raisi. But during times of unrest, he said, authorities drop all pretense of following criminal procedure.
“Unfortunately, everything that happens in the room is based on police or IRGC or regular intelligence officers,” he said. “When they don’t want to listen to people, they actually ban all kinds of the rights of the accused,” he added.
Before leaving Iran, Raisi was part of a small and ever-shrinking group of independent lawyers who take on human rights cases and represent political prisoners. These attorneys are under constant pressure and threat of arrest, said Raisi. When protests break out, they offer legal aid to families of detainees and often take on cases pro bono. In recent weeks, 24 lawyers have been arrested, according to Hrana.
During the 2009 Green Movement — when millions of Iranians protested electoral fraud — Raisi asked other lawyers in his hometown of Shiraz to volunteer. Only seven did. But in recent weeks, more than 40 lawyers in the southwestern city have offered to take on cases of detained protesters, he said.
“This is so beautiful,” said Raisi.
But as demonstrations continue, and arrests increase, it will be difficult for lawyers to keep up.
Raisi said judicial authorities effectively “copy and paste” charges, “like an application for all branches across the country.” Common charges have included propaganda and illegal gatherings against the state.
The revolutionary courts were key to Khamenei’s repression of the Green Movement. After a violent crackdown in 2009, hundreds of protesters, including key activists and reformist politicians, were tried, and several people were executed. The courts were also used for protesters after periods of unrest in 2017 and 2019.
By controlling the legal system, and other institutions, Iran’s leadership has “decapitated the reform movement,” said Enayat, the political sociologist.
“People have completely lost faith in reforming the system, as it hasn’t worked,” he said | 2022-11-12T07:26:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Protesters arrested in Iran face a justice system stacked against them - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/12/iran-protests-mahsa-amini-courts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/12/iran-protests-mahsa-amini-courts/ |
People hold a Ukrainian flag as they gather on Friday in Kyiv's Maidan Square to celebrate the liberation of Kherson. (Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images)
Losing Kherson — one of the first major cities to fall under Russia’s control after it invaded in February — constitutes a major military and political setback for the Kremlin and a blow its efforts to consolidate its grip over swaths of Ukraine’s south. However, Zelensky reminded residents that the city “is not yet completely cleansed” of Russia’s presence.
Russia’s retreat from Kherson “has broader strategic implications,” Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, said on Air Force One, as President Biden headed to Cambodia on Saturday. Sullivan added that Ukraine’s ability to push Russian troops across the Dnieper River reduces the “long-term threat” to places such as Odessa and the Black Sea shore.
“People of Kherson themselves are already removing Russian symbols and any traces of the occupiers’ stay in Kherson from the streets and buildings,” Zelensky said, calling on any lingering Russian forces to surrender.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday that the last Russian soldiers had safely left the city. But The Washington Post could not verify Moscow’s claims of an orderly pullback with no fighters or weapons left behind, and there were some reports of Russian troops struggling to escape to the east bank of the Dnieper River under heavy Ukrainian bombardment.
Ukraine is moving to restore the area around Kherson. Power, television signals and supplies were on their way to the neighboring Mykolaiv region, its military administrator Vitaliy Kim said in a statement. On Friday, he visited the small city of Snihurivka to inspect damage, visit a hospital and discuss restoration. He said that officials were working on providing electricity and communications, and that more humanitarian aid was expected to reach local warehouses on Saturday.
Bridges and the Nova Kakhovka dam suffered “significant new damage” as the Russians retreated from Kherson, according to satellite images that Maxar Technologies provided to The Post on Friday. The Antonovsky Bridge that crosses the Dnieper River was hit in several places, causing some sections to collapse.
At least six people have been killed in a Russian attack on a residential building in the southern Mykolaiv region, a regional official said early Friday, while three others were injured. Zelensky described the attack as a “cynical response to our successes at the front.”
Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities in recent weeks have “disproportionately” affected civilians, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Friday. The waves of attacks, which began Oct. 10, are “impacting critical functions such as health care and heating,” the ministry said, with blackouts becoming routine in parts of Ukraine including the capital, Kyiv. The decision to target energy infrastructure, and the likely impact on civilians as winter approaches, appears to be aimed at undermining “civilian morale,” it said.
Rice is the crop that could be “most badly affected by lack of fertilizers,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told a summit of Southeast Asian leaders Friday, adding that the United Nations was working to extend the Black Sea Grain Initiative that Russia recently withdrew from. “Removing all remaining obstacles to the exports of Russian fertilizers is an essential step toward global food security,” Guterres said. Also on Friday, U.N. officials and Russian delegates met in Geneva to discuss the “unimpeded export of food and fertilizers” from Russia to global markets.
Germany has allocated 1 billion euros from its 2023 budget to provide Ukraine with funding to defend against Russian cyberattacks, Reuters reported Friday. The money will also be used to collect evidence of Russian war crimes, according to a document cited by the news agency.
In an address at the COP27 U.N. climate summit in Egypt, President Biden echoed other world leaders in decrying Russia’s “brutal attack” on Ukraine, which he said “only enhances the urgency of the need to transition the world off its dependence on fossil fuels.”
Banksy, the elusive artist known for his graffiti art in public places, posted photos of artwork from Borodyanka, a town northwest of Kyiv, to Instagram on Friday. The Instagram post, which appears to be Banksy’s most recent since December 2021, shows graffiti art on a demolished building.
Database of nearly 300 videos exposes the horrors of war in Ukraine: On Feb. 24, as Russian forces rolled into Ukraine and missiles began to strike Kyiv, civilians picked up their phones and pressed record. For eight months, they have documented the war, allowing the world to witness the conflict in Ukraine through the eyes of its people.
New videos emerge each day, taken by local residents, soldiers and public officials. They show the trails of rockets streaming through the sky and the smoldering ruins of towns. Footage has shown slain civilians, some bearing signs of torture.
Video posted on Nov. 11 showed Ukrainians celebrating in central Kherson after Russian forces withdrew from the city. (Video: https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1591064777451003909)
A growing body of visual evidence has become instrumental for war-crimes prosecutors, while also propelling global outrage against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war. The Washington Post’s visual forensics team has been verifying and cataloguing videos since the start of the invasion. The work is in a searchable database that continues to be updated; graphic content is clearly marked.
Matt Viser and Erin Cunningham contributed to this report. | 2022-11-12T07:27:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/12/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/12/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ |
The two spent hours together before they rose to lead their nations. But times have changed dramatically.
Then-Vice President Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in 2012 displaying shirts from students at a California school. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
Biden certainly has not acquired the thick mane of the Chinese diplomat. His administration now very much does fear a rising China. And U.S. officials are hoping that — somehow — the personal connection the two men forged more than a decade ago can soften the often hostile, sometimes volatile and potentially dangerous standoff between two global behemoths.
It also comes as the Pentagon issues fresh warnings that China poses the “most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security.” With colliding positions on trade, Ukraine and especially Taiwan — and even fears of a global U.S.-China cold war — the pressure on Biden could hardly be greater.
He added, “It’s the one thing we have to work with — that is kind of the only thing we’ve got going for us in slowing the death spiral of the U.S.-China relationship.”
Planting the seeds of a relationship
“Xi was a bit of an unknown commodity — he had not served in the type of post that led to a lot of interaction with Americans,” said Ben Rhodes, who was Obama’s deputy national security adviser. “There was a real benefit in having somebody spend a lot of time with the guy to take his measure, get to know him and set up Obama’s capacity to hit the ground running with Xi when he became president.”
Once Xi became president, Biden’s interactions were more limited as Obama took the primary role. He did travel to China in 2013 — accompanied by his son Hunter, who met with a Chinese business partner during the trip — and spent more than five hours with Xi.
Exaggerated interactions
He has repeatedly claimed, for example, that they traveled 17,000 miles together in China and the United States. A White House official said Biden was referring to the total distance he traveled to attend the meetings — not necessarily their actual time together — but even that does not fully add up, according to The Washington Post’s Fact Checker.
In the anecdote, Biden recalls being with Xi on the Tibetan Plateau when Xi asked him, “Can you define America for me?” Biden says he responded, “I can, in one word: possibilities.” Telling the story in July 2021, Biden elaborated, “Possibilities — it’s what America is built on. It’s one of the reasons why we’re viewed sometimes as being somewhat egotistical. We believe anything is possible in America.”
‘We’re not old friends’
And perhaps mindful of previous presidents who believed they had a rapport with Putin, Biden has dismissed the idea that he and Xi are buddies. “Let’s get something straight — we know each other well, we’re not old friends,” he said in June 2021. “It’s just pure business.”
“I’m not willing to make any fundamental concessions,” Biden said during a news conference on Wednesday. “I’ve told him: I’m looking for competition — not conflict,” he added.
He added, “I think deep down, both understand that in many ways, there has to be a better way for both countries to deal with one another rather than constantly threatening to destroy one another. In the personality for both of these leaders, there is a greater strain of wanting to see if there’s a way to accommodate the other. But who the hell knows — sometimes events can destroy the best of intentions.” | 2022-11-12T07:31:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As Biden and Xi meet, can their old connection avert a clash? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/12/biden-xi-meet-avert-clash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/12/biden-xi-meet-avert-clash/ |
Teenage driver killed in Arlington crash, police say
The other driver, also a teenager, was arrested, according to police.
A teenage driver was killed early Friday in a two-car crash in North Arlington, and the second driver was taken into custody, the police said.
The driver who was killed was trying to make a U-turn on Old Dominion Drive in a sedan about 12:30 a.m. when his vehicle was struck.
He died at the scene at Williamsburg Boulevard in the Rock Spring neighborhood.
The driver of the other vehicle, an SUV, was arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter, according to the police.
No names or ages were provided. | 2022-11-12T08:01:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teenage driver killed in Arlington crash, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/12/teenager-killed-crash-arlington-driver/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/12/teenager-killed-crash-arlington-driver/ |
By Jamey Keaten and Cara Anna | AP
FILE - Members of the Ethiopian National Defense Force hold national flags as they parade during a ceremony to remember those soldiers who died on the first day of the Tigray conflict, outside the city administration office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Nov. 3, 2022. A U.N. body devoted to promoting broader and better access to the internet is about to hold its latest annual gathering in Ethiopia, whose government has cut off internet access in the Tigray region during a two-year conflict. (AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-11-12T08:02:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ethiopia hosts UN internet meeting after cutting off Tigray - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ethiopia-hosts-un-internet-meeting-after-cutting-off-tigray/2022/11/12/efd19cee-625c-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ethiopia-hosts-un-internet-meeting-after-cutting-off-tigray/2022/11/12/efd19cee-625c-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
President Biden speaks during a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Friday, Nov. 11, 2022, at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (Alex Brandon/AP)
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Biden’s brief stopover at the U.N. Climate Conference known as COP27 on Friday included “intensive consultations” on the case of Alaa Abdel Fattah, the British-Egyptian political prisoner currently on hunger and water strike in Egyptian prison.
“We are doing everything we can to secure his release as well as the release of a number of other political prisoners,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on board Air Force One after the delegation departed Egypt on Friday.
Abdel Fattah’s family staked their hopes on Biden’s visit as a possible step toward his release, as fears mount he may die in prison. An activist during the country’s 2011 revolution who comes from one of Egypt’s most prominent intellectual families, Abdel Fattah has spent much of the last decade behind bars and was most recently sentenced to five years in prison after he was found guilty last December of “spreading false news.”
The United States is a close ally of Egypt and provides more than $1 billion in military aid to the country each year. Biden has pledged to make human rights a focus of his presidency and specifically, to hold Sisi accountable for human rights violations.
The family also asked that Biden secure proof of life for Abdel Fattah before departing from Egypt. The last the family heard from Abdel Fattah, he said in a letter he planned to stop drinking water on Nov. 6. Several days later, officials at the prison where he is being held informed his mother, Laila Soueif, a London-born math professor at Cairo University, that a “medical intervention” had been conducted on her son “with the knowledge of judicial authorities.”
The family fears authorities could be force feeding him or that he may have already died. Egyptian officials have insisted he is in good care.
Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One after departing from Egypt, Sullivan said he did “not have an update on [Abdel Fattah’s] condition.”
“The Egyptians have one story on this; obviously his family has a totally different story,” he said. “And this is a circumstance where it’s not trust but verify. It’s verify. And we’ve not been able to do that.”
For the last week, Soueif has waited outside the prison where Abdel Fattah is being held, asking for a letter or other proof of life from her son.
On Thursday, Egypt’s Public Prosecution released a statement claiming Abdel Fattah was in good health and had last received a family visit on Nov. 7 — a claim the family vehemently denies. That same day, Abdel Fattah’s lawyer, Khaled Ali, announced he had received written permission to visit Abdel Fattah in prison. When he arrived to the complex outside of Cairo, he was denied entry, he said.
Abdel Fattah claimed British citizenship through his mother last year. Since then, Egyptian authorities have refused to allow British consular access to him in prison.
His case — and Egypt’s human rights record more broadly — has garnered massive attention at COP27, which Egypt hoped would raise the country’s profile on the world stage. Several world leaders, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have directly raised Abdel Fattah’s case with Sisi.
Families of political prisoners often opt to stay quiet on their relatives’ cases in hopes that behind-the-scenes diplomacy might offer a better shot at securing freedom. Abdel Fattah’s family is long past that point. After being jailed repeatedly for a decade, his case is now among the most well-known in Egypt. His claim to British dual citizenship added further international interest in his case.
Abdel Fattah’s family — and some British lawmakers — have criticized Sunak for not doing more to secure his release or receive an update on his health while on the ground in Egypt.
“There is a question about the extent to which trying to resolve these cases diplomatically is best done through public pressure or private engagement,” Sullivan said. “That’s a constant debate, a constant calibration.”
Abdel Fattah’s younger sister, Sanaa Seif, who herself was jailed three times in Egypt, is attending the climate summit. At a news conference earlier this week, a pro-government lawmaker confronted her over her activism and was escorted out of the building by U.N. security after he refused to back down — drawing more negative attention to Egypt.
By the time Biden arrived on Friday, pressure was mounting for the Egyptians to release Abdel Fattah. But activists and observers also feared that window during which COP27 shone a spotlight on Egypt’s human rights violations was essentially coming to a close. The summit continues for another week but most world leaders visit only during the first half of the conference.
On social media, Egyptians shared memes joking about what might await them after the conference closed, including one of Sisi that said in Arabic: “Just wait until the guests leave” — a reference to a common phrase Egyptian parents might use if their children are misbehaving in front of visitors.
After Biden left on Friday, Sullivan told reporters “the president directed his team to work with the Egyptians on a number of specific cases, one of them being [Abdel Fattah’s].”
“I can say empathically that we believe that Alaa Abdel Fatah should be released,” he said. “But in terms of talking through the specifics of our discussions with the Egyptians,” he added, “I’d like to leave those behind closed doors for the moment.” | 2022-11-12T09:33:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden believes Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fatah 'should be released' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/12/biden-egypt-activist-alaa-abdel-fattah/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/12/biden-egypt-activist-alaa-abdel-fattah/ |
Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen missed multiple practices with an elbow injury headed into Week 10. (Washington Post illustration; /Bryan Woolston/AP)
The NFL’s gravitation toward the passing game has made quarterback play more valuable than ever. As a result, one of the most important tasks for oddsmakers — and bettors — is to estimate the impact of a change under center, such as the one the Buffalo Bills might be facing in Week 10 as MVP candidate Josh Allen deals with an elbow injury. Not every quarterback will influence the game to the same degree, but if you can get these projections right, you could find an edge over the market.
How can we best translate quarterback performance into a value to the point spread? The easiest way is to start with a familiar metric — passer rating — and use that to determine the likelihood a team wins based on a typical performance. Then we can equate that win estimate to a specific point spread because we know how often teams favored by a certain amount of points win. With backup quarterbacks, because of limited playing time, we may have to make some educated guesses at a reasonable passer rating. And for starting quarterbacks, small sample sizes can cause issues, too. It’s not a perfect method, but we can produce estimates good enough to evaluate price changes, including overreactions and underreactions in the market. First, though, we need a baseline performance.
From 2015 to 2022, starting quarterbacks produced an average passer rating of 92.4 while backups earned an 87.0. Using what’s known as logarithmic regression on individual games since 2015 (when the NFL moved back extra point attempts, changing the scoring system), a starting quarterback with a passer rating of 92.4 should win 53 percent of games while one with a rating of 100 should win 58 percent of games. A backup with an 87.0 average should win about 50 percent of games while a less impressive backup (with a 75 average rating) should win 42 percent of the time.
We also know teams favored by two points win approximately 53 percent of games, and pick ’em games are 50-50 propositions, making the value of a typical starting quarterback around two points more than a backup in the point spread.
As noted, not all starting quarterbacks are created equal, nor are their backups. The Bills have an MVP-caliber passer in Allen, who is day-to-day with an injury to the ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow. Allen did not practice Wednesday or Thursday, and his availability for Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Vikings is uncertain. If he is unable to play, journeyman Case Keenum will start in his place. As bettors, we need to know what impact that will have on the Bills and, subsequently, the point spread.
Allen’s passer rating is 99.2, implying a 57 percent win rate, equivalent to that of a team favored by three points. Keenum has an 86.9 passer rating since 2015, implying a 50 percent win rate and a pick-’em game. However, Keenum’s passer rating in a backup role has been as low as 62.9 (2020 in Cleveland) over the past few years, more similar to what we would expect from an underdog getting 4½ points. That would put Allen’s value over Keenum somewhere between 3 and 7½ points. A huge range, to be sure, but that’s part of the uncertainty in most of these cases: We simply don’t know how a backup quarterback will play for the first time as a starter with a new team.
Nevertheless, the numbers suggest we are on the right track. The line for Buffalo’s upcoming game with the Minnesota Vikings opened at Bills -9½ before making a stop at -7½. It has drifted lower since and was at -3½ on Friday morning. The implication is that Allen is worth four to six points over Keenum.
We saw this method come close to the actual results earlier this season when Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa missed two-plus games because of a concussion. Tagovailoa leads the league in passer rating (115.9). His backups, Teddy Bridgewater and rookie Skylar Thompson, are not nearly as effective. Bridgewater’s career passer rating is 90.5, while Thompson is an unknown. We do know, however, that rookie quarterbacks who start have produced an average of an 82 passer rating over the past eight seasons, with a winning percentage of .352 (129-237-2). Using this information, we can estimate win rates and their point spread equivalents, do a little subtraction and get the projected impact.
Going from Tagovailoa to Bridgewater should be worth around 2½ points, while a drop from Tagovailoa to Thompson should be worth 5½ to 7½ points. The oddsmakers came to similar conclusions. Bridgewater got the start in Week 5 against the New York Jets, and the line moved from Miami -6½ to -3½. Thompson started in Week 6 against the Minnesota Vikings and the line moved from Miami -1 to Miami +3½, a 4½-point move that was slightly less that our expectation. (Remember, they are only estimates.)
Quarterback and passer rating
Expected win rate
Point spread equivalent
Tua Tagovailoa (115.9)
Teddy Bridgewater (90.5)
-1½
Skylar Thompson (estimated 82.0)
+3½ to +1½
Here’s another real world example. In Week 10’s Los Angeles Rams-Arizona Cardinals matchup, both starting quarterbacks are questionable. The Rams’ Matthew Stafford is in the concussion protocols and questionable for Sunday, while Arizona’s Kyler Murray will be a game-time decision after not practicing Wednesday because of a hamstring injury and only practicing on a limited basis Thursday. Stafford has a passer rating of 84.9 this season while Murray’s is 86.9. They would be replaced by John Wolford and Colt McCoy, respectively. Wolford has made just 42 passing attempts at the pro level, so we can feel comfortable using the standard passer rating of 82 for rookie (or untested) starters to evaluate his impact. Over the past four seasons, McCoy’s passer rating has been 84.9. With such little difference between the options, the point spread shouldn’t merit much of a change if one or both backups start.
For those looking for a quick guide to the value of a particular starter compared with an average backup or average rookie starter, here you go. Remember, these are estimates only and anytime you think there might be value in a bet, the particular game warrants further inspection. | 2022-11-12T11:00:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Josh Allen's injury impacts the point spread - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/12/josh-allen-injury-point-spread-quarterbacks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/12/josh-allen-injury-point-spread-quarterbacks/ |
A crypto-collapse, lay-offs at Facebook and carnage at Twitter are rocking the tech industry. It’s stoking memories of the dotcom crash 20 years ago.
Twitter, Facebook parent Meta, payment platform Stripe, software service firm Salesforce, ride-hailing company Lyft and a growing list of smaller companies all fired double-digit percentages of their workers. That means tens of thousands of engineers, sales people and support staff in one of the country’s most important and highest-paying industries are now out of a job. Meanwhile, other companies including Google and Amazon have recently instated hiring slowdowns and freezes.
The firings are solidifying a feeling in Silicon Valley that the bull market of the past decade — which created massive amounts of wealth for tech investors, workers and the broader economy — is decidedly over, conjuring an image of what the rest of the economy could experience if a predicted recession materializes.
The firings come just a year after Silicon Valley was at its peak, with valuations of Big Tech companies spilling into the trillions, salaries at all-time highs and cryptocurrencies pouring new wealth into the pockets of investors and workers alike. Now, tens of thousands of workers are looking for work.
“We are facing stubborn inflation, energy shocks, higher interest rates, reduced investment budgets, and sparser startup funding,” CEO Patrick Collison said in the post.
Last week, Twitter under its new owner Elon Musk fired around half of the company’s 7,500 workers. Musk said Thursday the company would need to find new sources of revenue or it would not “survive the upcoming economic downturn.”
Stripe is cutting 14 percent of its staff, real estate marketplace Zillow is cutting 5 percent and ride-hailing app Lyft is firing 13 percent.
The week’s layoffs bring the total number of fired tech employees in 2022 to over 120,000, according to Layoffs.fyi, a layoff tracker run by tech founder Roger Lee.
Still, the firings in Silicon Valley will have a growing effect, said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, a job search site. Tech companies spend a lot of money on other tech services, such as cloud computing or communications platforms, as well as digital advertising.
By 2020, the tech industry made up about 10.2 percent of U.S. GDP, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The seemingly endless growth of companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla, Salesforce and others has padded the retirement accounts of millions of Americans as tech firms took up an increasingly big share of the stock market. Tech companies made up nearly 30 percent of the total value of the S&P 500 this March.
For years, skilled tech workers jumped between companies, leveraging one job to get a higher salary at another. For entry-level engineers, it was not unusual to get offers of $200,000 a year plus a signing bonus from Big Tech firms. Tech companies offered perks such as free catered meals, massages, dog walkers and on-site laundry, plus unlimited vacation days. With so many recently fired workers out in the market now, that will change. | 2022-11-12T11:22:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Twitter, Facebook, Lyft layoffs spark fears of dotcom crash 2.0 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/12/tech-facebook-twitter-layoffs-dotcom/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/12/tech-facebook-twitter-layoffs-dotcom/ |
Two families mourn, ask questions after fatal grocery store shootout
Willie Tate, a security guard, and Zaila Akida, a customer, died in an exchange of gunfire after a shoplifting encounter, according to police
Willie Tate and son Alex. Camille McNicol, Alex's mother, said Tate would always surprise Alex with toys. (Family photo)
Alex Tate’s favorite memories of his father, Willie Tate, are of their travels together.
The 11-year-old and his dad went to WWE wrestling shows and on a cruise trip to the Bahamas.
But instead of looking forward to their next adventure together, Alex spent Thursday releasing balloons in his father’s memory nearly a week after the security guard was fatally shot in a Prince George’s County grocery store.
“We have to support him, protect him and help him through this,” said Earlene Tate, 47, Alex’s aunt. “As a young man, he shouldn’t have to go through this. His father should be here.”
Prince George’s County police are still piecing together what happened the morning of Nov. 4, when they say Willie Tate, 43, and Zaila Akida, 20, fatally shot each other inside a Giant.
Akida was “attempting to commit a theft” when Tate approached her at the front lobby of the store, police said, according to an initial investigation. Police have not said what she was accused of attempting to steal.
Akida then took a gun out of her backpack and shot at Tate, who fired back at her, according to police. Prince George’s County homicide-unit detectives have “recovered and reviewed video from within the store which captures the incident,” the police department said in a statement.
Officers responded to the Giant at Eastover Shopping Center on Audrey Lane in Oxon Hill about 10:25 a.m. and found Tate and Akida with gunshot wounds, police said. Tate died at the scene, and Akida was transported to a hospital, where she died.
Joseph Caleb, an attorney representing Akida’s family, said that Akida was a beloved sister and daughter who was gainfully employed and that the shoplifting accusations have come as a shock to her family. Caleb said that they have not seen any video footage and that it’s too soon to trust the preliminary investigation without more information.
“The family knows her to be a hard-working young lady who didn’t shoplift, didn’t steal and was able to afford to purchase things that she needed and wanted,” Caleb said. “No one knows of any reason why she would even do what she’s been accused of doing.”
For Tate’s family, the loss of the husband, brother and friend has rippled through his community. His sister, Earlene Tate, held a candlelight vigil Wednesday for him in Baltimore, where Willie Tate is from. The “life of the party,” Tate always had a joke to tell and could lift anyone’s spirit with his bright smile and laughter, his sister said. His homemade sweet potato pie was a favorite at Thanksgiving.
Tate had started at the Oxon Hill grocery store to be closer to his new home in Fredericksburg, Va., a shorter commute than his route from Baltimore. He lived there with his wife, Shaunte Bomar-Tate, and the couple recently celebrated their first anniversary, Earlene Tate said. Willie Tate had four children, with Alex being the youngest, and four stepchildren.
“With his job, he was protecting people. That was one of the things that he loved to do,” Earlene Tate said. “And unfortunately that job of protecting people took his life.”
Felismina Andrade, Giant’s director of external communications and community relations, said in a statement that the company is “cooperating in earnest with Prince George’s County police as they continue investigating” and “will support a transparent process for our community and the families as they begin the healing process.”
The company that employed Willie Tate, Wolf Professional Security, declined to answer questions regarding Tate’s employment and the company’s security protocols.
The double shooting was the second fatal incident at Eastover Shopping Center in the same week. The Prince George’s County Police Department has a satellite station in the shopping center.
The department said investigators “continue to conduct follow-up work on this case” and encourage any additional witnesses to contact police.
Tate once transformed his son Alex’s bedroom into a train station, building the station, cars and people for Alex to play with, said Camille McNicol, 38, Alex’s mother. The “special bond” they shared was felt in each moment they spent together, she said.
When asked how he would describe his father on Thursday, Alex said, “lovable.” | 2022-11-12T11:22:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Families of Willie Tate and Zaila Akida mourning after Giant grocery store shooting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/12/families-giant-grocery-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/12/families-giant-grocery-shooting/ |
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
On Nov. 8, Muriel E. Bowser (D) won a third term as mayor of Washington, in an expected victory in this heavily Democratic city. The Washington Post sat down with Bowser ahead of the election to ask about schools, development and the term that Bowser has promised will be “the comeback” from the pandemic years. A selection of Bowser’s answers are below; the interview has been condensed.
When you talk about coming out of the pandemic, how would you rate how D.C. is doing right now in this long recovery?
How are we doing? You’re asking somebody who is very impatient that question. … Our economic strategy right now is focused on how we get our workers back but also how we replace activity in our downtown commercial corridors where we won’t see the same number of workers. That focus will be on housing. It will also be on broadening our events and visitation because of organic D.C. things like our parades and festivals, our streateries, our murals.
What do you think will look different about D.C. a few years from now?
We are prepared to be bold and transformational in our recommendations. We’re going to study ways to increase affordable housing in high-opportunity areas. I would include the downtown in that. I think one benefit of covid is that we saw how to use our public spaces differently. I am pushing my team right now to think about all of the opportunities to transform public space so that we can bring more people to all parts of the city.
How would you characterize the direction the D.C. Council is moving and your relationship with the council?
I think my relationship with the council is what it should be. A mayor works with councils to set a bold vision for the city, introduce budgets that help delivery on that bold vision, and work with the council members on what we need policy-wise and legislatively to get those things done. Likewise it’s our job, when the council members have proposals, to make sure that they’re best for the city.
There’s this perception in the media and elsewhere of an increasingly liberal council and a moderate mayor, and there’s tension. Do you think that’s right?
We’re all kind of progressive in this city. Our policy differences really aren’t that big. Sometimes they are, but if I had to add up all the pieces of legislation in a session, I’m willing to bet that we agree on 90 percent of things. When I look at our budget deliberations, we have almost a $20 billion budget. We might argue over $100 million worth of items. I think policy-wise we’re very close, but people do expect the mayor to be the voice for the whole city. Where there are differences — it’s not about personalities. It’s not about the mayor not getting along with the council. It’s none of that. It’s just that I believe that the chief executive, and I know the voters believe this too, is responsible for setting the tone of how the government will approach big issues.
Outgoing attorney general Karl Racine is Bowser’s sharpest critic
Do you feel like people have trust in the people you have running agencies and running government? [The Post asked Bowser specifically about Ernest Chrappah, who led the recently dismantled Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs and whom Bowser intends to keep in leadership of part of the agency, and the leaders of the D.C. Housing Authority, as well as recently resigned Deputy Mayor Christopher Geldart.]
Absolutely. What D.C. residents know about me is that if I need to make a change, I’m going to make a change. If there’s something difficult that happens in the government, I’m going to tell them and course-correct. They also know that in a government of 37,000 employees, on any given day something can go wrong. They want to know that we have a framework to deal with it.
1 in 4 public housing units sits vacant during D.C. affordability crisis
Among people I talk to, the most commonly dissatisfied group is parents.
Parents are often frustrated. Their kids were out of school for a long time. Maybe they’re having trouble coming back.
I don’t get that impression from parents. That’s not to say there aren’t things that we can do in each school, but what I hear is that we have free pre-K3 and pre-K4 and those kids have come back. … We know there was a lot of frustration around covid-related closures. … Our schools were the first open in the region. We were able to make huge investments in air filtration early, in covid testing early, in rapid testing early, in reaching an agreement with the Washington Teachers’ Union to bring teachers back in the classroom.
And now that they are open, what needs to be done to get schools back on track?
What I’ve heard from teachers and school leaders is this feels like a normal school year. We didn’t go in with any restrictions, because of how this community stood together to fight covid. … It should feel like a normal school year. And more than that, parents should know that there are a lot of supports out there for enrichment: one-on-one tutoring, extracurricular activities, paid internships for students. I think that we’re going to continue to have more ideas. Nationwide, the math performance is what is really on everybody’s mind. So I’m going to ask the public education team if some of these out-of-school enrichment activities, if it’s worth it just to have them math-themed.
On the campaign trail, you hear “developers” all the time. There’s criticism that you’re too close to developers or you’re prioritizing developers. They’re also very necessary to, well, develop. Could you talk about your approach to working with developers and why you think there’s so much criticism around that?
Because the media says it and it’s kind of a cheap, salacious thing to say. People have been saying it for 15 years and I’ve been getting elected for 15 years. You can look at one of the first developments that I was involved in as an ANC commissioner on Riggs Road and South Dakota Avenue, and here’s my approach. I believe that neighborhoods don’t get better by themselves, and that if you have declining retail, if you have dangerous conditions, if you don’t have amenities, you have to change that, or it’s only going to continue to decline. So I believe in neighborhood-focused, supported development that delivers what neighbors want.
I’m bullish about economic development. This is what I know about making the city more affordable. If every part of the city is thought of as desirable, people will find it more affordable to live here. When I go to the new Lidl at Skyland, or when we go to the former Walmart pad where we’re going to get a new Giant, or now in historic Anacostia where we have more amenities coming up, more people will think that that’s a neighborhood that I can live in and that I can afford to live in. Because it has a grocery store, it has great transportation. These are great neighborhoods.
Our housing is more expensive because of the great quality of life we offer here. So we have to build more housing all over the city, but we also have to invest in amenities for every neighborhood in the city. You shouldn’t think that you have to go to the Wharf because that’s the only place where you’re going to be close to a restaurant. Or that you have to live in the Palisades because that’s the only place where you think there’s a good elementary school. Or you don’t feel comfortable getting on a bus because we’re letting juveniles terrorize the bus system. … I get a small-area plan done. That’s 18 months of community input, and it outlines what the community wants. And then the development community says: ‘That’s what the community wants. They’re on the same page. I want to invest there.’ They come invest there. Over time, the community gets what it wants. | 2022-11-12T11:22:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Q&A with D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/12/mayor-muriel-bowser-dc-questions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/12/mayor-muriel-bowser-dc-questions/ |
During eight years of construction, the new $3 billion stretch of rail recorded multiple problems, cost overruns and four years of delays.
Michael Laris
A view of Dulles International Airport from a Metro car on the new Silver Line extension. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Fifteen years ago, federal auditors warned that having the Washington region’s airports agency depart from its usual line of work to build a multibillion rail extension carried risks.
Citing Boston’s Big Dig, a budget-busting bridge-and-tunnel project led by a turnpike authority, U.S. Transportation Department auditors said projects lacking effective management and oversight could face long delays and ballooning costs. They wrote that lessons could apply to a long-planned Northern Virginia rail line and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which was tapped to build it, citing the authority’s “lack of experience in managing a mass transit project.”
The cautions proved prescient, at a reduced scale. The Silver Line is no Big Dig or California High Speed Rail — megaprojects on opposite sides of the country that have bled billions amid design flaws and charges of poor management — but the 11.4-mile rail extension will make its debut Tuesday four years late and $250 million over budget.
During eight years of construction, the new $3 billion stretch of the Silver Line recorded concrete failures, flawed railroad ties, problems in a rail yard and fraudulent quality records from an employee of a subcontractor. Project managers at the airports authority burned through a half-billion dollar contingency fund before calling on Fairfax and Loudoun counties and Dulles Toll Road drivers this year to kick in hundreds of millions more dollars to cover costly slip-ups.
As the Washington region opens a new chapter with a rail link between downtown D.C. and the nation’s wealthiest county — via an international airport and the economic powerhouse of Tysons — it will close another that was fraught with oversight challenges almost from the start.
“I don’t know that they properly planned for the magnitude of this project,” said Jeffrey C. McKay, chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Construction-related problems and resulting disputes with some of the authority’s “gazillion subcontractors … just seemed to me to drag on and on and on for too long,” he said. “MWAA is not an expert at building transit.”
But McKay said the deficiencies came with an undeniable upside: money. He said the project would not have happened without cash from the MWAA-managed Dulles Toll Road, which covered a large portion of construction costs. Plenty of the problems also were not of MWAA’s making, he added, noting the authority had to answer to numerous public boards and Metro itself.
On the eve of rail service to Dulles International Airport and Loudoun County, a project decades in the making, McKay said the problems “almost seem like sideshows to the fact that, my God, we got this done and it’s getting ready to open.”
John E. “Jack” Potter, a former U.S. postmaster general who has led the airports authority for more than a decade, acknowledged disappointment with some aspects of the project.
“When it comes to where we ended up, nobody’s proud that there were delays. Nobody is proud that we ended over budget,” Potter said. “That was not our intent.”
He added: “I don’t think there’s any one entity that has blame. … I’m sure in hindsight, everyone would tell you what they could do a little bit better. But at the end of the day, it’s not as if we weren’t aggressively managing it.”
The opening of the Washington-area megaproject comes as the nation is advancing toward its largest transit investment in history under last year’s infrastructure bill. Experts said the nation’s transit builders need to work more efficiently in a country with some of the world’s highest transit construction costs.
“If projects slip on schedule and budget, it really hurts confidence in government being able to do stuff,” said Eric Goldwyn, co-author of a recent New York University study of transit costs that used data from 900 projects in 59 countries. The research found average costs in the U.S. were the sixth-highest.
The Silver Line extension’s second phase will complete a rail line that debuted more than eight years ago, a project that added five Metro stations spanning Tysons and Reston. In both phases of the project, MWAA was responsible for construction and oversight before handing the rail system over to Metro for passenger operations.
Back in September 2013, Potter set lofty aspirations for the vast work ahead.
“Mr. Potter said that the overall goal is to make the Metrorail project the best run public transportation project in the country,” according to minutes at a meeting of MWAA’s board of directors.
That optimism came several months after the authority selected Clark Construction Group and Kiewit Infrastructure South to build the extension to Ashburn. Their partnership, Capital Rail Constructors (CRC), in April 2013 offered the lowest price to build the line and its six stations. The $1.18 billion bid bested one by Bechtel, which was still working on the Silver Line’s first phase, by just $14 million.
Why second phase of Metro’s Silver Line has been more problem-plagued than the first
The bid came in $200 million to $400 million below what MWAA expected. The authority hoped the savings would make up for cost overruns that plagued Phase 1, which opened six months late in summer 2014 and, according to MWAA, was $226 million over budget.
Less than a year into Phase 2’s construction, which began that same year, those hopes were quickly dashed.
The authority announced it would incorporate new state and federal rules for storm water management as part of the project, rather than seek an exemption. The decision delayed completion of the project by more than a year while adding tens of millions to the costs as officials at Capital Rail Constructors scrambled to incorporate the new requirements into their designs.
The project would never regain its footing.
As more problems surfaced, that delay ultimately stretched to four years. The once-cordial relationship between the airports authority, its contractors and Metro began to fray as the parties bickered.
The fact that Metro was not in charge of building the rail line it would operate, and did not have a financial stake in its construction, contributed to the project’s complexity, Potter said. “The ultimate owner did not participate in the construction other than as an adviser,” he said.
In response, Metro said in a statement that “understandably, projects of this scale are complex and we have worked closely with MWAA throughout construction to ensure the Silver Line meets Metro’s standards for the existing system.”
That arrangement left MWAA to mediate disputes between the contractors it hired and Metro.
Potter said the passage of time also added complications. Though MWAA oversaw construction, Fairfax and Loudoun counties had significant financial stakes in the Silver Line, while the Federal Transit Administration had an oversight role.
“When you have a project that runs better than a decade, you have changing administrations of all partners,” Potter said. “A changed board is not necessarily wedded to the commitments that were made decades ago.”
Other delays stemmed from unforeseen site conditions. To provide utilities such as water and electricity to the stations, workers had to tunnel beneath the Dulles Toll Road. The rock proved to be harder than expected, so the contractor abandoned plans to use boring machines. Instead, tons of rock was dug out by hand and carried away in five-gallon buckets.
Other issues with materials and the subcontractors that provided them raised questions about quality control and MWAA’s oversight. The problems forced project officials to redo or pause work while engineers sought to find the root causes of defective structures.
In July 2015, cracks were found in girders that supported the tracks at the Dulles station. In April 2018, project officials discovered substandard concrete was used to make panels that were installed at five stations, which could allow water to seep into structures, causing cracking.
Project officials learned issues with concrete panels were even more serious a month later, when a whistleblower’s 2016 lawsuit became public alleging the company that manufactured the panels, Universal Concrete, also had falsified inspection reports. One person pleaded guilty in connection with the case, admitting he had falsified records intended to verify the quality and longevity of the panels. The Department of Justice and Virginia also sued the company, which admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to settle for $1 million.
Concrete for Silver Line stations is flawed, test results were doctored, whistleblower says
Later in 2018, officials confirmed problems with concrete rail ties that Metro feared could cause trains to lean when traveling over certain areas of track.
Problems also surfaced at the Dulles rail yard built as part of the project. A platform at a building meant to house trains had to be removed and rebuilt because its dimensions were wrong. There also were cracks on rail yard buildings and problems with track beds that could cause tracks to shift.
As a result, a rail yard that was expected to be finished in December 2018 wasn’t completed until December 2021, adding tens of millions of dollars. MWAA officials themselves sometimes seemed at a loss to explain the delays.
“It’s hard to say why we need that extra time … at this point,” Charles Stark, then-executive director of the rail project, said in 2019.
As time wore on, finger-pointing intensified. MWAA battled with contractors over deadlines, routinely insisting companies find ways to make up for lost time.
In letters sent that same year, Stark wrote that the quality-assurance program of Colorado-based Hensel Phelps — in charge of building the Dulles rail yard — appeared to be “ineffective or nonexistent.” The contractor fired back, saying schedule delays were the result of “MWAA’s mismanagement and slow response to issues that arise on the project.”
Metro’s inspector general also highlighted the dysfunction in a 2020 report, noting that efforts to resolve issues were hampered by a lack of follow-through by MWAA and its contractors.
That same year, MWAA and its contractors also found themselves dealing with the impacts of a pandemic that slowed work on the project and created supply chain challenges.
Throughout the project, Metro didn’t always approve of what was built, frustrating some MWAA officials because the transit agency didn’t have to deal with the financial consequences.
One such case concerned a dispute over insulator covers to protect rail power-cable connections, colloquially known as “orange boots.” A top MWAA engineering official told local officials the rail contract listed two manufacturers of orange boots approved for the project. After crews finished installing the boots made by one approved manufacturer, Metro wanted them replaced with those made by the other, according to MWAA, which said the midstream change slowed the project.
Boots that were installed lacked a tight seal, and Metro said in a statement this month that “based on joint inspections and comparisons of the two boots by Metro and MWAA, a joint decision was made that we needed a better fit to resist water.”
Metro executives have emphasized the importance of ensuring the system is safe and would not require additional costly maintenance.
One result of delays was rising costs, as contractors laid the groundwork to be compensated for what they said were years of alterations made to their expected work.
“Both contractors are clearly positioning themselves for delay claims at the Project’s completion,” a Federal Transit Administration contractor said as part of an oversight report in 2019.
Ultimately, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post over the summer, the airports authority agreed to make additional payments to the lead contractors, settling disputes that could have gone to court.
CRC will receive $207 million to cover roughly 130 change orders, including costs for an additional six months of oversight of the line until it was handed over to Metro. The cost of replacing orange boots was also on the list.
Silver Line’s second phase will cost an additional $250M
The company declined to address the causes of cost overruns and delays or its financial standing on the project. In a statement, it praised the “extraordinary team effort … including years of collaboration and expert advice from all sides to mutually agree on the resolution of all issues.”
Hensel Phelps, the rail yard contractor, received an additional $46 million, which covered more than 20 change orders, some of which included increases in the cost of building materials such as concrete and asphalt. An additional 16 change orders were not included and will be negotiated separately.
The company did not address questions about the reason for delays, saying in a recent statement “we are excited that we have reached resolution to the yard project and WMATA will start operation next week.”
Some of the problems echo those identified in research by New York University’s Transit Costs Project. Issues increasing costs include ineffective decision-making among disparate partners, insufficient expertise for handling contractors, trouble managing utility work and excessive use of contingencies, which researchers called “especially notable as bad practice.”
The use of contingency funds should decrease over time, researchers found, writing that “if the money is already allocated in the budget, there is no incentive not to spend it.” In contrast, the use of contingencies rose between phases in the Silver Line project.
Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), a longtime supporter of the rail extension, said he would give MWAA a medium grade for its management of the project.
“MWAA, in retrospect, could have done a better job, but I’m not really going to second-guess MWAA’s overall management,” Connolly said. “It was big. It was ambitious. And it was difficult.”
Days before the line opens, McKay, the Fairfax County official, credited MWAA and others for their tenacity, saying, “this, I think, will go down as the most successful infrastructure project in the history of Virginia,” noting that it will enable communities to flourish along the new line.
Asked if the airports authority could have done one thing differently to avoid the difficulties it encountered while managing construction, Potter smiled: “Let somebody else do it.” | 2022-11-12T11:22:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why the Silver Line extension to Dulles was delayed and over budget - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/12/silver-line-extension-dulles-challenges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/12/silver-line-extension-dulles-challenges/ |
Geno Smith, Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes might be learning that less can be more. (Darryl Webb, Bryan Woolston, Ed Zurga/AP)
This is not the year to have quarterback dependency issues. If Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers don’t have it in them to mask their teams’ problems, then something peculiar must be happening. Aging cannot explain it all away, because plenty of standout quarterbacks, at varying levels of experience, have been shaky through the first nine weeks. On the other hand, the unlikely star turn of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith at age 32 has been a charming development, and two young players once considered limited — Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa — are performing at an elite level after their teams made big trades and spent huge money on wide receiver upgrades.
The early results indicate a shift. For most of the past decade, pass-happy, spread-concept offenses have revolutionized the NFL, and even teams with traditional systems have used wrinkles to put defenders in awkward situations and make it easier to throw the ball deep. But for those who crave balance and hard-hitting defensive football, this might be the transitional season they’ve been waiting to see.
To catch up, defenses aren’t creating something new as much as they are reimagining the old. Two-high safety schemes are popular again to dissuade quarterbacks from throwing deep. There are more speedy, rangy, position-fluid athletes, and defensive coordinators are more flexible about accentuating their skills. The evolution of talent sways the style of play, but when coaches resist change, their teams flounder. When they abandon stubbornness, the game morphs.
The first nine weeks of this season tottered into parity. It hasn’t all been fun to watch, and many perception-building prime time games have been atrocious. But if the game is equalizing, it ultimately will be a good thing. And for all the low quality of the regular season, a potential playoff field full of mercurial teams could make for riveting drama.
It feels like a season in which peaking at the right time will be more important than ever. But in determining which teams to trust, don’t default to overanalyzing quarterback play. The group hugging the Lombardi Trophy is often the most balanced team featuring a quarterback who ties it all together. That’s different from the savior quarterback. That guy almost never wins, and he is especially vulnerable this season, when defenses are better equipped to confuse signal callers, limit their efficiency and make their coaches regret piling too much responsibility on them.
This is the NFL’s diabolical dissonance: To build a consistent winner, you need a great quarterback. But great quarterbacks seldom lead you to the promised land during their best seasons.
A quarterback has won 14 of the past 15 regular season MVP awards, with only running back Adrian Peterson disrupting the dominance in 2012. But none of those MVPs won the Super Bowl. In fact, the MVP hasn’t led his team to a championship since Kurt Warner did it during the 1999 season.
Brady has seven rings and three league MVPs, but he never pulled off the double. Peyton Manning won two rings and five MVPs, but he couldn’t do it, either. Rodgers is a four-time MVP, but the Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl with him during the 2010 season, when they entered the playoffs as the sixth seed in the NFC. Patrick Mahomes didn’t lead the Kansas City Chiefs to a title until a year after his mind-boggling 5,097-yard, 50-touchdown season as a first-time starter in 2018. Lamar Jackson couldn’t do it in 2019 despite putting up video game numbers as a passer and runner.
During MVP seasons, quarterbacks often carry their teams to stellar records that don’t reflect their ability to adapt in the playoffs. It’s a given that aspiring championship teams need star-level quarterback performance. Trent Dilfer staying out of the Baltimore Ravens’ way is an aberration, and it’s more than two decades old. Philadelphia watched backup quarterback Nick Foles acquire superpowers during its Super Bowl run five years ago, but that’s also not repeatable. The most reasonable path is to have a versatile team capable of winning in multiple ways — paired with a quarterback who amplifies the entire roster.
The Philadelphia Eagles, who are underrated for an 8-0 team, look the part. Their offense and defense are among the top three in the NFL. With Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen working through an elbow injury, Hurts might build an even stronger MVP case now, and while that wouldn’t bode well for the Philadelphia’s championship hopes, that streak must end eventually. When it does end, it will probably happen with a player such as Hurts, who manages to be the Eagles’ most essential player without having to be their everything.
They can win when he struggles. Miles Sanders is a solid running back. The acquisition of wide receiver A.J. Brown has transformed the passing game, but tight end Dallas Goedert and receiver DeVonta Smith are terrific complements. The Eagles don’t have sufficient depth beyond those three targets, making health even more important. But their greatest concern should be their run defense — their one obvious weakness — which has yielded 5.2 yards per carry, 29th out of 32 teams.
At times, the Eagles have been so dominant that it can be hard to discern whether the run defense is a statistical weakness or a legitimate fatal flaw. The Eagles have won half of their games by at least 12 points, and the Bills (6-2) are the only team with a better point differential. But it’s something to monitor during a season in which running the football is experiencing a renaissance.
Fourteen teams, nearly half the league, are averaging at least 120 rushing yards per game. Five years ago, just eight teams reached that standard over the entire season. Big, run-stuffing defensive linemen aren’t as abundant as they used to be. There are also more opportunities to run because defenses are keeping both safeties deep rather than putting one of them closer to the line of scrimmage for run support. Regardless of the blocking scheme, power run games have a chance again.
It’s about time the game shifted. Last week, after Buffalo suffered a 20-17 loss to the New York Jets, Allen blamed himself for a two-interception, five-sack performance and declared, “It’s tough to win in this league when you’re playing a good team and your quarterback plays like s---.”
Then we learned of his elbow injury, which could cost him some game time. It could derail the season for Buffalo, which has the highest ceiling of any team. Or like Mahomes’s dislocated kneecap during Kansas City’s 2019 championship season, it could be necessary adversity that helps to create Super Bowl alignment for the Bills.
In a season that keeps presenting obstacles for quarterbacks, it’s better for Allen to deal with trouble now. For as good as the Bills are, they depend heavily on the quarterback’s heroics. Even if he can play through the elbow pain, this situation will ask more of the Bills, and if they handle it properly, they might acquire the key to surviving this wacky year of transition: More options for the playoffs. | 2022-11-12T11:48:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Star quarterbacks no longer guarantee NFL success - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/12/nfl-scoring-star-quarterbacks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/12/nfl-scoring-star-quarterbacks/ |
UFC president Dana White sees potential in televised slap fighting despite concerns over the sport's safety. (John Locher/AP)
A promotional video opens with scenes of roaming lights and fighter faceoffs, then transitions to howls, chest-thumping and slow-motion slaps across still faces. The video, released late last month, isn’t new. But it was shown ahead of Friday’s news conference during which Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White shared early details about the recently announced slap fighting league, called Power Slap.
“This all started for me back in 2017,” White said at Radio City Music Hall in New York. “I started seeing some of these slap videos on social media … and I was blown away by the numbers. Some of these have like 300 million views, so I started thinking. Obviously, this thing really works for social media, but I thought it would be good for television if done the right way.”
White said the league, which will be regulated by the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC), will include “rules, rankings and extensive medical testing.” Its medical requirements and weight classes will be similar to those featured in mixed martial arts promotions, UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell previously told ESPN.
In a typical slap fighting match, two competitors stand across from each other and trade slaps across the face. White sees promise in polishing the sport, which had been unregulated for years, by using weight classes to create more fitting matchups, limiting how many rounds those matches run, and instituting various requirements and regulations, including fouls, mouth guards and earplugs. Campbell told ESPN the league will utilize the 10-point must system used to score boxing and MMA fights.
“After testing it, it became clear to us that there’s massive potential here as a sport, not unlike the early years of the UFC,” Campbell said. “It made all the sense in the world to go toward regulation before the sport’s commencing, for all the obvious reasons — No. 1, the health and safety of the competitors.”
Worries about the sport’s safety reemerged after last month’s news that the NSAC would regulate Power Slap. But White suggests league organizers and athletes have taken those concerns seriously.
“These guys that have been doing it for a while, there actually is technique to it,” he said. “You can actually roll with the slap, they know how to defend, brace, whatever you want to call it. There’s actually technique to this thing, believe it or not.”
Despite White’s stated emphasis on safety, medical professionals are skeptical of anyone who suggests they can make slap fighting safer.
Nitin Agarwal, a neurosurgeon at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis whose research focuses on traumatic brain injuries, takes issue with the suggestion that slap fighting can be made safer.
“When it comes to the physical aspect of the martial arts, safety and defense are primary. By its virtue, slap boxing is an offensive sport. There is no defense,” said Agarwal, who has practiced taekwondo, krav maga and jujitsu. “You can’t use your shoulder to protect you, you can’t use your hands to protect, you can’t even turn your head to soften the blow or control where the blow is going to be placed. So that’s very worrisome.”
In the Power Slap promotional video, a quick sequence of slaps is followed by clips of bodies folding and dropping to the floor — or into the arms of awaiting attendants.
Agarwal said just one of those slaps can be “life altering,” adding that “no amount of preparation prevents the actual blow.
“You see these people pass out from one blow. In reality, what that is, is they just suffered a concussion. They suffered a traumatic brain injury,” he said. “Anybody who presents to the emergency room after a blow like that is being worked up with the full trauma work-up, including a trauma pan scan, which includes a full body CT scan and a scan of their head. I would not be surprised if there’s both visible and occult brain injury. … So, I’m very worried for these participants.” | 2022-11-12T11:48:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Doctors have concerns about Power Slap, Dana White's slap fighting league - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/12/power-slap-dana-white/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/12/power-slap-dana-white/ |
Tenoch Huerta’s role in ‘Wakanda Forever’ is a huge moment for Latinos
Many will see themselves in Namor, a breakout character in the “Black Panther” sequel
Perspective by David Betancourt
While watching “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” it’s easy to get swept up in the power of Namor.
The king of Marvel’s seas, played regally, with dignity, pride and full of indigenous, anti-colonial swag by Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta, is the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s next big deal. This is a Robert Downey Jr./Iron Man moment. This is an “uh-oh, Thanos has all the Infinity Stones” moment. This is a “yes, all three Spider-Men are in the movie” type of moment. This is a first episode of “WandaVision” type of moment.
In one of the most anticipated sequels in the history of the MCU, one that somehow still exists despite the loss of Chadwick Boseman, Huerta is el hombre. El chico que te quita el sueño (“The boy who takes your sleep away”) — which basically means that it’s an undeniably star-making performance. He’s all that and a bag of Vibranium.
That power of Namor, who first appeared in the pages of Marvel Comics in 1939, isn’t in the obvious. Sure, he’s as strong as the Hulk. He’s a king. He can fly, with literal wings on his feet. He’s a mutant — which means the X-Men will finally be in the MCU sooner rather than later.
But the true power of Namor is that he’s played by a Latino man — and one with brown skin — taking center stage in a Black superhero universe. And that’s not something that can be taken lightly.
The movie depicts two nations bordering each other — one on land (Wakanda), the other below the sea (Talokan), both led by superheroes. One is Black, the other is Indigenous, both powerful and refusing to adhere to colonization by force. I can count on one finger the number of times I’ve seen that in a superhero movie. And as someone who walks in both of those worlds, I can honestly say I never expected to connect so closely to a superhero film unless it was one I made myself. I became that Leonardo DiCaprio pointing GIF for two-and-a-half hours — and a movie that was already emotional for so many reasons became that much more so.
I spoke with Huerta at the premiere of “Wakanda Forever” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture last month. He referred to his Black Panther moment as “B and B power,” Brown and Black power. He’s using that as a term of embracement, not division, knowing that Black and Latino communities haven’t always seen eye to eye here in the United States.
He sees the making of the film as two worlds coming together for the greater good and realizing that the sins of colonization have impacted those communities equally. It was a chance to make beautiful music together, and realize that they are much more alike than they think.
“We’re the same,” Huerta said to me in Spanish. “[Latinos and Blacks] are not in two distinct points of life. We’re on the same side. And if we work together with love we can move forward. I hope that this film, with the message that it has, can help everyone understand that.”
Let’s be clear about something: Black people made this moment happen for Huerta — and it’s a moment he’s probably never experienced even in his native Mexico on this scale. The beauty of “Wakanda Forever” is its Blackness — including a Black director, writers, producers and actors — was a bridge, allowing Huerta to cross over into the MCU, and letting all of Latin America celebrate in its very own superhero moment just like “Black Panther” was for Black people all over the world in 2018.
Huerta’s ascension to MCU MVP goes against the grain of how entertainment and media works in Latin America. Seeing a Mexican his color in a regal role of leadership and super heroics is special. If you’re Latino/a/x, in the United States or Latin America, and been at your abuela’s house enough times when Univision or Telemundo was on, you already know what I’m talking about. What do you see when español is on TV? Doesn’t matter whether you’re watching the news, a novela, a movie, heck, even a commercial — the message is clear. White is the preferred template. And the closer you are to that Whiteness, the better chance you have to shine. Where do you think the age-old term mejorar la raza (better your race) comes from? Latin America always lets you know what it’s striving for.
In Latin America, Huerta has a better chance of being cast as the help than the hero. One of his biggest Spanish speaking roles to date? A drug dealer on “Narcos.” Think about when you see clearly-not-White Latinos on television. How many times were they in a role of servitude? Or the bad guy? Rarely are those the type of Latinos cast as the family living in that big mansion you always see on “La Rosa de Guadalupe” — they’re more likely cleaning that kind of house. Don’t believe me? What’s the biggest moment recently for a Latino actor who doesn’t look like a Utah Jazz season ticket holder? Yalitza Aparicio being nominated for an Oscar for “Roma,” right? What did she play in that movie? A maid. You get where I’m going. Ask yourself how many times you’ve seen a man of Huerta’s hue have a chance to be the leading man or, heck, even a Latin Lover on the big Spanish-speaking television networks, or streaming services such as Pantaya or Vix.
All of this is the remnant of the pervasive stench of anti-Blackness that has been part of Latin American culture for centuries. White? Great. Mestizo? Meh, okay, we’ll let you all in. Black? Doesn’t exist here unless we need help on our World Cup team. The average American who isn’t Latino doesn’t even realize Black people in Latin America exist, in part because of what they see whenever they are exposed to Latin American media.
That trademarked anti-Blackness of Latin America is something I feel every time someone is shocked to see my Puerto Rican father has a Black son. (Never mind the fact I strongly resemble him and have the same name. I’m just a lot taller and tanner than the guy, thanks to my beautiful African American mother.) Or every time I get looks from Latinos here in Washington when they hear me speak Spanish. Sí. Yo hablo español. Or every time those same Latinos speak back to me in English when I’ve clearly began a conversation with them in Spanish. It’s something I felt when listening to those recordings of Latino Los Angeles politicians saying horrible things about Black children last month. No one understands anti-Blackness in Latin America quite like someone who has to be Black in Latin America. And let me tell you, this moment Huerta is having? There’s a part of me that thinks Latin America doesn’t deserve it, given the regard in which they hold Blackness. I know it. He knows it. Y ustedes saben tambien. But Black people gave it to you anyway. De nada.
I couldn’t help but get sentimental in the moment when Huerta and I were speaking to each other in Spanish at a museum meant to honor the very people that were giving him his big break in Hollywood, in the city where I was born that was once, before gentrification, its own Wakanda. There we were, two brown-skinned Latinos in nice suits, very much aware of where comic book culture had taken both of us in our careers. It was a moment dripping in cool that your average Televisa producer would have looked right past in search of his next star that looked like neither one of us. But melanin prevailed on that night.
In “Wakanda Forever,” Namor, just like the Black Panther before him, leads a nation that looked into the face of colonization and said not today. Not here. Not now. Not ever. Even the secret origins of his surface-world name, “Namor,” is a chef’s kiss moment of Indigenous pride that we don’t want to spoil here. Huerta understands the strength of giving people that look like him, especially young people, a chance to see themselves in a way that many in their native lands don’t see as worth the time.
He told me, “If a child in Mexico or Latin America tomorrow looks in the mirror and says there’s nothing bad in the mirror, this is who I am — that means everything to me.” | 2022-11-12T12:01:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tenoch Huerta's Namor in ‘Wakanda Forever’ is a huge moment for Latinos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/11/12/tenoch-huerta-namor-wakanda-forever/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/11/12/tenoch-huerta-namor-wakanda-forever/ |
President Biden virtually speaks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping from the White House on Nov. 15, 2021. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
The surprisingly good showing for President Biden’s party in the midterm elections means Mr. Biden will have the domestic political wind at his back when he meets Monday with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping in Bali. Mr. Xi arrives with newly enhanced domestic standing, too, though his comes from the recent Communist Party congress’s orchestrated approval of his third five-year term in its top position — not a free election. Mr. Biden should not shy away from calling Mr. Xi’s attention to this contrast in what will be their first face-to-face meeting of his presidency. He could suggest that China might want to rewrite some of its propaganda about the dysfunction of U.S. democracy, now that so many participants in a free and fair vote have repudiated pro-Donald Trump Republican election deniers at the ballot box.
Bitter as the just-concluded campaign was, one thing Republicans and Democrats more or less agree on is the need for a more competitive stance toward China, geopolitically and economically. During the campaign, Democrats touted a legislative achievement aimed at thwarting China’s plans to dominate semiconductor manufacturing: the bipartisan Chips and Science Act, which provides tens of billions of dollars for domestic semiconductor manufacturing, on the condition that recipients don’t expand production in China. The bill has tens of billions more for basic research. And the Commerce Department recently announced limits on China’s access to chips and components for supercomputers, many of which Washington believes have applications for weaponry, a significant ratcheting up of the U.S. response to China’s more aggressive military posture toward Taiwan.
We question whether the Chips and Science Act is optimal policy. Research and education should boost competitiveness, but subsidizing selected domestic industries is more China’s style than the United States'. Nevertheless, together with the new restrictions on high-tech exports, these policies enjoy broad domestic support and constitute leverage for Mr. Biden in dealing with Mr. Xi on Monday — and subsequently. Also strengthening the president’s hand is the fact that the United States, though hardly free of inflation or recession risk, seems buoyant relative to the rest of the world, including China. The People’s Republic remains stalled in large part because of Mr. Xi’s own mistaken and disruptive “zero-covid” policy. Beijing announced incremental relaxation of the unpopular measures Friday. But officials gave no hint of unwinding it more broadly; it would be difficult to do so, because the virus has been spreading within China despite draconian measures, while a significant portion of the elderly population remains unvaccinated.
Russia’s surrender of Kherson, a key city in a province of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin had purported to annex six weeks ago, shows how mistaken Mr. Xi was to steer China into a “no limits” relationship with Moscow, or to suppose that a declining West would fail to stand up to territorial aggression. Mr. Biden should not hesitate to remind Mr. Xi of these realities, or to seek his cooperation in getting Mr. Putin to completely reverse course. During the party congress, Mr. Xi asserted that “drastic changes” are occurring in international politics, which is true, and that China’s autocratic system “offers humanity a new choice" for troubled times, which is not. Mr. Biden comes to the meeting in a strong position to tell him so. | 2022-11-12T12:18:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden has a strong hand to play at his summit with Xi Jinping - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/12/biden-xi-jinping-summit-chips-act-strength/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/12/biden-xi-jinping-summit-chips-act-strength/ |
It’s time to raise the voting age!
An ideally first-time voter displays a sticker. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
Where is the red wave I was promised? This cannot be! Something has gone wrong! These results — something is the matter with them. I would like to speak to an election manager, if one can be found.
After this disheartening news, I have been doing a great deal of soul-searching. Not my soul, which is, of course, perfect, but the souls of others. What, for instance, possessed Gen Z to put down their phones and Pokémon-Go-to-the-polls, and — worse yet — to vote for Democrats in substantial numbers when they arrived there?
There has been some mistake, clearly. And until we can get to the bottom of it, we have got to take prompt action to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Change our platform so that anything in it is appealing to young people? Learn to take the campaign to online spaces? Make inroads on TikTok? No, God forbid.
That would suggest there is something wrong with our party, and there is nothing wrong with our party. When I look at our prominent acolytes and national figureheads I see nothing but total dominance! The party is great and everyone in it is savory and not oleaginous, from Ted Cruz to Mehmet Oz to Donald Trump and — of course! — all the Mikes! What could be unappealing to young people about all the Mikes?
And our ideas?! Top-notch! Forcing people to give birth, banning library books and increasingly embracing fringe conspiracy theories — do these sound like the actions of a party that is off track? If you think that democracy is good and you like to see the results of the election before declaring a winner, I don’t know what to tell you! That’s a snowflake problem. Want student debt relief? No, you don’t. I am not moving an inch on any of these positions. You must come to me.
We already tried gerrymandering. And we will keep trying it! We already tried voter suppression of various kinds. That was good, but did not go far enough. It was not sufficiently well-targeted.
The answer is simple: We have got to raise the voting age. Twenty-one? That might not be enough, honestly. Millennials are not as conservative as they ought to be and some of them are pushing 40 now. We should consider whether we might not want it to be higher than that. Fifty feels reasonable. A good, round number.
I hear what you are saying. “You keep trying to tackle the problem from the perspective of discouraging voters! Why not, instead, modify any of your stances in a way that might encourage more people to vote for you?” I will tell you why not: because I do not want to.
Consider whom you want to trust with making decisions for the future. Shouldn’t you put your confidence in sober, levelheaded elders who, on their way out, are entirely unbiased and can look at the situation without considering their own self-interest?
Young people are the last people you want to make important choices about the future. They are not objective about it; they will be the ones living there. | 2022-11-12T12:19:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Republicans have but one option: Raise the voting age - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/12/republicans-raise-voting-age-satire/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/12/republicans-raise-voting-age-satire/ |
People visit the Korean War Memorial on Friday, Veterans Day, in Washington D.C. (Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images)
Cpl. Hanks was originally from Fort Worth, Texas, and was reported missing in action on Nov. 26, 1950, after his unit was attacked by the enemy as it attempted to withdraw from east of the Ch’ongch’on River near Anju in North Korea, according to a statement from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) this week.
“Following the battle, his remains could not be recovered,” the DPAA said, and Hanks was declared “nonrecoverable” on Jan. 16, 1956.
However, following a historic meeting between former president Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June 2018, Pyongyang turned over 55 boxes to U.S. authorities that “purported to contain the remains of American service members killed during the Korean War.”
The remains were taken to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where DPAA laboratory experts worked to identify the individuals. Scientists “used anthropological and isotope analysis” as well as DNA evidence to identify Hanks.
His body was finally accounted for in August 2022, the DPAA said, and it found “no evidence that he was ever a prisoner of war.”
#AccountedFor
The #DPAA announced today that U.S. #Army Cpl. Tommie T. Hanks, 27, of #FortWorth, #Texas, killed during the #KoreanWar, was accounted for on Aug. 2, 2022. Link: https://t.co/ZnRkkrltd8
| #NeverForgotten | #OurPromise | #DPAA | #NorthKorea | #DonaldTrump | #Science pic.twitter.com/QjIXIT9J7A
— Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) (@dodpaa) November 11, 2022
His name was previously recorded at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, along with others who are still missing from the Korean War. Now, the DPAA said a “rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.”
Korean War vets gather in Arlington for first time since pandemic
Yet the conflict is often described as America’s “forgotten war,” with veterans expressing frustration, borne of the perception that their military service is appreciated more overseas than at home by fellow Americans.
According to the DPAA, the remains of over 450 Americans killed in the war have been identified and returned to families for burial “with full military honors” since 1982. This is in addition to the approximately 2,000 Americans whose remains were identified in the years immediately following the end of hostilities.
However, over 7,500 U.S. soldiers are “still unaccounted-for from the Korean War, hundreds of whom are believed to be in a ‘non-recoverable’ category,” it said.
Identification is challenging as “cases from Korea represent highly commingled human remains involving thousands of missing persons from varied proveniences,” according to the ongoing government-backed Korean War Identification Project, which works with historians, scientists and families in the hope of identifying more slain soldiers.
Andrew Jeong contributed to this report. | 2022-11-12T12:36:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. soldier Tommie T. Hanks, killed in Korean War, is finally accounted for - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/12/korean-war-remains-tommie-hanks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/12/korean-war-remains-tommie-hanks/ |
What’s Next for Biden’s Green Agenda After Midterm Surprise?
WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 16: The dome of the U.S. Capitol Building is seen on November 16, 2021 in Washington, DC. According to media reports, the House is expected to vote on U.S. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda before lawmakers break for recess for the Thanksgiving holiday. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) (Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images North America)
For answers, I connected over Zoom on Thursday with Kevin Book. He is the co-founder of ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington-based firm that dissects US energy trends and politics at the federal, state and international level. He is also a member of the National Petroleum Council and a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Here is a condensed and lightly edited transcript of our conversation.Liam Denning: In all likelihood, we’re shifting from unified government in Washington with a thin majority to divided government with even thinner majorities. What does that mean on the energy and climate fronts for the next couple of years?Kevin Book: The Wall Street nostrum that gridlock is good because divided governments can’t go after economic growth or industrial sectors probably applies here — but not entirely. There have been cases where Republicans will agree to raise energy sector taxes to reflect what appears to be popular discontent with high prices; even under Republican leadership. Also, when legislative gridlock intensifies, the executive can try to creatively use old laws for new purposes — and almost always gets into trouble. Our courts are well stocked with strict constructionist judges, who take a dim view of broad interpretations of statute, however, especially at the Supreme Court level.
There are a couple of questions to be asked. First: Where do folks get along? Maybe permitting reform, depending on the composition of Congress as well as the reform. Another, surprisingly, could be carbon border adjustment mechanisms. That’s something that speaks to the broader trend of protectionism as much as it does to climate activism.
The second question is to what degree oversight from Republicans limits the administration. There’s a lot of Inflation Reduction Act money to spend, and relatively quickly. There’s going to be questions about that, for sure. Also about what happened with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Onshore and offshore fossil-energy leasing is probably going to get another hard look.
These interventions could slow the pace of regulatory progress. Anyone who’s served will tell you how disruptive it can be to answer questions for oversight hearings. Also, the answers will be read by appropriators with a lot of leverage via defunding. If they hear something they don’t like, they could propose riders to must-pass bills that would target a reduction or elimination of an agency function doing something they don’t like.
LD: Moving away from Congress, how do the states react to these midterm results vis-a-vis climate policy?
KB: Blue states have been greening up more than red states in terms of mandates. Most of the states with renewable portfolio standards — 30 plus (Washington) DC — have Democratic governments in some form. Blue-state greening is something of a trend. You can see that after Colorado and New Mexico went blue three ways (with Democrats taking the governor’s mansion and both legislative chambers) and the greening that followed, including restrictive regulation of oil and gas production despite significant output in both states. In Virginia, you saw the greening of a legacy fossil-energy producing state with a three-way blue government when (former governor Terry) McAuliffe took office. Does it make a big difference in Maryland and Massachusetts to have Democratic governors when they already had pretty green Republican predecessors? Probably not. Maybe a bit more difference in Michigan.
The red, fossil-energy producing states have been the principle purveyors of Biden backlash. At a federal level, slightly more than half of the 51 (states plus DC) are red states; at a local level, it’s closer to 20. Local governments, where their economic franchise is threatened, have taken steps against financial-sector players perceived as putting those franchises at risk: Texas, West Virginia, Oklahoma. This is likely to continue. It’s been a resonant issue with local industry.
But there’s a longer-term story yet to play out. Fossil-energy production is highly concentrated: Of those 25 red states, seven are the biggest producers. For the rest of them, some are pretty sunny, windy places with other stakes in the game. About two thirds of wind capacity is in red states. For those red states that are not big fossil-energy producers, they may eventually find their economic constituencies — the folks electing them — want more support. This is where it could get interesting. Historically, the Republican brand was about lower factor costs for corporate players in terms of environmental expediency, labor terms, tax rates. This is something Republicans have to sell to green industry, just like they did to fossil-energy producers.
LD: What might we expect from the lame duck session?
KB: The uncertainty emanating from the Georgia runoff means that, for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, time is running out to confirm federal judges and high-priority appointees, as well as pass a couple of critical bills. If Democrats win the Georgia race, the pressure to confirm judges will likely go away. Assuming that, there would be room for legislation. There could be an opportunity for permitting reform as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Senator Joe Manchin has already telegraphed his intent to do so, though that could be challenging. Likewise, the funding bill provides a second opportunity for that.
One interesting question concerns the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels, or NOPEC, bill. It turns out that December 6, Georgia’s runoff day, is one day after the European Union’s embargo of Russian crude kicks in, and also the onset of its maritime services ban for crude oil, likely to disrupt global supply. It’s also two days after the OPEC+ meeting. So we’re left with some questions about how the 4th, 5th and 6th of December turn out. If, on the 7th, Democrats find themselves with more time to run with Senate control, and OPEC has held or even cut output targets, and crude markets are tight, then NOPEC could start to get a hearing.
LD: While it seems less likely, let’s say Democrats somehow retained control of both chambers, could we expect anything energy or climate-related then?
KB: If Democrats retain the Senate, which is where a lot of power is for confirming nominees to the courts and federal agencies, then one of the big checks Republicans would have on executive action goes away. The oversight would be gone also on the House side and, with it, some of the risks that I described earlier.
The opportunity set might not get much bigger, though, especially if Democrats’ margin in the House got narrower still. But there would still theoretically be room for one more budget reconciliation act that could allow for additional party-line modifications.
Biden campaigned on modifying the 2017 tax act. He could still go after that. And if we look at what came out of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, there were some unfinished agenda items that could show up in a bill like that. Doing so would still mean winning over the same chairman of the same energy committee: (Senator) Joe Manchin from West Virginia. In addition, there were two other fossil-state Democrats up for re-election: Martin Heinrich from New Mexico and John Tester from Montana. If you push too hard on Manchin, there’s the question of whether he might be willing to defect and give control to the Republicans.
LD: How successful has the administration been to date in using executive power in advancing its climate agenda?
KB: The administration’s put out multiple pathways to move their climate agenda along. The first was, legislatively, to create new incentives and expand the existing ones. The second was a series of regulations which, unlike the incentives, are well behind pace and likely to require defense in court into the next presidency. That puts some of them at risk. The third is executive superpowers. They’ve started to use a lot of them: The power to control federal lands, trade, opportunities to use export finance for a climate agenda, that sort of thing. The fourth is the indirect financialization of climate risk; introducing climate risk as a cost of money rather than a cost of carbon, which ends up having a greater impact on the higher carbon-intensity players in an economy. The disclosure rule from the SEC is probably the most prominent example.
The most interesting outgrowth from the 2020 election was that the incredibly divisive politics produced a really strong partisan alignment to fuel and technology that doesn’t have much bearing on reality. So Republicans truly became the defenders of fossil fuels as a matter of policy and politics. And Democrats became ever more the green transition party. But the rocks don’t belong to political parties, the people above them do. Nor do the wind and the sun and the rain (to quote the Blue Oyster Cult).
This is a little bit unusual and created some surprising difficulties in just getting things done. One example: The Biden administration staffed-up for transition and found itself short of fossil-energy expertise during a conventional energy crisis. When conventional energy prices are rising, it’s hard to advance a green agenda. This wouldn’t be a bumper sticker I’d expect to see from the DNC, but fracking made greening a lot easier. Low energy prices allowed President Biden to campaign on and win with the greenest agenda in presidential history.
LD: You mentioned Manchin. He played a decisive role in the climate legislation that ultimately passed this summer. What’s next for him?
KB: If we end up with a 50/50 Senate, kingmaker status remains intact. Chairman Manchin will still have not only the purview of energy policy for extraction and production, federal lands and everything except environmental policy, essentially. He’ll also have a decisive vote on some of the things that come up and agenda-setting authority for the legislation that does get considered.
It’s worth considering that the Energy Act of 2020 happened when Manchin was working from the other side of the power structure. You had a Republican president and you could say with some certainty that the bipartisan compromise did happen then and could happen still. And it’s probably not a bad thing to have a Democrat with strong economic allegiance to conventional fuels. In a world where there’s a Republican House that does prioritize a fossil-fuel agenda, having Manchin as a bridgehead in the Senate Energy Committee could be a way to get some bargains done. Eventually.
LD: President Biden held an occasionally feisty press conference Wednesday evening. He had some disparaging comments about the domestic oil industry. With the elections out of the way, does Biden ease off that or, given the Democrats’ outperformance, feel emboldened?
KB: We will have to see what Democrats conclude about their strategy in this election. But looking at how it went, one might conclude that the green agenda and targeting conventional fuel producers with critical rhetoric was successful. Blame shifting is easier than adding new energy supply.
The election isn’t entirely over, of course — even after the Georgia runoff. One thing that came up during that press conference was whether or not the president would run again. The Biden administration, more than perhaps most, is relying on some degree of continuity, particularly for its energy and climate policy. A future president could abandon the defense of some of the pending regulation, work to reverse some of those rules and also implement the IRA in a very different way. So the continuity side of this, staying with the green agenda and trying to win on it, could also be a way to preserve it.
There are a lot of popular perceptions of oil and gas production that aren’t entirely flattering. But this is a period where one of the agents of economic stability for Western democracies is likely to be the oil industry. And it raises the question of whether cooperation could produce a different result. We’re in a structural shortage, so the time for getting more out of the ground is now and it may not be such a good time to try to run the industry into the ground. Plus, a lot of the companies that will likely be players in carbon reduction and capture technologies are the ones in the president’s political crosshairs. Still, that may well continue if Democrats conclude this was a successful way to win.
LD: As much as Democrats did well elsewhere, Florida seems to have transitioned from a swing state to a red state. How does that impact US energy and climate politics? Start with how the administration now deals with Venezuela.
KB: The Venezuela relationship has resonance not only with the diaspora that has formed during the (former Venezuelan President Hugo) Chavez era and now under (President Nicolas) Maduro, but also with the Cuban communities who associate Maduro with the kind of communism they fled. And so the question is whether there’s an opportunity for Democrats to vie for that constituency, which could be decisive in a close race. In this election, (Representative) Maria Salazar’s district in Florida was likely to run Republican anyway, but it was also a potential target of opportunity for Democrats. It really would have been a bad time to be making nice with Maduro when trying to convince those voters to go blue.
But the time has come and gone and, maybe, if you’re already losing, why wait? I’ve been thinking of the negotiation that seems to have started in March when two administration envoys went to meet with Maduro representatives. It looks like that’s going to unstick some sanctions so that US companies can increase production at a time when the world needs more oil. That will likely hinge on talks in Mexico City between the Maduro regime and the opposition, expected to be announced any day. The administration could presumably endorse those, though they might be cautious because there’s still the Georgia race to consider. But they may have decided that the ship has sailed and they need to worry more about barrels now than trying to look tough on communism.
LD: What’s the significance of Florida now being virtually a given on the Republican side of the ledger in a 2024 election?
KB: In the sense that at least one, and possibly two, Florida residents could be competing for the presidency, it’s going to have outsize influence depending on how the eventual winner of the Republican nomination performs in the 2024 elections. In terms of Florida itself, it’s not a big producer of conventional fuels. It’s a fairly significant producer and consumer of power, but also heavily reliant on fuel imports. Hurricanes can create some very significant disruptions in supply.
An interesting aspect of Hurricane Ian was that President Biden and Governor Ron DeSantis got along. There was a brief truce in an increasingly partisan standoff over other issues like immigration. And it was a pragmatic one: Florida, because of its import dependence and climate-change exposure, needs the federal government. Florida may be an outpost for Republicans, but not necessarily a place that can afford to make an enemy of Washington.
LD: About those two Florida residents, DeSantis and Trump. It now seems likely we’re going to see big divisions within the Republican Party. What might that contest mean for climate and energy politics over the next couple of years and maybe even beyond?
KB: So we’re talking about the Ron-Don runoff and maybe the dawn of Ron and the sunset of Don? This isn’t the first Florida governor to stoke hopes for a traditionalist Republican as a presidential candidate. But in 2016, Jeb Bush was bested by Trump. DeSantis is maybe closer to Trumpist territory but still very much considered by many to be a traditionalist.
Both are executives in terms of having run political units — one, the country, the other, a state — and both know how to win votes. Neither is what I would call an energy policy theorist. Both have energy and environmental stances that reflect political affiliation. President Trump was fairly laissez faire on energy production. Not because New York real-estate developers are born with a drill-bit in their hands, but because that was the policy of the party for which he won the nomination. And what we don’t know about DeSantis on energy could be filled in by the simple fact that he would be running for the Republican nomination.
I would make one distinction. The Floridian by birth is a person who understands climate risk experientially, even if he doesn’t use that phrase. A Floridian by residence might have the same challenges, but shorter direct experience. The words you get from Republicans on the Gulf Coast to describe climate risk are different from the words you get from, say, Democrats in California. But they’re both talking about the same infrastructure challenges, the same need for resilience and adaptation.
So the question would be: To the extent that any president brings the place they’re from with them to the White House — and I think a lot of them do — what might it mean to have a Republican from Florida potentially as president compared to a Republican of demonstrably malleable ideology from New York? It might mean some degree of pragmatism on climate that could be a different, and surprising, result.
LD: Meanwhile, Biden said he plans on running in 2024. If so, how prominent would the green agenda be on his platform compared to 2020?
KB: The 2020 pitch was an aspirational one. The 2024 pitch would probably be more a triumphalist recounting of successes. Incumbent presidents get to run on their record. But they also have to provide reasons for the people originally excited about the opportunity to explain away their dissatisfaction with the eventual reality. Compromise is an innate part of our process. And it means that anybody with a record falls short of somebody without one. That’s one of the challenges for senators with long tenures. And yet we have one in the Oval Office today.
He might need a fluid explanation of where the agenda has gone to date and why it would go further. To draw left-of-center, youthful constituents, the president will probably have to do more than just say we passed a bill and we’re in the process of implementing it. He’ll have to outline next steps.
Biden laid out a 2030 target of reducing emissions by between 50% and 52% below 2005 levels. Demonstrating progress toward that in the next couple of years is going to be very difficult. Not only would it almost certainly be back-end loaded, we’re in the middle of an energy war in Europe. That has created some challenges in terms of conventional energy prices that potentially fuel a backlash against the green agenda in some places. Plus, that war and other de-globalizing influences are driving up the cost of deploying green energy in this country, even with government money.
I expect the IRA and progress to date would feature prominently. There’s another reason why he’s probably going to want to rush those dollars out; not just because he’s campaigning on it but because unobligated balances could be a target for rescission by a future Republican government. The folks in Biden’s administration know that not only do they have a maximum of 10 years for a lot of the IRA disbursements; they might have little more than two years.
Besides his record, he’s going to need to tell the next story. That is probably going to have to be one of not just renewed global leadership but demonstrable progress towards global outcomes. That’s where the rift with China could be problematic, as could bifurcation vis-a-vis Russia and other competitor nations. If he’s going to tell a global story, in addition to the next step of meeting our own climate commitments, he needs to be able to show some global successes. You have to tell a big story, and there’s steps you have to take to get ready for that. Agitating for big change could have the effect of mobilizing young voters, and that could be a key to victory.More From Bloomberg Opinion:
• Republicans Were Wrong About Abortion: Sarah Green Carmichael | 2022-11-12T12:36:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What’s Next for Biden’s Green Agenda After Midterm Surprise? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/whats-next-for-bidens-green-agenda-after-midtermsurprise/2022/11/12/a5b21790-6281-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/whats-next-for-bidens-green-agenda-after-midtermsurprise/2022/11/12/a5b21790-6281-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Scientists are using tech platforms and virtual reality to create avatars, chatbots and more to help people still mourning
By Caren Chesler
(Rebekka Dunlap for The Washington Post)
In 2020, a Korean documentary team invited on its show a mother who had lost her 7-year-old daughter to an incurable disease. The girl’s death was so sudden — she died a week after being diagnosed in 2016 — the mother, Jang Ji-Sun, did not have a chance to say goodbye. For three years she was obsessed with the loss of her daughter.
The producers of the documentary, “Meeting You,” created a digitized re-creation of the child that the mother could see through a virtual reality headset (the TV audience was also able to see the image of the daughter).
On the show, the virtual girl, Na-yeon, appeared from behind a woodpile and runs toward her mother, calling, “Mom.” The mother burst into tears and said, “Mom missed you so much, Na-yeon.” A video of the show reportedly received 19 million views. While the experience was painful, the mother told the Korean Times that she would do it again if she could; she finally got a chance to say goodbye.
In "Meeting You," a Korean TV documentary, Jang Ji-Sun virtually embraces a digitized re-creation of her 7-year-old daughter who died in 2016. (Video: MBC)
“I was worried how the mother would react” to the digitized daughter, the producer of the documentary, Kim Jong-woo, told the newspaper. “No matter how hard we tried to make the character similar, she still can tell the difference. But she said she was happy to see even the slight reflection of Na-yeon.”
People have always craved post-death contact with their loved ones. Efforts to remain in touch with the dead have existed for eons, such as photographing deceased children, holding seances and even keeping a corpse in the house for posterity. But artificial intelligence and virtual reality, along with other technological advances, have taken us a huge step closer to bringing the dead back to life.
“It’s something that’s very fundamental to humans, to keep a connection to something they loved,” said Sherman Lee, a psychology associate professor at the Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va., and director of the Pandemic Grief Project.
A continuing bond with a loved one — such as by listening to old voice mails, watching old videos and engaging with chatbots that can speak in a loved one’s voice — can bring comfort. But it also can exacerbate the grief, particularly for those whose loved ones died by suicide, as people relive the loss anew, research shows.
“If you’re asking me, Is watching videos of your deceased spouse every night a helpful thing to do, instead of re-engaging the world again and spending that time with friends and family? No, I don’t think it’s helpful,” Lee said. “But that said, would it be helpful to smash all of the videos and lock them up in a room? That’s going to make the grieving process worse.”
Science has definitely taken an interest in connecting the bereaved with their loved ones.
For instance, Hossein Rahnama, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and a research affiliate with MIT Media Lab, has been building a platform called Augmented Eternity, which allows someone to create a digital persona from a dead person’s photos, texts, emails, social media posts, public statements and blog entries that will be able to interact with relatives and others.
To make reliable predictions of what the deceased might have said, the models need vast amounts of data. Rahnama said that will work well for millennials, who post everything they do on the internet, but less well for older people who aren’t as online focused or savvy. Rahnama receives emails almost weekly from people who are terminally ill, asking if there is a way to conserve their legacy for their loved ones. He said he now has a beta group of 25 people testing his product. His goal is for consumers to one day be able to create their own eternal digital entities.
In June, Amazon unveiled a new feature it’s developing for Alexa, in which the virtual assistant can read aloud stories in a deceased loved one’s voice after just hearing a minute of that person’s speech. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) “While AI can’t eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last,” said Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for Amazon Alexa.
And several entrepreneurs in the AI sphere, including James Vlahos of HereAfter AI and Eugenia Kuyda, who co-founded AI start-ups Luka and Replika, have turned their efforts toward virtual representations of people, using data from their digital footprint to craft an avatar or chatbot that can interact with family members after they’ve passed.
HereAfter’s app takes users through an interview process before they’ve died, prompting them to recollect stories and memories that are then recorded. After they’ve passed, family members can ask questions, and the app responds in the deceased’s voice using the accumulated interview information, almost like it’s engaging in a conversation.
Vlahos, HereAfter’s chief executive, said he was motivated to start the company after building a chatbot — or Dadbot as he calls it — from about a dozen hour-long recordings he made of his father after his dad was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 2016.
Vlahos transcribed those conversations and gathered his own memories of his dad. He then used a software platform called PullString to program the Dadbot. Vlahos spent a year inputting strings of conversation and teaching the bot to interpret what people said to it. When sent a message or asked a question, the Dadbot would respond similarly to how his father would, either with a text message, audio of a story or song, or even a photo.
He chats with the Dadbot every month or so, whenever he wants to hear his voice. One time, he went to a spot where his father’s ashes were scattered, overlooking Memorial Stadium at the University of California’s Berkeley campus, where his father rarely missed a football game, and asked the Dadbot to sing him a Cal spirit song, which it then did.
Vlahos said the Dadbot doesn’t make him miss his father any less. “But I do love that he can feel more present to me, with the aspects of his personality that I love so much less clouded by the passage of time,” he said.
How mourning can affect us mentally and even physically — including blood pressure and the immune system
Kuyda created a chatbot of a dear friend and roommate, Roman Mazurenko, for a similar reason. She and Mazurenko had moved from Moscow to the United States in 2015 and were living together in San Francisco when, on a brief trip back home, Mazurenko was killed by a hit-and-run driver. At the time, her company Luka was building chatbot-based virtual assistants. After Mazurenko died, Kuyda decided to use the 10,000 text messages she and Mazurenko had exchanged — as well as texts Mazurenko had sent to others — to create a digital version of him.
Their communications were just text messages on a messenger app, but to those who knew Mazurenko, his responses on the app were spot on. They sounded just like him because they largely were his responses, but made at another time in another context.
“It was just nice to be able to remember him in a special way and to be able to talk to him like we did before,” she said.
The company made the app, called Roman Mazurenko, publicly available, and people who didn’t even know him began downloading it and texting him. Some reached out to the company requesting that it make bots of their own loved ones.
She was 30 at the time, and he was the first important person in her life to die. She struggled with how someone so ever-present was no longer there. It was like he never existed, she said. “For me, to be able to get back to him, to continue to have the communication we had before, it was sort of therapeutic,” she said. Five years later, she still texts with his chatbot every week or two.
Psychologists say creating a virtual copy of a lost loved one can be therapeutic, especially in cases with unresolved issues, but could it lead to someone wanting to remain in this virtual world of their loved one?
My once-vibrant husband died of ALS, and my complicated grief is deep
“By giving somebody the ability to see their loved one again, is that going to give them some solace, or is it going to become like an addiction?” says clinical psychologist Albert “Skip” Rizzo, director of Medical Virtual Reality at the Institute for Creative Technologies and a research professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
Grief therapists sometimes invite people to have an imaginary conversation with the deceased, or to write a letter or role play with the therapists. With digital recreations of the dead, particularly in virtual reality, the experience would be more immersive.
Why people want to hold on to their loved ones is understandable.
One of our basic drives is to attach to others, particularly those who provide a secure base, like a parent for a child, said Robert Neimeyer, director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition. “These are among our strongest evolutionary imperatives, as beings, and our technologies are recruited to support that goal,” he said.
After the telephone was invented, he said, Thomas Edison was interested in developing a “spirit phone” to somehow communicate with the dead. And seeing a photograph of a deceased son who died at the Gettysburg battle during the Civil War was just as uncanny an experience for a parent then as it is for that mother in the video to see her dead daughter in virtual reality, Neimeyer said.
“What is surreal in one era quickly becomes conventional in the next,” he said. “In general, in life, we don’t grow as people by eliminating who we have loved, how we have loved what we have loved. It’s a question of holding on differently. How can we use this relationship as a resource? I think the technology can contribute to that.” | 2022-11-12T12:36:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Grieving relatives use AI to connect with deceased loved ones - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/12/artificial-intelligence-grief/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/12/artificial-intelligence-grief/ |
Long-lost operetta by Jewish WWII refugees gets first performance since 1945
By Ken Sturtz
Newly arrived Jewish refugees receive food and other refreshments at a picnic in 1944 at Fort Ontario in Oswego, N.Y. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
OSWEGO, N.Y. — During World War II, nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees who had escaped the Holocaust were brought to the United States and given safe haven at an Army post in Upstate New York.
Fearing that they would be sent back to Europe at war’s end, they lobbied to stay in America. They turned to leading citizens who drafted a petition to the president and Congress. They testified at a congressional hearing. And they wrote and performed an operetta sharing their story.
The score and libretto of “The Golden Cage” soon disappeared. Decades later, a historian tracked them down. This weekend, for the first time since 1945, the operetta is being performed.
“We feel that this is incredibly significant,” said Marilynn Smiley, president of Oswego Opera Theater, which is producing the operetta, noting that the issues it raised about how the country treats refugees remain relevant.
Antisemitic and anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States ran deep in the lead-up to World War II, and strict immigration quotas blocked most Jews fleeing Europe. In the most notorious incident, in 1939, the government refused to admit Jewish refugees on the German liner St. Louis; the ship was forced to return to Europe, where more than 250 of the passengers were killed in the Holocaust.
In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board. Its staff — initially tasked, among other things, with getting other countries to help refugees fleeing Nazi persecution — convinced Roosevelt that the United States should take some of the refugees, partly to encourage other countries to do more. The country would ultimately accept just 982 refugees outside of the quota system. They came from 18 countries, and nearly all of them were Jewish.
To house them, Roosevelt announced the establishment of an emergency refugee shelter at Fort Ontario in Oswego, N.Y., on the shore of Lake Ontario.
“These people definitely felt like they were being rescued,” said Rebecca Erbelding, a historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. But it wasn’t so simple. The refugees would be guests of Roosevelt with no legal immigration status. All had to sign documents agreeing to return to Europe when the war ended.
They boarded a troopship in Italy and, after dodging U-boats, arrived in New York in August. They traveled by train to Fort Ontario and settled into barracks. They were confined to the shelter, and the fort’s chain-link fence topped with barbed wire reminded them of the concentration camps some had escaped.
People in the community generally embraced their new neighbors. Refugees attended the local school and college. Adults weren’t allowed to work outside the shelter, but many busied themselves learning English and taking classes. They began publishing a weekly newspaper.
But they remained in limbo. After the war ended, some refugees voluntarily returned home. But many had relatives in the United States, and most wanted to stay.
Months after fighting in Europe had stopped, the government still couldn’t decide what to do, said Paul Lear, manager of Fort Ontario State Historic Site. Congressional hearings failed to resolve the issue.
“There was still no word of their fate, and everyone was very depressed,” Lear said.
World War II’s child evacuations inflicted terrible trauma
Local officials and many prominent figures, including Eleanor Roosevelt, lobbied to let the refugees stay.
Among the refugees were accomplished musicians and composers. They had organized several choirs and an orchestra in Oswego and performed concerts, plays and operas. They decided to write an operetta as a dramatic plea for their freedom. It detailed their escape of the Holocaust, their journey to the United States and their lives at the shelter in Oswego as well as their hatred of confinement.
Composer Charles Abeles wrote the music, and artist Miriam Sommerburg wrote the text. Abeles had been an orchestra conductor near Vienna before being arrested and leaving Austria. Sommerburg was a prominent artist before fleeing Germany. The original ending of “The Golden Cage,” written in November 1945, depicted miserable refugees trapped like birds in a golden cage, Lear said.
In late December, the Fort Ontario refugees learned that President Harry S. Truman’s directive to prioritize refugees in the nation’s immigration quota system would include them, allowing them to gain legal immigration status.
“And the refugees are all elated, and that’s how ‘The Golden Cage’ gets dropped,” Lear said. “They don’t have time to finish it.”
The refugees began leaving Fort Ontario within weeks and didn’t have time to put on a regular production. Instead the actors and singers read and sang their parts to the accompaniment of a piano. The operetta was performed on New Year’s Eve with a hastily added new finale incorporating the good news about their fate. The operetta then receded into obscurity.
Smiley, a retired SUNY Oswego music professor, began researching the music of the shelter refugees years ago. She scoured archival collections, sifting through boxes of documents, but found only passing references to “The Golden Cage.”
In 2009, she connected with a visitor to the Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum in Oswego. The man was from Germany and said his uncle, Abeles, had been a refugee. Smiley learned that after leaving Fort Ontario, Abeles had returned to Austria, stopping briefly in New York City to try to market his trove of musical works. But they were stolen instead.
A couple of years later, Smiley received a package in the mail.
“Well I opened it and here was all this music of ‘The Golden Cage,’ ” she said. The composer’s nephews had found a rough draft of “The Golden Cage” in one of their attics.
“It had almost been forgotten,” she said. “It was in a trunk of some of his belongings.”
The Holocaust survivor who fell in love with her American liberator
Smiley began searching archival collections for the text of the operetta, without success. Then she happened to ask Lear if he knew anything about “The Golden Cage.” He soon produced a copy of the text he’d discovered at the National Archives.
Smiley wanted Oswego Opera Theater to stage a performance of the operetta, but the music was incomplete. She turned to Juan LaManna, the opera’s artistic director and a SUNY Oswego professor, to fill in the missing parts.
“And there were many, many missing parts,” LaManna said. “There were entire sections that had words, but had no music and vice versa.”
The operetta traces the plight of the refugees, their journey to the United States and their lives in Oswego. The music was written for a piano and singers. LaManna added music for a small orchestra.
“It was very exciting to kind of re-create what the score would have been had it been completed,” LaManna said.
The goal isn’t to present a historical reenactment of the operetta exactly as it was originally performed, said Benjamin Spierman, stage director for Oswego Opera Theater. A good deal remains unknown about how it was performed, and how the music and text went together.
“It was very much a piece of its time telling their story,” he said. “I don’t know that the expectation was that it would have a life more than 70 years later.”
Spierman said he and LaManna tried to take the original material and slightly reconstitute it for a modern audience. The central themes raised in the operetta about how the country deals with immigrants and refugees are as relevant today as they were then, he said.
“This particular story, both as an American and as a Jew, really has a lot of poignancy for me,” he said. “And so to be able to put it together is really an incredible privilege.”
Ken Sturtz is a freelance journalist based in Mexico, N.Y.
More on World War II
Lost grave markers surface from a distant World War II battlefield
To liberate Auschwitz, David Dushman drove a Soviet tank through its barbed wire. Horrors awaited inside. | 2022-11-12T12:36:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Operetta by Jewish WWII refugees, lost for decades, returns to stage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/11/12/golden-cage-operetta-jewish-refugees/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/11/12/golden-cage-operetta-jewish-refugees/ |
Everyone struggles to put down their phones, but some families have had enough
“My mother has become very attached to her phone over the last five years. Whenever we’re together, she’s often on her phone, usually scrolling through social media,” says Angela, 37, who declined to use her last name to avoid hurting her parents’ feelings. “It really only bothers me when my children are around because they’re often trying to get her attention, and she’s unaware they’re trying to get her attention because she’s on her phone.”
How a year lived online has changed our children
Everything you should fix on your parent's phone
They learned it from their own children
Have a chat, buy them a smartwatch | 2022-11-12T12:37:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How to get Boomers to stop staring at their phones - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/12/boomers-screentime/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/12/boomers-screentime/ |
President Biden and other leaders at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Saturday. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — President Biden arrived here Saturday, the second stop of a week-long foreign trip seeking to reassure the world community that, no matter the political disruptions back home, the United States can still be a reliable global leader.
On the heels of a midterm election that gave him better-than-expected results — yet still could cost his party full control of Congress when final results are in, complicating his goals — he has used both appearances so far to press that theme and rally other nations.
During a speech in Egypt at the COP27 climate conference, Biden touted the United States as the global pacesetter in fighting climate change. And in Phnom Penh for a summit of southeast Asian nations, he immediately began trying to unite other nations to provide a counterweight to the rising economic and military threat that China poses.
One of the president’s enduring challenges, however, has been to persuade his fellow leaders that former president Donald Trump’s disruption of American foreign policy was an aberration, not a long-lasting shift. Hours into his presidency, Biden moved to rejoin the Paris climate accords that Trump had left, and after voters last week rendered a verdict on his first two years in office, he attempted to signal that his declaration of renewed American leadership was not in jeopardy.
Biden hopes to tamp down any notion that GOP hard-liners led by Trump, who may announce another presidential campaign within days, could gain power and torpedo any promises his administration makes on climate change. In addition, he’s working to unify the world against Russian aggression and show that the American commitment to Ukraine’s cause isn’t in jeopardy despite possible Republican control of Congress.
As he began meetings with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, he said he would address “the biggest issues of our time,” including energy, climate, health and national security, as well as the impacts that nations here are feeling from Russia’s war in Ukraine. He called ASEAN “the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy.”
The president also said he hoped to “defend against the significant threats against rule-based order and threats to the rule of law,” a seeming reference to China.
Still, even Biden wouldn’t have had to look far for a reminder of the uncertainty presented by domestic politics: During some 20 hours of travel on Air Force One over the past few days, the television screens were tuned into CNN’s blanket coverage of election results.
One of the big tests will come during the president’s third and final stop Monday in Bali, when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit. White House officials said they do not expect significant progress on major issues and characterized the meeting as an effort to keep an open line of communication between the two countries. It will be the two leaders’ first face-to-face meeting since Biden took office.
While some Democrats feared a midterm wipeout would weaken him on the world stage, top White House aides say the relatively successful outcome should be a boost. “The results from Tuesday show that the American people are sending him out to the world stage in a very strong position,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, told reporters ahead of the trip.
Biden has often noted that he has faced skepticism abroad after Trump’s stormy tenure, citing a meeting of the leaders from the world’s top seven economies early in his presidency. “I said, ‘America is back,’ ” Biden recounted. “And one of the leaders looked at me and said, ‘For how long?’ ”
“He wants to reassure people, but those reassurances are very hard based on the political situation we’re in. And I think the Europeans are right to question how long we’re back,” said Samantha Gross, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in climate and energy.
Rosa Balfour, director of the think tank Carnegie Europe in Brussels, said Wednesday that while the topic of American reliability among European partners “remains a pertinent question,” concerns were soothed a bit following the midterm election results.
“Everybody was very, very, very worried in European capitals,” Balfour said. “The fact that it looks like there hasn’t been a [Republican] wave … actually is very promising.”
Yet some anxiety remains. And while the temperature has been lowered, she said, it’s clear to those watching from afar that the fever has not broken. “Perhaps there hasn’t been a sufficient sense of urgency that Europe needs to prepare for a hostile, maybe even more hostile than Trump, president in 2024,” she said.
Biden’s stop at the seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on the Sinai Peninsula was meant to be a visible reminder of the importance his administration places on climate change. He had not initially planned to attend, but after a lengthy debate with advisers he reoriented his schedule.
Before his speech there, Biden met with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, who is hosting the conference and has faced criticism for a dismal human rights record.
The Biden administration decided in September to withhold $130 million in security aid for Egypt for the second year because of a range of concerns on that issue, including arbitrary arrests, excessive pretrial detentions and torture by government jailers. Political and media freedoms have also been restricted under Sisi.
Biden and Sisi held an extensive discussion about human rights, according to White House advisers, and Biden raised specific cases and pressed for the release of pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel Fattah.
“I can say emphatically that we believe that Alaa Abdel Fattah should be released,” Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One following the stop in Egypt. He noted the “constant debate” over whether a diplomatic resolution is best pursued through “public pressure or private engagement” and then opted for the latter.
“In terms of talking through the specifics of our discussions with the Egyptians, I’d like to leave those behind closed doors for the moment,” Sullivan said.
One of Biden’s goals during his visit to ASEAN is to signal to key allies like Japan and South Korea that the United States is supporting them as China gains more economic power.
“It is certainly the case that the countries of the region do not want conflict or confrontation between the major powers,” Sullivan said. “But they also very much want U.S. presence — forward-deployed presence in the region. And the reason they want that is because they see the United States as an important anchor of peace and stability.”
“There is no doubt that the president comes in with a meaningful value proposition to the rest of the region that says, ‘The United States is a resident Pacific power. We played a critical role in the past. We play a critical role today. And we have every intention of doing so in the future,’ ” Sullivan said. | 2022-11-12T13:06:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden works to convince the world U.S. is back as Asia swing starts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/12/biden-asean-summit-american-leadership/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/12/biden-asean-summit-american-leadership/ |
Former president Donald Trump answers questions from reporters during an election night party Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. (Phelan M. Ebenhack for The Washington Post)
Virtually every major political decision former president Donald Trump has made since he lost on Election Day 2020 has been a bad one.
It initially seemed as though he might move on, albeit petulantly. But then he decided he’d take a page out of the third-world-dictator playbook and cling to power by any means necessary.
When he left the White House, he decided he would take government documents and then decided to resist returning them — in a way that now presents perhaps Trump’s most significant legal liability to date.
Then he decided he was going to try to assert dominion over the party by endorsing candidates in the most important 2022 races in the country. Most underperformed their fellow Republicans on the ballot on Tuesday and lost winnable races — including some who could make the difference for Senate control. And if the GOP does come up short, there’ll be a credible case that Trump cost his party that chamber for the second straight election.
And finally, Trump decided that he would use the tail-end of the midterms to focus on his own impending presidential announcement, which still appears set for Tuesday. Trump has now backed himself into a corner: It’s exceedingly bad timing, but if he doesn’t go forward with it, he’ll look weak and chastened.
None of this means the GOP won’t nominate Trump again in 2024. It has stuck with him through plenty, and its adherence to Trumpism has always been more about emotion than pragmatism.
But long before this week, Trump’s grip on the party was weakening. An NBC News poll in October 2020 showed 54 percent of Republicans identified more as Trump supporters than as supporters of the party. By the eve of Election Day 2022, that had dropped to 30 percent — a record low. And it’s quite plausible it’ll drop further now.
And perhaps most troublingly for Trump, who has smacked down any Republican who dares to challenge him, he can’t seem to do that so well with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump’s decision to start going after DeSantis has gone over like a lead balloon in some corners of the party. And again, Trump can either commit to it or look like he backed down.
Even three months ago, we had DeSantis overtaking Trump as the most likely GOP nominee in 2024. After DeSantis’s reelection landslide and Trump’s very bad day on Tuesday, we feel significantly more confident of that. The lane for a credible alternative who can make their nomination bid about actually winning the White House is now significantly wider — whether that’s DeSantis or someone else.
Below are our latest rankings of the top 10 candidates most likely to be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024. As usual, this takes into account both their likelihood of running and their prospects if they do.
Honorable mention: Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Donald Trump Jr.
10. Sen. Rick Scott: On the one hand, the 2022 election is looking like a major setback for the Florida senator, whose stint as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee may soon end without his having secured what had been a very winnable majority. On the other hand, we just learned it reportedly dissuaded Scott from a planned challenge to GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). That suggests a presidential run might be more on the table than before. And Scott seems rather impatient with where he is. (Previous ranking: 8)
9. Mike Pompeo: The former secretary of state kinda, sorta suggested late Thursday that the party should move on from Trumpism — or at least from Trump’s constant social media score-settling, which has been pervasive since Election Day. “Conservatives are elected when we deliver,” he tweeted. “Not when we just rail on social media. That’s how we can win.” (Previous ranking: 9)
8. Nikki Haley: After the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Haley was one of the biggest voices making a pragmatic case that the party needed to move on from Trump. (Like others, she quickly backed off.) But even as Trumpism suffered another big setback on Tuesday and some in the party argue it’s a losing cause, the former United Nations ambassador has been remarkably quiet. She seems to have decided it’s best not to leap too soon. But if others adopt the same posture, it’s far less likely the party makes a clean break and rallies behind another candidate. (Previous ranking: 7)
7. Sen. Ted Cruz: Few were as wrong about the 2022 election as the Texas senator. In a Fox News interview published a day before Election Day, he offered, “I think this is going to be, not just a red wave, but a red tsunami.” Days earlier, he had ridiculed President Biden for predicting Democrats would gain a Senate seat and could hold the House — and both possibilities remain in play. Also worth noting: He dinged Trump for not spending more to help Republicans win. (Previous ranking: 6)
6. Kari Lake: This one is tough. Had the GOP gained as it expected on Election Day, the Arizona gubernatorial candidate would have rocketed up this list. Perhaps more than anyone not named Trump — and more than DeSantis, we’d argue — she gives the own-the-libs-first crowd exactly what it wants. She continued to bear-hug Trumpism and election denialism late into the 2022 campaign, even as many in the party opted for a more moderate tack. But that also might have cost her: Right now, it’s not clear that she’s actually going to win her race. If she doesn’t, she’s off this list for obvious reasons. If she does, though, don’t underestimate how well her style could play in 2024 — or her prospects as a Trump running mate if he gets to choose one. (Previous ranking: n/a)
5. Sen. Tim Scott: While all the focus has been on DeSantis’s performance Tuesday, the South Carolina senator quietly racked up an even more decisive win — defeating his opponent by 26 points — albeit in a redder state and in a race Democrats never seriously targeted. And while celebrating, Scott nodded to what might come next. He spoke of going to the polls in 2012 with his grandfather, who voted for both Scott and Barack Obama. “I wish he had lived long enough to see perhaps another man of color elected president of the United States,” Scott said. “But this time let it be a Republican.” If Republicans want a steady hand who could be broadly acceptable to many portions of the electorate, Scott can make a pretty compelling case that’s him. (Previous ranking: 4)
4. Gov. Glenn Youngkin: The Virginia governor gets a slight bump up on this list, since his 2021 win in a blue state looks even better now. It’s true that he benefited from more favorable dynamics than were present Tuesday. But the huge 2022 victories for governors like New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu and Ohio’s Mike DeWine only reinforced the electoral benefit of having someone able to craft their brand independent of — without necessarily breaking with — Trumpism. Meanwhile, Youngkin’s lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, on Thursday called Trump a “liability” and said she wouldn’t back him in 2024 — something which apparently prompted Trump to send Youngkin a warning signal. (Earle-Sears was elected separately from Youngkin, but this certainly doubles as a nice trial balloon without having it come from Youngkin’s lips.) (Previous ranking: 5)
3. Mike Pence: The former vice president continues to walk the finest of lines on Trump. In an op-ed adapted from his new book this week, Pence ran through what he says happened before and after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. He wrote that, five days afterward, he got “terse” with Trump. But he also assured that a president who has shown basically no remorse about that day had expressed some to him. “With genuine sadness in his voice, the president mused: ‘What if we hadn’t had the rally? What if they hadn’t gone to the Capitol?’ ” Pence wrote. “Then he said, ‘It’s too terrible to end like this.’ ” To the extent the GOP truly moves on from Trumpism — again, a major “if” — Pence’s stock rises significantly. But he’ll need lots of Trump backers to forgive him for the sin of not overturning American democracy. (Previous ranking: 3)
2. Donald Trump: The former president remains the leader in the polls, though post-election polling could tell a different tale. But he’s also the first president since the Great Depression to lose the House, the Senate and the presidency in a single term. Indeed, he’s looking more and more like the man who last did that: Herbert Hoover. Democrats kept running against Hoover even after he left the presidency, and turned that into the best midterm of the century for the president’s party. At the very least, Trump is more damaged goods than he’s been at any point in the past six years, because his self-appointed reputation as a winner is in tatters and he can’t keep his foot off the gas. (Previous ranking: 2)
1. Gov. Ron DeSantis: Conversely, the Florida governor’s stock has never been higher, as he emerged from Election Day as perhaps the biggest winner on the GOP side. Among the stats: He defeated Rep. Charlie Crist (D) by nearly 20 points, won the Latino vote handily, and became the first GOP governor candidate to carry Miami-Dade County since Jeb Bush two decades ago. DeSantis had already been closing in on Trump; a YouGov poll last month showed DeSantis within nine points of Trump in a one-on-one matchup. And the biggest shoe to drop in the 2024 GOP race is now whatever DeSantis decides to do next. (Previous ranking: 1)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) won a second term on Nov. 8. (Video: The Washington Post) | 2022-11-12T13:06:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The top 10 GOP presidential candidates for 2024, ranked - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/12/top-10-republican-candidates-2024/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/12/top-10-republican-candidates-2024/ |
Don’t Cancel Amy Coney Barrett’s Book
Smiling all the way to the bank. (Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images North America)
Even beyond the famous “Hollywood Ten,” there were blacklists everywhere. And small wonder. Advocacy for free and open debate had come to be seen as a smokescreen for the destruction of democracy. A letter to the Hartford Courant argued that “Communist degraders of free speech” must themselves be “suppressed.” In a 1948 opinion poll by Roper, only half of US respondents said free speech was an important right. A 1955 survey found that only about one-quarter of respondents would tolerate a communist speaking in their communities and that two-thirds believed those who held communist views should lose their jobs. In the words of the legal scholar Geoffrey Stone, “The only ‘safe’ course was to join nothing.”
Publishing fared no better. Dashiell Hammett, who went to prison rather than name names, was abandoned by the industry and found his best-selling novels suddenly out of print. Government libraries discarded books by those who were now disfavored. Even books scheduled for publication wound up cancelled. In 1953, for example, Little Brown changed its mind about issuing a volume by the historian Robert K. Murray, whose only offense was chronicling the wrongs done during the earlier Red Scare under Woodrow Wilson. Bringing out such a volume was too big a risk at a time when even the publishing industry — understandably, but to its shame — spent a lot of time looking over its shoulder, hoping not to borrow trouble. Only after McCarthy fell did the University of Minnesota Press agree to bring Murray’s book to market.
Nor would I refuse to read a book due to the author’s own views or history. Hugo Black was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but I discover something new every time I leaf through his book on the Bill of Rights. Bobby Fischer was a vicious anti-Semite, but I treasure his “60 Memorable Games.” And so on and so on. | 2022-11-12T14:07:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Don’t Cancel Amy Coney Barrett’s Book - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dont-cancel-amy-coney-barrettsbook/2022/11/12/71bd87ce-6292-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dont-cancel-amy-coney-barrettsbook/2022/11/12/71bd87ce-6292-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Analysis by Clive Crook | Bloomberg
WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 09: U.S. President Joe Biden takes questions from reporters, after he delivered remarks in the State Dining Room, at the White House on November 09, 2022 in Washington, DC. President Biden spoke about the mid term elections, control of house and senate in 2023, and the administrations achievements during the past two years of office. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images) (Photographer: Samuel Corum/Getty Images North America)
Democrats performed much better than expected in the midterm elections this week. I should concede at the outset that I was among those who expected (and hoped, for reasons I’ll come to) that they’d be more firmly rebuked. I also acknowledge that this surprise raises a very good question: How did pollsters, pundits and even most Democrats get the forecast so wrong?
Interesting as this is, it isn’t the most important question. What matters most is whether this week’s results will help the country mend its broken politics. It’s possible — but only if Democrats and Republicans alike decide to try. That makes it a long shot.
Certainly the results are a setback for Donald Trump, which is a good start. Many of the candidates he backed — including Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Don Bolduc in New Hampshire and Tudor Dixon in Michigan — did badly. And Trump’s strongest rival within the party, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, a target of the former president’s threats and insults, won re-election by a landslide. | 2022-11-12T14:07:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Question That Matters Most After the Midterms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-question-that-matters-most-after-the-midterms/2022/11/12/70f8fe04-6292-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-question-that-matters-most-after-the-midterms/2022/11/12/70f8fe04-6292-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html |
Molds of an ichthyosaur skeleton. TOP: The Yale cast of the specimen discovered in 1819. BOTTOM: The recently discovered cast in Berlin. (Royal Society Publishing)
In 1819, the complete fossil of an ichthyosaur dazzled scientists and the public. Thought to have been collected by pioneering English paleontologist Mary Anning, the fossil fanned interest in massive creatures that roamed Earth and swam the oceans millions of years ago.
But when a Nazi bomb obliterated the collections of a London museum during World War II, the fossil was lost to science.
Not anymore: Researchers recently uncovered two previously unknown casts of the famous fossil more than 75 years after the original’s destruction.
They describe the rediscovery in Royal Society Open Science. It’s a tale of historic hide-and-seek and a specimen with some serious scientific pedigree. In the early 19th century, ichthyosaur fever helped establish the field of paleontology and sparked public interest in fossils.
Anning, a fossil hunter and paleontologist who was excluded from full participation in the scientific community because of her sex, is thought to have found the specimen in Lyme Regis, England, at some point before 1818. She lent it to British surgeon Everard Home, who included it in some of the earliest research on ichthyosaurs. The groundbreaking fossil — the first complete skeleton of its kind ever recognized and documented by scientists — eventually made its way to the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
Peace accord in Colombia leads to discovery of new dinosaur species
During the Blitz of 1941 in London, the fossil was obliterated by a German bomb. No copies were known to exist. But while conducting research on other fossils at Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History in Connecticut, a pair of paleontologists found a plaster cast painted to resemble a fossil. They recognized the impression as a copy of the original ichthyosaur fossil and eventually tracked down another in Berlin’s Museum of Natural History Berlin. Neither had been properly labeled.
Scientists still study ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles that swam in oceans between about 250 million and 90 million years ago. But more information may be hiding in plain sight in museum collections, the researchers suggest.
“This discovery demonstrates the necessity to carefully preserve undetermined and casted material in a natural history collection,” Daniela Schwarz, the scientific head of the Museum of Natural History Berlin’s fossil reptiles department, said in a statement. “There will always be someone who discovers its scientific value in the end.” | 2022-11-12T14:08:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Researchers track down two copies of fossil destroyed by the Nazis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/11/12/ichthyosaur-fossil-images-discovered/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/11/12/ichthyosaur-fossil-images-discovered/ |
U.S. Paralympic champion sexually abused teammate, lawsuit alleges
U.S. Paralympic swimming champion Robert Griswold, as well as the USOPC and the U.S. Center for SafeSport, have been named in a lawsuit accusing Griswold of sexual assault. (Eugene Hoshiko/AP)
A decorated U.S. Paralympic swimmer repeatedly sexually abused an intellectually-impaired teammate at the Tokyo Games, as well as at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center, where the two athletes were paired together as roommates, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court.
The 63-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of Colorado states that Robert Griswold “maliciously targeted and groomed” Parker Egbert, a 19-year old who has autism and has suffered from developmental delays his entire life, taking advantage of his teammate’s intellectual disability that “rendered him vulnerable and naive to abuse.”
“This case is a horrific tragedy, where a young man who defied all odds to become a world-class Paralympic swimmer had his life utterly shattered by rape and abuse when he was paired with a team member who was a violent sexual predator,” the complaint states.
Griswold did not respond to an email seeking comment Friday and has said nothing publicly about the allegations, which first surfaced last month on the popular swimming site SwimSwam. He was given a temporary suspension by SafeSport on Aug. 23 for “allegations of misconduct” and is not allowed to compete while the case remains open.
The lawsuit charges the USOPC and SafeSport with negligence for failing to protect Egbert and for allowing Griswold close access to the athlete, even though Griswold had faced prior allegations of misconduct and had received a previous temporary suspension in September 2020, which was lifted before the Tokyo Paralympics.
This deaf-blind Paralympian was told to navigate Tokyo alone. So she quit Team USA.
Representatives for U.S. Paralympics Swimming did not respond to messages seeking comment Friday. Emails sent to Erin Popovich, the organization’s director, and Nathan Manley, the associate director, received automatic replies with both officials saying they’re “currently away on leave.”
A spokesman for SafeSport, the five-year-old nonprofit organization tasked with investigating and preventing sexual abuse in Olympic sports organizations, declined to comment on the lawsuit.
A Colorado Springs Police Department spokesman confirmed to The Washington Post last month that there was “open and active investigation” related to Griswold but declined to reveal any details. Griswold has not been charged with any crimes.
The Washington Post generally does not name victims of sexual assault, but Egbert identified himself in Friday’s court filing. Through an attorney, Egbert and his family declined to comment further.
“As you can imagine, this ordeal has been extraordinarily difficult for the Egbert family, as well as the other victims and families that have been impacted, so we ask that their privacy be respected,” attorneys Frank Salzano and Elizabeth Kramer said in a statement.
According to the lawsuit, Egbert was born with autism, did not speak his first words until he was 6 and today “has the mental capacity of a five-year old.” But he showed promise in the swimming pool at the U.S. Paralympic trials in June 2021, where he qualified for the Tokyo Games.
According to the complaint, that’s also where Griswold, a 25-year old swimmer who was born with cerebral palsy, befriended and began grooming Egbert. By time the national team got to Tokyo later that summer, Griswold was Egbert’s “de facto chaperone” according to the lawsuit, and “was always seated next to him on plane and bus rides, and was given prolonged unsupervised access to [Egbert] as the two shared a room in the Olympic Village.” The complaint alleges the “USOPC assigned Griswold to be a supervisor of” Egbert.
Griswold abused Egbert on multiple occasions, according to the complaint, and warned Egbert that he “would get in trouble” and “the police would come,” if he spoke out.
There was at least one witness to the abuse in Tokyo, according to the filing. A third, unnamed roommate became so enraged by what he saw, that athlete punched a wall and was later reprimanded by team officials for his outburst, the lawsuit states.
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Griswold, a two-time Paralympian from Freehold, N.J., won two gold medals and broke a world record in Tokyo, and the complaint alleges he’d become an influential figure in the U.S. Paralympic world. The lawsuit states that Griswold urged U.S. Olympic and Paralympic officials to extend an invite to Egbert to live and train at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
The two athletes were again paired together as roommates, the lawsuit states, and the abuse continued.
“On at least one occasion, Griswold raped Plaintiff so viciously that Plaintiff lost bowel control. To this day Plaintiff continues to suffer from persistent and excruciating rectal pain, for which surgery and continuing medical attention is required,” the complaint states.
According to the filing, Egbert stopped showering and began writing stories “as a means of escape,” including the tale of “Spookley and the Hurricane,” about a group of friends who battled a powerful monster called “Hurricane Robert.” His parents reached out to USOPC officials when Egbert first revealed the abuse allegations, the complaint states, “but the USOPC failed to investigate the issue and summarily and dismissively told Plaintiff’s parents that Plaintiff was just fine, and that Griswold posed absolutely no risk to Plaintiff.”
The lawsuit alleges the USOPC and SafeSport protected Griswold, who “was a premier swimmer, and because Griswold’s family was deeply embedded with leaders throughout the U.S. Paralympic swimming community.”
The complaint offers no details about Griswold’s previous suspension but says the USOPC and SafeSport ignored red flags and previous complaints before placing Egbert in a dangerous situation with little to no oversight.
“Griswold’s physical, verbal, and sexual abuse occurred in large part because of the acts and omissions of USOPC and SafeSport,” the complaint states.
In August, the USOPC suspended Griswold from the training center and removed him as a member of the national team, and SafeSport issued its temporary suspension. One week earlier, according to social media posts, Griswold married his fiance in a Florida beach ceremony.
Egbert’s parents traveled to Colorado Springs that week and took their son home to Iowa. According to the complaint, the young swimmer “had to make the difficult decision to leave behind his lifelong dream.”
“Since his return home, [Egbert] has continuously told his parents ‘thank you for saving me from’ Griswold,” the lawsuit states, “however, to this day, [Egbert] remains fearful that Griswold ‘knows where they live’ and ‘is going to kill [him].’” | 2022-11-12T14:08:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. Paralympic champion sexually abused teammate, lawsuit alleges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/11/12/us-paralympic-champion-sexual-abuse-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/11/12/us-paralympic-champion-sexual-abuse-lawsuit/ |
A British man pleaded guilty to spying for Russia when he worked at the British Embassy in Berlin. (Michael Sohn/Associated Press)
LONDON — A former British security guard has pleaded guilty to spying for Russia when he worked at the British Embassy in Berlin, including giving a Russian military attaché details of the identities and phone numbers of British civil servants.
The charges also involved collecting video recordings of CCTV footage and unauthorized photocopies of documents, as well as information on the layout of the British embassy, that was calculated to be “useful to an enemy, namely the Russian state,” according to the indictment. It said the offenses were committed between October 2020 and August 2021.
David Ballantyne Smith, 58, who worked as a security guard at the British embassy in Berlin, was extradited to the United Kingdom in April after his arrest last year by German police on suspicion of passing information to Russian intelligence in return for cash. He could face up to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty at London’s Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey, to eight charges under the country’s Official Secrets Act.
Germany arrests man with embassy ties as suspected Russian spy
Prosecutors argued Smith was fueled by a hatred of Britain and angry that the embassy had flown an LGBT+ flag, while his lawyer said the defendant contested the prosecution’s depiction of his motivation, according to the BBC. It said Smith pleaded guilty to the charges last week, but reporting restrictions were lifted Friday after the prosecution indicated it would not seek a trial on a ninth charge.
A string of arrests and suspects allegedly linked to Russian intelligence have put authorities on guard around Europe, as tensions rise between Moscow and its European neighbors over the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. Hundreds of embassy staff have been expelled in a diplomatic tit-for-tat, including some on charges of spying.
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The Swedish Prosecution Authority announced Friday that it had also indicted two men “for gross espionage on behalf of the Russian Federation,” as well as unauthorized “handling of secret information” for one of the men, without elaborating. Sweden’s national public broadcaster reported that the two Swedish men, detained about a year ago, were brothers and that one of them had worked for the country’s intelligence service. | 2022-11-12T14:08:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | British embassy guard David Smith pleads guilty to spying for Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/12/britain-embassy-guard-russia-spying-guilty/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/12/britain-embassy-guard-russia-spying-guilty/ |
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