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Analysis by Adam Kilgore
Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson hauls in a miraculous catch during the fourth quarter of Minnesota's game against the Buffalo Bills on Sunday. (Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images)
Once again Sunday afternoon, along came a game that explained how so many people can put up with so much from the NFL and keep coming back for more. It erupted from a snoozer to a white-knuckler to an all-out epic. It made you turn to the person next to you on the couch and ask if what you had just seen was real or CGI. It made you overlook all of the league’s off-field ills.
Here is what to know from Week 10.
The Bills and Vikings played the game of the year. What seemed like an intriguing matchup of a Super Bowl favorite and an untested contender became, by the end of the day, part of NFL lore. The sequence at the end of regulation alone contained a universe.
On fourth and 18, with Minnesota rallying from what had been a 27-10 deficit, Justin Jefferson and his superhero-grade arms made a leaping, one-handed catch that immediately landed on the shortlist of the best anybody had ever seen. Jefferson appeared to finish the drive with a touchdown, only for the call to be reversed and Jefferson ruled down inside the 1. Kirk Cousins attempted a sneak on fourth down, only to be thwarted by a wall of Bills linemen.
Brewer: For NFL contenders, a start quarterback is no longer enough
The Bills had sealed a victory with a stirring stand — until they hadn’t. On the next play, disaster arrived for Buffalo: Allen pulled away too soon and fumbled Mitch Morse’s snap. Linebacker Eric Kendricks pounced on the loose ball in the end zone. A clock-draining plunge for Buffalo became a go-ahead touchdown for Minnesota.
But Allen still had 41 seconds, and he steered the Bills downfield with a mixture of precise passes and powerful scrambles, putting to rest any concern about the injured ligament in his right elbow. On one run, he made Minnesota defensive backs look as if they were trying to tackle a Buick. A close call on a diving Gabe Davis catch, curiously not reviewed, certainly helped. Tyler Bass’s chip-shot field goal sent it to overtime.
Once there, Buffalo experienced a too-familiar letdown. Its defense couldn’t hold, and its offense made a backbreaking error. The Vikings kicked a field goal, then Allen threw an interception into the end zone, giving away a near-certain chance to tie and a good chance to win.
The Bills, now in third in the AFC East, cannot be regarded as a juggernaut, primarily because of their end-of-game woes. They have not scored a second-half touchdown in three consecutive games and have been outscored 43-12 after halftime during that stretch. More alarming, they are 1-10 in one-possession games, playoffs included, since the start of last season. When it counts, the Bills glitch. It falls on Coach Sean McDermott and Allen to improve.
The Vikings, meanwhile, need to be taken seriously. As they compiled a gaudy record, their lack of dominance and dearth of elite competition created justified skepticism. A victory at Buffalo legitimizes them, despite their shaky secondary and the mistakes constantly lurking over Cousins’s shoulder. But no matter how their season unfolds, they won Sunday at Buffalo. They will remember it forever.
Justin Jefferson is a bad man. Few players could have stood out amid the pyrotechnics, but Jefferson is one of them. He made the catch of the … year? Decade? Century?
The Vikings faced fourth and 18 inside their own territory coming out of the two-minute warning. Cousins heaved a pass over Jefferson’s head. Jefferson leaped, snared it at the top of his reach with one hand and landed with a defensive back draped on him, somehow cradling the ball inches off the ground.
It evoked Odell Beckham Jr.’s famous one-handed catch, but with more height on the leap, against better defense and in a more important situation. It looked impossible. It was also one of 10 catches Jefferson made Sunday, for 193 yards and a touchdown.
The game only strengthened the connection between Jefferson and the Bills, who traded the first-round pick that became Jefferson to the Vikings three years ago for Stefon Diggs. Neither team would take back that deal. It’s one of the best win-win trades in NFL history.
From September: For Justin Jefferson, a 2,000-yard season could be within reach
We’ll be seeing Tom Brady in the playoffs. The Buccaneers’ season rode the ragged edge of disaster for the first two months. Brady’s personal hardships, the transition to Todd Bowles as coach and the sudden aging of Tampa Bay’s core spawned cranky attitudes and stale football. After 59 minutes last week, the Buccaneers appeared headed for a 3-6 record, a four-game losing streak and the muddle of the NFC South.
In both performance and vibes, things have flipped. The Buccaneers capitalized on the momentum from Brady’s last-minute touchdown drive to beat the Los Angeles Rams last week by defeating the Seattle Seahawks, 21-16, on Sunday in Munich. Tampa Bay will head into its bye at 5-5 after its best offensive game of the season — and with a one-game lead in the division thanks to Atlanta’s loss to Carolina on Thursday.
The Buccaneers desperately needed punch in their running game, and they may have found it in rookie running back Rachaad White. With Leonard Fournette fighting an injury, White gained 105 yards on 22 carries. After Seattle rallied in the fourth quarter, Tampa Bay turned to White to drain the clock, never giving Geno Smith a chance down by less than one score.
The trip to Germany also seemed to boost Brady, who had been in a dour mood all year as he went through a divorce after an offseason he partially spent retired. He called playing in Germany “one of the great football experiences I’ve ever had.”
Most likely, the Bucs have shown who they are and won’t pose a serious threat in the postseason. But Brady has bought more time to figure out the Bucs, and would you want to bet against him?
Jeff Saturday is 1-0. The Colts stunned and, in many cases, angered the NFL world when they replaced Frank Reich with Saturday, a franchise icon as a player who had never coached above the high school level. Many former coaches viewed it as an insult that team owner Jim Irsay would hire a coach without experience and then declare he liked that Saturday’s lack of experience would let him coach without “fear.”
What in the name of Hebron Christian Academy happened in Las Vegas? The Colts went back to deposed starter Matt Ryan and upset the spiraling Raiders, 25-20. The move to Ryan was curious, given that Irsay reportedly had influenced Ryan’s benching for ineffective rookie Sam Ehlinger. Did Irsay have a change of heart? Did he let the interim coach pick his quarterback?
Buckner: Jim Irsay failed a leadership test with Saturday hire
Maybe the most pertinent question: What does it say about the Raiders that they lost to the Colts? In his first season in Las Vegas, with a roster that made the playoffs last year and added Davante Adams in the offseason, Josh McDaniels is 2-7, the second-worst record in the NFL. Since McDaniels started 6-0 with the Denver Broncos in 2009, he is 7-24. He didn’t get to finish his second season in Denver. He might not get a second season in Las Vegas.
The Dolphins are a machine. They are alone in first place in the AFC East at 7-3 after their 39-17 demolition of the Cleveland Browns. They have scored 31, 35 and 39 points in their past three games, and given the weaponry at Coach Mike McDaniel’s disposal, it’s hard to see how many opponents will hold them under 30.
In games Tua Tagovailoa starts and finishes, the Dolphins are 7-0 and averaging 29.1 points. Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle are an unsolvable problem, their speed forcing the defense to cover every inch of the field. If it spreads out, Jeff Wilson Jr. and Raheem Mostert can bludgeon opponents with the running game McDaniel imported from San Francisco. Tagovailoa is playing with confidence and making decisive, high-level passes.
The Dolphins are on a bye next week and play the Texans at home afterward before a three-week stretch that may define their season: road games at the 49ers, Chargers and Bills. Those are teams they should be measuring themselves against. They can win the Super Bowl because, on any given day, they could outscore their opponent, regardless of who it is.
Christian Watson said hello. It had been a frustrating season for Watson, the wide receiver out of North Dakota State whom the Packers drafted in the second round ostensibly to replace Davante Adams. In the season opener, he dropped an easy touchdown. He spent one week in the concussion protocol and had to leave another game with a chest injury. He showed his explosive speed, but mostly he was a gadget receiver who couldn’t be relied upon.
Watson’s status in Green Bay transformed Sunday during a 31-28 overtime victory over the Dallas Cowboys. The Packers trailed 28-14 in the fourth quarter before Watson’s second and third touchdowns of the day tied the score — and may have saved Green Bay’s season.
Before Sunday, Watson had caught 10 passes for 88 yards. Against the Cowboys, he caught four for 107, including the first three touchdowns of his career. Whether his emergence can make a difference for the Packers remains to be seen. But it at least suggests their crucial draft pick won’t be a bust.
Justin Fields is an outrageous weapon. The Bears lost to the Lions, 31-30, in large part because Fields threw a pick-six that erased what had been a two-touchdown Chicago lead. At this stage of his career, though, it’s more appropriate to focus on what Fields can do. And he already can do things few, if any, other quarterbacks can.
Fields ran for 147 yards, including a 67-yard touchdown on which he burst through a hole and ran past the entire Detroit secondary. Lamar Jackson may still be the best running quarterback in the NFL, but he’s no longer unchallenged. Fields is one of the best ballcarriers in the league, full stop — regardless of position. His speed manipulates the defense on every snap. It may not lead the Bears to wins now, but in the future it will.
The Rams’ nightmare Super Bowl defense got worse. Even as they sunk into a post-parade malaise, they could rely on wide receiver Cooper Kupp. He has been essentially their entire offense. But as they fell to 3-6 while Matthew Stafford was sidelined with a concussion, the Rams may have lost their lone bright spot.
In the fourth quarter, Kupp leaped to catch a pass. As he landed, a defensive back rolled into Kupp’s lower right leg. Kupp grabbed his ankle, rolled over in pain and limped to the bench with assistance. He never returned, and the Rams announced he had an ankle injury. “It didn’t look good,” Coach Sean McVay said. “It didn’t sound good.”
If the Rams’ record hasn’t knocked them out of playoff contention, an injury to Kupp would do it. | 2022-11-14T11:54:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Week 10: Bills-Vikings epic stole the show, Tom Brady is settling in - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/nfl-bills-vikings-brady-packers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/nfl-bills-vikings-brady-packers/ |
Research suggests that listening to brown noise could have cognitive benefits for people with ADHD, but experts caution the evidence is still limited
Göran Söderlund, a researcher at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, believes the effect goes beyond simple auditory masking. Over the past decade, he has done 15 preliminary studies on the effects of white noise on people with and without ADHD. He hasn’t studied brown noise, but believes it would have similar effects. | 2022-11-14T11:55:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brown noise could help people with ADHD focus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/14/brown-noise-adhd-focus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/14/brown-noise-adhd-focus/ |
CAIRO — Egypt’s imprisoned hunger-striking activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah has started drinking water again, his family said Monday, in the first communication from the prominent dissident in over a week amid fears for his life.
One of Egypt’s most prominent pro-democracy campaigners, Abdel-Fattah had intensified his hunger strike on Nov. 6, at the start of the U.N. climate conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, to draw attention to his case and those of other political prisoners.
Earlier, he had stopped taking food but then also stopped drinking water to coincide with the start of the summit. The announcement of the medical intervention last Thursday raised fears among the family that he could die in prison.
On Twitter, one of Abdel-Fattah’s sisters, Sanaa Souief, confirmed the letter was in her brother’s handwriting.
Also Saturday, Sanaa Soueif led a protest march in Sharm el Sheikh, calling for the release of her brother and all political prisoners detained in Egypt. | 2022-11-14T11:55:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Family: Egyptian hunger-striking activist drinking water - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/family-egyptian-hunger-striking-activist-drinking-water/2022/11/14/6075eb36-640a-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/family-egyptian-hunger-striking-activist-drinking-water/2022/11/14/6075eb36-640a-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
New-officer training presents ‘immediate crisis for policing,’ report says
New York Police Academy graduates in 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Public outrage over how police use force has fueled protests in the streets, spurred calls to cut their funding and ignited broad debates over how to reform law enforcement.
Despite this intense focus on the present and future of policing, one key component has remained woefully inadequate, according to a report from a prominent policing think tank: How new officers are trained.
Training for recruits “presents an immediate crisis for policing,” according to the report from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post before its scheduled release Monday.
The report describes a system that, even after years of push and pull over change, is “built to train officers quickly and cheaply.” That system then hurries the new officers onto streets across the United States without helping them develop vital skills, including crisis intervention and communication, that they will need on the job, according to the report.
Police nationwide have faced criticism over how officers use force, with unrest and protests following cases in Cleveland, New York, Baton Rouge, Louisville, Atlanta and Ferguson, Mo., among other places. The new analysis of training is based in part on a survey of hundreds of law enforcement leaders conducted in 2020, during a period that encompassed the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic; the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of police in Minneapolis; and the ensuing wave of nationwide protests against police brutality amid a broader racial reckoning.
Policing has changed over the years, seizing on new technologies and adopting approaches including “community policing,” the report said, while officers are facing difficult challenges, among them increasingly powerful guns on the streets and people in crisis. But far too often, the report said, police are trained “to be warriors, even though their agencies and communities expect them also to be guardians, social workers, and community partners.”
Much of America wants policing to change. But these self-proclaimed experts tell officers they’re doing just fine.
Changing American policing, the report said, means starting with how new officers are instructed and embracing new approaches instead of holding on to outdated concepts.
“Do I think it’s changed in some places? Yes,” Chuck Wexler, the executive director of PERF, said of police training. “But do I think there’s been fundamental changes since the George Floyd murder? No.”
In a Washington Post-ABC News poll last year, more than half of respondents said they doubted police were adequately trained to avoid using excessive force. The new PERF report and some law enforcement experts say that training has improved in some ways, including an increase in how much time police are instructed, but that overall practices have not changed dramatically, owing to a combination of factors including a reliance on past practices and inertia.
Police shootings continue daily, despite a pandemic, protests and pushes for reform
Much like policing itself — which is scattered among more than 15,000 local departments and sheriff’s offices, most of them small agencies — training varies from place to place, with different requirements and obligations.
State commissions typically set their own standards for training, the report said, creating “vast differences” between the academies in different states, including how many hours they teach and the material presented. There are an estimated 700 or 800 police training academies nationwide, according to the PERF report, so “recruit training is splintered and inconsistent.” The report said nearly half of the academies are operated by colleges or technical schools, while a third are operated by local law enforcement agencies themselves.
In Dallas, the police academy lasts for nine months and offers courses in interview techniques, asset forfeiture and foot pursuits; after the academy, the new officers spend six months in field training. Miami police undergo a six-month police academy program, while in Oklahoma City, the 28-week police academy includes instruction on constitutional law, self-defense and de-escalation, before recruits spend four to six months dispatched to field training.
In Atlanta, potential recruits are warned that the police academy could pose “the most challenging academic, emotional, physical and psychological undertaking you have ever experienced.”
The PERF report said police academies often devote a lot of time to preparing officers for dangerous encounters, including with armed people. While that is “critically important,” the report said, it is also vital for officers to learn skills such as how to communicate and engage with the community, things they will need “day-in and day-out for the routine encounters that will occupy the vast majority of their time.”
Fatal police shootings of mentally ill people are 39 percent more likely to take place in small and midsized areas
The report included other recommendations such as calling for a set of national standards and for departments to devote more money to training, which accounted for a fraction of the police budgets among agencies that responded to PERF’s survey. The report also calls for recruits to be taught more about the history of policing nationwide and locally “with a special emphasis on racial justice issues,” saying recruits need to learn how this history can “shape perceptions of the police today.”
Police instruction has changed over time, including the increase in hours spent in training, the report said. But that volume of training still falls short when compared with people in other jobs in the United States or police in other countries, the report said.
Police in the United States typically spend about 20 weeks in the academy, the report said, while recruits in Japan might spend up to 21 months training, and their peers in many European countries spend two to three years training.
“Look, it’s expensive to train someone for a year,” Wexler said. “But it’s far more expensive to not train them properly and see a situation handled badly. It can absolutely devastate a department and a city.”
Just ramping up the amount of training, Wexler said, is not the solution, even though that is often floated by officials amid controversies like uses of force.
“When police have faced a crisis, the conventional recommendation is inevitably more training,” Wexler said. “The reality is that more training may not necessarily be the answer to what the issue is.”
The report said there has not been enough research into what training actually works, calling on policing to invest in more to figure out “what works and what doesn’t in police recruit training.”
Ian Adams, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said he believes the training offered today is better than it used to be, but he said it is important to understand what types of training work best.
“I know it’s tempting to say, well, if we just put officers through 10 more hours of X training, then we should get Y results,” said Adams, a former police officer.
But, he said, “the evidence doesn’t say that. Because we haven’t put the necessary resources into understanding what training would actually accomplish the outcomes we want.”
The PERF report said training academies should avoid taking a “paramilitary approach,” potentially merge with others to create consistency in what new officers are taught, and welcome input from members of the community, among other suggested changes.
The report also touches on why, despite all the pleas to rethink policing, training remains behind the times in many places. “At many academies,” the report said, instruction “is based largely on what has been taught in the past.” New laws, department policies and other practices in law enforcement, the report said, are not always added promptly to the instruction.
Police de-escalation training gaining renewed clout as law enforcement seeks to reduce killings
In many cases, the report continued, academies “seem to rely almost exclusively on current or retired law enforcement officers to develop their training curricula,” even though these people lack backgrounds in actually designing course instruction.
David J. Thomas, a retired Florida police officer, said he feels like “there’s still not enough” instruction for new officers. Police get trained in things like how to use firearms and defensive tactics, Thomas said, but the instruction falls short when it comes to things like how to treat members of the community or respond to people in crisis.
“I don’t think the curriculum’s changed enough to meet the needs of the people that we’re serving,” said Thomas, a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University. | 2022-11-14T15:52:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New-officer training presents ‘immediate crisis for policing,’ report says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/14/police-training-brutality-perf-report/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/14/police-training-brutality-perf-report/ |
Four University of Idaho students found dead in apparent homicide
Police in Moscow, Idaho, are investigating the deaths of four University of Idaho students as a homicide.
Four University of Idaho students were found dead at a home near campus Sunday in what police and school officials described as a homicide.
Police in Moscow, Idaho, responded around noon to a call about an unconscious person on King Road, just south of the university of about 11,500 students, the department said in a news release. Officers found four people dead.
The school, located about 70 miles southeast of Spokane, Wash., asked students to shelter in place for about 40 minutes as law enforcement investigated. Police had not publicly identified a suspect as of Monday morning, but school officials said Sunday they did not believe there was an active threat to the community.
“It is with deep sadness that I share with you that the university was notified today of the death of four University of Idaho students living off-campus believed to be victims of homicide,” University President C. Scott Green told community members in an email.
The students’ families had been notified and the university was cooperating with the police investigation, the school said. Classes were canceled Monday, and counseling was available.
Moscow police did not immediately release the victims’ identities or the cause of death. They asked anyone with information to contact their department.
“An event of this magnitude can understandably have significant impacts on those left behind,” Green wrote to the university community. “As Vandals, we must come together and lift each other up.” | 2022-11-14T15:52:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Four University of Idaho students found dead in apparent homicide - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/14/university-idaho-students-homicide-moscow/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/14/university-idaho-students-homicide-moscow/ |
David Suh at his studio in Los Angeles. (Philip Cheung for The Washington Post)
Meet the effervescent photographer who is teaching America how to pose
The first time photographer David Suh put on a dress during a shoot, his aim was to help a client “come out of her shy shell.” “Honestly,” he says. “I didn’t think much of it.” But as he started posing, he realized something: “Oh my gosh. I feel so sexy right now!” The floor-length, flowing dress changed his movements, his posture, his energy. He had heels on, too, altering his stride.
For Suh, 28, it was a transformative experience that went far beyond this one outfit. “If I haven’t felt this way — what they feel, this divine feminine — how can I teach [my clients]?” His ability to show his subjects how to arrange their bodies so they feel at ease on camera, he discovered, “is not about just saying: ‘I see it, I understand it.’ It’s truly feeling it.” This revelation clicked with what he considers to be his calling: to elevate the everyday person through portraits.
The posing tutorial was also the basis for Suh’s first viral video on TikTok. When he started posting videos in late 2019, he had his own studio and was slowly building his clientele. But with his effervescent, exclamation-point-energy videos on posing, angles and on-camera confidence, Suh has won a considerable following. His TikTok follower count at press time: 4.3 million. His work and videos are built on his unshakable belief that you are camera-ready exactly as you are. “For me, everyone is inherently beautiful,” he tells me over Zoom from a low-lit nook in his studio. “Just the fact that they exist is beautiful.” All you need to look fantastic in photos, he insists, is some posing and picture-taking practice, plus — and he knows this is the hard part — genuine faith in your own innate beauty, as defined on your terms and no one else’s.
Suh’s work, which includes teaching a five-week course on “how to be photogenic,” is attracting an audience just as our collective obsession with how we look in photos is reaching an all-time high. The rise of camera phones and social media have created what feels like a societal imperative to be photogenic, combined with a heightened awareness of whether we are. Many of us are gathering a half-dozen “candid” pictures for dating apps, posting photos with and for our social circles on Instagram, needing a professional headshot for LinkedIn or the company page. “If you don’t have a social media presence, for the most part, it’s like, do you even exist in the world?” says Teri Hofford, a body image educator and photographer. “That’s what it feels like to a lot of people. Being seen and visible is almost a necessity.”
At the same time, our cultural norms around beauty are arguably beginning to widen. Suh’s approach to photography taps into the latest wave of body positivity and self-love movements. As Suh sees it, this expectation that we be “photogenic” crushes us only if we are beholden to what is culturally deemed attractive, usually Eurocentric ideals of beauty. In his “how to be photogenic” class, his students, he says, come in “feeling like they’re lacking, and they want to learn to be photogenic so they can be part of society. But what they learn at the end of the day is: They’re doing it for themselves first.”
When Hofford (who follows Suh online but doesn’t know him personally) thinks about why Suh’s work is catching on right now, she thinks part of it is the right man meeting the right cultural moment. “He’s not afraid to be his authentic self online, and I think that’s what people really want,” she says. “He seems pretty open and accessible.”
Hofford also thinks Suh’s posing tutorials in dresses are “invitingly funny.” “A lot of times, men make fun of women by posing [in certain ways],” she says. “But the way that David does it is just to create the vision so people can see what it would look like on somebody that’s wearing a dress.” She continues, “He more so makes fun of the gender binary or how you have to pose if you’re a dude. He does a really good job of being understanding and, dare I say, feminist about it.”
Suh, who grew up in South Korea and Hong Kong, started taking portraits of his friends in high school, where the ultimate reward, in his view, was someone making his shot their profile picture. He headed to the University of California at Davis and figured he’d go from college to a standard nine-to-five. “I have very stereotypical Korean parents,” he says, who “always wanted me to become a doctor or a lawyer. I was never that. I was always that kid chasing after what I liked on the side.” When he studied photography outside of class, he found that he was hungry to learn more. “I would keep searching and searching.”
In 2013, he earned his first photography commission: 50 bucks. He took a gap year from college two years later, hoping his portrait photography business would quickly be self-sustaining. But his income only covered the rent every other month, so Suh returned to college. He graduated in 2017 with a degree in design — and still committed to portrait photography.
Suh’s artistic philosophy comes from his own experience: In 2018, he got out of a five-year relationship he’d been in throughout college. “We did everything together,” he says, so he didn’t really have any friends of his own, or even his own identity. When the relationship ended, “It was like: Who am I right now? And I really just had to start doing things for myself. It was obviously very daunting at first, but it was also really refreshing.” He had what he calls an “epiphany”: “I was really uninitiated with expressing myself.” Outside of the box of “boyfriend,” Suh was able to “explore fashion for myself, buying clothes for myself. It started a little snowball.”
He brings that mind-set to his clients, telling them, “You build who you are, and because you feel more secure in your identity, to me, that is what is attractive.” And that, in turn, “applies to being attractive on film. When you get to express that … you get to represent yourself the way you want to.”
Since 2021, he’s been in Los Angeles, and his solo shoots now range from $4,850 to $12,000. “His entire personality and confidence has changed from the time I met him to now,” says Tina Leu, a D.C.-based photographer who bonded with Suh in a photography workshop in 2017. “The way he dressed, his body type, just the entire essence of him has evolved into this powerhouse who really loves who he is. Back then, he didn’t really know who he was, I think.” In searching for himself, she says, “it’s almost like there was nothing for him to look up to, so he made himself.”
When Suh joined TikTok, he knew he’d take a more dynamic approach than “Joe Schmo Photography” — as he described the practice of posting nothing but your best work. “How does that become social? You wouldn’t just meet someone at a bar and take out your portfolio and say, ‘Hey, look at this. Can you like this?’ ” For Suh, “it’s always about the conversation. How am I helping this other person?” He posts a combination of useful how-tos and earnest affirmations. You can find him responding to a disabled trans man seeking guidance on how to pose with his walker; showing a woman how to take solo pictures (which built to an impassioned takedown of the way society tells women not to take up space); offering a posing guide that contrasts a “Shy Couple” with a “Power Couple.” He ends his practical-yet-playful lessons with a duck quack sound effect.
Over Zoom, he is soft-spoken and reserved, and he says the vibe during his photo shoots is less “really hype” and more “meditative yoga.” Suh estimates that “99.5 percent” of his prospective clients find him through social media. (He’s also on Instagram, where he has 1 million followers.) He lists the reasons those followers give for reaching out to him: “I realize that you create a safe space for your clients [and] actually listen. … You realize that beauty isn’t binary and that posing isn’t binary.” To his continued amazement, “they tend to bring up this trust that they feel with me already, even though I’ve never talked to them in person.”
With his reputation as, basically, the Lizzo of portrait photography, Suh worries he cannot possibly live up to the expectations of everyone who comes to his studio. “My biggest fear is someone seeing me online and saving up to book a shoot with me because, in their mind, I’m the one person in the world who can fix them … [and] then [they come] to me and I’m not able to do that for them.” And a person could point out that Suh’s promise of empowerment-through-photography comes with an asterisk: He does not go so far as to tell us that we don’t need to look good in photos, only to tell us that we can.
For Amanda King, Suh more than fulfilled her hopes. King lost her dad in 2018 and spent much of the pandemic at home in Illinois, processing her grief. She’s struggled, she says, with feeling “worthy” of doing something just for her own happiness, which is part of why she pursued a list of 30 things to do before she turned 30. One of her items was a solo photo shoot, and Suh’s TikTok videos signaled to her that they had similar values. “Everything that’s happened that led up to this moment, all that’s made me, I have something to personify that,” she says. “And I think that’s David’s thing, too: You need to celebrate you now. You’re worthy of doing this now.”
As they went over the images at the end of the shoot, King says, “I definitely cried in his office.” Suh was “like, ‘Look at this! You are art! This is worthy of being on a wall. It’s not a question. It is,’ ” she remembers. “It was a really nice realization: It is art. That’s me, it looks beautiful, it looks amazing, and it’s something to be proud of.” | 2022-11-14T15:56:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | David Suh Draws Millions of TikTok Followers with His Belief that Everyone Is Photogenic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/14/david-suh-photographer-tiktok-posing-photogenic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/14/david-suh-photographer-tiktok-posing-photogenic/ |
Grace Wales Bonner in blazer (designer’s own), Wales Bonner Long River Shirt ($725), Wales Bonner Harmony pants ($850), Wales Bonner Earth loafer ($650). Stylist: Adonis Kentros. Groomer: Maria Comparetto. (Koto Bolofo for The Washington Post)
Her clothes combine British tailoring with the sensibilities of the African diaspora. And she is making her mark on fashion with astonishing speed.
It has been only two days since Queen Elizabeth II was, with great fanfare, laid to rest, and London feels like a city on the back end of exhaustion. Ten days of public mourning unfolded with precisely choreographed pageantry that extended from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle. With a two-part, globally televised funeral, the world had ample time to consider its feelings about the British monarchy.
British identity had long been wrapped up in the dignified personage of a white-haired woman in brightly colored suits who had the patient mien of a grandmother. In a commute across central London on a late September afternoon, I see handmade signs that read “Thank you, ma’am” propped in windows, columns of British flags fluttering in the breeze, and wilted flowers paying homage to her 70-year reign — her decades of devotion to the way things had always been.
But British history — which is, among other things, a centuries-old saga of colonialism and racism — is complicated, and so is the present. Complications are at the heart of everything that Grace Wales Bonner does. She is whom I’ve come to London to see. “Complicated” is the word the London-born fashion designer uses when I ask whether she mourned the queen and how she feels about the legacy Her Majesty represented.
My question isn’t a matter of small talk but curiosity born from Wales Bonner’s design philosophy as well as her family’s lineage. She is mixed race; her mother is White and English and her father is Black and Jamaican. Her collections explore the thorny issues inherent in that identity: diversity, imperialism, wealth and privilege. Her work forces a conversation about who and what is heralded as divine.
By asking about the queen, I am inviting Wales Bonner to hold forth. But she isn’t one to pontificate, either verbally or aesthetically. Her collections aren’t the equivalent of a radical uprising using bolts of fabric as weaponry; they are more like a civil debate. “I don’t feel like I’m combative,” she says. “I create space.”
When she addresses my question, she does so in false starts and backward glances. She argues the affirmative side as well as the opposing one. “I feel like there’s so much instability at the moment. Maybe there always has been, but it feels more visible now, and so I think [the queen] seemed like a figure that created some sense of stability,” Wales Bonner says. “But I think it’s complicated.”
“Growing up here, what you’re actually told, what you read, what you’re told when you’re at school about history is not very clear. This moment reveals a lot about people’s experiences and what you’re exposed to. And that’s quite uncomfortable,” she continues. “There’s tradition and it makes me feel English. … It’s kind of unbelievable, this sense of tradition that’s carried forward, the visual, processional elements. That’s interesting.” She says once more, “It’s complicated. … I have mixed feelings.”
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Wales Bonner’s clothes express a multitude of emotions that the designer can’t quite express in words. They embrace the precision of traditional British tailoring, the kind that made Savile Row synonymous with White male authority, and marry it with the vast aesthetic sensibilities of the African diaspora, from the continent to the Caribbean. She admires the reassuring rigor of her Britishness but finds a certain euphoria in pressing against its constraints.
She launched her menswear brand in London seven years ago and with astonishing speed made a mark on the fashion industry thanks to her distinctive designs and the stories that accompany them. Her spring 2017 collection was as close as any might come to career defining. The clothing was dignified and regal, but instead of looking to historical depictions of European royalty or Asian dynasties for inspiration, which is standard practice in fashion, Wales Bonner turned to Africa. She paid homage to the coronation of Haile Selassie I, who was emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. The elegance of her collection defied the cliches, assumptions and prejudices about this vast part of the world. Most often, designers in Europe and the United States turn to Africa to express some variation on primitive or tribal. Wales Bonner evoked majesty.
Mostly Black models wore tailored blazers, embellished capes and trousers that were cropped to echo the proportion of knickers. The shirts were crisp cotton or shimmered with the patina of satin. And there were pristine, white suits that stirred up visions of men at leisure, glorified men, dazzling men.
Wales Bonner has created many memorable collections since then. Her business now includes womenswear, as well as a recent addition of accessories and jewelry. She has a long-established partnership with Adidas. And her renown has spread beyond the small community of fashion insiders who were her early champions to a global community of shoppers.
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“If you are looking for someone who has a very intelligent approach to design, who is really catering to someone that is intellectual, that’s creative, that’s in the art scene, that knows tailoring as well as they know athleisure, then that’s exactly why you should shop Grace’s brand,” says Libby Page, market director for Net-a-Porter. “Whilst the business is small, comparatively speaking, we’ve seen some really healthy pockets of opportunity.” Page adds, “She’s really one to watch in the next couple of years.”
Her combination of tradition, polite subversiveness and cultural engagement, along with a keen eye for construction, has been irresistible to a fashion industry struggling to find its way forward — a business trying to attract younger and more diverse clients who are quick to say that they want clothing with a progressive purpose. Wales Bonner is a formally trained designer who makes a conversation about race invigorating. She stands in the middle of the cultural maelstrom and puts forward difficult and important observations that feel intimate but not ad hominem.
It’s no wonder that there’s been significant industry chatter that she might be named the next menswear designer at Louis Vuitton, a job that would have her succeeding Virgil Abloh, who died in 2021 and was the rare Black designer to climb into the upper echelons of luxury fashion. “The fact that Louis Vuitton is being rumored, it just goes to show that she came into the industry and really has made change to the way people are dressing,” Page says. “I think that in itself is something that she should be proud of, and that is a testament to how great her brand is.”
If the position should become hers, she would be a woman helming the menswear division of a legacy fashion house, which would be no small thing: The percentage of women leading any fashion company is, by one estimation, 12.5 percent. Those overseeing a menswear brand are further outliers and include women who were born into a family business. Yet even within that small sorority, Wales Bonner would be atypical: She’s specifically captivated by the beautiful complexity of Black men and the culture they embody.
She is, in short, a rarity — one who may be the perfect designer for now. And for what it’s worth, she did not stand in line to curtsy to the queen’s casket. Instead, she was working.
For some designers, their origin story is something to transcend. They spend their careers playing against type. For others, it’s a case study in improbability. With Wales Bonner, her beginning makes her present seem almost inevitable. She grew up in south London. Her mother is a business consultant and her father, a lawyer. They separated when she was young, and her childhood was defined in part by geography and logistics. Shuttling between her mother’s affluent, predominantly White neighborhood and her father’s more ethnically diverse one, Wales Bonner regularly crossed a racial divide with all the attendant social and economic elements that implies. She saw White privilege and the richness of Blackness, the power of money and of the mind.
Her parents chose careers that valued order and a methodical nature; Wales Bonner, who is a middle child — with two sisters and two brothers — has a similarly sober disposition. There are no outsize, extraneous embellishments to her ensemble when we meet; mostly she’s wearing black. Petite, with a tawny complexion, she wears her dark hair smoothed back into a bun. She has an oval face, and when she’s looking at you dead on, her presence is understated and spare. And then she tilts her head to the side and the light glances off the angles of her face, and that’s when you notice the cheekbones and the chiseled chin.
The facets of Wales Bonner, 32, reveal themselves slowly. She is not quick to guffaw with a stranger. When you’re introduced to her, you do not immediately feel as though this is someone you’ve known forever. You will get to know her as she will get to know you. In a world that engages in false intimacy and performative friendliness, Wales Bonner’s reserve is calming. Perhaps this is just a facade, but she seems to be someone who has made peace with the silences in a conversation; she will pause and think.
“Growing up, being a teenager in London, the school I went to was very, very diverse,” she says. “And the different places I lived when I was a teenager, I was exposed to a lot of different communities. The environment that I grew up in has informed what I do. But I think also because I have mixed heritage … I’ve always had to negotiate my identity.” Her father is a child of the Windrush generation — a group that came to Britain between 1948 and 1971 from Caribbean countries. He consumed the poetry of Derek Walcott and Dylan Thomas and shared both with her. As she moved through school, race was present both in fact and in theory. Education was a tool for coping and understanding her place in a culture that dealt in extremes rather than subtleties.
She graduated in 2014 from Central Saint Martins, the London art school that produced some of the fashion industry’s most influential designers such as Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Sarah Burton, Stella McCartney and Riccardo Tisci. She entered as a design student and along the way considered art direction and writing. Ultimately, however, she realized that the stories she wanted to tell were best communicated through clothing, a visual medium that is artful and also deeply personal. “During that time I was very interested in identity and representation,” she says. “That was more of a self-driven practice.” She devoured bookish research and wrote a thesis that digested the work of artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kerry James Marshall. She looked to blaxploitation films and Afro-Carribbean poets. And when she showed her graduation collection, with its merger of European opulence and Black culture, her classmates could see what she had been reading by looking at her clothing: “They kind of understood the world that I was coming from. It wasn’t necessarily really intentional. It was just that it was all embedded in what I was doing, and people could feel that.”
She was inspired by Raf Simons, Phoebe Philo and Miuccia Prada — designers who embody restraint, or whose work refuses the traditional trappings of gender and beauty. She was particularly enamored with Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel. “I was interested in her personal style and bringing in more elements considered kind of more masculine and timeless,” Wales Bonner says. “I really like when clothing is put together in a way that everything feels important; it’s not too much and quite balanced with harmonious elements. And the craftsmanship of the jackets, I like how they’re made and how they’re weighted and everything like that.”
While in school, she spent several months interning in New York at American Vogue and working for the stylist Camilla Nickerson. She was enthralled watching Nickerson and seeing the way in which she researched history or art and then infused her fashion shoots with that knowledge. She was also excited to be around the hum of efficiency and creativity that were defining features of Vogue during that time. Wales Bonner wasn’t tripped up by Vogue’s lack of diversity. She was energized by its female authorship.
“Women were in charge, you know? Women like Anna Wintour, and Grace Coddington was there as well, and Camilla — these women that were influencing the industry at such a high level,” she says of the three British editors. “It’s probably the first environment where I saw a lot of women really driving things professionally. And it was quite an informative age and they were doing things at the highest level, with the highest standard.”
“I’ve been able to find my voice through fashion. There’s an immediacy about creating clothing. It’s very direct. You don’t need to read an essay to understand something.”
Soon after graduating from Central Saint Martins, she launched her own brand, an entrepreneurial leap that has become standard for young designers. By 2016, she’d won the LVMH fashion prize, which, in addition to providing a cash award and professional mentoring, put her in conversation with the jury’s industry veterans who were impressed by the quality of her work along with its exploration of Black identity. “I think she has something very interesting to say, and it feels like she has a lot more to say,” designer and juror Phoebe Philo told Women’s Wear Daily after the award was announced. “You can see she’s figuring that out through her fashion.”
For Wales Bonner, the prize was validation. “I think it probably helped more with my confidence — that what I’m doing was appreciated or seemed important,” she says. It didn’t take long for Wales Bonner to become what she had so admired at Vogue: a professional woman working at the highest standard.
The Wales Bonner brand is headquartered on the Strand, in an imposing brutalist building not far from Trafalgar Square. It shares real estate with other extremely cool fashion brands, advertising firms and media groups. The office lacks the typical accoutrements of most fashion companies: There are no monumental bouquets of fresh flowers; no jungle of orchids is in evidence. If there is a library of Rizzoli and Taschen fashion biographies on-site, it is behind closed doors.
Several rolling racks of clothes are pushed against white walls, and the center of a room the size of a studio apartment is dominated by tall bookcases in industrial white that are close to overflowing. In fact, the space may contain more books on art and Black history than there are clothes. The books tell the story of a designer intent on presenting the world from an alternative perspective. Exhibition catalogues document the work of renowned artists Betye Saar, Theaster Gates, Kehinde Wiley, Deana Lawson; public intellectuals Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah speak through their writings. There’s even a Howard University Bison yearbook. These are all Black voices. And so whether one looks at this library and declares it an ode to Black culture, or simply a celebration of humankind’s creativity and intellectual might, is a matter of perspective. It depends on who’s writing the story. “A lot of my influences really come from outside of fashion,” she says. “It’s literature; it’s music, photography, art.”
She works with a team of 16 people, including two who are in charge of academic research. Her show notes can read like a course offering in art history or Black studies, with an appendix of recommended reading. She doesn’t just hire a DJ to create a playlist for a presentation, she co-curates one and tries to reflect the sounds and rhythms of the music in the clothing itself. Fashion is her way of participating in a larger cultural and creative conversation. It’s her way of getting inside the room and standing with other young artists such as filmmaker Jeano Edwards and photographer Tyler Mitchell. She doesn’t just want to make clothes. She wants to express herself. “I’ve been able to find my voice through fashion. There’s an immediacy about creating clothing. It’s very direct. You don’t need to read an essay to understand something,” Wales Bonner says. With fashion, “you can feel it — just by looking.”
She has explored creative possibilities in places that the fashion industry has yet to fully plunder. She has internalized the literature of James Baldwin and Ishmael Reed; she has found common cause with the contemporary art of David Hammons — creator of the African American flag with its red and black stripes, and stars on a field of green. She is specific. She isn’t moved by just any form of jazz but by the jazz musician Alice Coltrane. “I’m interested in artists and photography around the Black Atlantic,” Wales Bonner says. “I like collecting or library building. I’m interested in this idea of archiving as well, with working with existing materials, and having a relationship with history and lineage and what’s come before. I see my position and role as about transmitting some of that lineage to the future. I’m interested in kind of revealing beauty that has existed across time and channeling that through fashion.”
If you look at her work, whether it’s the formal tailoring or her collaboration with Adidas, the lines and colors and patterns connect the past to the present; they suggest new ways of defining beauty and luxury in the future. There’s a bit of the 1960s portraiture of Malian photographer Malick Sidibé in the slim silhouette of a suit. There’s more than a little self-satisfied elegance in the velvet jackets and embroidered details that makes one think of Wiley’s life-size renderings of Black men in heroic circumstances. And in her colors, one can see the 1970s swagger of an urbane gentleman as depicted by Barkley Hendricks. It’s all there. Absorbed into the clothes.
“Early things I was interested in is the idea of value and an idea of luxury coming from a certain place,” Wales Bonner says. “I wanted to bring things that are different, from different places or approaches, and give that the same space as another tradition. There’s a sense of hybridity, a sense of appreciation of these heritage brands, European brands like Dior and Chanel and thinking about that origin story and the idea of the maison, and the sense of creation and value and all that. But at the same time, for me, it was about bringing an Afro-Atlantic spirit to the idea of luxury.”
To explain what she means by “Afro-Atlantic spirit,” she refers to the work of Robert Farris Thompson, the pioneering Yale University scholar who studied the cultures of Africa and the Americas and transformed the thinking about the relationship between those worlds. Thompson, who died in 2021 at 88, coined the phrase “Black Atlantic” to describe an interconnected global culture, one with strands running through the visual arts, music, dance, religion and sociology. He was instrumental in welcoming what academics and critics long referred to as “primitive” art into the canon of fine arts. He argued that Black culture was more than anthropology. And in doing so, he highlighted the links between Africa and, well, just about everything. “Most of our ballroom dancing is Africanized,” Thompson told Rolling Stone in 1984. “The rumba, the tango, even tap-dancing and the Lindy. Fried chicken is African. And J. Press patchwork shorts may be related to an African fabric. Even cheerleading incorporates some apparent Kongo gestures: left hand on hip, right hand raised twirling a baton.”
This connecting of the cultural dots is something that’s particularly urgent in the arts in general and in fashion specifically. The art exhibition “Afro-Atlantic Histories,” which was assembled in Brazil and traveled to Washington’s National Gallery of Art earlier this year, highlighted artistic conversation between both sides of the Atlantic. And in London, the Victoria and Albert Museum has mounted “Africa Fashion” — a survey of modern African style, including designers, photographers and accessory makers.
Much of the work in “Africa Fashion” is dazzling in its mix of prints and fabrics; designers use fabrics such as wax cloth and mud cloth while incorporating silks and French lace. It’s an informative exhibition and asks its audience to lean into the breadth of African creativity — but it’s also a frustrating exhibition. How do you go about reconciling centuries of disregard? A single season of Wales Bonner’s work is a more stirring expression of Africa’s creative reach than what’s on display in the winding galleries of the V&A.
Menswear has long been a small part of the fashion industry, with revenue about one-third that of the women’s market in the United States. Historically, change has been slow and incremental. Wales Bonner chose menswear as her foundational language precisely because of its long-standing rigidity, its strict parameters and aversion to upheaval. It’s easier to stand out as bold and subversive in a field where skinny suits once reverberated like an exploding grenade.
In the past decade, however, many of the most significant shifts in fashion have first taken root in the men’s business — street style, athleisure apparel, sneaker mania — before eventually populating the entire fashion market. Womenswear has always borrowed from the men’s department and called it Annie Hall style, minimalism or androgyny. Today, it’s menswear that’s forcing a total reconsideration of gendered presumptions. Wales Bonner is part of that push. She presents her men’s and women’s collections together during the men’s runway season. “She’s blurred the lines between the women’s and men’s collection. … So if you’re a man, you feel like you can shop the women’s pieces and vice versa,” says Page of Net-a-Porter. “And there’s a really beautiful fluidity to the collections.”
For centuries, women have been dressed by male designers; they have been subject to a male gaze. But how do men look to women? How do Black men, who are so often vilified or hypersexualized, look to Wales Bonner?
For her spring 2023 collection, which she presented in Florence during Pitti Uomo, the menswear trade shows, the models walked through the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, one of the city’s Renaissance monuments and a reminder of the enduring imprint of Europe on the cultural landscape. But artistry from Burkina Faso and Ghana was also present, in the cottons and the glass-bead jewelry. The room was draped with jute — the bags were once used for transporting cocoa beans — in an installation created by the Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama. The message was simple: This is all luxury. This is all art, from Europe to Africa. Geography doesn’t have to define value.
And the men? They were beautiful, elegant and regal. They were tall and lanky. Delicate. Their dark skin was unblemished. Their resting expression was one of contentment. They didn’t lumber or stomp; they glided. They looked unburdened. And in today’s world, that’s a powerful, almost fantastical, statement.
One of the looks in that show was a T-shirt printed with a detail from artist Kerry James Marshall’s 1993 painting “Lost Boys: AKA Black Sonny.” Even without a detailed explanation of the collaboration, and its charitable bona fides, it’s immediately recognizable as a Marshall image: the audacious Blackness, the specificity of Sonny, the humanity. “He’s one of my biggest inspirations,” Wales Bonner says of the artist. “There’s something about the level of beauty that he presents in his work; it’s very seductive and I think that was interesting to me: You can draw people over through beauty. Beauty can be quite strategic.”
Another of Marshall’s admirers, Nigerian American writer Teju Cole, described the essence of the artist’s work this way: “Kerry James Marshall is looking for what’s not there. No, not quite. Kerry James Marshall is looking for what is there but not seen. Well, almost. Try again. Kerry James Marshall is looking for what is there but not seen by them. That’s it.”
For Marshall, art history is something that is constructed. It’s not inevitable. The same is true of fashion history and its accompanying myths. It’s something that the industry collectively creates and shores up season after season. Wales Bonner refuses to accept fashion’s inevitability. “When I first started Wales Bonner in 2015, I felt like there was a limited way that Black culture was represented within fashion, within that space. There was a wealth of my own experience and connections — like spiritually and ancestrally and across time — and [fashion] wasn’t representing that,” she says. “So for me, my work was really about just revealing something that maybe is quite familiar to us that maybe is not historically represented within fashion.”
Indeed, what Wales Bonner is illuminating has always been present but has gone unseen by fashion’s legacy brands — by the industry’s midcareer Eurocentric adherents, and even by many of the next-generation designers who have been admirably determined to offer a broader definition of beauty, desire and power. Like the face of one of Marshall’s jet black lost boys, there’s nuance and complexity in Blackness. If you bother to look, to really look, details reveal themselves.
Wales Bonner was making her case for the humanity, dignity and individuality of Black men before black squares began to appear in the social media of fashion brands, before “woke” made the linguistic journey from a value to a pejorative. She was telling her stories about a global Black culture before social justice protests erupted around the world. “It kind of reaffirmed everything, the importance of what I’m trying to do and the consistency of it,” she says.
She’s not trying to upend fashion. Or the culture. She’s aiming to bring clarity. “I don’t feel like I’m an outsider, like I’m outside the system. I’m quite in. I like structure,” Wales Bonner says. “For me, it’s about disrupting something from within.” | 2022-11-14T15:56:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Grace Wales Bonner is the perfect designer for now - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/14/grace-wales-bonner/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/14/grace-wales-bonner/ |
A soft(er) landing is possible. Investors have few better options than the U.S.
Employees build and test robots at Amazon's BOS27 Robotics Innovation Hub in Westborough, Mass., on Thursday. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images)
The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday released the October inflation number, which provided hope that we might be on the downside of the inflation spike. The consumer price index rose 0.4 percent in October. Year-to-year the CPI was up 7.7 percent. “Respective estimates from Dow Jones were for rises of 0.6% and 7.9%,” CNBC reported. Moreover, “excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core CPI increased 0.3% for the month and 6.3% on an annual basis, compared with respective estimates of 0.5% and 6.5%.”
The stock market went wild, with the S&P rising 5.5 percent on Thursday and another 0.9 percent on Friday. The Dow Jones rose nearly 1,200 points on Thursday alone. Yet President Biden remained restrained: “My economic plan is showing results, and the American people can see that we are facing global economic challenges from a position of strength,” he argued in a written statement. “It will take time to get inflation back to normal levels — and we could see setbacks along the way — but we will keep at it and help families with the cost of living.”
America is still the country if you want a stable (for now) government that enforces the rule of law and boasts a fluid labor market, protections for intellectual property and ample market regulation. The United States remains the most attractive venue to spend your money, the country most likely to come out of the post-pandemic turbulence in the best condition. As Annie Lowrey wrote in the Atlantic, the United States “occupies a strange sweetheart position in the global economy — one that stands to become sweeter as the world yet again teeters on the brink of recession.” | 2022-11-14T16:14:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Fed may get a soft landing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/fed-reserve-inflation-soft-landing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/fed-reserve-inflation-soft-landing/ |
Ukraine live briefing: Triumphant Zelensky visits liberated Kherson as focu...
A man on Sunday walks in the yard of a prison in Kherson, Ukraine, where he said Russian jailers killed prisoners for disobedience or for being suspected resistance fighters, known as partisans. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post)
KHERSON, Ukraine — Few people paid attention to the drab concrete building, tucked away on a quiet residential street, that had long housed unruly youths behind a high wall and a spool of barbed wire. But after Russian soldiers swept into Kherson early last March, the anonymous building quickly became infamous.
Black sedans with tinted windows and missing license plates arrived at all hours, disgorging Ukrainian detainees with bags over their heads. Screams began to escape the three-story structure, piercing the once-calm neighborhood, residents said.
Sometimes, the gates would open, and a detainee would be dumped on the street, physically and mentally broken. Other captives were sent to a larger prison, or never seen again. “If there is a hell on earth, it was here,” said Serhiy, 48, who lives across the street and whom The Washington Post is only identifying by first name to protect him from retribution.
Days after Russian forces fled in retreat, surrendering the only regional capital Russia had managed to seize since the start of its invasion, the horrors that occurred in this stately 18th-century port city are just starting to come into focus.
An outline of mass incarceration was already appearing on Saturday and Sunday, when a dozen people told The Post that they were either detained themselves or were searching for someone who had been taken. Many approached reporters on the street, asking for help in finding their loved ones.
A mother was arrested in front of her teenage son and held for two months on a suspicion of helping Ukrainian forces.
A priest was arrested and sent to Crimea, according to a congregant. Even the mayor was arrested. Still, no one knows where he is.
“A lot of people have disappeared,” Samoylenko said, adding that he feared the city’s name would soon join the ranks of cities like Bucha, Irpin, and Izyum, which are now synonymous with Russian atrocities.
‘Everyone could hear the torture’
Located where the Dnieper River meets the Black Sea, Kherson, with a prewar population of nearly 300,000, is by far the biggest city to be liberated. It was also the first to be occupied. Of cities that fell under Russian occupation only Mariupol, which suffered severe destruction and remains under Russian control, is bigger.
And as a regional capital crucial to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan to annex the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, Kherson city is a window into the Russian military- administrative machine.
Moscow-backed officials took over the regional administrative building downtown and began pumping out social media messages urging residents to obtain Russian passports to continue receiving their pensions and other benefits.
Some residents said officials offered cash payments — in Russian rubles — to take a Russian passport. Schools were ordered to implement Russian curriculums and Ukrainian nationalist songs were banned.
“Russia is here forever,” billboards vowed.
The deputy head of the Kherson occupation administration, Kirill Stremousov, who had criticized Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other Russian military commanders over battlefield setbacks, died in a car accident last week on the same day that Shoigu approved the retreat from the city.
What remains, however, is the architecture of mass incarceration, and many missing people.
Most people who spoke to The Post said they or their loved ones were first taken to the drab concrete building in the north of the city.
Serhiy said he often saw Russians drag Ukrainian prisoners out of black sedans with bags on their head and take them inside.
The building, a former youth detention center, was easy to adapt into a torture chamber. Most people who spent time in or around the place believed it was run by officers of the FSB, the feared Russian Security Service.
“The rooms were ready for them,” one nearby neighbor, Ihor Nikitenko, 57, said.
“They brought everyone they could get their hands on: partisans, activists, you name it,” his wife, Larysa Nikitenko, 54, said as the couple shopped at a store next to the detention center.
Almost as often as prisoners arrived, others were thrown onto the street, confused, half-naked and often seriously injured, they said.
Oleksandr Kuzmin said he was held in the detention center for a day, during which people he suspected to be FSB agents smashed his leg with a hammer — all because he had fought against Russian-backed separatists in Donbas nearly a decade ago. In occupied towns, Russian forces routinely searched for men with prior military experience often demanding that other residents identify them.
Kuzmin said that in a room below his cell, he could hear people screaming in pain, and he said that a young man brought into his cell told him that he had been arrested for helping others access hryvnia, the Ukrainian currency, which Russia was trying to replace with the ruble.
The Russians had shocked the young men with electricity on his nipples and penis, Kuzmin said.
Prisoners were forced to say “Hail Putin” or “Hail Russia” to receive meals, according to neighbors who had spoken to detainees after their release. Those who refused received electric shocks.
‘We wanted to kill them so badly’
While residents of the neighborhood could hear the torture inside, they said they could also see the Russians enjoying themselves. Russian men came into shops on the street to buy food and copious amounts of alcohol. They also brought in women who appeared to be prostitutes, several locals said.
In a house just a few blocks away, Yuriy, 68, described how his son, ended up in the detention center and is still being help captive in Crimea. The son, Roman, 38, had been part of a local territorial defense unit. When the Russians occupied Kherson in early March, his unit stayed and became resistance fighters, or partisans, smuggling weapons between safe houses and sometimes carrying out missions.
The Post is only identifying Yuriy and Roman by first name to avoid putting them at risk, or jeopardizing the son’s safe return.
For weeks, the Russians were looking for Roman. They finally caught him on Aug. 4 and took him to the detention center, where he was beaten for several days. After two or three weeks, Roman was transferred to a prison downtown — a fate that befell many of those accused of more serious offenses.
At the prison downtown, inmates let Roman use a smuggled telephone to call his dad. For the next two months, Yuriy was able to leave painkillers, medicine, cigarettes and candy for his son at the larger detention center, though he was never allowed to see him.
He dealt with Ukrainian prison officials, he said, and filled out Ukrainian documents from the 1980s that were written in Russian. When he last spoke to his son on Oct. 20, there was no hint that anything was about to change. But a day or two later, Yuriy heard that many of the prisoners had been taken to Crimea.
After almost a month of searching, Yuriy said he finally learned Roman was alive and being held in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea. Yuriy said he has no idea what will happen to his son who, as a resistance fighter, is facing serious charges. Even if his son is released, Yuriy said has no idea how Roman will return home.
Others also told The Post they suspected friends or family members had been sent to Crimea as the Ukrainian Armed Forces advanced on Kherson city.
Some believed their loved ones might be much closer: just across the Dnieper River in the Russian-held town of Chaplynka. But others said they had no idea where to start looking.
Oleksandr Zubrytskiy approached reporters on the street outside the detention center to ask for help finding his best friend, Petro Pikovskiy. Pikovskiy, 62, had gone out looking for his son who had been arrested by the Russians, only to vanish himself, Zubrytskiy said.
‘Work for us, or leave’
Serhiy Didenko, 42, was walking to join the celebration in Kherson’s main square on Sunday morning when he saw smoke rising from the large prison complex downtown where he used to work.
Didenko stepped over broken glass and followed inside after a team of soldiers who were clearing the building of mines and booby traps. Potatoes, presumably spilled by fleeing Russians a few days earlier, were strewn along the path into the building. Elsewhere inside, riot gear was scattered on the floor as if tossed aside in a hurry.
The 700-person detention center had been half-full when he left, Didenko said. But it quickly filled with suspected partisans, activists, or anyone bold enough to raise their voice to a Russian.
The new jailers put some of the prisoners to work building wooden structures for military trenches, according to two men who had been locked up since before the war began. Maksym Karynoi and Serhiy Tereshchenko, both 41, said they believed they were singled out because of their past military service fighting Russian separatists.
“One person refused to get on his knees, so they shot him,” said Andriy, a rail-thin 35-year-old prisoner who asked that his last name not be used. “They left his dead body in the cell for 24 hours.”
Andriy and two other inmates told The Post that they believed the Russians had executed some of the suspected partisans.
“There would be one person on either side,” said another inmate, Vardan Maglochyan, 61. “They would drag them outside. Then we’d hear gunshots.”
The Post was unable to inspect the building where the inmates believed the men were killed because it was on fire and the roof was collapsing on Sunday. The fire could have been caused by Ukrainian demining teams detonating explosives the occupiers left behind. But the inmates had another explanation. They said they believed the Russians were destroying evidence.
Neighbors suspected something similar across town, at the detention center, where smoke began to pour from the upper floors on Friday night, just a few hours after the last Russians had left Kherson.
Kamila Hrabchuk contributed to this report. | 2022-11-14T16:14:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kherson residents describe detentions and torture under Russian occupation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/14/kherson-disappearances-detentions-torture-occupation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/14/kherson-disappearances-detentions-torture-occupation/ |
Moderna says new booster increases protection against omicron subvariants
Officials say the need for next-generation treatments and vaccines is urgent as the virus continues mutating.
Biden officials are finalizing a request for about $10 billion in additional public health funds by year’s end, part of a larger request that would also include funding for Ukraine and disaster relief for Florida. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)
The White House is mounting another effort to secure billions of dollars from Congress for a new generation of coronavirus vaccines and treatments, even as Republicans remain skeptical about how past allocations were spent.
Biden officials are finalizing a request this week for about $10 billion in public health funds by year’s end, part of a larger request in the lame-duck session of Congress that would also include funding for Ukraine and disaster relief for hurricane damage in Florida, according to six people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential budget discussions. That request includes $8.25 billion for covid-response efforts, including a successor to Operation Warp Speed that some call “Project Covid Shield,” intended to jump-start development of coronavirus vaccines and treatments that would be effective against an evolving virus
Officials also are debating about $2 billion for other health efforts, including about $1 billion for the global covid response, as well as about $750,000 to combat problems such as hepatitis C and monkeypox.
Senior health officials and outside experts say that more funding for the covid response is desperately needed, pointing to lagging uptake of new coronavirus booster shots that could benefit from public education campaigns, the fading efficacy of existing antivirals and the demand for new vaccines and treatments that will work against future virus variants.
“While COVID-19 is no longer the disruptive force it once was, we face new subvariants in the U.S. and around the world that have the potential to cause a surge of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths …” wrote one individual familiar with the budget discussions. “That’s why we’re requesting $10 billion to meet immediate short-term domestic needs for resources like treatments; to accelerate the research and development of next-generation vaccines and therapeutics; to increase research into long COVID; and to support the global response to COVID-19.”
Officials had initially targeted between $15 billion and $20 billion in additional covid funding, before scaling back their planned request after President Biden sounded a note of caution late last week, given the collapse of prior attempts to secure covid funding from Congress. The timing of the new request also has been in flux as officials waited to see which party would control the legislative branch next year, with the outcome of more than a dozen House races still to be determined. Democrats’ best chance of success may come in the lame-duck since they still control both congressional chambers.
“The supplemental requests that we keep putting in … just because they don’t go anywhere, doesn’t mean the need for them disappears,” Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, said in an interview last week.
But the effort to secure more covid funding comes amid waning public interest in combating the virus. Just 2 percent of respondents to exit polls in last week’s elections said the pandemic was the most important issue facing the country; pharmaceutical companies have begun pulling back on covid-related product lines as government funding dries up; and charitable organizations are also pivoting away from prioritizing the virus response.
“What we’re seeing with many foundations is there are cycles of panic and neglect: Put a lot of money and a lot of effort into the crisis of the day, and then … the funding dries up,” Rick Bright, who recently left the Rockefeller Foundation after it folded his pandemic institute into a broader initiative, told Science magazine in October.
A Rockefeller Foundation spokesperson pointed to more than $60 million in pandemic-related investments, including a $55 million donation earlier this year to help with global vaccine rollout.
GOP questions
The push for more covid funds is expected to collide with GOP resistance, after Republicans repeatedly called on the Biden administration this year to explain how it spent billions of dollars previously allocated to the fight.
In one previously unreported flash point, Republicans on the Senate’s health committee this summer zeroed in on a nearly $150 million contract awarded to accounting firm KPMG last year to help distribute monoclonal antibodies, a covid treatment that must be administered in a health care setting.
While federal officials had already distributed the intravenous treatments to more than 5,000 hospitals, physicians’ offices and other care settings, White House leaders initially trumpeted the contract with KPMG, saying the firm’s personnel and logistics expertise would enable it to supplement federal efforts to expand access to the treatment, particularly in medically underserved areas.
“This new effort is going to speed assistance to hard-hit communities, really increasing the use and administration of the monoclonal antibody therapies, preventing hospitalization and death,” Marcella Nunez-Smith, who oversaw the White House’s health equity efforts, said at a briefing in March 2021.
Participating health centers, such as UMass Memorial Medical Center and Baptist Memorial Health Care in Jackson, Miss., worked with KPMG on efforts to promote the treatment, such as producing radio advertisements and distributing fliers.
“I think it was very beneficial,” said Vicki Brownewell, a nurse executive who oversaw monoclonal infusion centers in the Houston Methodist health system. Brownewell said the KPMG partnership allowed Houston Methodist to set up free, virtual visits in the summer of 2021, which helped the system quickly schedule appointments for infusions for covid patients.
“Two hundred and eleven patients took advantage of those free, virtual urgent care visits — but we know that we touched many, many more patients than that,” Brownewell added.
But four current and former administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe federal covid strategy said the KPMG contract produced work that was ultimately deemed duplicative. For instance, KPMG set up a now-defunct website — crushcovid.com — that explained the benefits of monoclonal antibodies and encouraged patients to seek them out, providing a list of possible treatment sites. But the website only listed the hospitals working with KPMG across 18 states, rather than providing the complete list of thousands of monoclonal infusion centers across the country, which were available on another website run by the federal government. The KPMG website also did not allow patients to register for treatments, instead urging them to contact health centers.
Overall, the KPMG contract resulted in about 55,000 monoclonal antibody infusions, representing about 3 percent of the more than 1.5 million infusions done across the country in the same period, said two of the former officials.
The contract was quietly paused in September 2021 as the Biden administration reviewed its broader monoclonal antibody strategy, and was wound down by the end of last year, amid Senate Republicans’ questions about why the funds were awarded in the first place — with GOP lawmakers saying they still don’t have sufficient answers.
“I am, once again, asking your agency to explain why up to $142 million was spent with an accounting firm to administer medicine to sick Americans,” Sen. Richard Burr, the top Republican on the Senate’s health committee, wrote to the Department of Health and Human Services in a July letter shared with The Washington Post, along with an accompanying memo. “This is grossly unacceptable.”
HHS: $98M never spent
In response to questions from The Post, HHS defended the arrangement with KPMG as an appropriate effort to boost monoclonal antibody infusions and said the government spent about $45 million on the contract. About $98 million in additional funds were not awarded because the contract was canceled, HHS said.
Two administration officials briefed on the KPMG contract privately conceded that it was not a good use of federal money. But they say that the current covid funding needs are clear and pressing — including the need for a new generation of treatments, such as monoclonals intended to be more durable than those currently in use — a position echoed by outside experts and allies.
Tom Inglesby, who stepped down as the White House coronavirus testing coordinator earlier this year and who leads the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, pointed to the declining efficacy of Evusheld, a treatment that millions of immunocompromised people have relied upon as long-term protection against coronavirus, but which has shown less potency against new omicron variants. Biden officials warned earlier this year that without more funding from Congress, they would not be able to provide a replacement for Evusheld.
“There is a scientific path towards getting the next-generation Evusheld so that it could protect immunosuppressed people — but they’re not able to move forward on that path because they need research dollars, development dollars,” said Inglesby, adding that similar issues are delaying other urgent needs.
“This whole chain of support, from the development of vaccines and distribution of vaccines to encouraging people to get vaccinated, that all is getting wound down or turned off, because of the absence of funding,” he said.
Jeff Stein contributed to this report. | 2022-11-14T17:10:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White House to seek more covid funding in lame-duck session - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/14/biden-covid-funding-request-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/14/biden-covid-funding-request-congress/ |
Supreme Court turns down Arizona GOP head’s request to shield records
Kelli Ward, Arizona chairwoman of the GOP, speaks at a rally during To Protect Our Elections conference in July 2021 in Phoenix. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request from the head of the Arizona Republican Party to shield her phone records from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault attack on the Capitol.
In a short, unsigned order the court turned down the request from Arizona GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they would have granted the request. Neither the majority nor the dissenting justices detailed their reasoning.
A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had said it was proper for the committee to issue a subpoena seeking information about calls placed from Ward’s cellphone between November 2020 and January 2021. The information would not include the content or location of the calls.
Ward argued that would violate her First Amendment right to freedom of association. “In a first-of-its-kind situation, a select committee of the United States Congress, dominated by one political party, has subpoenaed the personal telephone and text message records of a state chair of the rival political party,” Ward’s lawyers told the Supreme Court.
Ward speculated that investigators intended to call all those whose numbers showed up, adding “There can be no greater chill on public participation in partisan politics than a call, visit, or subpoena, from federal investigators.”
The committee replied that Ward “played a significant role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election,” and that she invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions about her role when she appeared before the committee.
“Dr. Ward participated in several improper efforts to subvert the will of the American people as expressed at the ballot box, culminating in a fake-elector scheme that was instrumental in leading to the January 6th attack,” says the committee’s filing at the Supreme Court. “At best, her arguments amount to a claim that she has an absolute right to attempt to overturn a presidential election, yet at the same time Congress cannot take reasonable investigative steps to learn more about that plan that had such disastrous consequences for our nation.”
On a 2 to 1 vote, the 9th Circuit panel rejected Ward’s arguments.
“Ward participated in a scheme to send spurious electoral votes to Congress, a scheme that the Committee describes as ‘a key part’ of the ‘effort to overturn the election’ that culminated on January 6,” wrote Judges Barry G. Silverman, appointed by President Bill Clinton, and Eric D. Miller, nominated by President Donald Trump.
The judges said, “There is little to suggest that disclosing Ward’s phone records to the committee will affect protected associational activity” because the subpoena does not “target any organization or association.”
Judge Sandra S. Ikuta, nominated by President George W. Bush, disagreed. “The communications at issue here between members of a political party about an election implicate a core associational right protected by the First Amendment,” she wrote. She added that “because the committee does not provide any actual explanation for its inquiry other than its general investigative interests” Ward has at least raised “serious questions going to the merits” of her First Amendment claim.
The committee said in its filings that the records sought “do not provide a list of phone numbers of Arizona Republican Party members — but rather a list of people with whom Dr. Ward communicated.” It labeled “categorically false” Ward’s claim that the committee intended to call those who show up in her records.
Instead, the committee said it wants to compare the list to a “set of names and phone numbers of people who were involved in various aspects of the multi-pronged plot to overturn the 2020 election” that the committee has accumulated.
As the 2020 election unfolded in Maricopa County, home to a large number of Arizona voters, Ward sought to avert Trump’s loss and pressure county leaders, according to text messages previously obtained through the county through public records requests. In texts to one county leader, Ward complained about voting equipment and election observers. She texted: “We need you to stop the counting.” They continued counting.
Texts show Ward also asked three Republican county leaders to talk to Sidney Powell, the attorney drawing national attention for claiming unsubstantiated election fraud. She sent Powell’s phone number, but county leaders did not call Powell. Ward also texted one county official that he might be hearing from Trump and wrote she had been talking with him about the situation in Arizona. Two Republican county supervisors, Clint Hickman and Bill Gates, perceived Ward to be acting as both a representative for Trump and in her capacity as chair of the state Republican Party, those familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak about it publicly, said.
In a Nov. 13, 2020 voice mail to Hickman as votes were underway, Ward said, “I’ve just talked to President Trump … he would like me to talk to you and also see if he needs to give you a call to discuss what’s happening on the ground in Maricopa.”
Later, Hickman did not pick up two subsequent phone calls from the White House.
In the weeks that followed, Ward helped arrange for a Dec. 14, 2020 alternate elector ceremony at the state Republican Party’s then-headquarters in Phoenix. Almost in real time, the state party touted their efforts, sharing video and photos on social media.
It was the same day the state’s true presidential electors cast their votes for Joe Biden.
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this report. | 2022-11-14T17:11:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court acts on Ward’s request to shield records from Jan. 6 committee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/supreme-court-jan6-ward-arizona/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/supreme-court-jan6-ward-arizona/ |
Protesters hold banners with the portrait of Mahsa Amini as they take part in a rally outside the Iranian consulate in Istanbul on Sept. 29, 2022. (Yasin Akgul/AFP/Getty Images)
An Iranian court sentenced an anti-government protester to death for the first time since the alleged police killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September set off the longest-running major demonstrations against Iran’s cleric-led security state.
Protesters have been calling for a change in Iran’s leadership and an end to decades of gender discrimination and state impunity. Iranian authorities have met the protests with violence and demanded harsh punishments for those who take part.
Iran’s revolutionary court handed down the death sentence on Sunday, according to Mizan, the news site of the country’s judiciary. The protester was accused of setting a government building on fire, andcharged with “war against God” and “corruption on earth,” as well as acting against national security.
A separate branch of Iran’s revolutionary courts sentenced five other unnamed defendants to up to 10 years in prison for violating national security and disrupting public order, according to Mizan. The rulings can be appealed.
There is little expectation of fair trials for the detained demonstrators, bystanders and chroniclers of the uprising. The Islamic Republic’s judicial system is stacked against the accused and dominated by Iran’s security services. Rights groups warn these are sham trials, with detainees often forced or tortured into providing false confessions based on made-up evidence.
More than 15,000 Iranians have been arrested and several hundred killed in nearly two months of anti-government protests, the activist news agency Hrana estimates. Iranian authorities, who claim Amini died of preexisting medical conditions, have framed the protests as riots incited by third-party countries to destabilize Iran.
A number of protesters face charges that can carry the death penalty. This includes Toomaj Salehi, a rapper who was arrested after taking part in the protests and releasing music that supported their cause, and Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, the two female Iranian journalists who helped break the story of Amini. Authorities have accused the pair, without evidence, of being CIA agents. They have been held in Tehran’s Evin prison complex — which is notorious for allegations of widespread human rights violations — since late September.
The family of another prominent detainee, activist Hossein Ronaghi, said Sunday that his life was in danger after he was transferred to a hospital in Evin prison and they lost contact with him. Ronaghi is on a hunger strike to protest his arrest on Sept. 24. Ronaghi’s family said he suffers from a kidney condition and that both his legs were broken while in jail.
When death sentences are issued to political prisoners in Iran, they are not always carried out, and can sometimes be commuted. But the threat of death is real: In 2021, Iran executed at least 314 people, according to Amnesty International — the second-highest known number of executions after China. The true number is likely higher.
Sunday’s sentence is the first known case linked to this year’s protests. Experts affiliated with the United Nations Human Rights Council called on Iranian authorities last week “to stop using the death penalty as a tool to squash protests” and “to immediately release all protesters.”
The experts said in a statement that they feared Iranian authorities would target “women and girls, who have been at the forefront of protests, and especially women human rights defenders, who have been arrested and jailed for demanding the end of systemic and systematic discriminatory laws, policies and practices.”
Experts explain what exactly Iran's morality police do, and why women are risking their lives on the frontlines to fight against it. (Video: Julie Yoon/The Washington Post)
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in a statement that the sanctions send “a clear message to the Iranian regime” that “the violent crackdown on protests must stop and freedom of expression must be respected.”
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday met with four female dissidents from Iran, and told them he respects and admires “the revolution they are leading.” Iran’s Foreign Ministry criticized the move, calling it “a flagrant violation of France’s international responsibilities in the fight against terrorism and violence.” | 2022-11-14T17:45:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iran issues first known death sentence linked to uprising - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/14/iran-death-sentence-protests-mahsa-amini/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/14/iran-death-sentence-protests-mahsa-amini/ |
3 football players killed in U-Va. campus shooting
A 6-foot-7 wide receiver known as a game-breaker because of his length, speed, and knack for catching long passes, including a 90-yarder as a freshman.
The player, Lavel Davis Jr., was one of three members of the University of Virginia football team killed in a shooting Sunday night at a parking garage on the Charlottesville campus. Two other students were wounded.
The university identified a student, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., as the suspect. Police said Monday Jones is in custody.
Here’s what we know about the people killed in Charlottesville:
Lavel Davis Jr. was tall and fast — a dynamic playmaker with a flair for breaking open games with acrobatic catches resulting in long gains.
The 20-year-old from Dorchester County, S.C. — an occasional starter at wide receiver — did not play in the Cavaliers’ last two games while in concussion protocol. He last was on the field Oct. 29 during a loss to Miami, 14-12, in overtime at Scott Stadium, where he finished with one reception for 47 yards.
Family members confirmed that Davis was fatally shot Sunday on campus.
“I wish it was me instead of him,” said Thaddeus Lavel Davis, his father. “That’s my son. I say I wish I was up there instead of him.”
Thaddeus Davis said Lavel was his firstborn child. He described his son as someone with a kind smile who would spread love.
Kim Richardson, Davis’s aunt, said the boy that the family called Tyler was a good child and never a troublemaker.
“He never bothered a soul,” she said. “He just wanted everyone happy.”
The 6-foot-7 junior averaged 23.2 yards per reception this season, which is first among Virginia players with at least five receptions. Davis had 16 catches for 371 yards and two touchdowns, matching a team high, overall after missing all of last season with a torn ACL suffered during spring practice.
Virginia football goes big with two new 6-foot-7 pass catchers
Davis had his most productive game of the year in the season opener Sept. 3 with four receptions for 89 yards in a 34-17 win against Richmond at Scott Stadium in the debut of Cavaliers Coach Tony Elliott, who was named to the position in December.
Why Virginia? : Lavel Davis Jr.
Why Virginia? : Lavel Davis Jr. "At Virginia... it's way bigger than football" #GoHoos | #THEStandard
Posted by Virginia Football on Wednesday, May 19, 2021
As a freshman, Davis amassed 515 yards and five touchdowns on 20 catches as part of a high-powered passing attack under coach Bronco Mendenhall, who stepped down last season for personal reasons, and offensive coordinator Robert Anae, who later joined the staff at Syracuse in the same capacity.
“Looking from the outside in last year made me appreciate the leaders on the team,” Davis said over the summer on the first day of training camp. “I’m trying to be one of those leaders. When things are going bad, even though it’s hard, try to pump positivity out, try to say, ‘Let’s keep going guys. We got this.’ ” | 2022-11-14T17:59:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who are the UVA shooting victims? Remembering the slain students. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/uva-shooting-victims-charlottesville/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/uva-shooting-victims-charlottesville/ |
For the portion of American sports followers who turn into soccer fans every few years, this month will serve as an introduction to Walker Zimmerman. (Kerem Yucel / AFP)
NASHVILLE — The summers here, Chris Ammons said, “can get hotter than hell’s attic.” When Ammons drove to his job as Nashville SC’s assistant equipment manager, he would leave the windows of his 1996 Pontiac Grand Prix rolled down in the parking lot. The air conditioning had busted, and Ammons had neither the time nor the means to fix it.
Walking down the hallway one morning last summer, Ammons passed Walker Zimmerman, Nashville’s star defender and an ascendant player on the national level. He didn’t know Zimmerman had noticed the battered Pontiac. Or that Zimmerman had recently purchased an SUV to replace his 2010 Nissan Altima. Or that Zimmerman had been waiting to speak with him.
“Hey,” Zimmerman asked him. “Would you happen to want my car?”
Over the years, Ammons had watched Zimmerman become both the face and the conscience of Nashville’s MLS club. He had come to believe Zimmerman was one of the nicest people he had ever met, which does not make him unique among people who have met Walker Zimmerman. Still, the question puzzled him, and Zimmerman could see the confusion on his face as Ammons began to blurt out a question.
“No, you can just have it,” Zimmerman said. “I want to give my car to you.”
For the portion of American sports followers who turn into soccer fans every few years, this month will serve as an introduction to Zimmerman. He is the projected starting center back for the U.S. men’s national team at the World Cup and, depending on Coach Gregg Berhalter’s willingness to share it, a candidate to wear the captain’s armband in Qatar. He wears his long blond hair knotted into a ponytail atop his head in the manner of Thor. He does not have a superpower, but the stories about him can seem too good to be true.
The son of a pastor and a homemaker from Lawrenceville, Ga., Zimmerman nudged his way into his first U.S. camp in 2017 and continued his steady improvement until, at 29, he effectively locked down a starting role. Berhalter has called him a “warrior,” praising Zimmerman not only for his aerial dominance and crafty passing but also his ability to bond a team through his magnetism. Hardly a moment passes on the pitch when Zimmerman is not directing a teammate, fingers pointing and mouth humming.
He is just as active off the field. Zimmerman played a role in completing the national team’s new collective bargaining agreement with the U.S. Soccer Federation, the first one negotiated alongside the U.S. women’s team, historic in its assurance of equal pay for both squads. He has joyfully made his 1-year-old son, Tucker, a ubiquitous presence at Nashville practices and U.S. training camps. He has spoken out in support of racial equality and gun control. He has donated time and money to breast cancer awareness, medical care for Ugandan children, at-risk kids and many other causes. Those around him describe his litany of charitable deeds and kind acts, many of which he attempts to keep private, with no shortage of awe.
“People want to belong to people like that — ‘I can join with him, and I’ll be fine,’ ” said Doug Allison, Zimmerman’s college coach at Furman. “He seems to always have it together. The cameras are always on him. He’s always protecting his teammates. He’s always guiding. As he gets to a higher and higher level, it doesn’t change.”
Ammons, the Nashville assistant equipment manager, has been the recipient of one of those deeds. When he realized Zimmerman was serious, he told Zimmerman it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him and fought off tears. That night, Ammons drove the Nissan Altima — his Nissan Altima — home, parked in his carport and cranked the radio with the windows up, sheltered from the Nashville swelter. Ammons had spent seven years taking care of soccer players, and now one of those players had taken care of him. The air conditioning cooled his face, and he cried.
‘Why can’t it be me?’
From the start, peers gravitated toward Zimmerman. He grew up tagging along with his older brothers, Dawson and Carter, playing games and sports with neighborhood kids. Even though he was the youngest, he always seemed to win. “You start to realize you can’t call him lucky forever,” Carter said. “Eventually, you start to realize he’s just better at everything than every other kid on our street.”
By seventh grade, Zimmerman had decided soccer would provide his clearest path to professional sports. He devoted himself to it with an uncommonly clear vision, guided by something that felt to him like fate.
At an under-13 national team camp, organizers showed videos of U.S. stars from past national teams. While a Clint Mathis highlight played, Zimmerman felt a sensation wash over him. On the drive home, he told his mother, Becky, “Something in me said, ‘You're going to play on the screen one day.’ ”
Zimmerman rose through the sport among the top of his age group, playing on national and regional teams that traveled the globe. He had tremendous athleticism, especially his vertical leap, and became a leader on every team he ever played on. Nuno Piteira, his youth coach at Gwinnett Soccer Academy, watched teammates literally follow him around Buenos Aires during a tournament — if he went into a convenience store, a line of teenage American soccer players tailed.
But Zimmerman did not stand out in a way that suggested he would one day star in domestic promotional commercials for a World Cup. He was the seventh overall pick in the 2013 MLS draft. He made his first national training camp at 23. Still, the entire time, Zimmerman expected he would reach his current prominence.
“A lot of people [say], ‘I never thought in my wildest dreams that this would be the path,’ ” Zimmerman said early this fall over lunch. “The way that I was raised, and the competitive spirit of my family and brothers, kind of always pushing the limits and trying to be the best, it feels like it’s where I’m supposed to be. It feels like the natural progression. There has to be someone to do it. So why can’t it be me?”
Zimmerman’s faith has shaped him. The children of pastors, Zimmerman realized as he grew up, would either rebel against the church or become ardent followers. “You hear the jokes — they go one way or the other,” Zimmerman said. “There’s so much pressure that’s put on them at a young age that it’s hard. You’re always knowing that you have to be the moral compass of your friend group. There’s a responsibility there that whether it’s fair or not, it’s just reality. I didn’t struggle too much on wanting to rebel and get outside of that. But I definitely felt the weight.”
At the Gwinnett Soccer Academy, Piteira arrived at one training session in a fragile state, rattled by a personal matter. As players started a warmup lap, Zimmerman, 15 years old at the time, broke from the pack and approached Piteira.
“Coach, you all right?” he asked.
“No, Walker, not so much,” Piteira said. “I’m dealing with some stuff.”
“Coach, that’s not a bad thing,” Walker replied. “That’s a good thing. The tougher life gets, the closer you get to God.”
Zimmerman turned to rejoin the warmup. Piteira stood there stunned and speechless. It was the only time Piteira remembered Zimmerman saying anything to him connected to religion.
“There are certain things people say in a moment, and it shapes your life,” Piteira said. “Maybe you expect it from a grown-up, somebody in my age group. My whole mind-set, my whole mood, it went out the window. It’s like, ‘Dude, are you kidding?’ ”
‘Dave & Buster’s might not be happy with it’
Last year, Zimmerman’s brothers, Carter and Dawson, visited him with their families. When they retreated to their room at night, Carter’s wife pointed out the brothers had done nothing but play games the entire day. “I didn’t even realize that,” Carter Zimmerman told her. “That’s just the way we relate to each other.”
Zimmerman relishes competition on a profound level, the result of all those days spent playing in the street. He does not play games so much as solve them from the inside out. When he was in high school and his brothers came home from college for Easter, he would arrange an elaborate egg hunt. The brothers never played darts until someone hung a dart board in their garage, and then they played one holiday break until their shoulders got sore. Carter had him beat until he watched his younger brother, unable to hit the bull’s eye all game, nail three in a row on his final turn.
“When he is put under pressure, he isn’t like the rest of us,” Carter said. “We’re all like, what if I missed this shot? Or what if this happens? He goes the opposite way, where I don’t even think he has those self-thoughts. He’s only concerned with winning.”
On the pitch, Zimmerman can be ruthless. The way he attacks balls in the air with abandon scares his mother, Becky. Zimmerman was best friends with a center forward at Gwinnett Soccer Academy, and sometimes Piteira worried the forward would try and fight Zimmerman because of how viciously he played. “But always within the game,” Piteira said. “Within a half second, Walker was able to look at him, smile and defuse the whole thing.”
Zimmerman’s reverence for play may have reached its apex during his five seasons with FC Dallas, when he and a handful of teammates hatched a scheme to take down the house — at Dave & Buster’s.
“I feel bad about releasing this,” Zimmerman said. “It's legal, but Dave & Buster's might not be happy with it.”
They found an online guide with tips on how to beat the system. First, they capitalized on the “$20-for-$20” offer to join the arcade’s mailing list, which loaded an extra $20 onto their player card when they paid $20. They would go on a Monday to execute the transaction, then leave. They would return Wednesday, when they had night practice and, more importantly, when games were half-price — meaning they had effectively turned $20 into $80.
“So now you’re operating at a way better ratio of money spent to tickets earned,” Zimmerman said, with a seriousness he might use to explain a defensive alignment against a corner kick.
They learned which games they could perfect through practice and “jackpot” — earn a massive number of tickets, which could be converted to prizes. They grew friendly with the staff, who would find more balls from the back to give them more throws in Two-Minute Drill. They would team up in Down the Clown. They could watch the first block fall in Tippin’ Bloks and know whether it was on a fast setting (walk away) or slow (go for the jackpot).
“I was unbelievable at this Flappy Bird game,” Zimmerman said. “It was paying out a thousand tickets a jackpot.”
They would walk out every Wednesday with around 20,000 tickets. Zimmerman exchanged tickets for his Xbox and two PlayStation 4s, which he sold for more than $300 each after spending, he estimates, about $150 to earn them.
“Honestly, I think my back ended up getting pretty sore in Dallas,” Zimmerman said. “And I think I traced it back to so much playing Down the Clown.”
‘A guy the players looked to’
Zimmerman’s competitiveness and his leadership are connected. He learns how to best motivate each teammate, whether it’s through yelling or encouraging. He communicates constantly. Regardless of the talent or stature of his teammates, his aim remains the same. “If I really want the team to win, then I need to make everyone around me as good as they possibly can be,” Zimmerman said.
His approach made him a natural in a showdown away from the pitch. The men’s national team had been negotiating with the USSF since its collective bargaining agreement expired in 2018, unable to forge a deal as the federation’s management turned over. As Zimmerman grew enmeshed into the national team, members of the prior leadership council had cycled off the squad.
“Walker just became a guy the players looked to and a guy who was willing to step up and play a leadership role both internally and externally,” said Mark Levinstein, head of the U.S. men’s national team players association. “He’s got great personal qualities. He’s honest and straightforward and thoughtful and empathetic. The biggest thing is to be able to see things from other peoples’ point of view. And they trust him as a result.”
Zimmerman spent hours on the phone with lawyers. When a decision needed to be made, he sent out messages on a WhatsApp chain, explaining offers and provisions to players stationed all around the world. Negotiations were a roller coaster — at times, Zimmerman said, he thought they would end without an agreement.
A breakthrough occurred as the women’s team’s CBA neared its expiration in 2021. The USSF faced a lawsuit from the women’s team alleging unequal treatment, for which the men’s team submitted an amicus brief supporting them. The teams began negotiating together on a deal that would ensure equal pay and benefits.
Both behind the scenes and in public, Zimmerman became the face of the men’s team efforts. When the sides signed the CBA at a ceremony at Audi Field, Zimmerman appeared on a stadium video board with a taped message.
“It’s achieved for the women’s team for the first time. It’s achieved for a federation for the first time,” Zimmerman said in an interview. “But that means there also has to be a men’s team that is willing to do something that’s different than what’s been done before. And I think that should definitely be applauded and not taken for granted.”
Under the new CBA, a child care provision has allowed Zimmerman’s wife, Sally, his college sweetheart, to travel to camps with Tucker. His brothers have seen videos of Tucker with a soccer ball at his feet or a golf club in his hand, or tossing objects into a hat. He once built a relationship out of games with them, and now he’s doing it again.
Tucker will stay home for the World Cup, a difficult decision made to ensure Walker’s best performance. He mentioned England’s Harry Kane and Wales’s Gareth Bale as players he’s most eager to defend, to test himself against the best players in the world.
The tournament will provide Zimmerman with a new platform. It has been a busy year — becoming a father, playing an MLS season, globe-trotting to national team camps, negotiating the CBA, planning a charity event to provide healthy meals to those lacking access. Carter said he has seen his brother stressed for the first time, but it hasn’t changed him.
“I feel really confident and comfortable in who I am and who I want to be,” Zimmerman said. “I don’t want to have anything change just because of one World Cup. And I want to have people try and connect with me and feel like they can relate because they identify with certain things about me that they agree with. And whether that’s being super competitive or being a Christian or being a dad, whatever it is, I hope that they can find things that they relate with me or other teammates. And they’re finding ways that they can believe in this team.” | 2022-11-14T18:00:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How USMNT's Walker Zimmerman became a leader - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/walker-zimmerman-usmnt-world-cup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/walker-zimmerman-usmnt-world-cup/ |
LOS ANGELES — DaMarcus Beasley, the only man to play for the U.S. at four World Cups, will serve as a digital host and analyst in Qatar for Fox’s U.S. English-language World Cup coverage.
Beasley, a midfielder and defender who played for the U.S. in 2002, ‘06, ’10 and ‘14, retired as a player after the 2019 season. | 2022-11-14T18:01:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Beasley, Conrad, Kljestan, Ortiz to work World Cup for Fox - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/beasley-conrad-kljestan-ortiz-to-work-world-cup-for-fox/2022/11/14/cc9d19d6-643e-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/beasley-conrad-kljestan-ortiz-to-work-world-cup-for-fox/2022/11/14/cc9d19d6-643e-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
The president tells reporters that the election results showed Americans remain committed to democracy
President Biden arrives Monday to speak at a news conference at the G-20 summit in Bali. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — When many analysts predicted a Republican sweep shortly before the midterms, some Democrats worried it would undermine President Biden’s message on the world stage that the United States is back as leader of the world’s democracies.
But with election deniers and former president Donald Trump’s candidates instead faring poorly, Biden on his trip to Asia is trumpeting the results as evidence that U.S. allies need not fear an American return to a Trump-style rejection of democratic values and alliances.
“How can I say this tactfully? I think the election held in the United States … has sent a very strong message around the world that the United States is ready to play,” Biden said after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “The Republicans who survived, along with the Democrats, are of the view that we’re going to stay fully engaged in the world and that we, in fact, know what we’re about.”
White House officials said that as Biden met with Southeast Asian leaders in Cambodia, they often remarked with great specificity and knowledge about the U.S. midterm elections, which delivered Democrats a stronger-than-expected showing.
Before his highly anticipated meeting with Xi, Biden said he was going in “stronger” after Democrats clinched control of the Senate on Sunday. And as he emerged from the meeting, the president said voters had sent a clear message to the world.
“The American people proved once again that democracy is who we are,” Biden said. “That is a strong rejection of election deniers at every level, from those seeking to lead our states and those who seek to serve in Congress and also those seeking to oversee the elections.”
Many of the candidates most vocal in falsely questioning Biden’s win in 2020, and in declining to commit to honoring election results in the future, lost their races Tuesday. But several key contests remain unsettled, and most on both sides still expect the Republicans to take control of the House, albeit narrowly.
Biden conceded Monday that he did not think Democrats would maintain control of the House — “I think we’re going to get very close, but I don’t think we’re going to make it,” he said.
Trump is expected shortly to announce another presidential bid, an event that will test Biden’s attempts to move the United States past Trump’s challenges to democracy and long-standing norms.
While Biden has not responded to Trump’s plans since he left for Asia on Thursday, he commented on the state of the Republican Party as its internal finger-pointing unfolded.
“I think the Republican Party is going to have to make like our parties in the past have done — it’s going to have to decide who they are,” Biden said earlier this week.
Some GOP leaders have taken issue with what they depict as Biden’s assertion that if Republicans win, it means American democracy has lost.
The interplay between domestic politics and global diplomacy has emerged as a major theme of Biden’s trip. In Egypt, he asserted the U.S. commitment to fighting climate change; in Cambodia, he sought to counter China’s influence in Asia; in Indonesia, he is signaling U.S. leadership of the world’s democracies.
All of those messages would have been far harder to deliver had Trump and his supporters appeared to be surging toward a return to power.
That could still happen in two years, but for now Biden and his aides have been triumphant as they circumnavigated the globe over the past several days. Before the president began his second day of meetings in Cambodia on Sunday, networks called Nevada for Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D), cementing Democratic control of the Senate even before the Georgia runoff election in December.
The White House considered it especially important that Biden was able to meet Xi on Monday as the leader of a country whose democratic values, it argued, had just been confirmed instead of repudiated.
While the United States still faces considerable political volatility — the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was assaulted with a hammer in their home days before the midterms — Biden said voters made clear their disdain for political violence.
White House aides said they have heard repeatedly from allies and competitors that they followed the U.S. election results in great detail, scrutinizing them for signs of which way the American political winds are blowing.
“It’s interesting to see how closely all of the leaders from these different countries, including leaders from countries that are not themselves democracies, very closely follow American politics — right down to state races that they’re all quite familiar with, surprisingly,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, told reporters.
Another senior adviser said the results “allowed us to come to these meetings with the wind at our backs.” The adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic interactions, also said it was among the first things foreign officials commented on — both “the conduct of the election and general expression of the acceptance of democracy.”
The midterm elections unfolded in a global landscape that has seen far-right figures gain support, if not always full power, in countries from Italy to France and Brazil to Hungary.
Biden’s tone was a shift for a president who has often recounted going abroad just after becoming president and attempting to convince a skeptical world that the United States was still prepared to lead the free world, despite Trump’s chaotic presidency and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“America is back,” he has recounted telling the leaders of the Group of 7 industrialized democracies. “And one of them turned to me and said, ‘For how long? For how long?’ It was a deadly earnest question: ‘For how long?’”
Another leader, he said, suggested the analogy of an attack on Parliament in Britain. “What would you all think?” Biden said last week. “You’d think England was really in trouble. You’d think democracy was on the edge if that happened in Great Britain.”
The question on the world’s mind, Biden said on the eve of this foreign trip, was: “Are we the same democracy we’ve always been?”
If that was a bit of an open question last week, Biden seemed to have a firmer answer this week following additional election results coming in and some election deniers conceding. | 2022-11-14T19:00:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden says midterm results strengthen the U.S. overseas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/biden-midterms-us-global-role/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/biden-midterms-us-global-role/ |
Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, during a break in her September closed-door testimony before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Dozens of conservative leaders are calling on Republican lawmakers to postpone their leadership elections until next month, echoing the demands of several frustrated Senate and House Republicans after a much-hyped “red wave” did not materialize in the midterm elections.
In an open letter Monday to Republican members of Congress, 72 conservative leaders said that “there should be no rushed leadership elections,” pointing to the fact that several congressional races remain to be called and that the Senate race in Georgia will go to a runoff.
“The Republican Party needs leaders who will confidently and skillfully present a persuasive coherent vision of who we are, what we stand for, and what we will do,” the letter stated.
It continued: “Conservative Members of the House and Senate have called for the leadership elections to be delayed. We strongly urge both Houses of Congress to postpone the formal Leadership elections until after the December 6 runoff in Georgia and all election results are fully decided.”
Signatories included Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a lawyer and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Coalition; and Mark Meadows, who was chief of staff in the Trump White House. Axios first reported on the letter.
The House GOP is scheduled to hold its leadership elections Tuesday, while the Senate GOP is to vote on leadership Wednesday. Republican leaders in both chambers have pushed back on calls to delay the votes. Several members of the House Freedom Caucus, who are staunch supporters of former president Donald Trump, have already said they will not support House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.).
Nevertheless, McCarthy launched his campaign for the speakership last week, sending a letter to his Republican colleagues in which he said he felt “confidently” that the GOP would achieve its goal of taking back control of the House.
“I trust you know that earning the majority is only the beginning,” McCarthy wrote. “Now, we will be measured by what we do with our majority. Now, the real work begins. That is why I am running to serve as Speaker of the People’s House and humbly ask for your support.”
In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has also faced criticism and calls to postpone the leadership vote.
“I don’t know why Senate GOP would hold a leadership vote for the next Congress before this election is finished,” Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) wrote on Twitter, joining several other Republicans, including Sens. Rick Scott (Fla.), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Mike Lee (Utah), Cynthia M. Lummis (Wyo.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), in a push for the vote to be postponed until after the Dec. 6 runoff between Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) and Republican Herschel Walker.
Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), the Senate GOP conference chairman, has said the election will be held Wednesday.
House Democrats will hold their leadership elections starting Nov. 30. In interviews on political talk shows Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) declined to say whether she would run for the speakership again if Democrats retain control of the House — for which there is a slim possibility.
Control of the House remained in the balance Monday, with neither party yet securing the 218 seats required to take the majority. Most of the uncalled congressional races are in California, where ballots are valid as long as they were postmarked by Election Day and where final election tallies could take weeks to determine. | 2022-11-14T19:00:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ginni Thomas, other conservatives call on GOP to delay leadership elections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/republicans-ginni-thomas-leadership-elections-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/republicans-ginni-thomas-leadership-elections-congress/ |
Once again, the fight over the House came down to the suburbs
Single-family homes in a housing development in Aurora, Colo., on Oct. 10. (Chet Strange/Bloomberg)
One of the more interesting victories in the Democrats’ retaking the House in 2018 was that the party won New York’s 11th district — mostly Staten Island, meaning that New York City was suddenly entirely blue.
But while interesting, that success wasn’t a representative one. Instead, the Democrats’ achievement was a function of picking up more than two dozen seats in suburban districts. It was a reflection of the political mood of the moment: Moderate voters came out to vote in a rejection of President Donald Trump’s administration.
This year, the likely Republican majority — however narrow it turns out to be — will probably be a function of regaining ground in the same areas.
Four years ago, CityLab’s David Montgomery came up with a useful categorization of congressional districts by population density. It’s a six-category scale, from “pure urban” to “dense-” and “sparse suburban” and then on to “pure rural.” After congressional district boundaries were redrawn over the past 18 months, The Washington Post’s Lenny Bronner used Montgomery’s methodology to categorize the new lines in the same way.
This usefully allows us to compare how the two parties fared in each type of district over the past three cycles — including where each gained or lost seats. You can see the Democratic gains in the suburbs in the top graph below. And you can see in the bottom graph, the one for 2022, that Republicans picked up at least eight seats in “sparse suburban” districts and 16 in districts categorized as to some extent suburban.
It’s important to note that there are still a number of outstanding districts to be called in 2022, most of them some mixture of suburban. There are also a lot of votes still to count. (The figures used in this article are from Cook Political Report’s running index.)
With that warning in place, we can also see how House vote margins shifted in each type of district since 2018. If we simply add up all of the votes cast in each type of district for each party and compare them, we see that the overall two-party margin shifted uniformly to the right in House voting from 2018 to 2020 and then from 2020 to 2022.
We’ve also included the 2020 presidential margin in each district, compiled by Daily Kos. Interestingly, the presidential vote in more rural and more urban districts was less polarized than the House vote. To some extent, of course, this reflects an incumbent effect. Most of the uncontested races in 2022 were in districts rated “pure rural” or “rural-suburban mix.”
That this is the first election after a redistricting is important for a variety of reasons, including that it means district population sizes have been evened out. Consider the 2020 election: Places that had been magnets for new residents for the preceding eight years were drawn according to their 2010 population, while districts that had been losing residents were as well. The most recent election was (theoretically at least) much closer to distributing power in the House evenly, relative to district populations.
It also meant an election in which district lines were often drawn to specifically advantage one party or the other after the 2020 census. One result is that the redistricting process itself accounts for the likely Republican majority. Another is that — again using incomplete vote totals — Republicans appear to have more “wasted” votes than Democrats. In other words, the total number of votes cast for Republican candidates beyond what was needed to win a district was larger than the total cast for Democrats. In 2018 and 2020, the opposite was true.
If you take out uncontested races (defined here as ones a party won by at least 50 points), the Republicans still wasted more votes, 12 million to 8 million. Perceptions of what’s likely to happen in an election can inspire incumbents not to seek reelection or candidates to challenge in even unfriendly terrain. The belief that this would be a strong Republican year, in other words, might have contributed to more Republican challengers (reducing the Democratic wasted vote) or caused more Republicans to run unchallenged.
Revisiting the urban-rural split, there’s another interesting consideration. In “sparse suburban” districts, Republicans picked up eight seats … but gave up five. Across all suburban districts (meaning not “pure urban” or “pure rural”) Republicans netted six additional seats, the difference in holding a majority by itself. They gained four in “pure rural” areas, places where there were fewer to pick up.
But that the suburbs were contested, and not just a place Republicans ran up victories, is the point. This was an election cycle largely dependent on the economy, abortion and concern about the stability of democracy. In the suburbs, those issues yielded a split decision. | 2022-11-14T19:26:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Once again, the fight over the House came down to the suburbs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/house-elections-suburbs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/house-elections-suburbs/ |
Over the coming week, 100 million Americans are slated to experience temperatures below 20 degrees
Morning lows Friday morning as predicted by the National Weather Service. (Pivotal Weather)
The spate of warmth that prolonged September-like temperatures across much of the central, southern and eastern U.S. has come to an end. A jarring blast of cold has arrived, with abnormally chilly weather for mid-November and even an early-season snowstorm on the way for some areas.
Winter storm warnings are in effect just west of Oklahoma City, where up to 6 inches of snow could fall Monday, with more expansive winter weather advisories stretching from the Texas Panhandle to northern Missouri as well as parts of Minnesota. That same strip of snow could push through the Midwest and into New England through the middle of the week.
That storm heralds a reinforcing shot of bone-chilling air descending south out of Canada, with temperatures expected to dip some 20 to 30 degrees below average. By this upcoming weekend, readings across the northern Plains and Upper Midwest may struggle to climb out of the middle teens during the day, and could fall below zero at night.
Over the coming week, 100 million Americans are slated to experience temperatures below 20 degrees.
Goodbye, unseasonable mildness
The chilly air isn’t coming as a single surge of Arctic cold, but rather as a series of Canadian coughs and sputters. A string of cold fronts, each bringing colder air than its predecessor, will roll across the central and eastern U.S.
The first rolled through over the weekend, bringing an end to the “second summer” that had been maintaining balmy weather in the eastern half of the nation. Washington D.C., for instance, had made it above 70 degrees a record 10 times in the first 12 days of the month. Saturday’s high was 72 degrees, but Sunday’s high temperature of 54 matched Saturday’s low.
New York City, where the average mid-November high is in the mid-50s, came within a degree of records last Tuesday when Central Park made it to 77 degrees. Now they’re looking at highs in the 40s every day this week, with a chance that Saturday doesn’t climb out of the 30s.
And in Boston, where highs this time of year are typically in the lower 50s, the month to date has been running 11 degrees above normal, both Nov. 6 and last Saturday hit a record of 76. Heading forward, highs this week should tend toward the 40s to near 50, with lows in the upper 20s to lower 30s.
In the Midwest and around the Great Lakes, Mother Nature’s caprice has been even more dramatic. Chicago peaked at 76 degrees last Thursday. Saturday was an astonishing 40 degrees colder with a high of only 36.
From Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Little Rock eastward, the first 12 days of November averaged 8 to 15 degrees above normal.
Unfortunately for summer lovers, the cold isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center is calling for odds of below-average temperatures for most of the country, save for Alaska, Florida and the Pacific Northwest.
Early-season snowfall for some
The second of the cold frontal trio is marching across the Plains to kick off the workweek, trailing south of a fledgling low-pressure system in the James River Valley of South Dakota. A second low is beginning to strengthen in Kansas on that front, energized by an approaching strong shortwave — or pocket of cold air, low pressure and spin — kicking east out of the Four Corners.
That’s generating a full-fledged snowstorm over Oklahoma, with rain in southeastern parts of the Sooner State and snow behind the front to the northwest.
Doug Speheger, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Norman, Okla., said the storm arriving in the area Monday is expected to produce the heaviest snow in a narrow band. “Our temperature profile is kind of right on the edge of rain versus snow … around or just above 32,” he said. “We’ll see the atmosphere dynamically cooling right near the center of the upper-level storm system. We’ll see a narrow axis of snow.”
The agency is predicting half an inch or less in Oklahoma City, but up to half a foot could fall about 100 miles west of the state capital.
Speheger says it’s “fairly unusual” to see a significant snowfall so early in the season, but that it’s “not unheard of.”
In Clinton, Okla., what falls Monday could total to the earliest four-inch snow event on record for the winter season. It could outpace the plowable snowfall that occurred on Nov. 20, 1988. Chickasha will likely nab a similar record.
“We’ve had it all going on this November,” Speheger said. “We did have the tornadoes that affected southeast Oklahoma, including a couple EF4s that moved in from Northeast Texas, on November 4. Then last Friday, we had a little bit of snow move through in central Oklahoma, so we definitely kind of pulled the trigger from spring.”
Winter storm warnings are in effect for Oklahoma City, with advisories for snowfall in Wichita and Topeka, Kan., and Columbia, Mo. Even the Kansas City area could see 1 to 3 inches of snow on Monday night, and it is under a winter weather advisory.
“Plan on slippery road conditions,” wrote the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill, Mo. “The hazardous conditions could impact the [Tuesday] morning commute.”
Farther north, a winter weather advisory is also in effect for Minneapolis into Monday night where 2 to 4 inches of snow is expected.
That same disturbance could bring snow to the Midwest on Tuesday, including in Chicago and Indianapolis, which could each see about an inch.
Then the system is forecast to deliver a few inches to western and central New England late Tuesday into Wednesday. The coldest air of the season will follow. As that cold air blows over the Great Lakes, significant lake-effect snow could develop downwind of lakes Superior, Michigan, Ontario and Erie on Thursday into the weekend. | 2022-11-14T19:30:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Blast of cold to swallow Lower 48, with early-season snowstorm for some - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/14/cold-blast-lower48-snow-oklahoma/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/14/cold-blast-lower48-snow-oklahoma/ |
The FTX Arena in Miami on Nov. 12. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
The first remarkable thing about this past week’s collapse of FTX, a major cryptocurrency exchange, was its speed: In a little over a week, it went from one of the largest, best regarded exchanges to a bankrupt shell. It took even less time than that to wipe out the entire fortune of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried; on Nov. 7 he was worth $16 billion, but by Friday, effectively nothing.
The second is how little effect this has had on markets beyond crypto, or even on the larger cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and ethereum, the two most popular tokens, lost significant value during FTX’s death throes, but by Monday morning, they had already regained a lot of lost ground. As for more conventional markets, there has as of yet been barely a ripple.
I don’t mean to say that crypto firms are constantly collapsing as their holdings get hacked, or maybe stolen by the founder, or turn out to be wildly overleveraged or inherently unstable, but … wow, there are a lot of stories like that! These failures occur so regularly, one begins to wonder if they are part of crypto’s appeal to a certain class of gamblers. They certainly keep things exciting. | 2022-11-14T19:30:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The FTX calamity explains why crypto is irrelevant - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/ftx-crypto-collapse-financial-markets-corporations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/ftx-crypto-collapse-financial-markets-corporations/ |
Kanye West’s antisemitism is bad for business. Now how about Henry Ford?
By Rebecca Sonkin
German diplomats award Henry Ford, center, Nazi Germany's highest decoration for foreigners, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, in Detroit in 1938. (Associated Press)
Rebecca Sonkin, a writer, lives near Detroit and in New York.
Amid a spike in reports of antisemitic incidents nationwide, two developments in recent weeks were especially conspicuous. One was the anti-Jewish statements made on social media and in interviews by Ye, the musician and fashion designer formerly known as Kanye West. He was promptly dropped by Adidas, Gap and other business partners. Then, on Nov. 3, National Basketball Association star Kyrie Irving was suspended by the Brooklyn Nets after promoting an antisemitic film on social media. Nike backed away from its relationship with him. (Irving eventually apologized. He remained suspended as of Monday.)
For the moment, it seems, antisemitism is bad business in the United States. And yet, to drive around my hometown of Detroit is to wonder whether this news has arrived.
Henry Ford, the most prominent, virulent antisemite the nation has ever known, is omnipresent in Detroit. Yes, Ford is famous for implementing the moving assembly line and founding the automaking business that put the Motor City on the map. But Ford was also a powerful driver of anti-Jewish hatred, using his wealth and influence to promote antisemitism in the interwar era, before World War II and the Holocaust.
Ford, a friend wrote in his diary in 1919, “attributes all evil to Jews or to the Jewish capitalists.”
To advance his views, Ford had purchased the Dearborn Independent newspaper in 1918, which soon began publishing a weekly front-page column, “The International Jew: The World’s Problem.” It ran for 91 issues of a paper that, at its peak in the mid-1920s, claimed a circulation of 700,000 to 900,000, distributed across the country at Ford auto dealerships.
In that period, Ford also paid for the printing and distribution of 500,000 copies of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a stubbornly persistent forgery that purports to describe a Jewish plot for world domination.
For these efforts, Adolf Hitler praised Ford by name in “Mein Kampf” and in 1938 awarded him the highest Nazi honor bestowed upon a non-German. Although Ford had apologized for his antisemitic campaign in 1927 amid mounting public criticism — his remorse was met with much skepticism — he gladly accepted the honor.
Today, how is it that Ford’s malevolence toward Jews is dwarfed in Detroit by the urge to celebrate his automotive achievements?
Drivers leaving the Detroit metropolitan airport encounter a highway sign pointing to Henry Ford College, another to the Ford Expressway. And still another to the Henry Ford, a 250-acre museum campus dedicated, as its website says, to “a vibrant exploration of genius.”
Downtown, the Henry Ford Hospital bills itself as a haven of “science + soul.” It is part of the Henry Ford Health system, with more than 250 locations in Michigan. At one in suburban Detroit that I visited recently, its marketing campaign posters covered the waiting room walls. One photo showed a smiling African American woman in a white lab coat. Another showed an Asian American doctor. Both beam from behind the slogan “I AM HENRY.”
Jews, so far as I can tell, are nowhere to be found in a campaign that otherwise strains for inclusivity.
Jews are also hard to find on the website of the Henry Ford museum complex. Digging eventually turns up “Henry Ford and Anti-Semitism: A Complex Story.” The article begins, “As with most famous people, Henry Ford was complex and had traits and took actions that were laudatory as well as troublesome.”
“Troublesome”? By the end of the article, it’s hard not to wonder: Troublesome for whom? We’re told that the column “The International Jew: The World’s Problem” in Ford’s newspaper “tarnished his reputation and it has never been completely forgotten.”
One might conclude that, for an institution saddled with his name, it’s almost reasonable to yearn for Ford’s antipathy toward Jews to be forgotten.
Most confounding, Detroit is home to a prosperous Jewish community of about 70,000. And yet, silence on this subject prevails. Where is the local opposition to living under the name of the man who helped inspire the mastermind of the Holocaust? Where is the Jewish campaign to make the name Henry Ford a losing business proposition?
The Ford Motor Co. is one thing; the name Henry Ford is another. Detroit ought to be scrubbed clean of it.
In the Depression’s early days, my grandfather landed a job at a Ford plant in Detroit. He was stunned. If an illiterate refugee of anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe could secure paid work with the nation’s leading antisemite, then the promise of America might be possible.
Alas, within a week, the foreman had called him a dirty Jew. As the story went, my grandfather responded with a one-two punch, knocking the foreman flat to the ground. It cost him his job, but his dignity was intact.
For me, as a child, the story of my grandfather was irresistible. He was the Jew who fought back.
It’s time for us all to fight back against the poisonous ubiquity of Henry Ford in Detroit. | 2022-11-14T19:30:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Kanye West’s antisemitism is bad for business. Now how about Henry Ford? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/kyrie-irving-kanye-henry-ford-antisemitism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/kyrie-irving-kanye-henry-ford-antisemitism/ |
Foreign governments spent over $750,000 at Trump hotel, new report shows
The records show the governments of Saudi Arabia, China and other nations spent more money at the Trump hotel than previously known.
The Trump International Hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The hotel profited from lavish spending by foreign officials during Donald Trump's presidential term. (Alex Brandon/AP)
Officials from six nations spent more than $750,000 at former president Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington as they were trying to influence his administration, according to documents turned over to congressional investigators.
The records obtained by the House Oversight Committee from Mazars USA, Trump’s former accounting firm, show the governments of China, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates spent more money at Trump International Hotel — renting rooms for up to $10,000 a night — than previously known, during periods they were working to influence the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
“These documents sharply call into question the extent to which President Trump was guided by his personal financial interest while in office rather than the best interests of the American people,” Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chair of the committee, said in a statement Monday. “These documents, which the Committee continues to obtain from Mazars, will inform our legislative efforts to ensure that future presidents do not abuse their position of power for personal gain.”
The hotel records show lavish spending by foreign officials at Trump’s hotel. Malaysia’s prime minister spent $1,500 on a personal trainer during his eight-day, $259,724 stay, for example, and the Saudi Ministry of Defense spent $85,961 at the hotel for members of a Saudi delegation that included $10,500-a-night suites. Officials from Qatar spent more than $300,000 over three months ahead of a meeting between Trump and the emir of Qatar.
The Oversight Committee’s findings from financial documents build on extensive reporting by The Washington Post detailing how Trump’s hotel profited from foreign governments during his time in office, and the blurred lines between Trump’s business and his administration.
Last year, Maloney and Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) released hundreds of pages of financial documents related to the Trump property from the General Services Administration — the agency that leased the federally owned property to Trump’s company — and estimated that the Trump hotel had received $3.7 million over three years in payments from foreign governments. | 2022-11-14T19:39:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Foreign governments spent over $750,000 at Trump hotel, new report shows - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/trump-hotel-foreign-government-spending/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/trump-hotel-foreign-government-spending/ |
‘We’re getting the recognition we deserve,’ said an 80-year-old Kiowa tribal member from Oklahoma who is a Vietnam veteran
Native American veterans, among them Hamilton Tongkeamha, 37, from the Kiowa tribe in Oklahoma, gather at the National Native American Veterans Memorial during the dedication of the memorial which honors those Indians who served in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 11, 2022. Tongkeamha is a retired staff sergeant of the U.S. Army who did two tours to Iraq, 2008-2010, and 2011-2012. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
Allen Kale 'iolani Hoe, 75, traveled nearly 5,000 miles from his home in Hawaii to witness the dedication of a memorial to honor Indigenous veterans and active U.S. military members that sits outside the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall.
For Hoe, a Native Hawaiian who served as an Army combat medic in Vietnam, the trip to Washington last weekend brought pride and joy. There also was sadness as he remembered his 27-year-old son, Nainoa, a U.S. Army infantry officer who was killed 17 years ago in combat in Iraq.
“This is a powerful statement in terms of putting all of the politics aside to showcase Native peoples and how they’ve served this country through decades of conflict,” said Hoe. “This nation and the citizens of this nation owe a huge debt of gratitude to Indigenous men and women who have for decades — and even centuries — helped to preserve this country.”
Hoe was among 1,700 Indigenous veterans and military service members who came from tribes across the country and descended on the museum’s grounds for three days of events that kicked off Friday — Veterans Day — with a procession, followed by speeches from dignitaries and a ceremonial, first-time lighting of the $15 million memorial that has been more than two decades in the making.
The dedication, in sight of the U.S. Capitol, was an emotional experience for people whose ancestors had been forced from their lands and treated harshly by a country that many in their community went on to defend over past decades, and still serve today. There are roughly 135,000 veterans and active military service members who are American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian.
‘A very deep kind of patriotism’: Memorial to honor Native American veterans is coming to the Mall
Military veterans and active service members participated in the procession on the grounds of the Mall. Some decorated war veterans rode in motorized wheelchairs, while others used canes or walkers — many wore a jacket or baseball cap that detailed their respective military branch and overseas deployments. Others wore their traditional Indigenous regalia, and some were in full military dress as they carried flags of the United States, their military branch and tribal affiliations and marched in cadence.
Thomas H. Begay, 98, a Navajo from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was among those who came. Growing up in a rural area, he spoke only Navajo until he learned English at 13 years old. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps at 16. In World War II, he was selected as a Navajo Code Talker — a group of American Indians who used their Indigenous language to send secret military codes that enemies could not unscramble. Begay survived Iwo Jima and can still remember dates of battles he served in and the names of lost comrades. He went on to serve in the Army in Korea and survived the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, a well-known and particularly brutal fight. He earned eight Bronze Stars for his military service.
In the Friday procession, Begay occasionally stood from his wheelchair and walked a few hundred feet, pausing at times to wave and salute the crowd. He wore white gloves, a shirt adorned with his military honors and a traditional, silver and turquoise Native American bolo at his neck.
Native American leaders said before the memorial opened, Indigenous veterans had to go to other war memorials in D.C. for tributes. Getting a memorial to recognize Indigenous peoples’ service near the Mall was a long time in coming.
Ray C. Doyah, 80, traveled with roughly two dozen others from his Kiowa tribe in Carnegie, Okla., on a chartered bus for the dedication. An air traffic controller for the U.S. Air Force in the Vietnam War, Doyah sat in his walker on the Mall, listening as a dozen speakers praised Indians for serving a country that did not always respect them and their tribal sovereignty. As they spoke of Indigenous people’s valor, courage and perseverance, tears came to his eyes.
“This is so moving to be here,” said Doyah. “It means a lot to me. I’m so glad to see we’re getting the recognition we deserve.”
Native American veterans gathered at the National Native American Veterans Memorial on Nov. 11 for the dedication. (Video: Dana Hedgpeth/The Washington Post, Photo: Astrid Riecken for/The Washington Post)
Indigenous peoples have a long history of service in the U.S. military and have served in every major military conflict since the Revolutionary War. Museum experts said that compared with their population in the United States, Indigenous peoples serve at “extraordinarily high numbers.”
At least 12,000 Native Americans served during World War I and in World War II, about 44,000 served. Another 10,000 Indians served in the Korean War, and about 42,000 served in Vietnam. According to the Pentagon, of the roughly 1.3 million active duty U.S. service members, nearly 14,000 — identify as American Indian or Alaskan Native.
A Native American war memorial is coming to Washington. Here are six Native veterans you’ve never heard about.
Some people may question why Native Americans would serve in the U.S. military, given the government’s forced takeover of their lands, followed by centuries of broken treaties but Native American veterans, historians and tribal leaders said there is a complex set of reasons as to why they do it.
Some Native Americans were drafted. Others come from economically depressed areas so it is a chance to travel and get on a stable career path. Many others serve because of a sense of patriotism and duty to defend homelands that originally belonged to their tribes. They see military service as an obligation and an honor. Some want to proudly follow generations of family members who have served. And for many, it is an extension of their tribe’s warrior culture and customs.
Doyah said he served because “it’s in my DNA.” Kiowa warriors historically were known to come home with “war stories,” he said, and “I wanted to come back and tell war stories too. I’ve now had that privilege.”
Air Force Staff Sgt. Wayne Lufkins, 25, of Gallup, New Mexico, whose grandfather was a Navajo Code Talker, said he joined the service seven years ago because he wanted to do “what my ancestors did before me.”
“It’s a deep, personal devotion,” said Lufkins, who is a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe in South Dakota and assigned to Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Southeast Washington. “I do this for myself, my people and my family.”
Debra Kay Mooney, a 58-year-old Choctaw who served more than two decades in the U.S. Army National Guard in Oklahoma, described the service of Indigenous people as “a calling that’s embedded within us.” She said she was glad to come and see the dedication of the memorial. “Native Americans don’t always get paid attention to,” she said, “but now we’re getting some recognition for what we’ve done for this country.”
The memorial was more than two decades in the making.
In 1994, Congress passed legislation establishing it, and museum officials spoke to more than 1,200 veterans and tribal leaders in forums across the country to get their input. They chose Harvey Pratt, a Cheyenne and Arapaho who also served as a Marine in Vietnam, from 120 submissions to design it. More than $15 million was raised for the memorial’s construction and dedication, and it opened in November 2020, but official dedication ceremonies were delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Called the “Warriors’ Circle of Honor,” the memorial stretches 12-feet-tall and is a stainless steel circle that’s balanced on a carved, stone drum. It has the seals of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marine Corps on it. The circle represents “the hole in the sky where the Creator lives,” according to Pratt, and visitors often tie clothes for prayers and healing — a Native American tradition — on four lances around the edges of the memorial. Pratt has said the memorial is meant to be a place of “gathering, remembrance, healing and reflection.”
At one point during Friday’s dedication, a rainbow broke through the clouds, just over the U.S. Capitol. For many including Hoe, it felt like a sign to honor those who had served.
“It’s awesome,” Hoe said, “to see the number of Indians that came to show our history and desire to continue the legacy and traditions of being Native warriors who want to serve their country and their Native lands.”
“My son would be so proud.” | 2022-11-14T19:52:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Memorial for Native American veterans dedicated in DC - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/native-american-veterans-memorial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/native-american-veterans-memorial/ |
Man shot after incident outside Clyde’s restaurant in Chevy Chase, Md.
Police said another man was hit in the face during the assault early Monday morning.
Police said a man was shot in the upper body and another hit in the face outside of a Clyde's restaurant in Chevy Chase, Md., early Monday morning. (iStock)
Authorities said one man was shot and another was hit in the face early Monday outside a Clyde’s restaurant in Chevy Chase, Md.
The incident unfolded around 12:15 a.m. at the restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue near Military Road near the Friendship Heights Metro stop. Montgomery County Police said a man got into a verbal argument with two other men inside the restaurant. Once they were outside, the gunman shot one of the two men in the upper body and hit the other man in the face before fleeing.
The victims were taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police officials said in a statement. Authorities said they believe it is an isolated incident and that they were looking for the gunman. | 2022-11-14T19:52:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man shot after argument outside Clyde's restaurant in Chevy Chase, Md. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/shooting-clydes-restaurant-md/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/shooting-clydes-restaurant-md/ |
Kyle Kuzma and Kristaps Porzingis have the Wizards feeling delightful after four straight wins. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Fast forward to the present day. Beal’s the headliner now, who leads Washington in minutes played, shot attempts and points per game. But this weekend the Wizards (8-6) collected their fourth consecutive win, and third straight over a team that’s ranked within the top six of the Western Conference, without him. The team’s longest winning streak since last November, when Washington ripped off five straight, has occurred with Beal either out due to health and safety protocols or working to regain his conditioning to return to play.
While no one inside the Wizards’ locker room dropped a catchy one-liner about winning without Beal — although Latvian-born Kristaps Porzingis offered a few charming moments while searching for the right words in English — this team has tapped into the same energy as that 2018 roster. They can survive without their star. And learning to be more than just Beal’s dependents should go a long way in developing Washington into a playoff contender.
“When that does happen, you can still play and compete at a high level. I think that’s part of it. [But] no one wants to be without their best players. … It’s a talent-driven league. You have to have talent,” Unseld continued. “The depth speaks to that. We have the ability to weather the storm but I do like the fact that we’re able to figure it out. And we’re able to stay afloat.”
To be perfectly clear: No. No one’s pining for the Wizards to stay afloat with Corey Kispert as the starting two-guard. However, we’re seeing what Unseld has known about his team since this summer. The fact that second-year guard Kispert can fill in off the bench as an emergency starter, and a player like Jordan Goodwin, who’s on a two-way contract, can emerge from nowhere to invigorate the defense and sharpen the outside shooting, speaks to the Wizards’ depth.
Unseld will reference this foundation when answering why rookie guard Johnny Davis, whom the Wizards selected 10th overall in the draft, can’t touch the floor in NBA games. Davis has been pulling double duty, developing with the team’s in-house G League affiliate and collecting DNPs for the Wizards. He’s appeared in five games but, tellingly, remained an afterthought during this four-game stretch when Beal’s absence created a hole at the guard/wing positions, which conceivably could have opened space for the team’s top draft pick.
“Because we have a logjam at the two, three (positions), two through four, really, with versatile players, there’s not a ton of minutes,” Unseld said, when discussing Davis and the roster’s makeup.
This depth might lack name recognition, but it has played a brand of team basketball in support of the team’s remaining stars, Porzingis and Kyle Kuzma. While Sunday’s wasn’t the prettiest of wins, Washington still generated 26 assists (they’ve only reached at least that amount four other times so far this year) and attempted a season-high 40 three-point attempts for a 47.5 percentage. Kispert nailed both of his attempts, Goodwin led the bench with 3-of-4 shooting, while Deni Avdija and Porzingis combined to make 10 threes. Indeed, everybody ate.
“I just think the way we’re playing for each other. We’re making the extra pass, we’re cutting for each other. We’re doing some little things that might not be as visible and those are the actual things that help us win,” said Porzingis, who scored a game-high 25 points on 7-of-15 shooting. “And then now once we get Brad back, that’s going to take even more pressure off everybody else and he can be the actual focal point.
“With a 'f' or with a ‘v? ‘F!’ Not the vocal point!” he said, smiling.
If anyone’s game inside the Wizards’ locker room has speaking up lately, it’s been Porzingis’s. Aside from the Nov. 10 win over the Dallas Mavericks, which Porzingis missed with a left groin strain, he has looked healthier and more spry than he has in some time. And he used this bounce in an unexpected way Sunday, gambling to jump the passing lane then swiping the ball and taking his entire 7-foot-3 frame, down the court for a layup.
Also, Porzingis moved effortlessly around the arc for his six triples. When he beat the first-quarter buzzer with a long three, a unicorn flashed across the scoreboard, highlighting the old nickname that made Porzingis one of the most intriguing players in the game when he broke in with the New York Knicks. Injuries and recovery have limited Porzingis since the 2018-19 season but he’s rediscovering his mythical powers. Porzingis averaged 28 points in wins over the Utah Jazz and Grizzlies, and has averaged more than 21 points this month.
Over the past four games, Washington found its way thanks in part to its depth. Whenever a star player goes down, everybody can eat as teammates find themselves and their shots within an offense that does not favor one single scorer. Now, the Wizards have to find a way to keep feeding their star, as well as one another. That could make this week’s success feel like just an appetizer. | 2022-11-14T20:00:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Wizards lost Bradley Beal — and won four straight games - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/wizards-bradley-beal-kristaps-porzingis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/wizards-bradley-beal-kristaps-porzingis/ |
Investigators see ego, not money, as Trump’s motive on classified papers
A review by agents and prosecutors found no discernible business interest in the Mar-a-Lago documents, people familiar with the matter said
Former president Donald Trump speaks outside a polling station in Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday. (Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters)
The warrant authorizing the search of former president Donald Trump’s home said agents were seeking documents possessed in violation of the Espionage Act. (Video: Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
Several Trump advisers said that each time he was asked to give documents or materials back, his stance hardened, and that he gravitated toward lawyers and advisers who indulged his more pugilistic desires. Trump repeatedly said the materials were his, not the government’s — often in profane terms, two of these people said.
The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the investigation is ongoing, no final determinations have been made, and it’s possible additional information could emerge that changes investigators’ understanding of Trump’s motivations. But they said the evidence collected over a period of months indicates the primary explanation for potentially criminal conduct was Trump’s ego and intransigence.
A Justice Department spokesman and an FBI spokeswoman declined to comment. A Trump spokesman did not return a request for comment Monday.
The analysis of Trump’s likely motive in allegedly keeping the documents is not, strictly speaking, an element of determining whether he or anyone around him committed a crime, or should be charged with one. Justice Department policy dictates that prosecutors file criminal charges in cases in which they believe a crime was committed and the evidence is strong enough to lead to a conviction that will hold up on appeal. But as a practical matter, motive is an important part of how prosecutors assess cases and decide whether to file criminal charges.
Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor, said keeping hundreds of classified documents, many marked top secret, at a private home “is such a perplexing thing to do” that it makes sense for prosecutors to search for a motive.
“It makes perfect sense as to why prosecutors would be spending time scouring through the various records and documents to look for some kind of pattern or theme to explain why certain records were kept and why others were not,” Mintz said. “In presenting a case to a jury, prosecutors typically want to explain the motive for committing a crime. It’s not necessary to prove a crime, but it helps tell the story of exactly how a crime unfolded, according to the government.”
Court papers say the Justice Department has been investigating Trump and his advisers for three potential crimes: mishandling of national security secrets, obstruction, and destruction of government records.
The Washington Post has previously reported that among the most sensitive classified documents recovered by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago were documents about Iran and China, according to people familiar with the matter.
At least one of the documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8 describes Iran’s missile program, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation. Other documents described highly sensitive intelligence work aimed at China, they said. The Post has also reported that some of the material focuses on the defense systems of a foreign country, including its nuclear capabilities.
Two advisers to the former president who personally reviewed boxes of materials in Trump’s White House said he often threw hundreds of pieces of paper in boxes — mixing in highly sensitive documents with years-old schedules and other mundane material.
Top national security prosecutor joins Justice Dept.' Mar-a-Lago investigation
The FBI has recovered three batches of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago in the past year. The first batch, in January, came when Trump agreed to hand over to the National Archives and Records Administration 15 boxes of material that the agency believed contained historical presidential records. In those boxes, archivists found 184 classified documents, including 25 marked top secret, which were scattered throughout the boxes in no particular order, according to court filings.
Their discovery raised concerns among both archivists and national security officials that there could be more classified material still at Trump’s Florida home. In May, a grand jury issued a subpoena seeking a lengthy list of different types of secret documents.
In response, Trump’s advisers in June handed over to government agents a sealed envelope containing another 38 classified documents, including 17 marked top secret, according to court papers.
Even then, officials say, the collection was not complete. FBI agents quietly amassed evidence suggesting there could be more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, including through a key witness who worked for Trump and admitted to moving boxes out of the storage room at Trump’s direction after the subpoena was issued.
In early August, agents got a judge’s approval to conduct a search of Mar-a-Lago, and found 103 more classified documents, 18 of which were labeled top secret.
Since that raid, Trump has suggested the FBI planted evidence, though neither he nor his lawyers have offered anything to bolster such a claim. The former president also accused the Justice Department of seeking to hurt his possible run for president in 2024 — which he is expected to announce at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night.
Trump’s legal team went to court this summer to stop the FBI and Justice Department from using the seized documents, which in addition to the classified material include some 13,000 nonclassified items. Trump’s lawyers argued that some of the documents could be protected from scrutiny because of either attorney-client or executive privilege.
A federal appeals court ruled that there was no reason to shield the classified documents from the FBI and the Justice Department. But an outside expert known as a special master, appointed by a federal judge in Florida, was given authority to review the 13,000 unclassified documents to see if any may be privileged. That review is scheduled to be completed next month.
Any decision on whether to file charges in the documents case is unlikely to occur before the special master review is complete, as prosecutors have argued in court filings that even the nonclassified documents taken in the search may include relevant evidence.
In a legal filing last week, lawyers for Trump suggested — as they have before — that the sensitive material at the heart of the government’s investigation may not be classified. As they did in previous filings, though, the former president’s lawyers studiously avoided claiming that Trump had in fact declassified them — an act that could be used in Trump’s defense if he is charged.
“The Government again presupposes the documents bearing classification markings are, in fact, classified,” Trump’s lawyers said in a 67-page appeal response that insists Trump “had unfettered authority to declassify documents.”
Trump has claimed publicly that he declassified everything in his home and did not need to follow any formal process to do so.
As Trump’s lawyers have skirted the question of whether, in fact, Trump declassified the material that was later found at his home, prosecutors have tried to get that answer from other sources, including longtime Trump loyalist Kash Patel.
Patel appeared before a grand jury in Washington earlier this month and was given a limited form of immunity to answer questions about whether he witnessed Trump declassify the documents, according to a person familiar with the matter. It is not yet clear what answers Patel — who had spoken in media interviews about Trump declassifying documents — gave the grand jury. | 2022-11-14T20:44:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump's motive in Mar-a-Lago case seen as ego, not money - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/14/trump-motive-mar-a-lago-documents/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/14/trump-motive-mar-a-lago-documents/ |
FILE - Then-MacKenzie Bezos arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on March 4, 2018, in Beverly Hills, Calif. The megadonor and novelist announced almost $2 billion in donations to 343 organizations in a short blog post Monday, Nov, 14, 2022, emphasizing her interest in supporting people from underserved communities. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-11-14T21:02:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | MacKenzie Scott acknowledges another $2B in donations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/mackenzie-scott-acknowledges-another-2b-in-donations/2022/11/14/b03867e2-645b-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/mackenzie-scott-acknowledges-another-2b-in-donations/2022/11/14/b03867e2-645b-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
The difference between the home team’s sideline and its opposition on the sun-baked side can be 30 degrees
The Cleveland Browns sideline is in the sun as they face the Miami Dolphins on Sept. 25, 2016, in Miami. (Marc Serota/Getty Images)
Most NFL teams have a natural edge when playing on their home turf, but the Miami Dolphins have an extra advantage baked in when facing foes at Hard Rock Stadium. Their sideline is in the shade, while the sun beats down relentlessly on the opposition.
The difference, during some games, is 30 degrees or more.
As the Miami Dolphins hosted the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, the CBS camera crew couldn’t help but show the temperature difference from each sideline. At one point, the sideline temperatures for the Dolphins was 82 degrees, while the visitors endured a brutal 102 degrees.
Browns coach Kevin Stefanski acknowledged the temperature disparity ahead of time.
“It will be warmer in the sun on our sideline so we will have plans for that,” Stefanski said in a news conference Wednesday. “I always tell the guys we don’t control the weather, we deal with it so whatever it is, it is, but I do want them to know ahead of time just to have the hydration and do the things that can help them leading into Sunday.”
The Dolphins took home a 39-17 victory.
The temperature at the start of Sunday’s game was a steamy 87 degrees, according to data from Miami International Airport. By the end of the game, temperatures were still in the sweaty low 80s. Temperatures in Miami have averaged about four degrees above normal this month, and this week it’s one of the few locations in the nation that will avoid an outbreak of cold air.
Average high temperatures in Miami at the start of preseason football are around 90 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. By the end of the season, they fall to a more comfortable 76 degrees. But in the sun, temperatures can be much hotter.
Hard Rock Stadium’s clever architectural design is to blame for the sideline discrepancies. When the Miami stadium was renovated between 2015 and 2016, engineers strategically planned to point the sun directly on the opponent’s sideline for the entire game while the home team’s sideline sat in the shade.
For those wondering how this is possible, it's because the Dolphins give themselves the sideline that has shade. An underrated home field advantage. https://t.co/3b5h2pieDF pic.twitter.com/LXH7pLtCSP
— Sam Ali (@SamAliSports) October 16, 2022
The Dolphins also regularly wear white for their home games which reflects sunlight. The opposing team wear their darker team colors which absorb solar energy and make it feel even hotter.
Throughout the season, television commentators have pointed out the disparity in sideline temperatures. The Dolphins have only one home loss this season, which some have attributed to their weather advantage.
The Minnesota Vikings are the only team to hand the Dolphins a loss in Miami so far this season. The Vikings overcame a fourth-quarter deficit and scorching sidelines to secure a 24-16 win. During the Week 6 game, images of the Vikings’ 122-degree sideline compared with the Dolphins’ 90-degree sideline went viral.
There is a 30 degree difference between the two sidelines 😳 pic.twitter.com/Q8uWNo3dtX
But the team from the north was ready.
“I think we were well-prepared,” receiver Adam Thielen said after the game. “The way that we practiced inside all week, and a lot of guys had long sleeves and sweatshirts on, just trying to get used to playing in a little bit of warmth.”
The Vikings staff took numerous steps to help the players fight the heat, placing an emphasis on hydration and administering IV treatments while installing air-conditioned benches and sun shades.
“They did a great job of keeping us cool,” Vikings linebacker Eric Kendricks said after the game.
The temperature advantage hasn’t always brought the Dolphins success. Miami made the playoffs for the first time in 13 years in 2016 and they haven’t gone since.
Some angry opposing fans have taken to social media to call the strategy “illegal,” but there’s nothing that bars football teams from taking advantage of the weather and stadium designs. At some point, all NFL teams are forecast to confront extreme weather situations that they aren’t accustomed to, from Florida’s sweltering sidelines to the notorious “Frozen Tundra” at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field. | 2022-11-14T21:02:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dolphins shady home-field advantage makes opponents hot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/14/dolphins-hard-rock-sun-shade/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/14/dolphins-hard-rock-sun-shade/ |
Man stabbed in apparent robbery on Metrobus in Hillcrest Heights area
A man was stabbed on a Metrobus in Maryland and suffered life-threatening injuries, according to Metro officials.
The attack happened about 1:20 p.m. Monday in what Metro officials said was an “apparent robbery” on the H12 bus route near Iverson Street and 23rd Parkway in the Hillcrest Heights area. Officials did not provide any details about what may have prompted the stabbing.
Ian Jannetta, a Metro spokesman, said Metro Transit Police are investigating and trying to identify a suspect. | 2022-11-14T21:02:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man stabbed in apparent robbery on a Metrobus in the Hillcrest Heights area - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/man-stabbed-robbery-metrobus-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/man-stabbed-robbery-metrobus-maryland/ |
President Biden speaks about student loan relief at Delaware State University last month. (Evan Vucci/AP)
The future of President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program remains in doubt after a federal appeals court issued an injunction preventing the government from discharging any debt while it considers a lawsuit to end the policy.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit decided 3-0 on Monday to side with a coalition of six Republican-led states that requested the court table cancellation amid its ongoing litigation. The injunction will remain in effect until further notice from the court or the Supreme Court, according to the order.
The ruling arrives days after a federal judge in a separate lawsuit in Texas declared Biden’s debt relief plan unlawful, effectively barring the Education Department from accepting more applications and discharging any debt. Justice Department attorneys have appealed that decision and the Biden administration has pledged to fight any legal challenge to one of the president’s signature economic policies. But the latest ruling from the 8th Circuit further complicates their efforts.
Before the Texas ruling, the states’ lawsuit was widely considered to be the greatest threat among the multiple legal challenges to Biden’s debt relief program. Other legal cases filed by individuals or conservative groups have been dismissed or had their requests for injunctions denied for lack of standing, the threshold to sue for harm. Conservatives had anticipated that standing would be a hurdle in their efforts to invalidate Biden’s policy.
In their ruling, the three-judge panel said Missouri, one of the states involved in the case, has the necessary standing to bring the lawsuit on behalf of the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, a quasi-state outfit that owns and services federal student loans. The lawsuit said MOHELA, which funds state scholarships, would also lose revenue from servicing Direct Loans — those made and owned by the federal government — that are wiped away. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) argued that loss of revenue would harm the state. The appellate court agrees.
“Due to MOHELA’s financial obligations to the State treasury, the challenged student loan debt cancellation presents a threatened financial harm to the State of Missouri,” the three-judge panel wrote in a 10-page opinion. “Missouri has shown a likely injury in fact that is concrete and particularized, and which is actual or imminent, traceable to the challenged action of the Secretary, and redressable by a favorable decision.”
The opinion addresses the issue of standing but not the merits of the states’ case. The appellate court in October granted the states an administrative stay, instructing the Biden administration to stand down on discharging debt under the relief effort, while it considered the request for an injunction.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday. Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson (R), one of the officials who sued the administration, praised the court’s ruling.
“The Eighth Circuit’s thorough analysis of the standing issue confirms that the States have a right to pursue this very important case,” Peterson said in a statement. “The court also recognizes that this attempt to forgive over $400 billion in student loans threatens serious harm to the economy that cannot be undone. It is important to stop the Biden administration from such unlawful abuse of power.”
The coalition of states — Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina — sued the Biden administration in September over the debt relief policy. The states accuse the president of overstepping his authority and threatening the revenue of state entities that profit from federal student loans.
A lower court judge dismissed the states’ lawsuit this month for lack of standing. U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey, a George W. Bush appointee, said that while the states raised “important and significant challenges to the debt relief plan,” they could not prove sufficient harm.
Biden’s loan relief plan would cancel up to $10,000 in federal student debt for borrowers earning up to $125,000 annually, or up to $250,000 for married couples. Those who received Pell Grants are eligible for an additional $10,000 in forgiveness.
In October, a federal appeals court blocked the imminent cancellation of federal student loans, days after millions of borrowers began applying for up to $20,000 in forgiveness.
The president has vigorously defended his debt relief policy, saying it “lowers costs for Americans as they recover from the pandemic to give everybody a little more breathing room,” during an appearance last month at Delaware State University. Biden has maintained that the policy is both legal and critical for the economy.
The Justice Department released a 25-page memo that says a 2003 law authorizes the education secretary “to alleviate the hardship that federal student loan recipients may suffer as a result of national emergencies.”
The states and other opponents of the program argue that the scale of loan cancellation, at a cost of about $300 billion over 10 years, warrants congressional authorization because of the economic and political significance. The Supreme Court invoked that idea, known as the “major questions” doctrine, earlier this year to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to combat climate change.
The states also claimed that some student loan companies and state investment entities that own debt from the defunct Federal Family Education Loan program could be hurt financially by the forgiveness plan. Some borrowers with FFEL loans rushed to consolidate their loans into Direct Loans held by the federal government so that they could qualify for forgiveness. But the Biden administration in late September said FFEL borrowers could no longer do that, a change Autrey said defeated the claims of the states.
In a filing to the appellate court, Justice Department attorneys used many of the same arguments Autrey raised in his opinion to tear holes in the states’ arguments. They said, as Autrey had also noted, MOHELA’s revenue and liabilities are independent of the state, even though the governor appoints five members of its board.
MOHELA, which is not a named party to the lawsuit, has tried to distance itself from the case. After Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) questioned its perceived involvement, MOHELA wrote her saying it played no role in the state’s decision to sue.
More than 26 million people have applied for the forgiveness program to date, according to the Education Department. An additional 8 million people whose income information is already on file with the department qualify for automatic debt relief.
The vast majority of federal student loan borrowers do not have to make payments until January, more than two years after President Donald Trump, citing the coronavirus pandemic, implemented a freeze on federal loan payments. | 2022-11-14T21:02:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Appeals court issues injunction on Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/14/appeals-halts-student-loan-forgiveness/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/14/appeals-halts-student-loan-forgiveness/ |
The first U.S. campus shooting struck U-Va. in 1840
A statue of Thomas Jefferson stands in front of the Rotunda at the University of Virginia on June 10, 2016. (Norm Shafer for The Washington Post)
On the morning of Nov. 15, 1840, the Richmond Enquirer reported the nation’s first campus shooting on the bottom corner of Page 2.
In a single paragraph labeled “Painful Occurrence,” the paper said John A.G. Davis, a beloved University of Virginia law professor, “was shot by an unknown hand, with a pistol, in front of his dwelling” and “the ball was received just below the navel.”
Davis died. A manhunt was on for his killer.
As the University of Virginia reels Monday from a shooting that killed three people and injured two others late Sunday, the echoes of other school shooting rampages continue to reverberate, from the 13 people who died at Columbine High School in 1999 to the 32 killed at Virginia Tech in 2007 and the 21 murdered this year at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Tex. But the history goes back much further, to the country’s first recorded campus shooting, at the very same university.
In the years around 1840, students at the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, engaged in regular protests for the right to carry guns.
Matthew Pearl, a novelist who wrote a short story based on the shooting, described the clash in November 1840 in an essay for HuffPost in 2011:
For several years at the University of Virginia, students had an annual tradition of raising hell around campus, burning tar barrels and shooting pistols into the air. The rioters wanted the freedom to carry arms on campus and each year marked the anniversary when restrictions were put into place that resulted in some defiant students being expelled.
On the evening of Nov. 12, gunfire erupted near the campus homes of the school’s professors and staff. One of the students with a gun was Joseph Semmes, who like the others was wearing a mask.
Remembering the deadliest school massacre in U.S. history
Davis heard the shots and “stepped out,” Virginia Magazine said, “to put a halt to the hullabaloo” and things went south from there:
Around 9:00 p.m., he saw one of the masked students hiding behind one of the pillars. Davis jumped for him and reached to unmask the student. The student fled, but turned after a few steps, pointed his pistol, and, without uttering a word, fired at Davis’ gut. The bullet pierced Davis’ abdomen, and he fell to the ground with a groan. Students soon flocked to the pavilion as word spread that a professor had been shot. Several picked up Davis’ limp, bleeding body and brought the wounded man inside.
While students were, like today, skeptical of authority, they were horrified by the death of a popular professor. Siding with administrators and police who asked for help, students hunted down Semmes, finding him a day or so later in a pine grove. Semmes seemed to care little about the professor’s death, laughing and joking while in custody. When a judge asked him to take an oath on a Bible to tell the truth, Semmes protested he was atheist.
The next thing that happened would seem shocking today: Semmes was released on bail.
The first U.S. primary or secondary school shooting was in 1853. Its victim was a teacher.
Not shocking: He disappeared.
Rumors spread about his whereabouts for several years. Some students said they heard he moved to Texas. Others said he died by suicide. One rumor was correct, but it was only confirmed fairly recently.
In 2013, Jean L. Cooper, a U-Va. librarian who maintains a blog about 19th-century U-Va. students, tracked down a Baltimore newspaper from July 1847 that reprinted an item from the Charlottesville Republican about Semmes’s death.
“He shot himself with a pistol, the ball entering the left eye and penetrating the brain,” the Charlottesville paper said, describing his body slumped in a chair at his brother’s house in Georgia. “On the table was found an open note, stating, in the form of a certificate, dated July 9th, 1847, that his death was occasioned by himself.”
A version of this story was first published on April 20, 2018.
More on Virginia history
Jim Limber and the myth of the Confederate president’s adopted Black son
At Arlington Cemetery, a Confederate monument to the South and slavery still stands
With scoop by scoop of soil, Alexandria remembers lynched Black teens | 2022-11-14T21:02:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The first U.S. campus shooting happened at U-Va. in 1840 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/11/14/first-campus-shooting-university-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/11/14/first-campus-shooting-university-virginia/ |
John Aniston, ‘Days of Our Lives’ star, dies at 89
Earlier this year, after more than 2,800 episodes, he received a lifetime achievement Emmy Award
Actress Jennifer Aniston, left, stands next to her father, actor John Aniston, in Los Angeles in 2012. (Chris Pizzello/Associated Press)
John Aniston, a star of the daytime soap opera “Days of Our Lives” and father of actress Jennifer Aniston, died Nov. 11 at 89. His daughter announced the death on social media Monday morning but gave no further details.
Mr. Aniston’s acting credits included “Search for Tomorrow,” “The West Wing” and “Gilmore Girls.” He was best known for his recurring role on “Days of Our Lives” as family patriarch Victor Kiriakis, the former drug lord who goes on to found the powerful Titan Industries. He joined the series in the 1980s. Earlier this year, after more than 2,800 episodes, he received a lifetime achievement Emmy Award.
John Anthony Aniston was born Yannis Anastassakis on the Greek island of Crete on July 24, 1933, and grew up near Philadelphia. He was a standout football player in high school until a leg injury forced him to consider another activity.
“So I did a play,” he told an interviewer. “I did not want to, but it was a good way to meet girls. All the pretty ones were in theater.” He studied theater Pennsylvania State University and, after a stint in the Navy, began his professional acting career. His early roles were on television shows such as “Combat!,” “I Spy” and “The Virginian.”
His first marriage, to actress Nancy Dow, ended in divorce. In 1984, he married actress Sherry Rooney. In addition to his wife, survivors include a daughter from his first marriage, a son from his second marriage, and a stepson. | 2022-11-14T21:03:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | John Aniston, ‘Days of Our Lives’ star, dies at 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/14/john-aniston-actor-days-of-our-lives-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/14/john-aniston-actor-days-of-our-lives-dead/ |
The percentage of U.S. residents born overseas today is the highest in more than a century, and the number of immigrants in this country has more than quadrupled since 1960. Those facts and a surge of unauthorized border crossings, which exceeded 2 million in the fiscal year that ended in September, a record, have contributed to unease and antagonism in some communities, Republican attacks on the Biden administration and, among Democrats, jitters about the political fallout.
Meanwhile, in Canada, the share of foreign-born residents — approaching one-quarter of the population — is markedly more than in the United States, and also at a more than 150-year high; few Western countries have a higher proportion of immigrants. Despite that, Canadian officials recently announced a substantial increase in immigration over the coming three years. In 2025, the goal is to admit 500,000 newcomers, a 23 percent increase from last year’s record total. The news prompted no widespread outcry.
The many differences between the two countries discourage facile comparisons. But one critical contrast is worth noting: Canada has a relatively functional immigration system that responds rationally to its economic needs. The United States does not.
Granted, Canada does not struggle to police one of the world’s longest borders separating a mostly rich country from a mostly poor one, as the United States does along its southwestern frontier. That affords Ottawa the luxury of simpler enforcement — that is, being able for the most part to select which migrants will be admitted and which refused. It is also the case that while there is broad consensus on immigration levels in Canada — well over half of Canadians favor welcoming more immigrants to boost population and help fill nearly 1 million job openings — there are danger signs. Specifically, nearly half of Canadians say too many newcomers fail to adopt “Canadian values.”
Still, Americans should consider taking some lessons from Canada, especially in an era of massive U.S. labor shortages, which have contributed to spiking inflation. Critically, the Canadian system gives preference to well-educated, highly skilled and entrepreneurial migrants with strong earnings prospects. By contrast, the U.S. legal immigration system heavily favors family ties, meaning the relatives of current residents. Its H1-B program for skilled workers, including those with advanced degrees, has been capped for years at 85,000 visas annually; that is grossly inadequate.
Canada’s policy is no outlier; several of the world’s other wealthiest countries, particularly in Europe, are pursuing similarly sensible initiatives. They include France, where President Emmanuel Macron survived a stiff electoral challenge this spring from a far-right anti-immigration candidate, Marine Le Pen. His government, like Canada’s, is pursuing reforms that respond to economic reality, not xenophobic populism. This month, Mr. Macron’s administration proposed legislation to establish resident permits that would grant legal status to undocumented migrants already in France who could fill jobs in sectors desperate for workers, including agriculture, hospitality and construction. The legislation is expected to come before France’s parliament early next year.
French nativists howled but the country’s largest employers organization applauded the measure, which is designed to support the nation’s economy as it battles inflationary head winds. Officials took a measured tone, pledging to tighten enforcement by pursuing migrants who remain in the country after receiving deportation orders while at the same time pushing for the new residence permits.
In Germany, too, employers starved for workers have generally welcomed Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s promise, upon taking office last year, that “it’s high time we made life easier for immigrants to become German citizens.” His government has set a goal of attracting 400,000 qualified workers annually for the country, which has Europe’s biggest economy, and easing access to language and other courses to help assimilate migrants. A recent survey found the German economy is grappling with a record shortage in skilled workers, affecting nearly half of the country’s companies. That has forced many to slash production, costing the German economy as much as $85 billion on an annualized basis.
Elsewhere in Europe, the picture is mixed. In Italy, the far-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni took power this fall on an anti-immigration platform. Yet it is anyone’s guess who will fill low-skill jobs, including caregivers for the elderly, if migrants are barred or forced out of the country. Italians, whose birthrate has long been among the lowest among the world’s wealthy countries, are often in short supply for such positions.
Denmark is pursuing what might be one of the most self-defeating immigration policies among wealthy countries. Earlier this month, Danish voters handed a narrow victory to the center-left Social Democrats, who have embraced a “zero refugee” policy and proposed relocating asylum seekers to Rwanda, against their will, as their applications are processed. At the same time, Danish firms are facing a severe labor shortage, which many have called their biggest challenge.
Ironically, it was Donald Trump, the most nativist of recent American presidents, who proposed a reform based partly on the Canadian model, as well as similar point-based systems in Australia and New Zealand, that would tilt the balance of U.S. legal immigration toward skilled workers while still retaining about one third of slots for relatives of current residents. Mr. Trump’s blueprint was mainly an act of political positioning; once introduced, in 2019, it was rarely mentioned again. Nor did it take into account the reality of 10 or 11 million undocumented migrants, most of them long-standing members of U.S. communities, including nearly 2 million young “dreamers” raised and educated in this country.
Still, by acknowledging Canada’s example, the Trump proposal was a useful starting point. There are now 10.7 million jobs available in the United States, nearly two for every unemployed worker, and an ever-increasing share of the openings are for skilled employees. As a proportion of population, more jobs are vacant in the United States than Canada. Canada is wisely opening the door wider to the legal immigrants that its economy needs, while Congress, politically paralyzed, has proved itself unable to fix the United States’ broken system. | 2022-11-14T21:03:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Canada’s expansion of immigration sets a model the U.S. should follow - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/canada-immigration-model-united-states/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/canada-immigration-model-united-states/ |
Exploring college options while in high school
I am very glad to have enough support to take care of my education costs, but others need more assistance, especially those in less supportive communities. Jay Mathews’s Nov. 7 Education column, “More high school students should be allowed to learn on college campuses” [Metro], explained the resources some high schools give their students to experience college-level coursework. I agree that it is not enough to allow only advanced placement and international baccalaureate courses. College campus visits show prospective students how challenging college course work can be. Leaving a student to only experience college coursework instead of the actual college experience could lead a student into health risks in college.
High school students need more higher-level coursework and education that challenges them instead of just harder work as soon as they enter college. Mr. Mathews quoted one college student as saying that “thousands of high school students use the [Post-Secondary Enrollment Options] program to fill their high school graduation requirements and reduce risks by helping students earn free college credits at the same time.”
There is a lot of commitment that comes with a college education, and high schools, which focus on a central education, do not explore the different career opportunities there are. I would like to see more improvements in how the high school curriculum is set up.
Esther N. Nartey, Randallstown, Md. | 2022-11-14T21:03:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Exploring college options while in high school - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/exploring-college-options-while-high-school/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/exploring-college-options-while-high-school/ |
John Fetterman is an inspiration to stroke survivors
Democratic nominee John Fetterman speaks to supporters in Pittsburgh after being declared the winner of his U.S. Senate race last week. (Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post)
As a stroke survivor, I was glad to see Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) overcome the effects of a stroke to win his race for a U.S. Senate seat [“The ‘red wave’ that wasn’t — and other key takeaways,” news, Nov. 10]. And because I struggle with visual-processing problems as a result of my own stroke, I especially sympathize with Mr. Fetterman’s difficulty in processing auditory information.
Mr. Fetterman’s struggles are personal to me, but they also seemed strangely personal to the many online commentators who felt moved to say how “embarrassing” or “painful” it was to watch Mr. Fetterman’s performance during a televised debate.
And I’ve seen in my own life how a disabled person’s struggles can make able-bodied observers cringe.
I was moved by Mr. Fetterman’s courage during the campaign and especially the bravery he showed by participating in that debate after months of mockery by his opponent. As I watched, I thought back to my own recovery and how that must have looked to observers.
Evidently, many able-bodied people see failure and embarrassment when disabled people struggle.
But those of us who have shared that experience see the determination and resolve that drive the struggle. We see the will to survive and the triumph of the human spirit.
And, fortunately, it seems the people of Pennsylvania saw that, too.
William McKenna, Silver Spring | 2022-11-14T21:03:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | John Fetterman is an inspiration to stroke survivors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/john-fetterman-is-an-inspiration-stroke-survivors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/john-fetterman-is-an-inspiration-stroke-survivors/ |
The Metrorail station at Dulles International Airport on Nov. 2. (AP Photo/Matthew Barakat)
Six decades ago, when Washington’s Metro transit system was still a twinkle in the eye of transportation planners, the idea of a rail link to Dulles International Airport seemed a distant fantasy. Not only were commuters few and far between in the sparse farmland between the nation’s capital and the airport, but Dulles itself was brand new, and its prospects uncertain.
“I think [a train line] is some time in the future” a dismissive Kennedy administration official, C. Dalton Stolzenbach, told a congressional committee in 1963.
That future has arrived.
On Tuesday, the $3 billion, 11.4-mile second phase of the Silver Line, four years behind schedule and massively over budget, is set to start running at six new stations, including Dulles and two others farther west, in Loudoun County. That the project took so long and cost so much does not negate a simple fact: Dulles at last joins other world-class airports served by rail — from Singapore, New Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo and Hong Kong to Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Paris and Berlin.
The United States has been a global laggard in linking major cities to the airports that serve them. No direct trains connect Manhattan with John F. Kennedy or LaGuardia airports. Workers broke ground on a rail line to serve Los Angeles International Airport last year; it is scheduled for completion in 2024. International visitors who arrive at Dulles for the first time are routinely surprised at the lack of train service, and Washingtonians have complained about it for years.
The Silver Line’s construction, amid fights over financing, federal support and above-or-under-ground stations, has supercharged development in Northern Virginia. It also consumed years, a testament to the difficulty of getting major infrastructure projects built in this country and the shortsightedness of opposition forces. Still, the completion of its second and final phase is a timely reminder that long-term planning and tough-minded elected officials are required to meet the region’s daunting transportation and transit needs.
By 2045, some 7 million people are expected to live in the greater metropolitan area, 1.3 million more than today. More than 1 million jobs are projected to be added in the region, for a total of 4.3 million. The number of daily road and rail trips is forecast to jump to 21 million, up from 18 million today. If the region stands pat, the outcome is preordained: longer, more frequent delays for those who live and work here.
To avoid that grim future, key projects will have to graduate from drawing boards to construction sites. They include widening the Beltway and Interstate 270 in the Maryland suburbs; rebuilding and widening the American Legion Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River; building bus rapid transit along the Route 1 corridor in Northern Virginia and expanding it to vital routes in Montgomery County; securing Metro’s future with additional local, state and federal funding; extending the Blue, Orange and Yellow lines of Metrorail itself; and solving the problem of Metro’s Rosslyn tunnel bottleneck, where three Metrorail lines converge. Better and safer pedestrian and bicycle networks are also critical.
Those battles are underway. The results will shape and determine the region’s livability and prosperity.
The Editorial Board on Metro
Opinion|Decades in the making, the Silver Line reaches its destination
Opinion|Metro’s new leader takes on brazen fare evasion
Opinion|Metro cannot ignore its safety problems | 2022-11-14T21:03:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Decades in the making, the Silver Line reaches its destination - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/silver-line-washington-metro-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/silver-line-washington-metro-future/ |
Muslim Americans make historic gains in midterm elections
More than 80 Muslim candidates won local, state, federal and judicial seats in over 20 states, according to a report from CAIR and the Jetpac Resource Center
By Alejandra Molina
Nabeela Syed, Democratic member-elect of the Illinois House of Representatives from the 51st District. (Josh Ford)
Nabeela Syed made history in this year’s midterms when she defeated a Republican incumbent in Illinois’s 51st District, making her the youngest member of the Illinois General Assembly and among the first Muslims elected to the state legislature.
“It is so important for us to have a seat at the table, for us to have a voice in the legislative process,” Syed, a 23-year-old Indian American who is Muslim, told a local TV news reporter soon after her win. Syed recalled a conversation with a friend who had never expected to see a name like hers on yard signs in their community.
To Syed, candidacies like hers are viable “if people put in the time, the effort and the money,” she said in a podcast series documenting her campaign. Syed and Abdelnasser Rashid became the first Muslims elected to the Illinois legislature.
“You can’t just write off a candidacy like mine because, ‘Oh, she’s too diverse for this district or she’s too young,’” Syed said.
Syed is among a cohort of candidates who made history this year by becoming the first Muslim Americans to be elected to the state legislature in states including Texas, Illinois, Georgia and Minnesota. All of them are Democrats, many are women and a rising number are Somali Americans.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said the 2022 midterms have been a historic election: It tracked a record-breaking 145 American Muslim candidates running for local, state and federal office, including 48 state legislative candidates in 23 states.
Jetpac also documented a record number of Muslims running for state legislative seats, including: 20 Muslim incumbents who successfully ran for reelection; two appointed lawmakers who ran for a full term and made history as the first Muslims elected to their respective state legislatures; plus 17 new Muslim candidates who won their campaigns.
To Mohammed Missouri, Jetpac’s executive director, it’s noteworthy that all Muslim state legislators who were up for reelection have retained their seats. “That’s a big thing,” he said.
Missouri said the successful campaigns of Muslim American candidates show that “when Muslims run for office today, in 2022 and beyond … it’s rewarded by voters.”
Among the historic gains:
In Minnesota, 25-year-old Zaynab Mohamed, a Democrat, became the first Muslim woman of Somali descent to be elected to the state Senate.
In Georgia, four Muslim Americans were elected to state office. This includes Democrat Ruwa Romman, the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, and Nabilah Islam, the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia state Senate.
In Texas, the first two Muslim lawmakers are Democrats Salman Bhojani, who won election in House District 92 in Tarrant County, and Suleman Lalani, who won election in House District 76 in Fort Bend County.
In Ohio, Democrat Munira Abdullahi, who ran unopposed, became the first Muslim woman to be elected to the state legislature. Ismail Mohamed, also a Democrat, was elected as the first Muslim man to serve in the Ohio Statehouse. Both are Somali Americans.
In Maine, Democrats Mana Abdi, Ambureen Rana and Deqa Dhalac were the first Muslims elected to the state legislature. Abdi and Dhalac are Somali American.
In Oregon, state Sen. Kayse Jama (D) ran for a full term after being appointed to fill a vacancy in 2021. He is the first Muslim elected to the Oregon state legislature.
In Washington state, state Sen. Yasmin Trudeau (D) ran for a full term after being appointed to fill a vacancy in 2021. She is the first Muslim elected to the Washington state legislature.
The 2022 midterm election results prove that “Muslims are a powerhouse,” said community organizer Nada Al-Hanooti — not just as candidates but also as a constituency.
As executive director of Emgage’s Michigan chapter, an organization that educates and mobilizes Muslim American voters, Hanooti saw major wins in voter outreach and in the candidates they endorsed in Michigan, where Democrats will now control the Michigan legislature following this year’s election.
Hanooti said most of the candidates who seek out Emgage are not Muslim. “[They] know now the pull that we have,” she said.
A recent survey of American congregations by the U.S. Religion Census showed that the number of Muslims who participate in mosque prayer increased from 2.6 million in 2010 to 4.5 million in 2020, a 75 percent increase. (The Pew Research Center projected there would be 3.85 million Muslims in the United States by 2020.)
Michigan Democrat Hillary Scholten, whom Emgage endorsed, defeated John Gibbs, backed by former president Donald Trump, in her run for Congress. Emgage also endorsed U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who defeated state Sen. Tom Barrett (R) in a competitive race.
In Michigan, the Democrats were last in charge of the Senate in 1984, and they last controlled the House in 2010, according to the Michigan Advance.
“Our focus was really to flip the House and Senate. We knew we had an opportunity,” Hanooti said.
Emgage, through its nonprofit, offers nonpartisan voter education outreach. It also has a political action committee, dubbed the nation’s largest Muslim American bipartisan PAC, that supports local, state and federal candidates with a “track record of upholding civil rights, welcoming diversity, and protecting religious freedom.”
“I think slowly, but surely, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, will know that the Muslim community is a force to be reckoned with,” Hanooti said. | 2022-11-14T21:04:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Muslim Americans make historic gains in midterm elections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/11/14/muslim-americans-make-historic-gains-midterm-elections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/11/14/muslim-americans-make-historic-gains-midterm-elections/ |
Women are managing more assets than ever before as personal investors, business leaders and financial decisionmakers both at work and at home. On Monday, Nov. 21 at 12:30 p.m. ET, Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis, and C. Nicole Mason, president and CEO of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, join Washington Post Live to discuss how women can grow their wealth to the fullest potential, navigate the current uncertainties in the economy and overcome structural barriers like the wage gap.
Personal Finance Columnist, The Washington Post
Professor of Economic Policy Analysis, The New School
President & CEO, Institute for Women’s Policy Research
Content from Fidelity
Volatility, inflation, and your money
This past year has seen volatile markets and the highest price increases in over a decade.
What does it all mean for your money? In this segment from Fidelity Wealth Management, Denise Chisholm, Director of Quantitative Market Strategy, breaks down what’s happening in the markets and suggests actions investors may want to consider.
Denise Chisholm
Director, Quantitative Market Strategy, Fidelity | 2022-11-14T21:05:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Women taking charge of their financial future - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/11/21/women-taking-charge-their-financial-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/11/21/women-taking-charge-their-financial-future/ |
Woolly Mammoth calls for theaters nationwide to trust and protect artists
The board of the D.C. company circulates a letter in response to layoffs at a venerable Chicago theater company
Washington's Woolly Mammoth Theatre has spearheaded an effort to hold theater boards accountable to their artistic staffs. (Mike Morgan)
This summer, a Chicago theater stunned the industry by firing its artistic director and entire staff, and reportedly making plans to discontinue producing new work. Now, in a highly unusual act, an influential Washington theater is asking other companies to publicly reaffirm their commitment to their artists.
That the board of D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company felt the need to make such an appeal attests to the turbulent times for the nation’s theater companies. The pandemic shutdown weakened the financial underpinnings of many, and a less than robust return of audiences — some estimates put the drop at 20 to 25 percent of theatergoers — has unnerved the industry.
But it was the actions over the summer of one company in particular, Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater, for half a century a mainstay in one of the nation’s most vibrant theater cities, that has heightened the alarm. In response, Woolly Mammoth’s board is seeking co-signers for a letter that delineates the scope — and limits — of what theater trustees are expected to do, to bolster the groups that they had pledged to assist.
“Without input from the professional artists associated with the theater,” Woolly’s board wrote about Victory Gardens, “the mission of the theater was overhauled — from a theater devoted to producing new plays, it was announced by remaining board members that Victory Gardens will now be run as a rental house for other producing companies. …”
“As volunteers who dedicate our time to beloved cultural organizations in our respective cities, let us ensure that what happened in Chicago is an anomaly, not the norm,” the Woolly board continued. “While we do not speak for every theater, we have seen how easy it is for boards to silo themselves from the needs of the artists, administrators and technicians who work to create the theater they love and support. This is not serving us and our field.”
Several board members from Baltimore Center Stage, New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre, San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre and the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis have already attached their names to the letter, which asks signatories to donate to an online fundraiser on behalf of Victory Gardens’ former employees.
The unraveling at Victory Gardens Theater — a company recognized with a Tony Award in 2001 that has offered world premieres by such major playwrights as Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Lucas Hnath and Jackie Sibblies Drury — occurred over several mystifying months this year. In June, after just 14 months as artistic director, Ken-Matt Martin was relieved of his duties by the board. In protest, playwright Erika Dickerson-Despenza withdrew in the middle of its run her well-received play “Cullud Wattah,” about the water crisis in Flint, Mich.
On his website, Martin noted that he was given no reason for his dismissal. “I have received no disciplinary notices, formal or informal warnings, and have had no complaints filed against me or any documented infractions,” he wrote. Three months later, as the company’s remaining staff of eight sought to unionize, the board fired them, too.
Emails to Victory Gardens’ communications office bounced back as undeliverable. In July, board president Charles E. Harris II told the Chicago Reader: “The Victory Gardens Theater board is grappling with the theater’s future, as are many other nonprofit theaters in this time. We are committed to acting in the theater’s best interests in all matters.” He added that the board was taking measures to install an interim management.
The Victory Gardens crisis was unsettling enough to spark conversations among board members at other nonprofit theaters, worried about the message sent to artists and staff members who might be wondering about their own companies’ loyalties. J. Chris Babb, chairman of the Woolly board of trustees, was among those who thought the situation called for an organized response.
“This is just to send a statement to the people who work in American theater, who do the art, that this is not how the majority of us function,” Babb said in an interview. “What we have conveyed is that we want you to stay in the nonprofit theater, and don’t be scared of the people who are holding this, clearly, in trust.”
Barbara Strack, another Woolly board member, said that she was taken with a comment by the former Victory Gardens artistic director: “In particular, there was a phrase Ken-Matt Martin repeated, that he tried every day to center the needs of the artists and staff,” Strack said in an interview. “That resonated with me. As a board member, as a trustee, that is the same lens that we should be bringing.”
Woolly Mammoth’s letter echoes this philosophy: “We all have one fundamental role: to hold our theater’s mission — its principal reason for being — in trust for the communities we represent,” the board wrote. “Holding a theater in trust this way is quite different than directing its operations. It is a stewardship that requires centering on the art and the artists and trusting their talent and expertise … ”
Maria Goyanes, Woolly’s artistic director, said it was gratifying that board members took it upon themselves to circulate such a forceful statement. “The thing I really took to was the idea that the board would not overhaul the artistic mission of the theater without centering the artists and staff and the professionals,” she said. “That made me go, ‘Oh, great, whatever happens, however rocky things are, there is really a respect.’ ”
Scot Spencer, a longtime board member at Baltimore Center Stage, said he immediately signed the letter. “For me, it really is about the way forward. We have been through a perilous time both in culture but also in how people approach the things they do in their leisure time,” he said. “We also need to evolve with that. As board members, trustees, this is not a crazy, far-off set of demands. This is asking to treat people with mutual respect.”
Center Stage is taking a lead role: It has hired several former Victory Gardens staffers, and Martin has been recruited to direct one of its main stage shows this season, Nia Vardalos’s “Tiny Beautiful Things.”
“It’s important for people to remember these are real people, people with children in college,” Martin said in an interview, referencing his former colleagues. He expressed the hope that all those he worked with in Chicago will find jobs.
“Anything that is done to advocate for those people who’ve had the rug pulled out from under them,” he added, “is what I care about.” | 2022-11-14T21:23:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woolly Mammoth asks other theaters to protect its artists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/11/14/woolly-mammoth-victory-gardens/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/11/14/woolly-mammoth-victory-gardens/ |
“We’ve been talking to the team for the last 18 months about Qatar, about social issues in Qatar, and we think it’s important when we are on the world stage — and when we are on a world stage like Qatar — to bring awareness to these issues,” USMNT Coach Gregg Berhalter said. “We recognize that Qatar has made a ton of progress but there is still some work to do.” (Carl Recine/Reuters)
DOHA, Qatar — From a soccer standpoint, the mission of the U.S. men’s national team when it gathered for its first formal training here Monday was narrow: complete preparations for the World Cup, polish tactics ahead of next week’s opener against Wales and aim to advance out of the group stage.
For four years, Coach Gregg Berhalter and his 26-man squad have been working toward this moment — to make amends for the failure to even qualify for the tournament last time and to fulfill promises that have escaped the U.S. men’s program over much of its history.
The players and coaches, however, have not lost sight of goals extending well beyond the pitch. They are not oblivious to concerns about human rights in the host country, and with the global spotlight turning to the month-long tournament beginning Sunday, they want to use soccer’s immense platform to help spur change.
Graphic: The USMNT World Cup roster is out. Here’s who made the cut.
In a media room tucked inside Al-Gharrafa Stadium — the Americans’ training base for the duration of their stay in Qatar — a wall is decorated in rainbow colors and the U.S. Soccer Federation’s crest displays that same pattern. It’s a show of support for LGBT rights in a country where homosexuality is illegal and where former Qatari player Khalid Salman, a World Cup ambassador, recently told a German broadcaster that homosexuality was “damage in the mind.”
The USSF said it will exhibit the colors in other venues it controls, such as the team hotel, media areas and fan parties the night before matches. The players will not wear the rainbow crest on match uniforms.
“We’ve been talking to the team for the last 18 months about Qatar, about social issues in Qatar, and we think it’s important when we are on the world stage — and when we are on a world stage like Qatar — to bring awareness to these issues,” Berhalter said. “We recognize that Qatar has made a ton of progress but there is still some work to do.”
There are limits, both imposed and self-imposed, on what actions World Cup teams can take on social issues without jeopardizing their standing in the tournament. FIFA, the sport’s global governing body, does not allow team equipment to show political, religious or personal slogans, statements or images. For its part, the U.S. team is mindful of respecting its hosts while continuing to raise awareness.
The selection of Qatar to host the World Cup also has brought attention to the treatment of migrant workers, who make up a large share of the country’s 3 million residents. In addition to traditional red-and-white uniforms, Denmark will have the option of wearing black jerseys to protest Qatar’s human rights record.
FIFA will not stand in the way of the jerseys but rejected the Danes’ request to train in shirts that read “Human rights for all.”
Early this month, FIFA wrote a letter to all 32 teams, asking them, “please, let’s now focus on the football!”
Additionally, several European team captains plan to wear a “OneLove” armband, promoting diversity and inclusion.
Through an initiative called “Be the Change,” U.S. players have been active on social rights issues since George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
From June: Ahead of a controversial World Cup, U.S. men say they see the big picture
“It’s a sign of our values and what we represent as the national team,” goalkeeper Sean Johnson said, “and we’re a group who believes in inclusivity and we will continue to project that message going forward.”
Defender Shaq Moore added, “We’re aware of what’s going on, and we always want to be here and play but also be the change as well.”
The men’s and women’s national teams have worn rainbow colors on their uniforms during home friendlies and have supported social justice causes by printing messages on training gear.
“Our rainbow badge has an important and consistent role in the identity of U.S. Soccer,” USSF chief communications officer Neil Buethe said in a statement Monday. “As part of our approach for any match or event, we include rainbow branding to support and embrace the LGBTQ community, as well as to promote a spirit of inclusiveness and welcoming to all fans across the globe.”
The U.S. delegation has settled into its hotel in the exclusive Pearl district jutting into the Persian Gulf. The players’ lounge includes a barber’s chair, large-screen TVs, pool tables, foosball and a putting green. Players watched NFL games Sunday.
Friends and family members will stay nearby.
The team brought with it 30,000 pounds of equipment, food and other support material. Besides its own barber, the U.S. team has its own chef — an Italian named Giulio Caccamo whom team officials met when the United States was in San Salvador for a World Cup qualifier in September 2021. Caccamo was the head chef at the team’s hotel there.
The Americans’ training grounds in Doha is a 22,000-seat stadium several miles from the team hotel. Although the players have fitness options at the hotel, the USSF assembled an open-air gym at the stadium. U.S. officials made numerous trips to Doha, well before the team qualified, to scout potential venues.
“It was important to try to get it right,” Berhalter said. “And we feel like this is a good combination of hotel and training facility.”
Notes: All but four players participated in training Monday, and the entire group is expected to be present Tuesday. Tim Weah, Weston McKennie, Sergiño Dest and Haji Wright were scheduled to arrive by Monday night after departing their European clubs. … The U.S. team will conduct a closed scrimmage Thursday against a local club. … The temperature here has been around 90 degrees during the day and fallen into the low 70s at night. Next week, the range is expected to be from the mid-80s to the mid-60s. | 2022-11-14T21:32:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At World Cup, USMNT will shine light on Qatar human rights concerns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/qatar-human-rights-world-cup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/qatar-human-rights-world-cup/ |
Md. governor-elect Wes Moore unveils key positions for administration
Wes Moore, the next governor of Maryland, speaks at a news conference in College Park. (Graeme Sloan for The Washington Post)
Governor-elect Wes Moore (D) on Monday announced key members for his leadership team, appointments that he said will complement his history-making ticket.
Moore, the first Black governor of Maryland and one of only three Black governors elected in a state since Reconstruction, said he wants his administration to reflect the diversity of Maryland, where a majority of residents identify as people of color. Moore called his newly named administration leaders “innovative and hard charging” figures who know how to produce results.
Moore named as his chief of staff Fagan Harris, the president and chief executive of Baltimore Corps, a social enterprise organization that connects people with programs targeting issues that affect Baltimore, with a goal of boosting equity and advancing racial justice.
Who is Wes Moore? A look at the projected governor of Maryland.
Tisha Edwards, who was chief of staff of the Moore campaign, will be secretary of appointments. Moore selected Democratic National Committee counsel Amanda LaForge as his chief of legal counsel and Maryland House Majority Leader Eric Luedtke his chief legislative officer. Helene Grady, vice president and chief financial officer at Johns Hopkins University, will be secretary of budget and management.
“In this time and in this moment, Marylanders will be able to look up at this administration with a real sense of pride,” Moore said. “I know that these are leaders who understand what it means to get things done.” Moore said he deliberately picked a team with a range of experience across executive and legislative branches, private and nonprofit sectors, and secondary and higher education fields.
“This is an administration who understands” what it “means to make sure that every single sector of our society is seen and what it means to take new approaches and new innovations to make sure that government can meet people where they are,” Moore said. Harris, who has not worked in government before, echoed the sentiment from Moore that his administration will reflect the “diversity and dynamism” of Maryland.
Wes Moore campaign created high expectations. Can he deliver?
When asked about his lack of experience, Harris said that his career has been spent working with government, nonprofits and businesses to achieve desired outcomes. “We are bringing a different spirit to this administration,” Harris said, adding that the role of government needs to be rethought and must include responsiveness, accountability and transparency. “I intend to learn and to grow in this role and to seek out advice and consultation. We are not doing this alone.”
Moore reflected that statement by speaking about the importance of collaboration between the Maryland House and Senate. He noted that past years were “complicated and challenging” but that he wants to work with both chambers of government to ensure legislation that reaches his desk is legislation that jas been born out of partnership and without “surprises.”
He said his selections, announced less than a week after he defeated Del. Dan Cox (R-Frederick) in a landslide, lay the foundation for delivering on ambitious campaign promises such as ending child poverty. “This is going to be Maryland’s decade,” he said. “We are going to do it because we are bringing multiple sectors, ideas and thoughts into that process. This is the team that is going to help lead us there.” | 2022-11-14T21:32:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wes Moore announces top positions for his incoming cabinet. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/wes-moore-maryland-staff/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/wes-moore-maryland-staff/ |
Jay Leno poses for a portrait in September 2014 at his car garage in Burbank, Calif. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
People magazine reported on Sunday that Leno, 72, canceled an appearance at a financial conference in Las Vegas that evening because of a “serious medical emergency.” The Financial Brand wrote in an email to attendees that Leno’s “family was not able to provide us very many details, but there was a very serious medical emergency that is preventing Jay from traveling.”
Leno hosted “The Tonight Show” on NBC from 1992 to 2009, and again from 2010 to 2014 after a kerfuffle over the poor ratings of both his next endeavor, NBC’s “The Jay Leno Show,” and the “Tonight Show” iteration hosted by successor Conan O’Brien. During Leno’s tenure, the show landed nine Emmy Award nominations for outstanding variety series; it won once, in 2005.
After Leno officially retired from “The Tonight Show” in 2014, he began hosting “Jay Leno’s Garage,” an Emmy-winning web series about cars — inspired by his side passion — that landed a prime-time spot on CNBC in 2015. He said in a news release at the time that the show would be “about anything that rolls, explodes and makes noise,” and would “highlight the passion and the stories behind the men and women who made the automobile the greatest invention of the 20th century.” | 2022-11-14T21:54:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jay Leno hospitalized after suffering ‘serious burns’ from car fire - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/14/jay-leno-burns-car-fire/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/14/jay-leno-burns-car-fire/ |
Mike Pence highlights his heroic hour, and sidesteps the rest
In his memoir, “So Help Me God,” the former vice president writes of his outrage at the Capitol invasion but is generally soft on President Trump
Review by Geoffrey Kabaservice
Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi preside over the electoral college vote certification for President-elect Joe Biden during a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Former vice president Mike Pence begins his new memoir, “So Help Me God,” by recounting the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob summoned by then-President Donald Trump invaded the Capitol seeking to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election. On the very first page, Pence notes that this was “the election we had lost.” On the very last page, in an appendix, he reproduces a letter he sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 12, 2021, in which he refers to “President-elect Joe Biden.” But almost nowhere else in this book does Pence acknowledge that his running mate lost the election fair and square, and that Biden is his legitimate successor. It’s a significant minimization.
Pence didn’t play a particularly prominent role in the Trump administration, so it makes sense that the book’s most vivid chapter relates the events of Jan. 6, when the vice president’s ceremonial duty to preside over congressional certification of the electoral count took on enormous symbolic significance. Pence doesn’t convey the full horror of the Capitol invasion, but he writes compellingly of his outrage at how the mob “desecrated the seat of our democracy and dishonored the patriotism of millions of our supporters.”
The blunt facts of his bravery in remaining at the Capitol and his insistence that Congress reconvene that very evening to complete its work speak for themselves. It’s unclear if Pence intends this memoir as a calling card for some future campaign, but his honorable conduct during a dark and dangerous day for the nation makes for more compelling stump-speech material than most politicians can muster.
Aside from its one remarkable event, and its close-up descriptions of a unique figure in the history of the American presidency, Pence’s memoir resembles those of other politicians. The reader learns of his “idyllic” younger years in southern Indiana as one of six children in a devoutly Catholic Irish American family. Although he writes that President John F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were “the heroes of my youth,” Pence converted to evangelical Christianity and the Republican Party in college. Law school, marriage and a failed run for Congress soon followed. He spent the ’90s leading a small think tank and achieving modest success as a right-wing talk-radio and television host before winning election to Congress in 2000. In the House, Pence hewed to uniformly conservative positions. He was fully supportive of George W. Bush’s “war on terror” but frequently at odds with the president’s domestic policy, much of which he considered to be “big-government conservatism.”
As Pence ascended the ranks of party leadership, some conservative commentators and activists encouraged him to run for president. He acknowledges that he was interested but instead returned to Indiana in 2012 to run for governor. During Pence’s single term in that office, he pushed for tax cuts, abortion restrictions and a religious freedom bill that incurred wide opposition (including from a number of Indiana-based businesses) for its perceived discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community. Pence denies that the bill had discriminatory intent and concludes, in hindsight, that the controversy was “the first battle between woke corporate America and the American people.”
But Pence could also be pragmatic. He was one of the few Republican governors to accept federal funding to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, although he negotiated a waiver from the Obama administration to create a plan that included health-savings accounts. Pence allows that some conservatives called it a “sellout,” but he says that the plan “became a model for consumer-directed health care” in other states.
Pence’s popularity sagged during his time as governor, but his prospects for reelection in 2016 became moot when Trump tapped him to be his running mate. Pence declines to speculate about why Trump picked him over other contenders, but most analysts observed that he boosted the ticket in critical Rust Belt states and reassured evangelical voters who doubted the flamboyant and twice-divorced Trump’s commitment to traditional morality.
Pence didn’t play the usual vice-presidential roles of hatchet man and attack dog, largely because Trump amply filled those roles himself. Pence’s memoir offers a characteristically earnest and low-key survey of the Trump-Pence administration. It is long on partisan cheerleading but relatively short on personal attacks, aside from repeated criticisms of the Democratic Party and “the ever-divisive press.” It is unreliable as history, particularly in its claims for the successes of the administration’s handling of covid-19, where Pence skips over the myriad ways that Trump made the pandemic deadlier by politicizing public health. More generally, Pence portrays the decidedly mixed record of the administration as a nearly unbroken series of political wins, promises made and kept — up to Election Day 2020 anyway.
Pence’s descriptions of his interactions with Trump are among the most interesting parts of the book, although here too objectivity is not the author’s strong suit. At one point he emphasizes to his boss that, other than Trump’s family, “no one in this administration has been more loyal to you than me,” and for most of this account Pence offers up a loyalist’s defense. He excuses Trump’s venom as brashness, considers the high turnover in the administration to have been merely a byproduct of Trump’s business-minded willingness to fire underperformers, and insists that the chaos attested to by White House insiders was simply an “entrepreneurial and competitive” environment into which the president would inject “a bit of drama” to get results.
What, for his part, did Trump really think of his vice president? In one unintentionally revealing anecdote, Pence relates how he attended the musical “Hamilton” and, at the curtain, heard one of the cast members issue a statement on behalf of the show expressing anxiety and alarm over the administration’s lack of commitment to protecting a diverse America. “I wasn’t offended by anything he said,” Pence writes, but Trump “was outraged — mostly as a New Yorker. ‘Broadway is almost like going to church,’ he told me.” When Pence declined to turn the episode into culture-war point-scoring, Trump “good-naturedly” admonished him: “You took the high road. I never take the high road.” Somehow one doubts that Trump intended that as a compliment.
The tone of Pence’s memoir darkens in its final chapters. In the wake of Trump’s 2020 defeat, the president baselessly claimed he had been deprived of victory by massive electoral fraud, and pressured his vice president to decertify the election results. Pence refused, explaining in an email to members of Congress just before they met in joint session on Jan. 6 that he did not have the authority to overturn an election. Trump then tweeted that his vice president “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done,” prompting many of the Capitol invaders to chant “Hang Mike Pence!”
Pence performed his constitutional duty by certifying the election. But in the weeks before Jan. 6, as Trump lied about the election having been stolen, Pence did not contradict him in public or, as his memoir makes clear, in private. Rather than defending democracy by conceding that his ticket had lost in a fair and secure election, he gave speeches at which he implored his supporters to “stay in the fight for election integrity.”
And aside from a small number of passing moments, his memoir also fails to unequivocally deny Trump’s falsehoods. Instead, Pence resorts to weasel-worded half-admissions that “we came up short under circumstances that would cause millions of Americans to doubt the outcome of the election.” His reluctance to acknowledge the legitimacy of Biden’s victory makes his self-serving invocations of fidelity and patriotism ring hollow. If only Pence, who begins each chapter with a biblical verse, had quoted John 8:32 to the millions of Americans who continue to believe the dangerous lies he helped to promulgate: “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Geoffrey Kabaservice is vice president of political studies at the Niskanen Center and author of “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party.” Follow him on Twitter: @RuleandRuin | 2022-11-14T21:54:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mike Pence Reflects on Capitol Invasion and Trump in 'So Help Me God' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/14/mike-pence-memoir-so-help-me-god/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/14/mike-pence-memoir-so-help-me-god/ |
Roberta Flack has ALS, making it ‘impossible to sing,’ manager says
Singer Roberta Flack in 2018. A representative for Flack has announced that she has ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and can no longer sing. (Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
R&B singer Roberta Flack has been diagnosed with ALS, her manager announced this week, and the disease has “made it impossible to sing.”
Flack had three hits top the Billboard Hot 100 chart during the 1970s. Her first was “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in 1972, then “Killing Me Softly With His Song” the next year, according to Billboard. “Feel Like Makin’ Love” in 1974 capped that run.
I’m a scientist studying brain illnesses. Now I’m a lock-in, living with one of them: Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, causes nerve cells to slow and die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A lack of functioning nerve cells robs people of the ability to trigger specific muscles, including the muscles around the lungs and mouth along with the vocal cords themselves, according to the ALS Association.
The announcement from Flack’s manager included details about a documentary named “Roberta” set to premiere Thursday at the DOC NYC film festival at the SVA Theatre in Manhattan.
“Flack plans to stay active in her musical and creative pursuits,” her manager wrote. Flack has her own foundation that educates and mentors girls. | 2022-11-14T21:58:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ALS diagnosis takes away Roberta Flack's ability to sing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/14/als-diagnosis-symptoms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/14/als-diagnosis-symptoms/ |
The subdued mood marks a reversal from just days earlier, when the GOP gubernatorial nominee in Arizona was readying a transition team
Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for Arizona governor. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
PHOENIX — Kari Lake, staring down a likely loss in the Arizona governor’s race, is being advised by GOP operatives and some of her closest aides to take a measured approach should she come up short in the vote tally and not “storm the castle,” as one person present for the discussions described the sentiments.
Lake has been among the nation’s most outspoken promoters of former president Donald Trump’s disproved claims that he was cheated out of victory in the 2020 election. Voters rejected election-denying candidates in key battleground states nationwide this year, and many of those candidates have responded by doing what Trump wouldn’t: concede defeat.
Some campaign aides and Republican operatives, looking at internal data, have grown increasingly doubtful over the last three days that Lake has a path to victory. To remain viable, they said, she may need to claim as much as 65 percent of the next batch of votes in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and more than half of the state’s voters, while also over-performing in Pima County, home to Tucson.
Trump urged his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol after his loss, and the question of how Lake would respond to defeat has lingered as one of the biggest unanswered questions of the 2022 election. The candidate has been coy in her public statements since Election Day. She has sharply criticized Maricopa County for voting machine malfunctions and hinted at a devious, partisan motive, while also urging patience as the votes are counted.
Within Lake’s war room, where the mood has shifted in the past week from giddy anticipation to grim resignation, discussions have centered on how Lake should speak about a loss. Among those who have made appearances are some of the biggest names in Trump’s orbit, including Stephen K. Bannon and Christina Bobb. Trump himself called in on Sunday.
Some people in the war room want Lake to concede if the final tally goes against her. There are also those who want her message to center on problems with printers on Election Day that affected 30 percent of polling sites, while a smaller number of voices have floated the idea of claiming that the election was stolen.
“Nobody is advocating to go storm the castle,” one person familiar with the discussions said.
At the same time, Lake relies largely on her own instincts, according to current and former aides, and may go in a different direction than the one suggested by her team and those in the war room. GOP activists, including some in touch with Lake during her campaign, are threatening litigation and seeking to gather testimonials from voters who claim to have been turned away at the polls.
Hobbs began the count with a substantial lead. Lake advisers had hoped that later batches of votes — drawn from Election Day ballots they thought would be favorable to Lake — would catch her up. But the results are not breaking as heavily in her favor as anticipated. Lake criticized the state’s early-voting system throughout her campaign and urged people to vote in person on Election Day or to drop off their early ballots at the polls.
Now, the mood inside a large conference room filled with televisions and strewn coffee cups has shifted from elation to a mix of anger and resignation that Hobbs may be on her way to flipping the governorship blue after two decades of Republican control.
Lake, members of her campaign team and her allies have huddled at various times at the hotel in recent days, culminating in a phone call with the former president on Sunday in a side room near the conference space. Trump, who made Arizona a centerpiece of his false claims of voter fraud in 2020, expressed disbelief that the Republican candidates were losing, according to three people with knowledge of the call.
But Lake has mostly fallen silent in recent days, even as Hobbs on Sunday issued a statement from her campaign manager saying the Democrat was the “unequivocal favorite to become the next governor of Arizona.”
Lake’s team did not respond to a request for comment about that claim, and the Republican nominee — usually busy on social media — did not tweet for more than 24 hours, breaking her silence midday Monday with a clipped communication. “Arizona, I am fighting for you,” she posted on Twitter.
An adviser said Lake would probably appear on a Fox News show on Monday evening. “Everybody expects us to be screaming, and we’re doing the opposite,” the adviser said.
In addition to Lake’s closest advisers and some attorneys, other allies have filtered in and out of the war room, according to people with knowledge of the activity there.
They include Ric Grenell, who served as Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, and Bobb, a former One America News anchor who aided a review of 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County after the 2020 election.
Bobb serves as a lawyer for Trump’s political action committee and has been interviewed by the FBI regarding her involvement in the case arising from Trump’s handling of sensitive documents allegedly taken to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home and club in Florida. Additional people present have included Bannon, a former White House chief strategist and host of a far-right radio show, and Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer of the political arm of the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA.
Bowyer directed efforts through Turning Point’s PAC to help Lake and a slate of GOP candidates who appear on track to win seats in the state legislature. After problems at polling sites were discovered on Tuesday, Bowyer has threatened to launch recall campaigns against Bill Gates, the Republican chair of Maricopa’s board of supervisors, which oversees Election Day operations and vote counting, and Stephen Richer, the Republican recorder responsible for early voting.
“Go talk to your neighbor about how incompetent Lil’ Bill is and help recall the people responsible for this international embarrassment,” Bowyer wrote Saturday on Twitter.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Gates said he was focused on finishing running the 2022 election and governing Maricopa County. Richer, through an aide, declined to comment.
Gates, Richer and other county leaders have repeatedly said problems at polling sites on Election Day did not prevent voters from casting their ballots or cause any ballots to be misread. Voters were instructed to wait until problems were fixed, travel to different voting centers or to place their ballots in secure boxes that were transferred downtown and counted there. But those familiar with conversations inside the war room said the Election Day problems could be the subject of litigation.
Mark Finchem, the GOP candidate for secretary of state who on Friday was projected to lose, has also stopped in at the Scottsdale resort where Republicans are huddling. He has refused to concede, tweeting conspiracy theories about George Soros, the Jewish financier and donor to Democratic causes, and Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency investor and Democratic donor whose business empire has crumbled in recent days.
Finchem on Monday sent out a fundraising appeal to his supporters saying, “This fight is not over. This race is not over. I need your help today to fight back against the Fake News Machine that is spewing Leftist Propaganda hoping we won’t notice!”
Grenell, Bobb and Finchem did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
People familiar with the discussions said Bannon and Caroline Wren, a senior adviser to Lake and a veteran GOP fundraiser, were clear-eyed about the unfavorable numbers.
Still, in a monologue Monday morning on his “War Room” radio show, Bannon railed against Maricopa County, describing the Election Day glitches as “an active disenfranchisement of voters in Arizona on the world stage.” Republicans had asked a judge to extend voting hours on Election Day as a result of the problems, but the judge denied their request, finding that they were unable to show that any voter had been denied the ability to cast a ballot.
Lake and her allies have argued that the problems only affected Republican areas. But an analysis by The Post found that the proportion of registered Republicans in affected precincts, about 37 percent, was virtually the same as the share of registered Republicans across the county, which stands at 35 percent.
Maricopa County officials have said that they are working as long as 18 hours a day to tabulate a record number of ballots dropped off on Election Day and that the process was always expected to take as long as 12 days. | 2022-11-14T22:24:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kari Lake is being advised that she will likely lose the Arizona governor's race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/14/kari-lake-arizona-governor-race-results/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/14/kari-lake-arizona-governor-race-results/ |
No, Republican underperformance in 2022 wasn’t due to covid deaths
The stage remained empty most of the evening at a Republican watch party on Election Day in Topeka, Kan., as the candidates for governor and attorney general waited until nearly midnight to speak. (Reed Hoffmann/AP)
It was probably inevitable, given the extent to which the response to the coronavirus pandemic overlapped with political partisanship, that the effects of the virus would also be viewed in reverse. If Republicans were less likely than Democrats to be vaccinated (which they were) or to do things like wear masks (same), wouldn’t that mean that more Republicans would die of covid-19? And given that more than 1 million Americans have died because of the virus, wouldn’t that necessarily have some effect on politics?
Those rumblings, particularly common in the post-vaccine era when the gap between red and blue widened, have grown louder ever since Republicans fared unexpectedly poorly in the midterm elections. Was this a manifestation of the disproportionate toll on Republican voters?
The short response is no. The longer one is that this line of argument is often nothing more than an effort to whitewash a macabre I-told-you-so sentiment among Democrats with a veneer of quantitative objectivity.
One paper published earlier this year showed the gulf in covid-19 deaths by party. In Florida and Ohio, a comparison of party registration with confirmed pandemic deaths revealed a big increase in Republican deaths in the period after vaccines became widely available. This comports with our understanding: The vaccine became a culture-war marker, leaving Republicans more vulnerable from infections. More than a quarter-million deaths probably could have been prevented had the infected been vaccinated — and many of those who weren’t vaccinated were Republicans.
That paper, though, is useful not only because it shows the divide but also because it gives us a rough rubric for testing the question at hand: Were there races that might have been affected by the partisan gap in covid deaths?
What the researchers found was that there was a wider partisan gap in deaths in less-vaccinated counties, using vaccination rates at the start of June 2021 as a metric. Here’s the paper’s chart comparing the period before vaccines were widely available with the period once they were made available to all adults.
The gap is clear.
We can do a rough reverse-engineering here. The research looked not at covid-19 deaths but “excess deaths” — that is, the number of deaths of members of each party above a pre-pandemic baseline in a county. So, if we make five assumptions about the figures, we can come up with estimates of the pandemic’s effect on voters. Those are:
That the results from Ohio and Florida can be extrapolated nationally.
That all of the excess deaths captured in the curves above are due to covid-19.
That the curves accurately capture the relationship.
That everyone who died would have otherwise voted.
That everyone who died would have voted for one of the two parties.
You can immediately see some problems here. Setting aside the first three assumptions, none of which is particularly defensible, we can say with certainty that the last two aren’t. Maybe about half of eligible voters cast ballots this year. Even recognizing that older Americans vote more heavily and have been more likely to die of covid-19, we should still assume that no more than two-thirds of those who died would otherwise have voted.
But we can set that aside because it doesn’t really matter. The fundamental issue (as I wrote back in February when I first addressed this question) is that 1 million deaths nationally translates into far fewer deaths at a state level. And when you then apply the partisan ratios sussed out from the above assumptions, the net difference in votes is often tiny.
Imagine a state in which 50,000 people died of the virus, for example. Imagine that those deaths were demonstrably 2 to 1 Republicans. That means that the net loss for Republicans was about 16,500 votes — a small margin in a statewide race.
I took county-level data (compiled by The Washington Post), determined the vaccination rates on June 1, 2021 (using federal data and in keeping with the paper’s assumptions) and applied a distribution of those deaths by party in keeping with the curves above. Then I tallied the number of deaths in each state between May 1, 2021 (after vaccines were broadly available) and Election Day and figured out the partisan gap.
Unsurprisingly it was in Texas and Florida — red states with large populations — where the net losses for Republicans were largest. But in both of those states, the margins in Senate and gubernatorial races (that is, state-level contests) were far wider than the 14,000 or 10,000 net differences, respectively.
In no state, in fact, was there any Senate or gubernatorial race that was likely to have been affected by the partisan divide in coronavirus deaths. The closest was in Nevada’s Senate race, where Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) was projected the winner with a current lead of about 6,600 votes. The partisan difference in covid-19 deaths would have narrowed that margin by about 2,000 votes, less than a third. And that’s with assumptions 4 and 5 above, about perfect turnout and no third-party voters.
The next closest Senate race was the one in Wisconsin, where Sen. Ron Johnson (R) leads by about 12 times the net partisan difference in covid deaths. The closest gubernatorial race was in Nevada, where the Republican is winning by 16,000 votes. The next closest Senate and gubernatorial races where Democrats lead — and therefore might have benefited from deaths — were in Georgia (35,000-vote lead, 5.5 times the estimated death gap) and Kansas (20,000-vote lead, 16 times the estimated gap). These are not races that were going to be affected by the death toll.
In fact, there is no state in which a Democrat leads in the Senate or gubernatorial race and where, if we assume that all of the covid-19 deaths since May 2021 were of certain Republican voters, the results would have been different.
There will be a tendency to drill down a level deeper: Well, what about House races? To which the response is straightforward: The effect of covid-19 deaths will necessarily be smaller in those cases, so only the most narrow of results might have been affected by those deaths. That’s setting aside the fact that close races are determined by hundreds of factors.
Again, it’s worth examining why this argument keeps cropping up. What’s the point? The point, clearly, is to suggest that Republican politics came back to bite the GOP. But the numbers here are so small, there’s no reason to assume that’s what happened — except that it allows one to believe that fate had, at last, weighed in on their partisan side.
If one’s response to this article is disappointment, that, too, is worth examining. | 2022-11-14T22:24:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | No, Republican underperformance in 2022 wasn’t due to covid deaths - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/coronavirus-midterm-elections-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/coronavirus-midterm-elections-republicans/ |
Congress is expected to block a rail strike and impose contract terms on both sides if they can’t come to an agreement before next month's deadline. That’s because the stakes are so high for the economy with so many businesses relying on railroads to deliver their raw materials and finished products. | 2022-11-14T22:34:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Another union rejects deal with nation's freight railroads - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/another-union-rejects-deal-with-nations-freight-railroads/2022/11/14/b85af28a-6467-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/another-union-rejects-deal-with-nations-freight-railroads/2022/11/14/b85af28a-6467-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
The Silver Line will usher in a long-desired westward expansion to Metro after years of planning, political wrangling and construction setbacks
A view of the exterior of the Ashburn Metro station. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
More than 120 years before the Silver Line will begin shuttling passengers Tuesday between the nation’s capital and Loudoun County, a railroad was carrying vacationers between the Washington area and the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, trading sweltering city summers for rolling pastoral hills.
The first iteration of the Washington and Old Dominion railroad began in Alexandria in the mid-1800s, running until 1968. The Metrorail system broke ground the next year, when regional leaders envisioned a future connection between D.C., its suburbs and the recently opened Dulles International Airport.
The distance between the hopes of local leaders at the time and the reality of restoring rail was a 54-year journey of lobbying, funding searches, construction delays and bureaucratic setbacks that will come to end about 2 p.m. Tuesday.
A rail connection will be reestablished between the nation’s capital and its wealthiest county as Metro’s Silver Line extension adds three stations in Loudoun — including one at Dulles on the week of its 60th anniversary — and three others in Fairfax County. The $3 billion, 11.5-mile rail segment will complete a 23-mile line that opened in 2014, ushering in a long-desired westward expansion of the transit system after years of delays.
Loudoun has changed dramatically since its bucolic early days, while its aspirations for what Metro would bring to Virginia’s fastest-growing county have shifted with it. County leaders are still looking to give residents a commuting alternative to stifling traffic, but they also hope the rail line will spur affordable housing and business development that will diversify new businesses beyond mammoth data centers.
“Metro really put us in an entirely different game,” said Buddy Rizer, executive director for economic development in Loudoun County. “We’ve been uber-successful. Our economy has been strong and we’ve been able to grow our tax base. But while we’ve done some amazing things, Metro represents our single biggest opportunity.”
At the same time, questions remain about whether the transit system’s benefits will make up for the increased fees Dulles Toll Road users will encounter and the bills that special tax districts will bear to pay for the project, coming after the pandemic cut Metro ridership in half.
Officials in Fairfax and Loudoun counties say they are confident the rail line will supercharge business growth, increase housing options and give residents a convenient travel alternative between D.C., Tysons and Dulles. Airport leaders say they expect thousands of passengers each day will take the five-minute underground walk between the Metro station and baggage claim.
Like the railroad of the early 1900s, Loudoun leaders also hope Metro will also bring visitors seeking to escape Washington, but the draw no longer is a rural country retreat for the weekend.
Instead, they hope people will come out to enjoy options such as a new performing arts venue the Loudoun County Department of Economic Development promotes as part of the coming Rivana development at Innovation Station, a retail and residential complex that will include more than 1.8 million square feet of office space, nearly 2,000 homes, a hotel and two public parks.
“It will really open up the tourism industry with Metro in Loudoun County in a major way,” Loudoun County Supervisor Michael R. Turner (D-Ashburn) said of the Silver Line. “It will transform the community.”
The long-discussed rail line began to take shape in the early 2000s. The federal government committed $900 million to the first phase of the project, which opened eight years ago between the East Falls Church and Wiehle-Reston East stations.
In early 2008, federal officials stunned local leaders by declining to fund the second phase, effectively scuttling it. Then-Federal Transit Administration chief James S. Simpson told Virginia leaders the project had too many large “technical, financial and institutional risks” and “unprecedented” uncertainties.
After negotiations, officials relented in December 2008, although federal support would ultimately come in the form of $1.9 billion in loans that still need to be paid off through toll revenue. With limited federal investment, the extension was a big bet for Fairfax and Loudoun counties, as well as for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversaw the project and boosted highway tolls to pay for most construction costs.
Debates over the line’s merits broke out in Loudoun as a county board of supervisors vote neared on whether to fund the project, said county Supervisor Matthew F. Letourneau (R-Dulles), the lone board member left from those days.
Opponents argued the rail line would bring crime to Loudoun and that Metro was poorly managed. The board developed special tax districts around rail stations to pay for the Silver Line, but some supervisors didn’t believe the districts would bring in enough money. They balked at the annual subsidy Loudoun would fork over for Metro’s operating expenses. Others said the stations wouldn’t benefit western portions of the county and that toll increases would hurt drivers.
In addition to economic and commuter benefits, proponents noted the county’s financial responsibility was less than 5 percent of the line’s cost.
“Other people are paying like 96 percent of the cost to bring us Metro,” Letourneau said.
In summer 2012, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted 5-4 in favor of funding the Silver Line.
Years later, residents say they still want transit access to D.C. and the benefits of new amenities, stores and restaurants that come with new developments springing up. But in a county with a median household income of more than $147,000, job creation and increased tax revenue from development are not as large a desire as they might be for other communities. Instead, residents and local leaders are eyeing affordable housing and businesses other than data centers, which have enriched the county’s coffers but bring few other community benefits.
The Silver Line could change that.
“We’ve got millions and millions of square feet of data centers, and now our public is sort of frustrated with that,” Letourneau said. “Where’s the rest of the economic growth? Metro is that opportunity. The Silver Line is that opportunity.”
Echoing businesses in the District and closer-in suburbs, those in Loudoun say they are willing to pay a premium for Metro access. When Mark Madigan was looking for an office for his growing consulting business, he said an Ashburn location near the future Metro station stood out.
“It was the most important factor in the decision to choose this building,” said Madigan, chief executive of IT Cadre. “It connects us into this massive ecosystem that is the D.C. metro area.”
The company signed a lease in 2018 and has about 100 employees at the new Loudoun Station development.
Madigan said proximity to Metro will allow his firm to recruit employees from across the area, including those who don’t want to drive to Loudoun to be in the office. He also envisions using the train to visit customers in the District and elsewhere in Northern Virginia.
Loudoun Station is being developed by Comstock, which invested heavily in properties along the Silver Line. The company since 1999 has owned the land where the Loudoun Station development is rising.
Comstock originally envisioned a subdivision of single-family homes, but as Silver Line planning was underway, chief executive Chris Clemente said it became clear a Metro station nearby would become a reality.
“That changed our course for that property,” Clemente said.
The 50-acre property is about one-third built out, with apartments, trendy restaurants and a movie theater alongside offices. It’s smaller than the company’s Reston Station development at the Wiehle-Reston East station, but also marks a shift for Washington’s suburban fringe.
“The Silver Line is doing what it was supposed to do,” Clemente said. “It is creating economic development all up and down the Dulles Toll Road.”
Between the two Comstock developments stands a project built by Rocks Engineering. Michael Rocks, the company’s president, said his grandfather picked out the land 70 years ago from a helicopter. Now it’s home to Innovation Center South, a mixed-use project at the Innovation Center station in Fairfax County.
Rocks said he expects the opening of the Silver Line extension will help to attract a major office tenants interested in about 1 million square feet of space.
The pandemic has changed the office market while ushering in hybrid work schedules, but developers say they have adapted and expect demand for offices and commercial development — particularly at locations close to Metro — to remain strong. Clemente said that while one of his buildings might have had one or two large tenants in past, they now have leases with a half-dozen smaller tenants either looking to downsize or abandoning older office park developments.
Realtors say the Silver Line will attract families to Loudoun, appealing to workers who no longer must commute five days a week. Rich Blessing, president of the Dulles Area Association of Realtors, said he’s already seen that shift among younger prospective residents.
“They’re coming back out here and having some more space,” he said. “I think the Silver Line affords them the opportunity for recreation on weekends.”
Realtor Lynn Norusis recalled covering the county in a previous career as a local news reporter and how the arrival of a grocery story in 2006 was considered major news. For the Metro to be coming a few years later underscores how quickly the area has evolved, she said.
“What the Metro is going to do for that area is really pull it out of people thinking ‘oh my gosh, Loudoun County is so far,’ ” she said. “It’s going to aesthetically pull it into what people see as Northern Virginia.”
Staff writer Lori Aratani contributed to this report. | 2022-11-14T22:36:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Loudoun County, Dulles prepare for Silver Line extension - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/14/silver-line-dulles-loudoun-county/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/14/silver-line-dulles-loudoun-county/ |
Why the GOP’s popular vote edge hasn’t translated to more House seats
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) walks into a House Republicans' party at the Westin Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
For many years, the manner in which our country elects its leaders has been a very favorable setup for Republicans. Not only did they win the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections despite getting fewer votes, but they also held the House in 1996 and 2012 despite getting fewer votes. Republicans have regularly won more House seats than their popular vote share would suggest — in large part thanks to their superior control of redistricting.
Republicans appear primed to win the narrowest of House majorities — around 220-215 or 219-216 — despite winning a majority of the votes nationwide and edging Democrats by around 4 percentage points.
If they do ultimately win by around four points, it would mean Republicans improved on their margin from the 2020 election by around seven points, but they were only able to add about 2 percent of seats, as the Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman notes.
This has understandably led to some griping and head-scratching among Republicans who wonder how they’re struggling to win the House despite that swing. But it’s worth putting in context.
The first thing to note is that we have incomplete results. The Cook Political Report’s national popular vote tracker currently shows Republicans winning 51.7 percent of House votes to the Democrats’ 46.8 percent — a gap of more than five points. It’s safe to assume Republicans will win the popular vote by a few points, at least, but that margin will narrow as we get more results from blue-leaning states out west, especially California.
The second point is that the popular vote can be deceiving. That’s especially the case in the battle for the Senate, but it’s also true of the House.
The reason: Some districts don’t feature two major-party candidates, and as a result, those races skew the overall numbers. That’s because having no major-party opponent generally means that candidate runs up a much bigger margin than they otherwise would.
In the 2022 election, there were many more uncontested House districts held by Republicans (14) than by Democrats (3). And there were another 10 districts in which the GOP had no major-party opponents, compared to just three for Democrats.
Thanks to California’s top-two primary system, there are also another six districts in which Democrats have the votes all to themselves, because the two finalists are both Democrats.
So effectively, there are more than 20 districts in which the GOP can run up the score, compared to a dozen for Democrats. They would be able to run up the score less in races with third-party candidates also on the ballot, but it still skews the numbers in the GOP’s favor, to some degree. (A note: Two uncontested districts held by the GOP are in states that don’t tally votes in uncontested races, which somewhat diminishes the GOP’s advantage on this metric.)
Excluding those districts from the popular vote altogether would also be misleading, given they heavily favor the party that’s actually running a candidate. But it’s safe to assume the GOP wouldn’t be leading by quite as much if every district featured a Democrat versus a Republican.
Yet even accounting for that, the 2022 election is unusual. That’s because it appears as though it will be only the second election since 1994 in which Democrats will win a higher percentage of seats than of the two-party popular vote.
If Democrats lose the popular vote by about four points and win 215 seats, they will have won 48 percent of the two-party vote and 49.4 percent of the seats — a gap of 1.4 percentage points in their favor. Here’s how that would compare historically:
The only other time that happened since 1994 was 2008, when Democrats turned 55.5 percent of the two-party popular vote into 59 percent of the seats — a gap of 3.6 points in their favor. And it’s no coincidence that election delivered the biggest House majority for either side since the early 1990s; huge popular vote wins tend to lead to even larger majorities, because the winning side sweeps the vast majority of competitive races.
Besides that election, though, Republicans have gained a disproportionate number of House seats in every other election over the last 28 years. The gap was particularly pronounced in 2012, 2014 and 2016, thanks to the GOP’s successful gerrymandering after the 2010 census.
But Republicans again exercised superior control over redistricting following the 2020 census (which probably delivered them the majority). So why didn’t it happen again?
There are likely a number of answers.
One is that it could be a statistical fluke — just Democrats happening to do better than would be expected in the most competitive races. Another possibility: the lackluster GOP candidates in a number of important races, who might have held the party back from making gains more commensurate with their overall edge in the popular vote (i.e. ,shrinking a likely gain of around 20 seats to one that’s fewer than 10). That would be in line with what happened in the Senate, where Republicans left winnable races (and in that chamber, the majority) on the table by running flawed candidates.
But it’s also worth emphasizing that the gap between the votes Democrats got and the seats they’ll control isn’t wildly out of step with the historical norm. Even in the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, Democrats won more seats than their popular vote share suggested. And if you stretch back earlier than 1994, the results of this election are very much in line with what we would expect from such a popular vote.
Regardless, it shows how election results can test our priors. In recent years the conventional wisdom has been that even a small GOP edge on the generic ballot suggests it’s in line for significant gains. And plenty of recent history backs that up.
But there are always exceptions. And this is hardly the only way in which the 2022 election has proved exceptional.
The latest: Schumer files same-sex marriage bill setting up Wednesday vote | 2022-11-14T22:50:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why the GOP’s popular vote edge hasn’t translated to more House seats - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/republican-popular-vote-seats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/republican-popular-vote-seats/ |
Nationals release pitcher Seth Romero after his second DWI charge of 2022
Seth Romero was a first-round draft pick in 2017. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
The Washington Nationals on Monday released Seth Romero, according to a team spokeswoman, after the left-hander was arrested for driving while intoxicated and possession of a controlled substance Sunday in Sweeny, Tex. It was Romero’s second DWI arrest of the year, with the first occurring in January.
Romero, 26, was a first-round draft pick by the Nationals in 2017. Since he joined the organization, he was sent home from spring training for violating club policy in 2018; debuted in the major leagues as a reliever in 2020; dealt with a host of injuries and received another chance after his DWI charge last winter. Romero has made just three major league appearances, posting a 13.50 ERA in 2⅔ innings, and finished last season with Class AA Harrisburg.
He was released on bond Sunday, according to online jail records for the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office. Romero’s possession charge was classified in “Penalty Group 2,” meaning he was found with between 4 and 400 grams of a substance not specified by the jail records.
Attempts to reach Romero for comment Monday were not successful. According to a person familiar with the situation, the Nationals referred Romero to MLB’s Joint Treatment Board, a group that includes medical professionals specializing in substance abuse as well as representatives from MLB and the players union.
The Nationals drafted Romero 25th overall despite a handful of off-the-field issues at the University of Houston. During his sophomore year there, he was suspended for what the school described as “conduct detrimental to the team.” The Houston Chronicle later reported the suspension was largely tied to a “lack of effort regarding conditioning.” Then as a junior, Romero was suspended again, this time for nearly a month because of a “violation of team rules” on a trip to play the University of Central Florida.
Svrluga: ‘For sale’ means hope for the Commanders, confusion for the Nationals
The Houston Chronicle reported the second suspension was partly tied to Romero testing positive for marijuana. About a week later, he was dismissed from the team, which the Chronicle reported was because of a fight with another player.
In August, Nationals Manager Dave Martinez was asked how many opportunities Romero would get with the organization following his first DWI charge. Martinez focused his answer on Romero’s ability to chart his path.
“For me, honestly, that’s up to Seth Romero,” he said. “He’s very talented, and he’s had some issues and we’ve talked to him about them. At this point, it’s up to him. He can definitely help us [down] the road. But he’s got to do the right things. As you know, I don’t tolerate a whole lot of things off the field. He’s got to do the right things off the field as well as perform on the field. Only time will tell.
“He’s still fairly young, which is good. It all just depends on how Seth wants to move forward.” | 2022-11-14T23:47:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seth Romero released by Nationals following another DWI charge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/seth-romero-released-nationals-dwi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/seth-romero-released-nationals-dwi/ |
At Miriam’s Kitchen, people without homes can find more than a meal
Miriam’s Kitchen helped usher Sheila White, pictured, from the streets and into a home. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)
In the time before — before her apartment flooded, forcing her out of it; before her family and friends had stopped letting her crash with them; before she spent winter nights crisscrossing the city, asleep on Metrobuses — Sheila White had never heard of Miriam’s Kitchen. She’d had no reason to know about the charity in Foggy Bottom that feeds hungry people and helps them find homes.
White hadn’t had the easiest life — from ages 2 to 9 she was in and out of Junior Village, the children’s home in Southeast — but it wasn’t until 2013 that she found herself without a place to live. A pipe broke in her apartment, flooding it and destroying her possessions. For a year, White stayed with different relatives — a few days here, a few days there — until they tired of being hosts.
For a while, she stayed in Lincoln Park.
“I would just watch the people play with their dogs and their kids and be like: ‘Why can’t I be like that again?’ ” she said.
Then White went to her old neighborhood in Southeast, sleeping in building vestibules. She figured if she should die in the night, someone would be able to recognize her.
“If something happened to me, at least somebody could identify my body and say, ‘Well, I know this lady right here,’” she said.
Often she’d catch the 32 bus at night. Before the route was truncated in 2014, that bus used to go all the way across the city.
“It was a bus line that stayed open almost 24 hours,” White said. “To stay safe I would just ride the bus line from Friendship Heights and then all the way to Southern Avenue, which is over there by the Anacostia area. Then I’d ride it back again. I would do that, say, three times or four times. That would pass the night till it got light outside. Then I’d start my journey walking around.”
It was on one of those journeys — on K Street NW, White recalled — that another person without a home told her about Miriam’s Kitchen. She paid it a visit.
“I thought, ‘I can’t keep staying on the street. It’s cold. I’m tired. I’m hungry all the time,’ ” White said.
Miriam’s Kitchen was founded in 1983. It operates out of Western Presbyterian Church at 24th and Virginia NW. Breakfast and dinner are served there every weekday. Case workers help clients navigate the paperwork to receive housing benefits and other support. The pandemic has affected some of the charity’s offerings, but when White first started coming, art and beading classes were held. Poetry workshops, too.
“I just started hanging around Miriam’s Kitchen all day, five days a week,” said White, 61. “What Miriam’s Kitchen did for me is kept me from being depressed, because I always had something to do.”
At Miriam’s, White found something that had been in short supply in her life: smiles. They were on the faces of the staff and volunteers who worked there and the guests who went there.
“It got to the point where I was looking forward to seeing that smile, because it reminded me that I am human and that I do matter,” she said. “That right there is a powerful statement for me.”
White became an advocacy fellow at Miriam’s Kitchen, allowing her to work with the staff to dive into the District’s budget and testify before the D.C. Council. She received help from other organizations, too, including the People for Fairness Coalition and Street Sense. (White’s work with the Street Sense newspaper and website is chronicled in a new documentary, “Street Reporter,” by Laura Waters Hinson.)
For four years, White lived in a women’s shelter in Chinatown. In May 2020 she found permanent supportive housing in Northwest D.C. She is working on a degree in political science at the University of the District of Columbia.
“I can sit in front of my computer and do my homework at my own leisure time,” she said. “For my life, I just want the simple things: a home where I can cook, sleep and work, play and enjoy life, just live out my old age.”
I asked White if she still rode the bus, not for survival, but for transportation.
“I was on the 32 today,” she said. “It did bring back memories.
“I can get anywhere in Maryland, D.C., Virginia. One thing about a homeless person: Ask them for directions. They won’t get lost. We know how to survive out there, as much as we can.”
Miriam’s Kitchen is a partner in The Washington Post Helping Hand, our annual fundraising drive. Your gift will help support people like Sheila White.
To give online, visit posthelpinghand.com. To give by check, write Miriam’s Kitchen, Attn: Development, 2401 Virginia Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20037. | 2022-11-15T00:00:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miriam's Kitchen gave a helping hand to this homeless District woman - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/miriams-kitchen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/miriams-kitchen/ |
Supporters of same-sex marriage stand beneath a large rainbow flag outside the Supreme Court in 2015, just months before the court decided Obergefell v. Hodges. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday filed the Respect for Marriage Act, setting up a first procedural vote for Wednesday on the bill that would enshrine marriage equality into federal law.
Democrats have warned that same-sex marriage and other rights could be at risk since June, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which for nearly 50 years had guaranteed the right to an abortion in the United States. In July, the House passed the Respect for Marriage Act, but the Senate delayed its vote on the bill until after the midterm elections.
On Monday, Schumer reiterated that the decision to delay the Senate vote on the bill — which was negotiated on a bipartisan basis — had been made to ensure that there were enough votes to pass the measure.
“I want to be clear this bill is not a theoretical exercise,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “It’s as real as it gets.”
In July, the House passed the Respect for Marriage Act, but the Senate delayed its vote on the bill until after the midterm elections. The decision to postpone the vote was negotiated on a bipartisan basis and was made to ensure that there were enough votes to pass the measure.
The Respect for Marriage Act would require that someone be considered married in any state as long as the marriage was valid in the state where it was performed. The bill would also repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman and allowed states to not recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. That law has remained on the books despite being declared unconstitutional by the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.
“Through bipartisan collaboration, we’ve crafted commonsense language to confirm that this legislation fully respects and protects Americans’ religious liberties and diverse beliefs, while leaving intact the core mission of the legislation to protect marriage equality,” they continued. “We look forward to this legislation coming to the floor and are confident that this amendment has helped earn the broad, bipartisan support needed to pass our commonsense legislation into law.”
Those senators had been part of a bipartisan group that was trying to find 10 Republican votes necessary for the bill to pass in September. Some Republicans had been skittish about taking a position on the legislation less than two months from the midterm elections, and ultimately the group negotiated a delay on the vote.
“I think we’re in very good shape and this bill is going to pass,” Collins told reporters in September after it was announced that the bill would wait until after the election.
Passage in the Senate would require 60 votes to avoid a filibuster.
In his June concurrence with the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the high court should also examine previous rulings that legalized the right for married couples to buy and use contraception without government restriction (Griswold v. Connecticut), same-sex relationships (Lawrence v. Texas) and marriage equality (Obergefell v. Hodges).
Thomas’s opinion set off alarm bills among proponents of marriage equality, particularly with the prospect of a Republican-controlled Congress after the midterms. However, Republicans drastically underperformed expectations last Tuesday, and Democrats will retain their majority in the Senate. A Dec. 6 runoff in Georgia — between Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) and Republican Herschel Walker — will determine if Democrats gain a 51st Senate seat.
Control of the House remained undecided Monday, with several races still to be called. Neither party has yet reached the 218 seats needed to gain a majority in that chamber.
Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report. | 2022-11-15T00:05:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Schumer sets up Senate vote on same-sex marriage bill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/schumer-gay-marriage-bill-senate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/schumer-gay-marriage-bill-senate/ |
HARTFORD, Conn. — Google has agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states to resolve an investigation into how the company tracked users’ locations. State attorneys general announced the settlement Monday. They’re calling it the largest multistate privacy settlement in U.S history. Officials say the investigation by the states was spurred by a 2018 Associated Press story. The officials say they found that Google continued to track people’s location data even after they opted out of such tracking.
NEW YORK — Cryptocurrency exchange giant Binance is proposing the creation of a rescue fund that would save otherwise healthy crypto companies from failure. It’s an effort to stave off the cascading effects of last week’s implosion of FTX, the world’s third-largest crypto exchange. Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao posted on Twitter that his company would create an industry-recovery fund to help cryptocurrency companies that are otherwise strong but are facing a liquidity crisis. Zhao provided no details on the fund’s size or scope, or how the funds would be distributed.
NEW YORK — Megadonor and novelist MacKenzie Scott announced almost $2 billion in donations in a short blog post Monday that emphasized her interest in supporting people from underserved communities. Scott made the announcement on her blog. The announcement Monday brought the amount she’s said she’s given to around $14 billion to some 1500 organizations. In the post, she also repeated a promise first made in December last year to release a database of the organizations to which she’s donated. Scott’s ex-husband, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, separately said in an interview with CNN Monday that he would give away the majority of his wealth in his lifetime.
OMAHA, Neb. — Another railroad union has rejected its agreement with the nation’s freight railroads. That increases the chances that Congress may be called upon to settle the dispute and block a strike. The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers union Monday voted down the contract even though it includes 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses. All 12 rail unions must approve their deals to prevent a strike. But no strike is imminent because all the unions have agreed to keep negotiating until a deadline early next month. Workers’ quality-of-life concerns are threatening to derail the agreements. Contract talks with the two unions that rejected their deals last month remain deadlocked over the issue of paid sick time. | 2022-11-15T00:05:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Google settlement, Crypto rescue fund - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-google-settlement-crypto-rescue-fund/2022/11/14/c6415aa6-6471-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-google-settlement-crypto-rescue-fund/2022/11/14/c6415aa6-6471-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Federal prosecutors say former police detective Roger Golubski, seen above, and three other men ran a violent sex-trafficking operation in Kansas City, Kan., in the 1990s. (Edwardsville Police Department/AP)
A former police detective in Kansas City, Kan., was indicted Monday by the Justice Department on charges of conspiring with local drug dealers to force underage girls into “involuntary sexual servitude” in the mid-1990s.
The three other men connected to Golubski and the apartment building — Cecil A. Brooks, who is serving an 18-year federal prison term for conspiring to sell crack cocaine, LeMark Roberson and Richard Robinson — also were charged in the new case. The defendants “conspired with one another and others known and unknown to the grand jury to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate young women,” prosecutors said.
The charges are the latest in an expanding web of alleged misconduct stemming from Golubski’s 35 years in the city’s police department. The FBI launched a criminal investigation into Golubski in 2019, two years after Lamonte McIntyre, a Black man who spent 23 years in prison on a double murder conviction in 1995, was exonerated after his lawyers presented evidence that Golubski had set him up.
Chris Joseph, Golubski’s attorney, said in an email Monday: “Roger maintains his innocence and looks forward to clearing his name from these decades-old and uncorroborated allegations.”
In a joint statement Monday, the Midwest Innocence Project and the law firm of Morgan Pilate, which represented McIntyre, said: “We are grateful for the continued vigorous efforts of federal law enforcement to hold accountable anyone responsible for such horrific crimes, which targeted the most vulnerable of victims. Justice demands nothing short of full truth so that the important process of repair and reconciliation can begin. Today, our thoughts are with the victims, their families, and a community that has suffered for many years.”
The indictment accuses Brooks of targeting vulnerable girls who were runaways or had been released from juvenile detention facilities to work as prostitutes, locking them in an office in the apartment, and beating or threatening them if they did not provide sex in exchange for shelter, drugs or clothes.
Golubski was seen taking money from Brooks, who allowed the detective “to choose girls to provide him sexual services,” according to the indictment. In one instance, Golubski forced a 16-year-old into sex “even though he acknowledged that she did not look like she was happy to be at Delevan,” prosecutors said. Brooks also is accused of paying off law enforcement officers to warn him when police were preparing to raid the apartment.
“It’s not a surprise to see more charges against former detective Golubski or his association with defendants known for their organized criminal activity,” said Lora McDonald, executive director for More2, an activist group that has called on the Justice Department to conduct a broader civil investigation of the police department. | 2022-11-15T00:05:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Kansas cop charged in conspiracy with drug dealers to rape teens - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/14/doj-kansas-city-cop/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/14/doj-kansas-city-cop/ |
The former president envisions a smaller campaign akin to his 2016 effort rather than the better funded but losing 2020 bid
Former president Donald Trump attends a rally in Vandalia, Ohio, on the eve of the midterm election last week. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
A trio of longtime Republican operatives will lead Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, which the former president is set to announce Tuesday evening in the ballroom of his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., according to five people familiar with the staffing decisions.
LaCivita is expected to take the leading role, but practically speaking duties will likely be split between him and Wiles, a top campaign adviser said. The group of top advisers also includes Brian Jack, who served as a senior political aide in the White House and has advised Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) since 2021.
Wiles — the daughter of the late football player and television sportscaster Pat Summerall — helped lead Trump’s Florida team to victory in 2016 and 2020. She is a polite yet steely grandmother who has managed to command the respect of Trump’s fractious orbit and speaks frequently with Trump, having led his PAC for the past year. Trump has told others he trusts her political instincts after she helped him win Florida twice. She has deep ties in Florida politics, and an acrimonious relationship with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a potential Trump foe in 2024. She ran DeSantis’s campaign in 2018 for governor and has previously worked for Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida.
LaCivita, a Virginia-based political consultant, helped lead the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth campaign against John F. Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee. During the 2020 campaign, he ran Preserve America PAC — a group that spent over $100 million to support Trump and was funded almost entirely by entities linked to Sheldon Adelson, the late Las Vegas casino magnate.
More recently, in 2022, LaCivita worked on the successful reelection campaign for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and served as the senior strategist for the Trump-backed outside group, Make America Great Again Inc., which can raise unlimited sums of money.
Jack, a veteran of Trump’s 2016 campaign, went on to serve as his White House political director for four years. He later joined McCarthy’s team, managing his national political operation where the two men worked to counsel Trump on his involvement in the 2022 midterm contests.
Steven Cheung is also expected to join the campaign in a top communications role, according to three people familiar with the decision. Cheung worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign as director of rapid response and then joined his White House, staying for two years. He also previous worked as the communications director for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s eldest son, will likely play a role similar to the ones he played in his father’s previous bids — campaigning for him in states where he can be helpful and offering advice when asked — but will not take on the role previously occupied by Kushner, a person familiar said.
Boris Epshteyn — a pugilistic communications consultant who helped encourage Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen — and Sergio Gor, a former aide to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and a former Trump fundraiser, are also expected to take on adviser roles. And Gary Coby, a longtime Republican digital and Trump strategist, is expected to continue to do digital work for the campaign. | 2022-11-15T00:31:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump campaign operation takes shape ahead of expected 2024 announcement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/trump-campaign-advisers-2024/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/trump-campaign-advisers-2024/ |
3 U-Va. students killed after gunman opens fire on bus, police say
Students at the University of Virginia paint signs in solidarity on fraternity row on campus on Nov.14 in Charlottesville. (Jason Lappa for The Washington Post)
CHARLOTTESVILLE — Em Gunter, 19, was watching a biology lecture on a computer in her University of Virginia dorm room Sunday night when she heard three loud bangs. She looked over at her friend and said, “Was that gunfire?”
Then she heard three more shots. Terror gripped the friends that would soon sweep across the campus of the prestigious university, forcing students to barricade their dorm rooms, hide in closets and hunker down in libraries.
A short distance away, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a 22-year-old student and former university football player, had allegedly opened fire on a bus full of students that had just returned from a field trip to see a play in D.C., leaving three dead and two injured, authorities said.
At least four of the victims were U-Va. football players. University police officers who rushed to scene found the bodies of wide receiver Lavel Davis Jr. and linebacker D’Sean Perry on the bus, authorities said. Wide receiver Devin Chandler was rushed to the hospital, where he later died.
Family members said running back Michael Hollins Jr. was shot in the back but is alive. A fifth unidentified victim also survived and was taken to the hospital.
Jones had fled the scene by the time police arrived, prompting a massive search that lasted 12 hours as the campus was put under a shelter-in-place order. He was taken into custody about 80 miles away in Henrico County around 11 a.m. Monday, authorities said.
The motive for the shooting remains under investigation, and the relationship between Jones and victims is unclear. But Jones was on the radar of university officials, and a disciplinary action from the university was pending against him at the time of the shooting.
Suspected shooter scrutinized by school threat assessment team, officials say
Jones was a freshman on the football team in 2018 but did not appear in any games, according to a U-Va. sports site. He had previously played linebacker and running back at Petersburg High School in Virginia and had overcome a difficult childhood in Richmond public housing complexes, according to a 2018 Richmond Times-Dispatch profile.
“This is an unimaginably sad day for our community,” U-Va. President James Ryan said at a news conference. “My heart is broken for the victims and their families.”
The incident began around 10:30 p.m. Sunday, when officers were called to the scene near a parking garage on Culbreth Road.
Michael Hollins Sr., father of Michael Hollins Jr., said officials told him that the alleged shooter carried a gun on the bus while on the field trip and opened fire when they returned to campus. Longo said the students had spent the day enjoying the trip and eating a meal together.
The elder Hollins said he was at work as a city bus inspector in Fairfax, Va., when just before midnight he got an urgent call that his son had been a victim in the shooting. The father hopped in his car and sped to Charlottesville, he said, arriving just before 2 a.m. Monday.
His son had been shot in the back, the bullet lodged in his stomach. Hollins said his son was in “stable” condition and intubated, as of Monday morning. He said his son, lying in the hospital bed, recognized his voice and squeezed his hand.
Devin Chandler played on the University of Wisconsin at Madison football team as a freshman, before transferring to U-Va. Alvis Whitted, a coach for Wisconsin, remembered Chandler as not just as an “exceptional” wide receiver, but also as an “all around good guy.”
“All of our kids are devastated,” Whitted said. “He was so full of life, so full of energy. Always had a smile on his face. He was a great kid. He came from a really good family.”
Thaddeus Davis, the father of 20-year-old Lavel Davis, said his son was a wide receiver on the football team.
“I wish it was me instead of him,” Thaddeus Davis said. “That’s my son. I say I wish I was up there instead of him.”
U-Va. spokesman Brian Coy said in a statement that a student told school officials on Sept. 15 that Jones had made a comment about possessing a gun as administrators were investigating a possible hazing issue. During an investigation by the university, Coy said they learned he had been convicted of a misdemeanor concealed weapons violation in Henrico County, Va., in 2021, which he did not report to the university as required by school rules.
Jones repeatedly refused to cooperate with university officials, and on Oct. 27, the school’s threat-assessment team escalated his case for disciplinary action. It was pending at the time of the shooting.
A family member at Jones’s mother’s house said Jones had been bullied for months. “It was just bullying. He just got fed up. It was too many bullies, and nobody was listening,” the person said. “He had nowhere to go, he had nobody to talk to, so he finally gave up. And that’s life, right? Everybody’s got their breaking point.”
Remembering the three football players who were killed at U-Va.
Longo said emergency alerts were sent to students immediately after the shooting, announcing an active shooter and that the campus was being locked down.
“The second we all got that message that there was an active shooter, my phone flooded with messages,” said Eva Surovell, 21, of Alexandria, Va., who is editor in chief of the Cavalier Daily student newspaper, while the shelter-in-place order was still in effect.
Ozzie Alam, Oybek Askarov and Aaron Stackpole were packed into a friend’s apartment Sunday night, half finishing statistics homework and half hanging out, when their phones lit up.
It was the school emergency notification system telling them that shots had been fired nearby. At first, the 19-year-old sophomores thought it was another incident with a BB gun, which they said had been relatively common this year. But then they got a notification that said: “ACTIVE ATTACKER … RUN HIDE FIGHT.”
They panicked.
“We low-key secured weapons,” Stackpole said.
He grabbed a belt. Alam grabbed a painting of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” The friends pushed couches against the door as barricades.
A few minutes later, their phones lit up again. This time it was Yik Yak, an anonymous blogging app used by students at U-Va. It said the shooter may have stopped by an apartment building — the same one they were in, three floors down. They looked out the window and saw police lights flashing.
The friends slept there that night, two on a couch and one on the floor. By the time they woke up, the shooter, who they later learned was a fellow student, had still not been caught.
Danielle Werchowsky of Arlington, whose son is a student at U-Va., said Monday morning: “U-Va. parents are glued to our social media right now. … Parents are all on edge.” She said she urged her son in a phone call to turn off the lights in his apartment and stay away from windows.
U-Va. classes and a basketball game scheduled for Monday were canceled as police searched the campus building by building. Charlottesville City Schools and Albemarle County School District schools were also closed.
The campus was desolate early Monday. Nearby, a sign taped to the door of Bodo’s Bagels, a popular breakfast spot, read: “Due to on-going events at UVA, our location is closed until further notice.”
The lockdown was not lifted until around 10:30 a.m., shortly before authorities announced Jones had been taken into custody. Jones is facing three counts, each of second-degree murder and commission of a felony with a firearm. He was being held in Henrico County, where he was arrested, on Monday.
Virginia football coach Tony Elliott addressed players in a team meeting at the football facility shortly after the shelter-in-place order had been lifted.
“I cannot find the words to express the devastation and heartache that our team is feeling today after the tragic events last night that resulted in the deaths of Lavel, D’Sean and Devin, and the others who were injured,” Elliott said in statement. “These were incredible young men with huge aspirations and extremely bright futures.”
The White House released a statement saying President Biden and first lady Jill Biden were mourning with U-Va.
“Our deepest condolences are with the countless families, friends, and neighbors grieving for those killed as well as those injured in this senseless shooting,” the statement read.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) called the shooting a “horrific tragedy” while speaking at a tourism news conference Monday morning.
“There were lives lost and families changed forever,” Youngkin said. “I just ask everyone this morning to lift up these families, the entire community in prayer.”
U-Va. officials canceled classes Tuesday and said they were planning a university-wide vigil. Late Monday afternoon, members of the Phi Kappa Si fraternity had painted a banner and strung it across the top of their house that read: “VIRGINIA STRONG.”
Nicolas West, a 20-year-old sophomore, was on his way back from an ultimate Frisbee tournament in Georgia when he got the news of the shooting. Driving with his teammates, he and his friends realized that on any other Sunday night, they probably would have been practicing on the field right next to the parking garage where the shooting took place.
West and his team were supposed to come back to campus Sunday night. Instead, they pulled over at a parent’s house about 10 minutes away. The dozens of boys packed into a single living room, not one having showered since their game.
The room was quiet for hours, West said, with the only sounds coming from teammates who had news about the shooting. The sophomore was supposed to be in statistics class on Monday morning. Instead, with classes canceled, West was on his way to find his girlfriend.
“I’m really, really shaken up,” West said, looking at the mostly empty street around him. “Campus doesn’t feel the same.”
Dana Hedgpeth, Martin Weil, Peter Hermann, Gene Wang, Katie Mettler, Salvador Rizzo, Olivia Diaz, Laura Vozzella, Alice Crites, Cate Brown, Jennifer Jenkins, Razzan Nakhlawi and Monika Mathur contributed to this report. | 2022-11-15T01:10:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U-Va. gunman opened fire on a bus. His motive is unknown, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/uva-shooting-suspect-victims-motive/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/14/uva-shooting-suspect-victims-motive/ |
Trump’s lawyers call unclassified Mar-a-Lago documents ‘personal’ property
Justice Deptartment disputes Trump’s definition of personal property and the Presidential Records Act
A partially redacted image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice shows documents seized during the Aug. 8 FBI search of former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. (Department of Justice/AP)
In separate and clashing legal filings unsealed Monday, Donald Trump’s attorneys and the Justice Department once again sparred over whether the former president could lay claim to documents from his time in the White House — with Trump saying most of the materials were “personal” and with the government saying, in essence, absolutely not.
Trump’s team argued that most of the 13,000 nonclassified documents the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Fla., belonged to the former president and that the federal government had no right to review the seized materials. His lawyers have said that Trump had the right to designate presidential documents as personal ones under the Presidential Records Act.
The Justice Department, however, slammed that interpretation of the law as “meritless.” Saying a president could simply designate presidential documents as personal ones would go against the very purpose of the federal act, the Justice Department wrote in its brief.
Under the Presidential Records Act, the immediate staff of the president, the vice president and anyone who advises the president must preserve records and phone calls pertaining to official duties. Trump’s team argued that, as president, he did not need to document that he changed the designation of the seized materials from presidential to personal.
The legal filings were submitted to Raymond J. Dearie, the court-appointed special master who was ordered by a federal judge in Florida to review the materials seized from Trump’s Florida residence and private club and determine whether any should be shielded from criminal investigators because of executive or attorney-client privilege.
The purpose of the filings was for the parties to lay out the big issues and disagreements that they believe Dearie should settle in his review.
Ultimately, if Dearie finds that Trump had privilege or personal claim to certain documents — and U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon agrees with his recommendations — criminal investigators would not be permitted to view those materials as part of their probe.
The Justice Department is investigating Trump’s possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago long after he left office and despite a subpoena and other attempts by the federal government to get the materials back. While Dearie is only reviewing the nonclassified government records found in the Aug. 8 search, the Justice Department has said those documents are critical to the investigation and could help them interview witnesses and corroborate evidence.
In its brief to Dearie, the Justice Department wrote that the filing by Trump’s lawyers “doubles down on a wholesale rewriting of the [Presidential Records Act] that has no basis in its text or purpose. Plaintiff appears to offer this argument based on an assumption that a document’s designation as ‘personal’ somehow precludes the government from reviewing it. He is wrong on both points.”
Even if the documents were personal, the Justice Department said, law enforcement authorities are permitted to access personal materials in criminal investigations.
“Nothing in the law prohibits the government from using documents recovered in a search if they are ‘personal,’ and Plaintiff offers no authority suggesting otherwise,” the Justice Department argued.
Investigators see ego, not money, as Trump's motive in keeping classified papers
Prosecutors also criticized Trump’s team for seeming to abandon its previous legal argument that, as former president, Trump could invoke executive privilege over the seized materials. Instead, prosecutors said, Trump’s team has changed course and argued he could simply deem the materials as personal.
Trump’s lawyers refuted that framing in their filing and said that even if Dearie disagrees with their reading of the Presidential Records Act, the former president would still have claim over those documents because of executive privilege.
“The question now before the Special Master is therefore whether a President has the authority to decide whether a document is a ‘Presidential record’ or a ‘personal record,’ ” Trump’s team wrote. “Both the plain language of the PRA and past court decisions answer this question in the affirmative.”
Mary McCord, who served as acting assistant attorney general for national security during the Obama administration, questioned that reading of the Presidential Records Act.
“These are defined terms,” McCord said of the act. “And it is not defined as anything that the president says is personal.”
The Justice Department earlier won an appeal that excluded the 103 documents marked as classified from Dearie’s review, giving federal investigators immediate access to those materials for their criminal probe. The Department’s appeal to overturn the entire special master appointment is pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. | 2022-11-15T01:32:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump, DOJ filings to Dearie focus on whether Mar-a-Lago documents are 'personal' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/14/personal-trump-dearie-mar-a-lago/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/14/personal-trump-dearie-mar-a-lago/ |
Prosecutors do not plan criminal charges against Giuliani over Ukraine
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks during a news conference in June. (Mary Altaffer/AP)
NEW YORK — Justice Department officials do not plan criminal charges against Rudy Giuliani in connection with his dealings in Ukraine while serving as a personal attorney for former president Donald Trump, according to a letter made public Monday.
Thousands of Giuliani’s communications turned over to Manhattan U.S. attorney following privilege review
The letter asked U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken to release Barbara Jones, a former federal judge, from her duties as “special master” in the case. Jones and her team were appointed to review thousands of communications that were contained on phones and computers, to filter out privileged items before releasing evidence to investigators.
On Monday, Jones was separately tapped to serve as independent monitor overseeing operations at the Trump Organization, the former president’s namesake company, while a civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York state remains pending against Trump and the company.
Giuliani, a former New York City mayor who once also ran the same prosecutor’s office that sought several of his electronic devices in this matter, has repeatedly said he did not commit any violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The investigation into the matter resulted in an April 28, 2021, seizure of devices at his Manhattan home and offices.
Arthur Aidala, one of Giuliani’s attorneys, said in a statement his side was “very pleased but not surprised” that the U.S. Attorney decided not to bring charges. On Twitter, Giuliani posted a CNN story about the prosecutors’ decision and labeled the post “COMPLETE & TOTAL VINDICATION.”
Giuliani’s legal profession does not shield him from seizure of electronics, prosecutors say
Giuliani remains a target of a special grand jury investigation in Georgia where a prosecutor is probing efforts by Trump and supporters to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Giuliani’s engagements in Ukraine during Trump’s presidency were a prominent theme in the former president’s first impeachment proceeding. Guiliani was said to be making contacts there in an effort to dig up incriminating information about now-President Biden and his son Hunter in advance of the 2020 election.
Trump, with Giuliani’s assistance, was accused of trying to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing a criminal investigation into the Bidens, allegedly suggesting he would withhold military aid from Ukraine, before the war with Russia began, if Zelensky didn’t cooperate.
Trump was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Republican-led Senate after a trial on obstruction of Congress and abuse of power charges in February 2020. | 2022-11-15T01:36:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prosecutors do not plan criminal charges against Giuliani over Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/14/giuliani-ukraine-no-charges-1115/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/14/giuliani-ukraine-no-charges-1115/ |
‘Mainstream and not extreme’: Far-right candidates, views rejected in key battlegrounds
Doug Mastriano, who lost the Pennsylvania governor’s race, had rejected the results of the 2020 election. (Shuran Huang/For The Washington Post)
Republican Doug Mastriano baselessly denied the results of the 2020 election and fought to overturn them. He had advocated a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and espoused Christian Nationalist views as he ran for governor of Pennsylvania. He lost the election in a purple state by about 14 percentage points.
And in Colorado, Rep. Lauren Boebert, who has made Islamophobic comments and has been a staunch defender of rioters in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, clung to a razor-thin lead on Monday in a surprisingly tight race where a winner had yet to be projected six days after the election concluded, as votes were still being tallied.
Across the country, many Republicans who ran in this year’s midterms promoting far-right platforms on issues such as abortion, elections, LQBTQ rights and other topics lost their races, even in some unexpected places where the GOP was favored to win. Many were elevated by former president Donald Trump and associated themselves with his combative movement.
In post-election interviews, Democrats and many Republicans said they view these results as a decisive rejection of political extremism on the right, propelled by Trump. In the eyes of some in the GOP, this is an alarming development in a year the party expected to make large gains due to inflation, Biden’s low approval rating and historical trends. Now, the party is reckoning with the results as it eyes future elections and policy debates.
“In any environment when the electorate is unhappy, it should be winnable, but Republicans fell short and couldn’t capitalize on that because Donald Trump promoted candidates through the primary that weren’t viewed favorably by a general election population,” said Kevin Madden, a longtime GOP operative. “There were a lot of missed opportunities.”
In the primaries, the former president backed far-right candidates, propelling them past more moderate alternatives, who then lost in the general election. In other cases, he joined their side later in the campaign. A representative for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
National exit polls showed an electorate concerned about the future of democracy, with 68 percent of voters saying it was being threatened. Nearly eight in 10 voters said they felt confident that elections were conducted fairly and accurately in their state, and 61 percent said President Biden was legitimately elected. Only 10 percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all cases.
Democrats held onto the U.S. Senate majority, and in the House, they held their ground in many competitive races. While the House majority was up for grabs Monday, it was clear the massive wipeout some Republicans had hoped to see in the lower chamber of Congress had not materialized.
In key state races, voters also rejected Republicans who ran on far-right platforms. Voters in the six major battlegrounds where Trump tried to reverse his 2020 defeat rejected election-denying candidates running to control their state’s election systems. These included GOP candidates such as Jim Marchant in Nevada and Mark Finchem in Arizona, who embraced false claims about the 2020 presidential election.
In Arizona, Kari Lake, who has been among the most ardent messengers of false conspiracies that the 2020 election was stolen, was trailing in the governor’s race there as of Monday. There was not yet a projected winner in the race between Lake and Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer easily beat Republican Tudor Dixon. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers defeated Republican Tim Michels, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz prevailed against Scott Jensen. All three had denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election.
Michael Stratton, a longtime Democratic operative in Denver, said many voters rejected “the lack of civility” often displayed by Boebert and her allies. “Regular rank-and-file people have been embarrassed by her conduct,” he said, adding that voters were looking for a viable alternative in that district.
Stratton said “people made a conscious decision to think about the value of democracy and women’s choice, and that is extraordinary that they are paying more for bread, more for gas, more for milk, but democracy is still worth it for them.”
Speaking of the election on a national scale, Matt Bennett, president of Third Way, a centrist political think tank, said it was “very clear the electorate wants mainstream and not extreme.” He added, “the attack on democracy sent a message about where that candidate stood on a range of issues, it was a defining attribute. It wasn’t just about democracy, it’s that this person can’t be trusted because they are so far out.”
Some Democrats took a gamble during the primaries that voters would rebuff far-right candidates in the general election, promoting them over more mainstream GOP alternatives. That bet paid off in key races, from Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District, where Gibbs lost to Democrat Hillary Scholten, to New Hampshire, where Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan beat back a challenge from Republican Don Bolduc, who had baselessly raised doubts that Biden won the 2020 election, to the governor’s race in Pennsylvania.
In the latter contest, Democratic Governor-elect Josh Shapiro spent much of the last year warning that Mastriano was the most extreme and dangerous candidate running in the country. He spoke specifically about the freedoms he said were under attack by the right. On Election Day, Shapiro’s landslide win stood in contrast to the narrow victories won in the swing state by Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.
“We all basically joined together behind three simple truths. Three simple truths that have sustained our nation over these last 246 years. We value our freedom, we cherish our democracy, and we love this country — and these three truths, these three truths, and your votes, well, that stood up to the extremism that has taken root in some parts of our society,” Shapiro said in his election night victory speech.
In Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, where Trump won by just over four points in 2020, Kent, with Trump’s backing, waged a primary challenge against Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He lost to Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, in a district the GOP had hoped to hold.
In Ohio, Republican J.R. Majewski, who associated with QAnon conspiracies, lost by 13 points to Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in a battleground U.S. House district that had been redrawn in redistricting from a deep blue seat to one Trump would have won by more than four points.
Reflecting on the election across the country, former Republican congressman Charlie Dent, a centrist who left Congress in disgust over the party’s embrace of Trump’s brand, said “voters called out crazy.”
“A lot of the more extreme candidates lost; this is all on Trump because Trump was responsible for nominating a lot of these problematic candidates,” Dent said. “Bottom line is, I never felt there was a future in this angry populism, this isolationism, nativism that defines Trumpism. I don’t think it works, not in the long term.”
One Republican operative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be more frank about the party’s future, said many of the races had unique factors, but it was undeniable that “Democrats were able to turn out their people with the issue of abortion and to an extent the issue of democracy or the election denialism — Trump, you could say for short.” | 2022-11-15T01:37:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Far-right candidates and views were rejected in key battlegrounds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/republicans-far-right-midterms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/republicans-far-right-midterms/ |
The discussions are preliminary but come as White House officials face legal challenges to the debt forgiveness program
President Biden answers questions with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona at an event related to student debt relief last month. The Biden administration is no longer accepting applications for student loan forgiveness after courts have blocked the program. (Susan Walsh/AP)
In August, Biden announced that the administration would implement student debt forgiveness while simultaneously ending a moratorium on student debt payments that started during the pandemic. But Biden’s plan has so far been thwarted in the courts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, by a 3-0 vote on Monday, issued an injunction preventing the administration from going forward with discharging debt, and a Texas judge last week declared the program unlawful in a separate ruling.
Although the Biden administration has vowed to defend the program in court, White House officials have in recent days discussed the possibility of extending the debt freeze again if they are unable to move forward with the president’s initial program. Payments had been scheduled to resume on Jan. 1 in conjunction with the loan forgiveness.
No decisions have been made, and the people briefed on the matter stressed that the conversations were preliminary. Those people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss early private talks. The moratorium is not expected to be indefinitely extended under Biden’s tenure, the people said, but extending it at least temporarily would provide some relief to borrowers. It is unclear if the president has signed off on the idea yet or been involved in the planning, though senior aides have discussed the move.
“As the legal vulnerability has become clearer and clearer, the White House has been making increasingly firm plans to extend the loan repayment pause,” one of the people familiar with the matter said. “The extension we’re likely to see is meant to make sure borrowers don’t have the rug pulled out from under them, rather than an indefinite replacement for loan forgiveness.”
A White House spokesman declined to comment.
The Biden administration could face a difficult political challenge should the courts persist in striking down the program, which Republican lawmakers have maintained is an unconstitutional violation of congressional spending authority.
Biden’s program would have affected as many as 40 million borrowers and canceled up to $20,000 in student debt for individuals earning less than $125,000 per year, or less than $250,000 for married couples. The Congressional Budget Office, Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper, has estimated that Biden’s plan will cost roughly $400 billion. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a D.C.-based think tank, estimated earlier this year that the debt pause costs roughly $50 billion per year.
The Education Department is no longer accepting applications for relief because of the court rulings. More than half of eligible borrowers have already signed up.
Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is blocked. Can you still apply?
Student debt activists have called for the administration to take action to help student borrowers despite the court rulings.
Conservatives are likely to blast any extension of the moratorium, which has been in place since President Donald Trump began it in March 2020. Many economists preferred Biden’s debt cancellation plan to the moratorium, in part because debt cancellation applies only to families below a certain annual income, while the debt moratorium is universal and helps affluent borrowers who could afford to keep making payments.
How President Biden decided to go big on student loan forgiveness
“This seems like a ham-fisted way of trying to do a student loan bailout but far less efficiently — it would benefit virtually everyone, including the wealthiest borrowers,” said Brian Riedl, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank. “And it’s so far from the original point of the moratorium, which was mass unemployment and recession that’s now long gone.”
The administration, meanwhile, has publicly maintained its belief that the program will be affirmed by the courts.
“We are confident in our legal authority for the student debt relief program and believe it is necessary to help borrowers most in need as they recover from the pandemic,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Monday after the ruling. “The Administration will continue to fight these baseless lawsuits by Republican officials and special interests and will never stop fighting to support working and middle class Americans.” | 2022-11-15T01:38:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden aides consider extending student loan freeze after court defeats - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/11/14/biden-student-loan-extend-moratorium/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/11/14/biden-student-loan-extend-moratorium/ |
Tiffany Polifko, Erika Ogedegbe projected winners of Loudoun school board race
Election officers in Leesburg, Va., on Nov. 8. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Tiffany Polifko and Erika Ogedegbe have been projected winners of the race for two seats on the Loudoun County School Board representing the Broad Run and Leesburg districts, respectively. Their victories mean a more conservative member, Polifko, and a more progressive member, Ogedegbe, will join the nine-member body.
Polifko and Ogedegbe both led after election night last Tuesday. But although Ogedegbe’s victory was clear, Polifko’s race remained extremely close. For a time, she led her closest competitor, Nick Gothard, by only 135 votes as election officials worked several days tallying ballots.
Polifko put out a statement Monday night saying she had been confirmed the winner by 100 votes, and Gothard publicly conceded around the same time. Virginia elections officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night.
“I unapologetically stand for parental rights and curriculum free of identity politics,” Polifko said in her statement. “Children are the most important stake holders [sic] in our school system and they will be my primary focus.”
One conservative, one left-leaning candidate leading for two seats on Loudoun school board
Gothard, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night, posted a thank you message to his supporters on Twitter. “It has been my distinct honor to be your candidate in this race,” he wrote. “Though we came up short, I am so proud of all the work we have done.”
The race for two seats on the Loudoun board was unusually tense, tight and partisan this year. Each race had three candidates, with each member of the two trios publicly identifying as either conservative, left-leaning or independent, either through interviews given to news reporters or through endorsements received from the Loudoun County Republican or Democratic Committees.
Polifko, a 40-year-old behavior analyst who provides treatment for children with autism, promised during the campaign to boost parental rights in education and eradicate sexually explicit texts from school libraries. Ogedegbe, a 52-year-old chief data architect at American University, campaigned for improved early literacy teaching and better staff recruitment and retention rates.
Ogedegbe did not send a statement in response to requests for comment.
Loudoun has recently featured in the national spotlight for fierce debates over how to teach race, racism, U.S. history and gender and sexuality, as well as the school’s handling of a pair of sexual assaults that took place last year. School officials transferred a teen who had committed a sexual assault at one school to a second campus, where the teen committed a second assault — spurring criticism from parents and from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). | 2022-11-15T01:58:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Loudoun school board race: Tiffany Polifko, Erika Ogedegbe projected winners - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/14/loudoun-school-board-election-polifko-ogedegbe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/14/loudoun-school-board-election-polifko-ogedegbe/ |
He helped pioneer the modern comedy club, opening a New York venue where stand-ups performed one after the other, without playing second fiddle to dancers or musicians
Budd Friedman, the founder of the Improv comedy club, at his home in Los Angeles in 2017. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)
Budd Friedman, who turned a dingy New York coffeehouse called the Improv into a vibrant showcase for stand-up comedy, helping to usher in the 1970s and ’80s comedy boom by showing that a club could thrive on stand-up alone — without musical acts on the bill — died Nov. 12 at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 90.
By the time the venue opened on Melrose Avenue, Mr. Friedman’s comedy-club model had been replicated by venues including Catch a Rising Star in Manhattan and the Comedy Club in West Hollywood, where owner Mitzi Shore became his biggest West Coast rival. Hundreds of comedy clubs eventually opened around the country, which Mr. Friedman blamed in part for diluting the quality of stand-up shows and contributing to a business downturn in the late 1980s.
Many of Mr. Friedman’s comics described him as friendly and protective, a sympathetic father figure who offered encouragement as well as suggestions. Still, he noted that he ran his clubs with a firm hand, calling himself a “benign dictator” in a 1994 interview with the Los Angeles Times. | 2022-11-15T02:15:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Budd Friedman, Improv founder who built a comedy empire, dies at 90 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/14/comedy-impresario-budd-friedman-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/14/comedy-impresario-budd-friedman-dead/ |
Julio Rodríguez got all but one vote in the American League. (Stephen Brashear/AP)
Two of baseball’s youngest outfielders earned Rookie of the Year honors Monday night, when the Seattle Mariners’ Julio Rodríguez and the Atlanta Braves’ Michael Harris II were announced as the winners in the American League and National League, respectively.
Harris and Rodríguez, both 21, tied for third among major league center fielders in on-base-plus-slugging percentage (.853), trailing only the New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge (1.111) and the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout (.999). Rodríguez finished third among center fielders with 28 home runs. Only Judge (62) and Trout (40) had more.
Rodríguez, who spent the entire season as the Mariners’ center fielder, earned 29 of 30 first-place votes. The other went to the Baltimore Orioles’ Adley Rutschman, who was called up in May but still finished second among major league catchers in FanGraphs’ calculation of wins above replacement.
“Being able to win that Rookie of the Year Award is very cool,” Rodríguez said. “You only have one chance to do it in your career, and to be able to win it, it feels pretty good.”
Harris’s closest competition came from a teammate, right-hander Spencer Strider. Harris received 22 first-place votes, with Strider receiving the other eight. Strider, 24, rode an explosive fastball to a 2.67 ERA and averaged nearly 14 strikeouts per nine innings over 131⅔.
Rodríguez is one of the game’s brightest emerging stars, a player heralded as likely to be the centerpiece of a Mariners renaissance long before he became the fifth player in franchise history to be the rookie of the year. He finished second to Juan Soto in his first Home Run Derby. He became the third rookie in history to hit 25 homers and steal 25 bases.
He helped the Mariners to their first playoff appearance since he was less than a year old — albeit in the largest postseason field ever. And he is under contract through at least the 2029 season after signing a 12-year deal that reportedly includes options for either side to pick up along the way and incentives that could boost the contract’s value to more than $400 million.
Atlanta called up Harris from Class AA in late May, giving him four months to establish himself in an experienced lineup just a year removed from a World Series title. He nearly compiled a 20-20 season, settling for 19 homers and 20 stolen bases in 114 games. The Atlanta-area native became the latest to sign for the long term with the five-time defending NL East champions when he signed an eight-year deal worth $72 million in August.
Thanks to new provisions negotiated into the collective bargaining agreement, Rodríguez earned the Mariners an extra draft pick after the first round. Rodríguez was a top-100 prospect when the Mariners named him to their Opening Day roster; the players union had been eager to incentivize teams to put promising rookies on the roster to start the season instead of waiting until the optimal moment to extend their years of team control.
“Whenever they said, ‘Okay, we’re just going to play you; if you can do it, we’re going to take you on,’ I was really grateful for that opportunity,” Rodríguez said.
The CBA also calls for second-place finishers Strider and Rutschman to be awarded a full year of service time despite being called up midseason and includes provisions for each winner to receive part of a pre-arbitration bonus pool meant to compensate young players more proportionately to their contributions than MLB minimum salaries allow. Any pre-arbitration player who finishes in the top five in MVP or Cy Young voting or in the top two for Rookie of the Year honors receives part of a $50 million pool.
Harris and Rodríguez, of course, agreed to deals that guarantee them far more money than is guaranteed to most players who win this award. So did Strider, who agreed to a six-year deal worth $75 million as part of Atlanta’s plan to sign all of its promising young players for the long term. Rutschman, the No. 1 draft pick in 2019, made the minimum this season. His career earnings, at least for the moment, will increase dramatically because of the change.
MLB will announce its managers of the year Tuesday, followed by its Cy Young winners Wednesday and its MVPs on Thursday. | 2022-11-15T02:33:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Julio Rodríguez, Michael Harris II are MLB's rookies of the year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/julio-rodriguez-michael-harris-mlb-rookie-year/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/julio-rodriguez-michael-harris-mlb-rookie-year/ |
Officials said the person, linked to menacing messages about 50 institutions, is now under government monitoring and restrictions to prevent further threats
Howard University in the nation's capital is among the dozens of HBCUs that have received threats this year. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
The FBI held a conference call Monday with journalists — including student reporters from HBCUs — about the threats and how federal law enforcement agencies have worked to stop them. The FBI said many of the senior law enforcement officials on the call spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be named.
Amid nationwide enrollment drops, some HBCUs are growing. So are threats.
The messages led to a sprawling investigation across the country, which included more than half of the FBI’s 56 field offices. The senior FBI official said investigators initially thought that several minors were behind the threats but that they ultimately determined it was one actor. Because the suspect is a minor, the FBI official did not reveal any details about the suspect’s identity or location.
Hate crimes are federal ones, and the federal government does not typically charge minors. In this case, the suspect was charged in a state court with leveling a threat unrelated to the ones made against HBCUs. The official said this charge allowed law enforcement to enact necessary restrictions and monitoring of the suspect’s activity.
The FBI said investigators also are looking into two other clusters of threats lodged against HBCUs and other institutions. A senior official at the FBI said the law enforcement agency has received an “alarming amount” of bombing and active shooter messages targeting community institutions such as schools. In February and March, the FBI identified racially motivated threats against 19 institutions in which the caller used different voices and accents and email addresses to make the threats. The senior official said investigators have linked those to a foreign internet address.
HBCUs are still receiving bomb threats, frustrating lawmakers and campus leaders
Paul Abbate, deputy director of the FBI, said on the call that threatening a religious or academic institution is among the most “serious and despicable acts” and that law enforcement has dedicated an “immense amount of resources” to solving these cases and holding people accountable.
“I promise you, we will continue to devote whatever is required and needed,” he said.
“We’re pleased that the FBI has brought someone to justice,” Murray said. “This does not make up for the terror that has been caused on our campuses and the impacts on our students’ operations, classes and most importantly mental health.” | 2022-11-15T03:08:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Racist threats against HBCUs were linked to one minor, FBI says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/14/hbcu-threats-bomb-racist-fbi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/14/hbcu-threats-bomb-racist-fbi/ |
Quarterback Taylor Heinicke led Washington to an upset win Monday night in Philadelphia. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
PHILADELPHIA — Taylor Heinicke said he wasn’t paying attention. He said he didn’t give much thought to Monday night potentially being his last start, should Carson Wentz return to the active roster ready to go.
His concern, he said last week, was winning. And to win a game against the NFL’s last undefeated team, he had to help his Commanders convert on third down, sustain drives and be consistent — a feat Washington has typically failed to do.
At the time, perhaps his comments felt like the usual football speak — say the right things, no matter how obvious they are, and hope and pray the result comes somewhere close. In hindsight, the quarterback’s hopes — and his play — were shrewd, and they may have all but guaranteed him a chance to remain Washington’s starter, no matter the health of Wentz.
With a heavy reliance on the running game and efficient play on third down, Heinicke’s Commanders did what no other team has this season: They upset the Philadelphia Eagles, 32-21 — on their home turf, no less.
Heinicke finished 17 for 29 for 211 yards, no touchdowns and an interception for a 66.9 passer rating. Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts went 17 for 26 for 175 yards, two touchdowns and an interception for a 94.2 rating.
“We found that one of the best ways to slow Jalen Hurts down is to keep him off the field,” Coach Ron Rivera said.
For the first time this season, the Commanders’ offense appeared consistent and methodical as it notched four first-half scoring drives, three of which spanned 13, 12 and 16 plays. Washington scored 13 points in the second quarter while holding the Eagles scoreless, a feat unto itself; Philadelphia entered the game having scored nearly 60 percent of its points in the second quarter and had yet to be shut out.
But its first-half dominance didn’t stop there. Washington outgained Philly 235 yards to 101, converted 75 percent of its third downs (9 of 12) and ran 51 offensive plays compared with the Eagles’ 19.
Washington’s 17-minute, 38-second time-of-possession margin in the first half was the largest in franchise history, and it was capped by a 58-yard field goal (the longest of Joey Slye’s career) that built a 20-14 Washington lead and prompted a round of boos from Eagles fans.
On the game, Washington totaled 81 plays for a net of 330 yards, including 152 on the ground, and converted 57 percent of its third downs (12 for 21).
“In a situation like this, I’ve always thought that we’ve got the kind of guys in that locker room that can do things, and we’re starting to see it come together,” Rivera said.
It was everything no one expected, and more. And it didn’t stop there.
The Commanders opened the second half by forcing a three-and-out, then embarked on another long drive, this one spanning 14 plays and more than eight minutes before Slye knocked in a 32-yard field goal to expand Washington’s lead to 23-14.
More boos rained down from the Lincoln Financial Field stands as Eagles fans grew frustrated and confused by the upset-in-the making.
Analysis from Monday night's matchup
The Commanders not only defied their own play over the past two-plus seasons — they showed control and attention to detail that had eluded them in most critical situations. With Heinicke at the helm, Washington plays on the edge, typically one throw away from catastrophe or glory.
But against Philadelphia, the Commanders were sound. They committed to the run early and stuck with it (Brian Robinson Jr. finished with 86 yards and a touchdown on 22 carries), opening up chunk plays in the passing game. They moved the ball and ate up the clock, converted critical third downs and, for the most part, stayed out of their own way.
The game’s first two minutes gave the appearance of another first-half disaster. Armani Rogers was flagged for holding on the opening kickoff, resulting in the loss of 33 yards on a long return by Antonio Gibson. Washington then went three-and-out; after a roughing-the-punter penalty gave Washington the ball back, Heinicke was strip-sacked. Philadelphia recovered the ball and needed only three plays to find the end zone on Hurts’s one-yard run.
The Commanders responded with their first long drive, using 10 run plays sandwiched around two big passing plays to Terry McLaurin — a 26-yard reception on third and two and a 14-yard catch on second and 11. Gibson capped the drive with a one-yard touchdown run.
That offense was wholly unlike the one Washington had showed in weeks prior.
A few mistakes would follow; cornerback Benjamin St-Juste was called for pass interference on a deep pass by Hurts, and though the call appeared questionable, it nonetheless led to another Eagles score, this time a six-yard pass to tight end Dallas Goedert.
Washington was flagged for delay of game on fourth and one, prompting offensive coordinator Scott Turner to throw his hands up in dismay in the coaches booth and the offense to settle for a 44-yard field goal by Slye. But after two more scores before the end of the half — a one-yard touchdown run by Robinson and that 58-yard field goal by Slye — Washington had a 20-14 halftime lead — the first time in more than two years that it scored at least 20 before the break.
The Eagles seemed to bounce back after Javon Hargrave’s third-quarter sack of Heinicke at Philadelphia’s 3-yard line. The takedown forced Washington to settle for a field goal that expanded their lead to nine. But Philadelphia responded with a long drive of its own, using 11 plays before Hurts threw an 11-yard touchdown to receiver DeVonta Smith to make it 23-21.
Washington turned the ball on its subsequent drive when Heinicke went deep for McLaurin. It was third and three at Philadelphia’s 43-yard line when Heinicke launched a missile up the left sideline that hung in the air just long enough for safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson to go up and grab it.
Heinicke had said in the past that if he has a 50-50 chance with McLaurin, he plans to give his receiver that shot, and his decision to do so again seemed wise. McLaurin had beaten his man in coverage, and had the throw sailed a few inches farther, the Commanders would’ve been steps from the goal line.
Instead it was picked off, a turnover that ultimately had little consequence.
Defensive tackle John Ridgeway forced a fumble on a short pass to Goedert that linebacker Jamin Davis recovered and returned for a touchdown. The score was overturned on review — but the turnover stood and set up another chance for Washington to expand its lead.
Slye, having the game of his life, knocked in a 55-yard field goal with 7:33 remaining to give Washington a little more cushion with a 26-21 lead.
But no Commanders game, especially with Heinicke at quarterback, can end without a bit of late-game theatrics. But his time it was courtesy of Washington’s defense.
Hurts launched a 50-yard pass to Quez Watkins, who lost control when St-Juste pummeled him on a tackle. Safety Darrick Forrest, who earlier had an interception, recovered to prevent what could’ve been the game-winning drive.
With a chance to seal it in the final minutes, rookie wideout Jahan Dotson was flagged for offensive pass interference, negating a 21-yard catch by Curtis Samuel on third down. Defensive end Montez Sweat thwarted another potentially game-winning Philadelphia drive with a sack on third down.
Heinicke stuck to his plan: convert third down, sustain the drive. On third and seven with no open target, Heinicke scrambled before taking a knee to avoid a turnover. Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham collided with the quarterback, drawing an unnecessary roughness penalty for a loss of 15 yards that let Washington bleed almost all of the clock. Casey Toohill recovered an errant desperation lateral for a touchdown on the game’s final play, allowing Washington to secure the win and Heinicke to waltz into the tunnel in celebration.
NFL live updates: Commanders win, 32-21, dropping Eagles to 8-1 | 2022-11-15T05:01:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Taylor Heinicke, Commanders shock unbeaten Eagles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/commanders-upset-eagles-undefeated/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/commanders-upset-eagles-undefeated/ |
His behavior is mean, calling them idiots, and he often uses foul language. He tries to teach them patience and manners by yelling and holds the older child to a standard that he doesn’t reach himself.
He has never hit them, but is very intimidating. He is a stay-at-home dad because of some health issues and hasn’t worked in two years. He rarely cleans, and doesn’t cook or do laundry.
They are having financial problems and I want to offer to have them move in with me. I have plenty of room but am worried about not being able to get along with my son-in-law all the time.
Grandma: Your daughter has asked you not to engage so thoroughly in her marriage. Moving this family into your household would place you directly in the middle of it.
Rejecting help is the strange dynamic that is sometimes part of an abuse cycle. It is possible, too, that the counseling this couple receives is helping to reform your son-in-law’s behavior.
If things are not improving, providing housing, child care and housekeeping for the entire family would actually keep this father in the mix, when it might be best for the children if the parents separate. If all of you lived together, your home would cease being a safe-haven and would become ground zero.
Dear Amy: Years ago, I planted a tree in my yard that was very close to my property line. The tree has grown a lot. It has small leaves, and this year the leaf fall is large. It is a pain to clean up. Many of the leaves are falling into my neighbor’s yard.
My neighbor has no trees in her yard. All the fallen leaves in her yard are from my tree. My neighbor and her husband are my age and are able-bodied. They have able-bodied millennial children living with them.
Tree Owner: Researching your question, I have encountered a number of unfortunate accounts detailing extreme disputes between neighbors — brought on by falling leaves.
Leaves falling off a tree become the responsibility of the person owning the property where they fall. The leaves that land in your yard are your responsibility; the leaves that land in your neighbors’ yard are theirs, no matter where they come from.
Fresh Faced: This is the near-universal reaction when parents tell their children how to “improve” their looks. | 2022-11-15T05:27:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: Son-in-law is 'mean' to grandkids. Should I ask them to move in? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/15/ask-amy-father-mean-grandkids/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/15/ask-amy-father-mean-grandkids/ |
FILE - A view of the red carpet at the 64th annual Grammy Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena is photographed on Sunday, April 3, 2022, in Las Vegas. The Recording Academy will announce nominees for its 65th Grammy Awards on Tuesday, Nov. 15 with a couple of significant additions, including a special song for social change award and five new categories. The Grammy Awards will be handed out Feb. 5 in Los Angeles. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-11-15T06:11:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Grammy nominations to be announced, with 5 new categories - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/grammy-nominations-to-be-announced-with-5-new-categories/2022/11/15/d149f72a-64a6-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/grammy-nominations-to-be-announced-with-5-new-categories/2022/11/15/d149f72a-64a6-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022 | ‘Once Upon A Time In Londongrad’ premieres on Peacock
R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned (Netflix) In this sequel to 2013′s ‘R.I.P.D.', Sheriff Roy Pulsipher is recruited by the Rest In Peace Department after dying in a shootout with a notorious outlaw gang, but his revenge is tabled when a world-ending gateway to the underworld is opened. | 2022-11-15T06:14:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to watch on Tuesday: ‘Deon Cole: Charleen’s Boy’ airs on Netflix - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/11/15/what-watch-tuesday-deon-cole-charleens-boy-airs-netflix/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/11/15/what-watch-tuesday-deon-cole-charleens-boy-airs-netflix/ |
The meeting with President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping went largely as expected. On the Indonesian island of Bali, the leaders of the two global powers had their first in-person, face-to-face encounter since Biden took office. The session, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 major economies summit, came amid a deep freeze in relations between the two countries. The modest goal was to stabilize a tense dynamic and lay the kindling for a potential future thaw. After Xi and Biden spoke, officials suggested progress had been made.
“I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War,” Biden told reporters following the three-hour closed-door meeting. He added that he and Xi “were candid and clear with one another across the board” and pointed to the need for their two countries “to be able to work together” on global challenges like climate change and food insecurity.
Xi responded in somewhat similar fashion. He said “China-U.S. relations currently face a situation that is not in the interests of the two countries” and hoped that he and his American counterpart could “steer the bilateral relationship in the right direction.”
There were glimmers of breakthroughs. It emerged Monday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will go to Beijing early next year as part of an expanding dialogue between both countries. And it also appeared that a number of intergovernmental joint working groups — including important bilateral discussions on climate change — were set to resume operation after China broke off contacts in the wake of the controversial visit to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in August.
Both Biden and Xi came to the sit-down bolstered by domestic developments. At a major Communist Party congress last month, Xi secured his position as paramount leader of the one-party Chinese state and raised up loyalists to further cement his indefinite grip on power. For outside observers, the long horizon of Xi’s rule has crystallized a view of an increasingly aggressive China on the world stage, bent on subverting the international system in its favor while further constricting the space for civil society and dissent at home.
Biden, to greater surprise, emerged from last week’s midterm elections with a stronger mandate than anticipated, as the a red wave failed to materialize and his Democrats maintained control of the Senate. He argued that the election results justified his administration’s approach to foreign policy after the nationalist disruptions imposed by former president Donald Trump.
“I think the election held in the United States … has sent a very strong message around the world that the United States is ready to play,” Biden said during his Monday news conference. “The Republicans who survived, along with the Democrats, are of the view that we’re going to stay fully engaged in the world and that we, in fact, know what we’re about.”
The irony is that Biden has, in some arenas, maintained the Trump-era status quo, refusing to drop tariffs on China. He is also pressing ahead with an ambitious plan to delink a key cog of the tech supply chain from China by boosting the manufacture of semiconductors within the United States and placing a complex regime of export controls on this key equipment to China — what some analysts have cast as a bureaucratic declaration of economic war.
Xi and Biden’s meeting did not conclude with a joint statement, a diplomatic nicety that usually indicates a level of trust and common cause. That’s clearly not there, with the two countries still at odds on a host of issues, from tech policy to Taiwan. Analysis of the separate readouts of the Biden-Xi meeting put out by the United States and China showed a telling divergence.
The United States touted Xi’s agreement with Biden that Russian President Vladimir Putin should not threaten to use nuclear weapons in his war in Ukraine. That view was not present in China’s summary of proceedings, which relayed that Xi simply said that the crisis in Ukraine had no “simple solution” and that “confrontation between major powers must be avoided.”
The clash over Taiwan is a more urgent issue. Biden, according to the U.S. readout, pressed Xi in private discussions about China’s “increasingly aggressive” actions toward the self-governing island, which is witnessing a spike in Chinese military maneuvers near its coastline and entries into its airspace. Xi retorted, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, that Taiwan’s future is at the “very core of China’s core interests” and is a “red line” the United States must not cross.
That’s easier said than done. Bipartisan sympathy has grow in Congress for the Taiwanese plight, with some lawmakers now pushing legislation that would authorize the U.S. government to be able to arm and train Taiwan in advance of a Chinese military invasion in the same way it has aided Ukraine after Russian tanks rolled across its borders. U.S. military planners believe the prospect of China taking military action against Taiwan is high in the coming years.
The pomp, pageantry and paranoia of China’s Communist Party Congress
President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden had a candid and in-depth exchange of views on issues of strategic importance in China-US relations and on major global and regional issues. Check the full readout & some highlights of President Xi's remarks: https://t.co/ho8j348P3t pic.twitter.com/imKyRuywCl
— Qin Gang 秦刚 (@AmbQinGang) November 14, 2022
The discussions between Xi and Biden may cool temperatures for now. But while Washington and Beijing can try to put guardrails on their relationship, sensitivities over Taiwan are high and the risk for misunderstanding acute. That Biden or his successors may not budge on their solidarity for Taiwan could prove a problem for Xi, who has in part staked his legitimacy on the promise of Taiwan’s eventual unification with the mainland.
“The United States thinks that so long as there is no conflict or crisis in relations, then that’s fine. But China wants to see evidence of progress, especially when it comes to Taiwan,” said Wu Xinbo, dean of international studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, to my colleagues.
Some analysts insist that conflict doesn’t need be in the cards. “A war over Taiwan is no longer unthinkable, but it is by no means inevitable, especially if the United States acts to bolster the credibility of the conditional threats and conditional assurances that have preserved the peace for decades,” wrote Jessica Chen Weiss in Foreign Affairs. “The growing fatalism of some commentators neglects the interest that the United States, China, Taiwan, and the world all share in avoiding a shooting war.”
Yet the absence of meaningful diplomacy between the two powers sets the stage for further friction. “The meeting seems to have accomplished the minimum: creating the potential for stabilizing the relationship,” Lyle Goldstein, of the Defense Priorities think tank, said in an email. “But that requires robust follow-up and a determination on both sides to break with trends in both countries toward vitriolic rhetoric and escalating tension.” | 2022-11-15T06:14:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After meeting Xi Jinping, Biden says no ‘Cold War’ with China, but tensions may flare - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/biden-xi-cold-war-tensions-g20-meeting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/biden-xi-cold-war-tensions-g20-meeting/ |
British Families Are Already Being Hit by Stealth Taxes
Analysis by Stuart Trow | Bloomberg
CARDIFF, WALES - NOVEMBER 08: A close-up of a womans hands around a warm cup of coffee at the Rumney Forum community charity on November 8, 2022 in Cardiff, United Kingdom. The Rumney Forum is a resident-led community organisation in Cardiff that take in and give out donations to families in need. The centre, located in a former library, also operates as a foodbank and is one of a number of warm spaces where residents can spend time. With the cost of living crisis and increase in energy bills affecting households across the UK this winter, many councils and charities are opening safe, heated spaces. These spaces are known as warm banks and charities say that they should only be a short-term fix to the issues facing people and not the long-term solution as foodbanks have become. (Photo by Matthew Horwood/Getty Images) (Photographer: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images Europe)
Brits are awaiting Thursday’s Autumn Statement with even more trepidation than usual. Less-than-subtle hints from ministers have signaled sharp tax increases that would compound the cost-of-living crisis.
Unfortunately, especially during periods of rapid inflation, such tax strategies are the gift that keeps on giving for governments, raising additional revenue without having to increase tax rates. .
Stuart Trow is co-host of “Money, Money, Money” on Switch Radio and author of “The Bluffer’s Guide to Economics.” Previously, he was a strategist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. | 2022-11-15T07:42:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | British Families Are Already Being Hit by Stealth Taxes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/british-families-are-already-being-hit-by-stealth-taxes/2022/11/15/90a9800a-64ab-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/british-families-are-already-being-hit-by-stealth-taxes/2022/11/15/90a9800a-64ab-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Leave Africa’s Carbon Emissions Alone
Feel free to step on the gas. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
John Kerry is right. Mother Nature does not care where carbon emissions come from. The statement by the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, however, offers a pretty dismal guide to how to combat climate change.
For sure, the additional carbon emissions would warm the atmosphere like any other. But the climate can afford to give Senegal a break. In 2040, with a projected population of 27 million, it would emit 30 million tons, about what Connecticut emits today with a population of 3.6 million.
The weather can take it. Ken Caldeira and Lei Duan at the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Juan Moreno-Cruz from the University of Waterloo concluded that if countries wait until their GDP per person hits $10,000 before they start working to decarbonize their economy, the increase in the average global temperature would only be 14% more than if they had started decarbonizing in 2020.
There is, of course, a reasonable case to invest in mitigation where mitigation is cheapest. If it costs less to cut emissions of CO2 by a ton in Ghana than it costs in Switzerland, the Swiss may have a solid argument to steer their carbon reduction budget to pay for efficient lighting and cleaner stoves in Ghana rather than to reconfigure transportation in Lausanne.
This is not exclusively an ethical conundrum. Economic development opens up avenues for decarbonization. It’s harder to electrify an economy when, as in Sub Saharan Africa, one-third of the population has no access to electricity.
Vijaya Ramachandran at the Breakthrough Institute and Arthur Baker at the Development Innovation Center at the University of Chicago argue that poorer nations will have to raise their per-capita consumption of energy from their current level of 100-300 kilowatt-hours to some 5,000-10,000 kilowatt hours per year, to achieve the living standards of the rich.
At the moment, renewables alone won’t cut it. “It’s been really really challenging for some countries to build out renewables, Ramachandran said. “Mitigating away from natural gas is the problem.”
Many of the poorest countries of the world need gas to combat climate change – to replace wood and charcoal for cooking and coal in power plants – and to grow. The IEA’s high-growth path for Africa sees electricity production tripling by 2040. Gas-powered generation under the scenario grows by 150%. Fortunately Africa is sitting on 600 trillion cubic feet of the stuff.
The Swiss are not wrong. If they want to deploy a bunch of francs on top of their foreign aid budgets to help poor countries develop clean energy resources, more power to them. As Kerry might say a ton is a ton is a ton. It stands to reason to invest in decarbonization where decarbonization is cheapest.
Consider the Green Climate Fund’s investment to install solar-powered mini-grids in 1,000 villages in Senegal, powering 39,000 households. In terms of its climate impact, wrote Matt Juden and Ian Mitchell of the Center for Global Development, “it is highly cost-ineffective,” reducing CO2 emissions at a cost that works out to some $200 for each avoided ton.
This is way higher than the $75 per ton that the IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva proposed last year as a price on carbon, to accelerate decarbonization. It is about four times the US government’s estimate of the social cost of carbon, meant to price the damage that an additional ton of carbon in the air will impose on the world.
Kerry is right to say that trimming a ton out of Senegal’s CO2 emissions is just as good for the global climate as cutting them in Connecticut. But the climate, and Senegal’s economic development, might have been better served had the electrification of its remote villages used a little more diesel.
• Data Can Unleash Massive New Green Investment: Michael Bloomberg | 2022-11-15T07:42:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Leave Africa’s Carbon Emissions Alone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/leave-africas-carbon-emissions-alone/2022/11/15/90f07bcc-64ab-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/leave-africas-carbon-emissions-alone/2022/11/15/90f07bcc-64ab-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Qatar’s World Cup Is a Win for Globalization
DOHA, QATAR - NOVEMBER 14: Images of Gareth Bale of Wales, Hassan Al-Haydos of Qatar and the FIFA World Cup trophy are seen on sky scrapers in the West Bay area ahead of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 on November 14, 2022 in Doha, Qatar. (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images) (Photographer: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images Europe)
Never mind the invisible hand. Over the coming weeks the world will be united by the visible boot. Billions of people will watch the World Cup in Qatar (in 2018, some 3.5 billion people, more than half the world’s adults, watched a portion of the tournament, and more than a billion watched some part of the final). And rivers of money will be spent to persuade those fans to consume various brands of fizzy drinks and glutinous burgers in the name of athletic prowess.
No other sport comes close to soccer in its global reach. US football failed dismally in its attempt to cross the Atlantic. US baseball only extends to bits of Latin America and pockets of Asia. Cricket is confined to the old British Empire. Golf is global but niche. Soccer is watched everywhere you can get a TV signal and played wherever you can purchase a round ball. Even Osama bin Laden, an Arsenal fan, encouraged his troops to play soccer when they were holed up in Afghanistan.
The globalization of the beautiful game keeps gathering momentum. Xi Jinping has set China an ambitious goal of hosting and winning a World Cup by 2050. Having been pipped at the post by Qatar for 2022, the US will host the 2026 World Cup jointly with Canada and Mexico. With women’s soccer gaining momentum and the sport’s association with macho violence in decline, at least in Western Europe, soccer is also gaining more female fans: In the last World Cup 40% of spectators were female.
The Qatar World Cup, which starts on Nov. 20, will mark several firsts. It is the first time a World Cup has been held in an Arab and Muslim-majority Country. It is the first time the Cup has been held in winter (the original plan to hold the games during the 47-degree heat of the Qatar summer had to be abandoned). And, above all, it is the first time that the Cup has been used as such a centerpiece of a vast development project.
Qatar’s ruling Al Thani family is using the country’s untold wealth from liquefied natural gas both to ensure its security and guarantee its long-term prosperity. In the mid-1990s, it built a billion-dollar air base, which it offered to the United States, and launched Al Jazeera, which is now a global media network. Since then, it has increasingly focused on the reputation-enhancing (and hopefully revenue-generating) power of soccer. Qatar Sports Investments purchased Paris Saint-Germain in 2011 and turned a rickety French club into a European powerhouse. Various Qatari organizations have struck sponsorship deals with brand-name European clubs such as Barcelona (£30 million a year to sponsor its shirt), Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and A.S. Roma. The government also spends prodigiously on creating a Qatari league at home, reviewing the footballing prowess of every 12-year-old Qatari, with limitless support for high-flyers, and scouting Africa for future stars.
Since winning the competition to hold the World Cup in 2010, Qatar has spent more than $250 billion on soccer-related development, a figure that dwarfs the estimated $42 billion that China spent on the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the $55 billion that Russia spent on the Winter Olympics in 2014. Ten billion has gone on eight soccer stadiums. The rest was devoted to a wholesale transformation of the country: the complete remodeling of downtown Doha; the construction of nearly a hundred new hotels; the expansion of the port and the airport; a revamped road system; the creation of three metro lines; and a new city with homes for more than a quarter of a million people.
So far the West has been overwhelmingly hostile to Qatar’s extraordinary project, far more hostile than it was to Vladimir Putin’s games four years ago. The list of charges being made against the petro-state is a long one: that the ruling family is using the World Cup to shore up its power; that more than 6,000 people have died in delivering the “vision”; that Qatar is hostile to gay people and other minorities; that it is obscene to see a quarter of a trillion dollars in petrochemical wealth being used to pay for a sporting extravaganza that will encourage yet more flying; and that Qatar 2022 represents everything that’s gone wrong with the beautiful game in the age of globalization. The Qataris hardly advanced their cause when their World Cup ambassador (and former national player) Khalid Salman described homosexuality as “haram” (forbidden), and “damage in the mind.” Nor were many people persuaded when the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, the organizing committee of the cup, claimed that there have been no more than three “work-related” fatalities on projects that it is responsible for. The World Cup thus represents as good an opportunity as any to ask two questions: How is soccer being shaped by globalization? And what impact will the backlash against the Qataris have on World Cup 2022?
The globalization of soccer is being driven by the most basic of market forces: Teams that can attract the best talent make the most money, and teams that make the most money can afford the most talent. This has led to the creation of super-leagues of football teams that have pulled further away from the rest of the football world. It has also led to a surge in cross-border trade: In Britain’s Premier League, the most globalized of the world’s leagues, three-quarters of the players and more than half of the managers are foreign-born, and half the clubs have foreign owners.
Surprisingly, these market forces are at their most vigorous in Old Europe, a continent normally noted for its reluctance to embrace commercial values, particularly when those values are applied to sacred things like soccer, which was originally a working-class sport and is still saturated with collectivist values best captured by Liverpool’s anthem, “you’ll never walk alone”. America is a laggard where soccer is concerned, not least because it held out hopes that its own version of football might become the global game. By embracing open markets in talent and corporate control, Europe has turned itself into the global center of investment, pouring money into stadiums, training programs and support staff, as well as a global center of excellence. European teams have won five of the six World Cups between 1998 and 2018 and provided three-quarters of the finalists.
Politics also plays an important part. This starts with the role of the international and regional organizations that police the game: For all its faults FIFA has pursued a strategy of spreading soccer around the world — hence, as FIFA tells it, its decision to give the Cup to the Middle East this year and North America next time around. But it extends to politicians more generally.
Politicians of all stripes, from social democrats such as Tony Blair trying to prove that he’s a “lad,” to authoritarians like Vladimir Putin burnishing their macho credentials, love to be associated with soccer. In 1993, Silvio Berlusconi announced his decision to enter politics by saying that he’d decided to take to the pitch (“discesa in campo”). He also named his political party, Forza Italia, after a national football team chant. President Xi likes to get himself photographed at soccer-related events, including taking a selfie with David Cameron and Sergio Aguero when he visited Manchester City’s training ground in 2015. Viktor Orban has built a show-stadium in his hometown, where he still keeps a dacha, with seating for nearly 4,000 people despite a local population of just 1,700. In 2014 Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan christened the opening of a new stadium in Istanbul by playing himself and scoring a hat trick, all on live TV. The North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has written a sports manifesto, “Let Us Usher in a New Golden Age of Building a Sports Power in the Revolutionary Spirit of Paektu, in which he called for North Korea to “first secure world supremacy in women’s football.”
These two different forces, commercial and political, can sometimes pull in opposite directions: Britain routinely underperforms in the World Cup because, as the most international market in the world, it loses so many of its best players to the countries of their birth and is stuck with a group of English-born players who are not used to playing together. But in general these two forces reinforce each other. The quadrennial World Cup is just one of a number of football festivals, from the European Cup to the weekly Premier League games, which thrill soccer fans the world over, from the chancelleries of Germany to the slums of Kenya.
How seriously should we take the backlash against the Qatari games? The treatment of building workers in the heat and dust of the desert has frequently been horrific, to be sure. And prejudice of any kind has no place in a global event that is broadcast around the world and sponsored by global companies. But we should beware of the tendency to think of soccer as an embodiment of the West’s enlightened values now being threatened by its contact with the Middle East: Many soccer fans, particularly in Russia and Eastern Europe, are hardly angels of toleration, and, as we have seen, many of the world’s autocrats are keen on bending soccer to their political ends. We should also recognize that the $250 billion will bring progress as well as problems in its wake. The Qataris have liberalized many of their policies — you will be able to get weak beer near the stadiums and a full range of alcohol in hotel bars — and are sensitive about their international reputation over gay rights. Salman’s “haram” interview was shut down by an accompanying official. The sunshine of publicity has done something to improve the country’s backward labor laws.
Then there is the game itself. I suspect that billions of people will quickly forget about their worries about human rights as they are caught up in World Cup fever. Soccer is not only a beautiful game but also an unpredictable one — small countries like Croatia can humble giants and obscure players can suddenly turn out to be superstars. I also suspect that some people will have a creeping admiration for what the Qataris have done in transforming their kingdom for the competition. We live in an age of diminishing expectations, shrinking visions and defensive nationalism. The Qataris have bucked the trend by thinking big, embracing globalization and building a pharaonic monument to the world’s most global game. | 2022-11-15T07:43:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Qatar’s World Cup Is a Win for Globalization - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/qatars-world-cupis-a-win-for-globalization/2022/11/15/91364d00-64ab-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/qatars-world-cupis-a-win-for-globalization/2022/11/15/91364d00-64ab-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Its experience illustrates the challenges that industrializing economies face in making the energy transition
A woman takes a photo of her friend in front of electric buses at an electric vehicle charging station Sunday in Nusa Dua, Bali, where Indonesia is hosting the Group of 20 summit. (Putu Sayoga for The Washington Post)
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — The streetlamps lining the highway from Bali’s airport are powered by the sun. Police patrol the streets on electric motorcycles, and drivers shuttle visiting dignitaries in luxury electric SUVs.
The global climate crisis is a top concern at this week’s Group of 20 summit, and Indonesia, as host, has put every effort into showing off its commitment toward cutting carbon emissions. As world leaders travel across the sun-soaked island of Bali, however, they’re plugging into an energy grid powered overwhelmingly by fossil fuels.
Endowed with a wealth of renewable energy resources, Indonesia has done less to tap into this potential than most countries its size. Climate activists say the Indonesian government has moved too slowly to disinvest from fossil fuels and to abandon archaic policies that subsidize dirty sources of energy. Indonesia’s experience, analysts say, illustrates some of the toughest challenges that industrializing economies face in transitioning to green energy.
In 2015, after Indonesian President Joko Widodo was elected, he commissioned a series of projects that would generate 35 gigawatts worth of new energy — the bulk from coal-fired plants. At the time, 16 percent of the population still lacked access to electricity, and officials were confident that the country’s economic growth would soon send demand for energy surging.
By the time it became clear that Indonesia’s growth was not keeping pace with projections, it was too late. Dozens of new power plants had come online, with more under construction. The country’s grid became oversupplied with coal energy, which accounted for more than half of electricity generation — double what it was a decade ago, according to the Institute for Essential Services Reform, an Indonesian think tank. Renewable energy had no space to grow.
“This is like an excess baggage that the Indonesian government is carrying,” said Elrika Hamdi, an energy finance analyst based in Jakarta. It is “a mistake of the past” that the country is still paying for, she added.
At the same time, regulations governing clean energy have been inconsistent, onerous and often poorly implemented, advocates say, leaving Indonesia trailing behind other industrializing countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines. After a decade-long “solar boom,” Vietnam’s installed solar capacity is nearly 80 times that of Indonesia despite having a third of the potential, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental organization that helps countries transition to clean energy.
Although Bali receives enough sunlight to support its power needs multiple times over, its energy demands are met almost entirely by fossil fuel plants on the island and on the neighboring island of Java. Renewable energy accounts for less than 2 percent of electricity generation, provincial officials say.
In northern Bali, fishermen have been campaigning for years against the proposed expansion of a coal plant, alleging that it threatens their livelihoods. “We will accept any power plant that doesn’t damage the air, the sea, the water,” said Supriyadi, a fisherman in the village of Celukan Bawang. “We just don’t want coal.”
Indonesia’s leaders, who are pushing at the G-20 to secure a multibillion-dollar energy transition loan, have often characterized their reliance on fossil fuels as an issue of inadequate financing for alternatives. Coal, which is abundant in Indonesia, was for decades the cheapest way to electrify the country. Even now, addressing the climate crisis cannot supersede developmental needs, said Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, the minister for investment.
“Everything we do, we don’t want to stop our economic growth,” Pandjaitan said in an interview last month from his office in Jakarta. “Even as we do this new program, we should see revenue for the government, for the people of Indonesia.”
But analysts say this view is outdated, and that in Indonesia, money is only part of the problem.
“It’s frustrating because technologically, the solutions are there. Economically and financially, there are no longer barriers,” said Nicholas Wagner, a researcher at IRENA.
The average amount of solar power that Indonesia receives per square meter is almost double that of some countries in Europe, research shows, and Indonesia has the largest geothermal reserves in the world. Those conditions position the country to make one of the world’s most dramatic energy transitions, though it’s not currently on the path to do so.
Last year, the government banned new coal plants from being developed but said the rule would not affect the 13.8 gigawatts of additional coal energy — enough to power 10 Balis — that was already in the pipeline. Two months ago, the government announced another set of exceptions to its ban, allowing new coal plants that support “national strategic projects” such as smelters for battery minerals.
In addition, the government has required since 2009 that all coal-mining companies sell a designated amount of their output to the state-owned utility company below market value. This regulation, which the World Bank has urged Indonesia to scrap, effectively subsidizes the price of coal, distorting the energy market against renewable sources, analysts say.
Even when the government tries to spur the deployment of clean energy, it sometimes misses the mark on implementation, said Hamdi, the energy finance analyst. In 2018, for example, a ministerial decree that was meant to encourage rooftop solar panels ended up making people pay more to use them. “On paper,” Hamdi said, “it’s not the same as reality on the ground.”
Bali has long sought to be energy independent, and locals increasingly believe this goal can dovetail with their ambitions to reach net-zero emissions by 2045, 15 years earlier than the rest of Indonesia. A 2017 study from the Asian Development Bank found that Bali needs to harness just 5 percent of its renewable energy resources to support all of its electricity needs.
But without adequate support from the national government, progress has been glacial, residents say. From 2012 to 2015, the government opened eight small solar farms in Bali, placing them in the custody of local authorities. Only four are still operating, a provincial representative said. The rest have fallen into disrepair. Meanwhile, plans are underway to build a new terminal for liquefied natural gas, a type of fossil fuel, in southern Bali.
“We have a high ambition,” said Ida Ayu Dwi Giriantari, a professor at Bali’s Udayana University who wants to see more renewable energy. “But we can’t achieve this by ourselves.”
Fabby Tumiwa, executive director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform, said that while he agrees that Indonesia has moved slowly so far, the push for renewables is picking up.
In September, Widodo issued a regulation paving the way for the country to retire coal plants early. And on Monday, Indonesia’s state-owned utility company, Perusahaan Listrik Negara, announced the first coal facility that it would be closing down ahead of schedule. Tumiwa, a vocal PLN critic in the past, attended the company’s news conference in Bali. “I am ready to be surprised,” he said.
Not all advocates are as optimistic, especially those in Bali. Most of the 600-plus electric vehicles being used for the G-20 were brought in from Java and will be sent back after world leaders depart. It’s not clear who will maintain the solar panels set up for the summit — or whether there are plans to help the local government replicate them across the island.
“The real challenge,” said Ida Bagus Setiawan, head of Bali province’s energy division, “comes after the summit.”
Winda Charmila in Bali contributed to this report. | 2022-11-15T07:47:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | G-20 host Indonesia flaunts climate agenda in coal-powered Bali - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/g20-indonesia-bali-climate-change-coal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/g20-indonesia-bali-climate-change-coal/ |
Ukraine live briefing: Zelensky says Kherson is ‘beginning of the end of the war,’ tells G-20 Russia can be stopped
Karoun Demirjian
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the recently liberated city of Kherson on Monday. (Handout/AFP/Getty Images)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Kherson on Monday, greeted by a crowd of hundreds who celebrated Ukraine retaking the strategic city. Kherson’s liberation, he said in a speech, marked the “beginning of the end of the war.” The nation is now working to restore internet, electricity, water and other supplies to the city.
Zelensky, in his nightly video address, welcomed anti-nuclear-arms statements by China and the United States, and he told delegates at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia, via video on Tuesday, that “now is the time when the Russian destructive war must and can be stopped.”
Zelensky welcomed comments from global leaders on nuclear threats. He referred to the “G-19,” and not the G-20, which includes Russia, in his nightly address, and noted that “influential statements have already been made” on the eve of the summit. “In particular, it is important that the United States and China jointly highlighted that the threats of using nuclear weapons were unacceptable,” he said in his nightly address. “Everyone understands to whom these words are addressed.”
In Kherson, Zelensky pledged to drive Russia out of Ukraine entirely. “I think they ran because our army threatened the enemy and they were in grave danger,” he said of Russian occupiers in his speech to the city. “There were intense fights. And here is the result: We are here today in Kherson.” He said Ukraine was ready for peace, but not if it meant handing over its territory to Russia.
U.S. prisoners in Russia were a point of discussion when the CIA director, William J. Burns, met with Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, on Monday in Ankara, Turkey. On Tuesday, the Russian ambassador in Washington is expected to meet with White House officials on the same issue. These meetings come less than a week after Brittney Griner, a WNBA star detained in Russia, began her move to a penal colony.
The Pentagon said Monday that the Army awarded over half a billion dollars’ worth of contracts to Lockheed Martin to produce Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, known as GMLRS, to replenish the U.S. arsenal. The surface-to-surface missile system with a range of approximately 50 miles has been a centerpiece of the advanced military assistance that the United States has been giving to Ukraine.
Britain said Tuesday that Russia was redeploying some troops to the Henichesk area of Kherson. “It is well positioned to coordinate action against potential Ukrainian threats. … Above all, it is currently out of range of Ukrainian artillery systems which have inflicted heavy damage” on the Kremlin’s forces, the Defense Ministry in London said.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under terms set by the Pentagon, claimed on Monday to be “not aware of any operation at this stage of Ukrainians crossing the [Dnieper] river,” the new front line after the recapture of the city of Kherson. The Pentagon could not say with absolute certainty, however, that every last Russian had left the western side of the Dnieper, citing media reports that indicated some small bands of troops loyal to Moscow might have stayed behind.
Russia unsuccessfully tried to seize territory in the northeastern part of the Kharkiv region and “intensified offensive operations” in the eastern Donetsk region, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The Washington-based think tank said late Monday that the Kremlin was claiming gains in Donetsk in an effort to take attention away from its pullback in Kherson.
The United States imposed a new round of sanctions against Russia on Monday targeting military supply chains. “The United States will continue to crack down on Russia’s attempts to evade international sanctions to fund its war machine,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. In his nightly address on Monday, Zelensky said he was “grateful” for the sanctions, adding that there should be “punishment for complicity in terror.”
Recovery and rebuilding in Ukraine could cause up to 49 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, Ukraine’s minister of environmental protection, Ruslan Strilets, said at COP27, the BBC reported. He added that Ukraine plans to collect evidence and seek compensation from Russia. The war has already led to 33 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday it is planning to send missions to power plants in Rivne, Chernobyl, Khmelnytskyi and South Ukraine. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been “relatively quiet recently, with reduced shelling,” IAEA Director Rafael Mariano Grossi said in the statement.
Prosecutors do not plan criminal charges against Rudy Giuliani over Ukraine: U.S. Justice Department officials do not plan criminal charges against the former New York mayor in connection with his dealings in Ukraine while serving as a personal attorney for President Donald Trump, according to a letter made public Monday.
Giuliani has repeatedly said he did not commit any violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Shayna Jacobs reports. The investigation into the matter resulted in an April 28, 2021, seizure of devices at his Manhattan home and offices. His engagements in Ukraine during Donald Trump’s presidency were a prominent theme in Trump’s first impeachment proceeding. Giuliani was said to be making contacts there in an effort to dig up incriminating information about Joe Biden and his son Hunter before the 2020 election. | 2022-11-15T07:47:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/russia-ukraine-war-g20-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/russia-ukraine-war-g20-latest-updates/ |
A police officer entered Clyde Cooper’s Barbeque after a customer called 911 because her ‘barbecue was pink’
A worker at Clyde Cooper's Barbeque in Raleigh, N.C., prepares smoked pork barbecue. (Ashley Jessup)
The co-owners insisted they’d cooked the pork shoulder plenty, barbecuing it “low and slow” in a smoker for 12 hours at about 250 degrees. The woman disagreed and, when she couldn’t convince the co-owners to cook it some more or give her a refund, sought redress elsewhere.
“I had ordered some food from there, and the barbecue was pink,” she told the dispatcher, according to audio of the 911 call obtained by The Washington Post.
In the weeks since Raleigh police worked the case of the pink meat, Clyde Cooper’s Barbeque has defended its pulled pork, even marketing itself as the home of the “infamous pink bbq” and creating “PinkBBQ” merchandise. Others agree that customers shouldn’t be frightened by pink-colored barbecue — what aficionados call the “smoke ring” — even if it can at times alarm the uninitiated.
Dana Hanson, a North Carolina State University associate professor and an expert in meat science, said myoglobin, a protein that supplies oxygen to the muscles of nearly all mammals, is at the root of what happened at Clyde Cooper’s. In non-barbecue cooking, heat “denatures” myoglobin in fresh meat, turning it from red to pink and then brown to hockey puck.
“That’s the whole premise of when you order a steak at varying degrees of doneness, from rare to medium-rare to well-done,” Hanson said. “That’s the myoglobin pigment going through this normal denaturation during cooking.”
But barbecuing can mess with meat’s straightforward transformation along that color scale, Hanson added. Barbecuers often smoke their meats, usually doing so by burning wood that contains thousands of chemicals. One of those, nitric oxide, binds to myoglobin in the presence of heat to lock in the red or pink color — no matter how long the meat cooks.
Once upon a time, that “smoke ring” was a “badge of honor” for barbecuers and a signal to savvy customers, Hanson said.
“It’s the visual cue to know that that product is true barbecue and has been exposed to smoke,” he added. “There was a time that that was a measure of quality.”
Safe to say, the Clyde Cooper’s customer who tried to return her lunch of barbecued pork didn’t think so.
Ashley Jessup, co-owner and manager of the downtown Raleigh institution, said the woman ordered, paid for and received a plate of barbecued pork shoulder toward the tail end of the lunch rush on Nov. 1. About 10 minutes later, she returned to the register, telling Jessup’s mother and fellow co-owner, Debbie Holt, that her meat was undercooked.
“She snickered a little bit, and she said, ‘Honey, that’s because it’s smoked. It’s smoked pork, and it turns pink whenever it’s cooking,’ ” Jessup said.
Undeterred, the woman insisted the meat hadn’t been cooked enough, even as other customers interjected, backing up Holt. Jessup, who had been working on the restaurant’s catering orders, stepped in, allowing her mother to serve other customers. Jessup said she googled images of “smoked barbecue” on her phone in a vain effort to convince the woman that the pink coloring was a byproduct of the smoking process. Because of that, the meat would remain pink no matter how long they cooked it.
The woman went outside. Although they denied her a refund, as a consolation, Jessup and Holt dispatched a server to give the woman some chicken she’d requested. They thought the matter was settled.
About 10 minutes later, Jessup saw an officer pull up and worried about what mayhem had brought him to her door. After getting out of his cruiser, he talked with the “pink barbecue” customer.
“Wait, it can’t be,” she recalled thinking.
When the officer asked Jessup what had happened, she gave him the short version. He didn’t say much in response, Jessup said, adding that he was inside the restaurant for less than a minute. Then “he walked out — kind of has a little smirk on his face.”
But hours later, the woman left a Google review of the restaurant. One out of five stars. “Worst customer service I ever had in my life. Barbecue was very pink and had lots of fat in it.”
Jessup took to Clyde Cooper’s Facebook page to defend her restaurant. The customer’s review has since been taken down, but the woman told WRAL she didn’t regret calling the police and is considering filing a lawsuit against Clyde Cooper’s.
For now, Jessup and her customers are embracing the “pink bbq” fame. Patrons are dropping off gifts: pink flowers, a bottle of Pepto Bismol and a pink pig stuffed animal. Nearly all of Clyde Cooper’s social media posts contain the #pinkbbq hashtag.
“You kind of have to be like, ‘Well doggone, this is the best publicity we’re going to get, so let’s keep on with it,’ ” Jessup said. | 2022-11-15T08:43:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman’s 911 call over pink barbecue has experts defending smoked meat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/pink-barbecue-911-call/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/pink-barbecue-911-call/ |
White teacher in Texas tells students his race is ‘superior’
Students at a computer lab at a middle school in Pflugerville, Tex. (Bob Daemmrich/Alamy Stock Photo)
A Texas teacher is no longer employed by his school district after he told students that his race was superior, the district’s superintendent said in a statement Monday.
The teacher, whose name has not been released and who appears to be White, told students that “deep down in my heart, I’m ethnocentric, which means I think my race is the superior one,” according to footage. “I think that everybody thinks that, they’re just not honest about it,” he added. When a student asked whether he was racist, the teacher said that “everybody is a racist at that level.”
He was teaching an advisory class at Bohls Middle School in Pflugerville, Tex., a suburb of Austin. He is no longer employed by the Pflugerville Independent School District, which is now “actively looking for a replacement,” said Douglas Killian, the superintendent.
It was not immediately clear whether that meant the teacher had been fired or he had quit. The Dallas Morning News reported that he had resigned.
A debate over how to talk about racial inequality has roiled many U.S. schools. In Texas last year, a Black high school principal faced criticism from parents who accused him of promoting critical race theory, an academic framework for examining systemic racism that Republicans have used as a catchall label for discussion of race in classrooms. In Tennessee, a White teacher was fired for asserting that “White privilege” is “a fact.” In Oklahoma, a teacher quit to protest the state’s ban on books that it says lead students to “feel discomfort, guilt” or psychological distress because of their race or gender. In more than a dozen states, new rules now govern how race can be taught in schools.
The Pflugerville Independent School District’s student population is almost half Hispanic, according to figures compiled by the Texas Tribune. Less than a quarter of its roughly 25,000 students are White, and about 15 percent are Black.
The teacher had been put on administrative leave earlier, according to local reports.
“We want to reiterate that this conversation does not align with our core beliefs and is not a reflection of our district or our culture at Bohls Middle School,” Killian said.
The teacher’s comments were “inappropriate, inaccurate, and unacceptable; and this type of interaction will not be tolerated,” he added.
The Pflugerville school district and its superintendent could not be immediately reached for further comment late Monday.
Texas education board rejects proposal to call slavery ‘involuntary relocation’
In the video, the teacher appeared to be talking to a group that included Black students. The students told him that they had lost respect for him after hearing his remarks. The teacher replied that they should have more respect because he was being honest. “No, not at all,” one student said in response.
The district’s administrators were made aware of the remarks Friday, Killian said. The district said it encourages students to “be self-advocates and let an adult know when something is wrong, as they did in this situation.” | 2022-11-15T09:14:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White Texas teacher no longer employed after making racist remarks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/texas-teacher-pflugerville-racist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/texas-teacher-pflugerville-racist/ |
NEW YORK — Seattle’s Julio Rodríguez and Atlanta″s Michael Harris II, a pair of 21-year-old center fielders, were voted Rookies of the Year.
NEW YORK — North Carolina and Gonzaga remain 1-2 in the first regular-season men’s college basketball poll from The Associated Press.
NEW YORK — South Carolina remained the unanimous choice as the top team in first regular-season Top 25 women’s basketball poll from The Associated Press.
STORRS, Conn. — Azzi Fudd scored 22 of her career-high 32 points in the second half to help No. 5 UConn beat third-ranked Texas 83-76 in an early season showdown of top-ranked teams.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A University of Virginia student and former member of the school’s football team fatally shot three current players as they returned from a field trip, authorities said, setting off panic and a 12-hour lockdown of the campus until the suspect was captured. | 2022-11-15T09:14:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/11/15/c429efa0-64bf-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/11/15/c429efa0-64bf-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
(Charles Platiau/Reuters)
Google agreed to pay $391.5 million to 40 states to settle an investigation into its location tracking practices, a coalition of state attorneys general announced Monday.
The investigation had centered on what Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum (D), one of the state law enforcement officers who led the probe, called misleading and deceptive tactics regarding users’ location data. “Consumers thought they had turned off their location tracking features on Google, but the company continued to secretly record their movements and use that information for advertisers,” she said in a statement.
The accord was the largest such privacy settlement by state attorneys general in U.S. history, according to the coalition. It also requires Google to “be more transparent about its practices,” the group said. Measures include forbidding Google from hiding “key information about location tracking” and requiring the search giant to “give users detailed information about the types of location data” it collects and how it is used.
In a blog post, Google called the agreement “another step along the path of giving more meaningful choices and minimizing data collection while providing more helpful services.”
Google spokesman José Castañeda said in a statement that the privacy issues had already been addressed. “Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” he said, adding that the settlement was to resolve the investigation and not a lawsuit.
Arizona sues Google over allegations it illegally tracked Android smartphone users’ locations
Google has faced legal scrutiny over alleged violations of users’ privacy regarding location data. Last month, the company reached an $85 million settlement with Arizona, whose attorney general, Mark Brnovich (R), had alleged in a 2020 lawsuit that the tech company “engaged in deceptive and unfair practices toward users by tracking their location data even when the company was told to stop.”
In January, Texas, Indiana, Washington and the District of Columbia built off Brnovich’s allegations and filed individual lawsuits against Google for the alleged privacy violations. (The four states and D.C. were not part of the group whose settlement was announced Monday.)
The state investigations and lawsuits were sparked by a 2018 Associated Press report that found Google “records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.” While Google Maps users have the option to disable tracking of their location history, the company still stored location data when consumers opened the Maps app or searched for something unrelated to location, the AP reported.
Google said at the time that it used customers’ location data in a number of ways “to improve people’s experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services.” It added that consumers could “turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time.” The AP reported that doing so could be difficult and labor-intensive.
In January, France fined Google more than $150 million for allegedly making it difficult to refuse cookies, which track users’ web browsing.
Location information is often highly sensitive and “in some circumstances, the availability of location information can put an individual’s personal safety in peril,” said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University whose research focuses on the internet and privacy.
For people seeking abortions, digital privacy is suddenly critical
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, privacy advocates warned that location data could be used against people seeking clandestine abortions. Google said after the court’s ruling that it would clear the location history of its users whenever they visited sensitive places such as an abortion clinic.
Goldman said that while “it makes sense” for the attorneys general to pursue Google over the alleged privacy violations, recent state laws such as the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), passed by voters in the state in 2020, “will restrict Google’s use of location information more severely than this settlement does.”
The CPRA built on an earlier law, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which went into effect in 2020 and allowed consumers to instruct companies to stop storing or selling their data. The CCPA was widely seen as setting a new national standard for data privacy; the CPRA added more protections and established a state agency to enforce the law. | 2022-11-15T09:15:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Google reaches $392 million privacy settlement over location data - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/15/google-privacy-settlement-location-data/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/15/google-privacy-settlement-location-data/ |
By Niniek Karmini and Sibi Arasu | AP
Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo speaks next to U.S. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen co-hosts the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment meeting at the G20 summit, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022, in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Indonesia signed deals with international lenders and major nations on Tuesday that will bring billions of dollars in funding to help the country increase its use of renewable energy and reduce its reliance on coal. | 2022-11-15T10:45:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Indonesia signs deals to accelerate clean energy transition - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/indonesia-signs-deals-to-accelerate-clean-energy-transition/2022/11/15/6348d8c8-64c8-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/indonesia-signs-deals-to-accelerate-clean-energy-transition/2022/11/15/6348d8c8-64c8-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Before you play, invest in the right shoes and follow these tips to sidestep common hazards
People play pickleball at a public court in Brooklyn in September. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)
Pickleball has exploded in popularity in recent years, especially among those 50 and older. And, as is often the case when a new sport catches on, injuries are growing along with participation.
“Ten years ago, I saw no pickleball injuries,” says J. Bruce Moseley, an orthopedic surgeon at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “Today, I see at least one a week.”
Pickleball combines elements of tennis, badminton and table tennis. It is played indoors or outdoors on a badminton-sized court with a slightly modified tennis net and lightweight rackets and balls. Some 4.8 million Americans played pickleball in 2021, according to USA Pickleball, and more than half of those considered “core” — or regular — players were 55 or older.
Experts stress that pickleball is a safe, all-ages sport — but it is a sport, so warming up, building up to longer play and using the right equipment are keys to heading off Achilles' tendon injuries and more.
One analysis, using data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), used a sample of 300 emergency room visits for pickleball injuries to extrapolate that there were some 19,000 ER visits for pickleball injuries from 2001 to 2017, and that the pace of injuries rose as pickleball’s popularity grew. People 50 and older accounted for nearly 91 percent of the patients, according to the study.
For older players, muscle sprains and strains from on-court slips and falls are common hazards.
Most play is underhand, but strains or tears in the shoulder rotator cuff can also result from overhand volleys or repetitive stretching for the ball, although such injuries occur more often in tennis where the force of the ball is greater and much more of the game involves overhead shots.
Bumps and bruises from falls, sprained ankles, wrist fractures and strained muscles and tendinitis from overdoing things are also part of the game.
A recent study compared annual tennis injuries with pickleball injuries between 2010 and 2019, tracking the most common injuries in both sports for people over 60. For pickleball, the study said, older women were at higher risk than men for trips and falls leading to wrist fractures; men were at higher risk for lower-leg injuries, including to their Achilles’ tendon. (The study also relied on NEISS data.)
“Almost no one was playing pickleball at the start of the study, but as the sport exploded over the time period, pickleball play and corresponding injuries went from almost nothing to increasing rapidly over that decade, especially over the last few years,” says Harold Weiss, an adjunct associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, who co-wrote the study. Weiss, a pickleball enthusiast, stresses that it’s not possible to calculate the rate of injuries per pickleball players because there aren’t enough data yet.
A former squash and racquetball player, Weiss, 71, took up pickleball when he found other sports were too hard on his body — although he, too, has suffered his share of twisted ankles and occasional pulled muscles in his back and leg.
“I switched overnight,” he says. “There’s not as much speed, you don’t have as much area to cover, no overhead smashes, a lighter racket and ball — and it’s fun, which is why I think people do it. It’s also an excellent workout.”
Have fun, take it easy
Pickleball fans extol its social appeal. “We have made many new friends, and laughter is a huge part of the game,” says Robin Dobler, 66, of Westerville, Ohio, who took up the game in 2021. “Our Friday group plays from 9 to 11:30 in the morning, then we all go to lunch after.”
“I am absolutely hooked,” Dobler, a retired physical therapist assistant, adds.
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One thing to watch out for, however, is not to do too much too soon. Warm up first, and take it easy out there.
“People go from doing nothing to playing pickleball five days a week, and they will get overuse injuries as a result,” says Nicholas Greiner, an osteopath who practices sports medicine in St. Louis. Greiner conducted a 2019 review of common injuries associated with pickleball. “The one thing I tell people is to go into it gradually.”
And while stressing the safety of pickleball overall, Greiner and others recommend that older participants take extra precautions against falls, which can be especially dangerous in this age group. One way to reduce the risk is to wear “court” shoes designed for pickleball and tennis, they say.
“There is a lot of side-to-side lateral movement” in pickleball, Greiner says. “We tend to be straight with our movements in our daily activities. We walk straight. We bike straight. We run straight. Sometimes we lose our mastery of balance with lateral movements, so falls can be a risk.”
While playing one day last fall, Dobler ran wide to return a ball, planted her right foot and turned toward her opponents — and felt instant pain inside her right knee. She tried to keep playing, but it hurt. Later, she iced the knee, did strengthening exercises and got an injection to lubricate the joint. She improved quickly and wasted no time returning to the court.
“I would play every day if my body would let me,” she says.
D.C. podiatrist Sheldon Laps says he commonly sees inversion ankle sprains from pickleball, injuries that occur when the foot twists upward and the ankle rolls inward, often the result of inappropriate shoes.
Many runners who take up pickleball assume they can play in running shoes: Don’t. Instead, wear court shoes. They are designed for pickleball, tennis and other sports that involve lateral movement.
“Many running shoes today have a ‘rocker’ sole, that is, viewing the shoe from the side, the forefoot of the shoe is curved up,” Laps says. “This aids push-off off during running and walking. But rocker type soled shoes should not be used to play a court sport. The side-to-side motion on a pickleball court increases the likelihood that the player will twist the foot at the ankle and thus, sprain the ankle.’’
As with all sports, experts recommend warming up first — easy jogging or walking, or pedaling on a stationary bicycle to work up a light sweat — and stretching, “so you don’t shock the muscles when you start doing game play,” Greiner says.
Other things to remember: If a body part hurts after the game, put ice on it for 20 minutes. Bring a water bottle, and drink frequently to avoid dehydration. If playing outdoors, wear a hat with a brim, or a visor, and use sunscreen liberally. And use eye protection — there have been reports of eye injuries from being hit in the eye with a ball or paddle.
“Injuries are part of all sports,” says Greiner, who also plays. “But if you take the proper steps, pickleball is a great sport — even at a high level of play, there is less risk of injury than from many of our other traditional sports. And it’s a fun game.” | 2022-11-15T10:45:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How to avoid slips, trips and injuries on the pickleball court - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/15/pickleball-injury-prevention-tips/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/15/pickleball-injury-prevention-tips/ |
The California house where Steve Jobs co-founded Apple is a historical site, and now the sandals he wore while pacing its floors have been sold for nearly $220,000. (Julien's Auctions/AP)
NFT | Steve Jobs Birkenstock Sandals from Julien's Auctions on Vimeo.
Jobs’s Arizona-style sandals date back to the Apple founder’s days as an “eco, alternative and New Age supporter,” according to Julien’s. Having dropped out of Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1972, he moved onto an apple orchard turned hippie commune and looked for enlightenment during a trip to India. In 1976, Jobs, along with Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, created a computer company that would eventually revolutionize the tech world.
Fanny packs. Prairie dresses. Luxury shower shoes: Is fashion trolling us or what?
Jobs also hated clutter, Mark Sheff, who was an estate manager for Jobs’s house in Albany, Calif., told Insider. It was during one of Jobs’s closet-clearing episodes that Sheff collected the pair of Birkenstocks that were, decades later, auctioned off after 19 bids.
Steve Jobs’s Apple legacy
And now they’re off to the home of some lucky buyer, who will also receive a non-fungible token, or NFT, featuring a “360° digital representation” of the sandals and Jean Pigozzi’s book “The 213 Most Important Men in My Life” — which has a shot of Jobs wearing the Birks. | 2022-11-15T10:46:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Buyer pays $218,000 for Steve Jobs's old Birkenstock sandals at auction - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/steve-jobs-birkenstock-sandals-auction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/steve-jobs-birkenstock-sandals-auction/ |
Yasiel Puig to plead guilty to lying to prosecutors in gambling case
Yasiel Puig made hundreds of sports-related wagers, with no indication any of them were on baseball, through an illegal gambling operation. (Matt Slocum/AP)
In a case stemming from a federal probe of an illegal gambling operation, former MLB player Yasiel Puig agreed to a plea deal that could land him a prison sentence of several years.
Puig, 31, is set to plead guilty Tuesday to making false statements to federal law enforcement officials, according to a news release issued Monday by the Justice Department. That charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. Puig also agreed to a fine of at least $55,000.
Per a copy of the plea agreement provided to The Washington Post, Puig and his attorney signed off on it in July, and it was filed in August at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The Cuba-born outfielder, who became an American citizen in 2019 — also the year of his most recent MLB season — agreed to a statement of facts that included the following details:
Starting no later than May 2019, Puig began making bets with an illegal operation run by a former minor league baseball player named Wayne Nix.
By June of that year, Puig owed the operation $282,900 for sports gambling losses. He was instructed to pay $200,000 to another client of the gambling business, identified as “Individual A,” who had racked up at least that much in winnings.
Puig purchased two cashiers’ checks worth $100,000 each and, after demanding direct access to websites used by Nix’s operation, mailed the checks to Individual A via UPS.
Granted the access he wanted at that point, Puig used the websites to place 899 bets on tennis, football and basketball games between July 4 and Sept. 29, 2019.
In an interview with federal agents Jan. 27 of this year, during which Puig was with his attorney and was informed that lying to them constituted a crime, he was said to have made several false statements. Per the agreement, he denied having discussed sports betting with a person identified as “Agent 1,” who was described as a baseball coach and former college player who worked for Nix’s operation. Agent 1, who was said to have helped Puig prepare for the 2019 season, also served as the go-between for wagers Puig placed with the operation.
“In fact, as defendant then knew [in the interview], defendant discussed sports betting with Agent 1 via telephone and text messages on hundreds of occasions,” prosecutors said of Puig in the agreement.
Puig also acknowledged lying about what he knew regarding his instructions for the cashier’s checks and about what kind of gambling activities led to the expenditure of $200,000.
In March, per the plea agreement, Puig sent another person involved in the case an audio message in which he said of the interview, “I said that I only know [Agent 1] from baseball.”
“When given the opportunity to be truthful about his involvement with Nix’s Gambling businesses, Mr. Puig chose not to,” IRS special agent Tyler Hatcher said in a statement. “Mr. Puig’s lies hindered the legal and procedural tasks of the investigators and prosecutors.”
Puig’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night, nor did a longtime representative for the 2014 all-star.
From 2021: The secret settlements that helped Yasiel Puig play on
A standout in Cuba who famously endured a harrowing experience while defecting to Mexico, Puig signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012 and made it to the major leagues the following year. He was traded to the Cincinnati Reds before the 2019 season and was moved to Cleveland months later in a midseason swap. For his MLB career, Puig batted .277 with a .348 on-base percentage and a .475 slugging percentage, and he hit 132 home runs to go with 415 RBI.
In 2020, Puig was on the verge of signing with the Atlanta Braves for a pandemic-shortened season when he contracted the coronavirus, scuttling the deal. He sat out the season and spent 2021 with a team in the Mexican League. He played for a South Korean team this year.
While in the major leagues, Puig was accused of sexual assault by multiple women and agreed to settlements with them. Early in his career, he was twice arrested for reckless driving, with charges eventually dropped both times.
In March, the Justice Department announced that Nix and other key figures in the illegal gambling operation agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges. The investigation by multiple federal agencies also produced an admission by a member of the group of failing to report $1.5 million in income to the IRS. Nix was said to have used his experience in the sports world to build a client list that included current and former professional athletes. His plea agreement, per the government, stated that he received payments for gambling losses from unidentified parties including “a professional football player, a Major League Baseball coach and a baseball analyst.”
The plea agreement Puig signed in July noted that it was read to him in Spanish, the language he understood best. It did not indicate that any of the bets he placed were on baseball. | 2022-11-15T10:46:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Yasiel Puig to plead guilty to lying to prosecutors in gambling case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/yasiel-puig-pleads-guilty-gambling-prison/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/yasiel-puig-pleads-guilty-gambling-prison/ |
More than half of Americans 50 and older — 54 percent — are considered to be caregivers because of the help they provide to one or more people 65 and older, according to the most recent findings of the University of Michigan’s ongoing National Poll on Healthy Aging. Most often, caregiving involves helping with health care, usually through making appointments, talking with doctors and handling insurance issues, but it can also include assisting with home cleaning, yard work, grocery shopping, meal preparation, banking and bill paying. The survey found that nearly all caregivers (94 percent) are not being paid for their help, and nearly half (47 percent) have been helping out for at least three years. The most frequent recipients are parents (45 percent of the time) and friends or neighbors (19 percent). The researchers note in their report that such support “is often essential for aging in place and managing chronic conditions” — issues that people increasingly confront as they age. The Census Bureau projects that, by 2034, older adults will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history and, by 2040, 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 or older. That reflects a worldwide trend, with every country seeing a greater percentage of older people in its population, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO predicts that, by 2050, the global population of people 60 and older will double (to 2.1 billion) and the number of people 80 and older will triple (to 426 million). | 2022-11-15T10:46:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In an aging U.S., more than half of adults are caregivers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/15/caregivers-aging-nation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/15/caregivers-aging-nation/ |
‘I want him to know that not a day goes by that I don’t think of his kindness,’ said Rose Andresen of the man who saved her and her husband after a car crash.
Rose Andresen recovering after she was involved in a car crash in December 2020. She and her husband were rescued by a stranger, and she is hoping to find him. (Courtesy of Rose Andresen)
A stranger became a hero to Rose Andresen on the eve of Dec. 27, 2020. When her husband, then 39, fainted at the wheel while driving on Interstate 10 near Jacksonville, Fla., the couple crashed off the side of the highway. A mystery man swooped in and saved their lives.
Andresen, 41, recalls the accident with unsettling clarity. She and her husband, Adam Terrell, were driving from North Carolina — where they were visiting her ill father-in-law — to Fort Walton Beach, Fla., where the couple was living at the time.
They were about 10 hours into the drive, and it was dark out. They were listening to an audiobook, when suddenly, Terrell quietly said: “I don’t feel so good.”
“The next second, he was slumped over the steering column, completely unconscious,” Andresen said.
The car was on cruise control, going 70 miles an hour. Andresen managed to reach under her husband to put the hazard lights on, and she took hold of the steering wheel from the passenger seat, swerving the car across three lanes of traffic.
“Everything was slow and fast all at once,” said Andresen.
She knew they would crash, and to avoid other vehicles, she aimed for cluster of trees off the highway.
“We went through those trees and down an embankment,” Andresen remembered, adding that she couldn’t find their cellphones once the car came to a halt. “We were alone in the darkness.”
The passenger door wouldn’t open, so she climbed out the window, and went searching for help. She saw a big SUV that was headed in the opposite direction take the nearest exit, get back on the interstate and pull up beside her. He made several “deliberate, calculated decisions,” Andresen said.
The driver told her he had already called 911, then he helped her find her way back to her husband. He didn’t leave the couple’s side until the ambulance arrived.
“No one else even slowed down,” Andresen said. He was “the only driver who stopped that night.”
The couple was rushed to the hospital, where they were both treated for broken backs. Doctors also diagnosed Terrell with a heart condition — which explained his sudden collapse — and gave him a pacemaker.
“It was a condition that he already had that we didn’t know about, that was probably exacerbated by the incredible amount of emotional distress he was under,” said Andresen, citing his father’s poor health. At the time, her own father was also critically ill, and they had plans to travel to Arizona to say goodbye to him.
Despite their anguish — both physically and emotionally — the couple was determined to thank the stranger who came to their rescue. They felt defeated when they realized his name was not listed on the police report, and they weren’t sure how else to track him down.
“It’s something that I think about a lot,” said Andresen.
On Nov. 12, the couple was chatting about how the two-year anniversary of the accident was approaching.
“It’s almost Thanksgiving, and we’re thankful to be alive,” Andresen said, adding that both she and her husband have recovered. “It feels miraculous.”
In the same conversation, they spoke about Elon Musk’s recent acquisition of Twitter, and the chaotic changes on the platform. Some have speculated that the site will soon cease to exist.
“I’ve been on the internet for a very long time,” said Andresen, who is a vampire tour guide and author based in New Orleans. “I have seen the death of AOL, I have seen the death of LiveJournal and I have seen the death of MySpace.”
“I’d like to believe that Twitter is going to hang around,” she continued. “I don’t want it to go away, but experience has shown me that it might.”
So Andresen decided to put out a plea on the site, hoping to find her hero. She wrote a thread chronicling the story, and described the driver as best she could.
“I remember almost nothing about him. He was driving a bigger SUV. Maybe it was brown, or blue?” she wrote. “There was a child’s artwork on the floorboard of the passenger seat. He was kind. He kept me calm. He stayed til help arrived.”
“If there’s any way to find him before this site goes dark, I’d like to do so. I would like to be able to thank him for stopping. I’d like to be able to tell him that we lived,” she wrote in another tweet. “I want him to know that not a day goes by that I don’t think of his kindness. As we approach the 2-year anniversary of the accident, I’d like, very much, to be able to thank him in person, or over the phone. Help me with this long shot?”
People on Twitter sprang to action. Some shared suggestions and tips, while others offered words of kindness. The thread has more than 54,000 likes, and 16,000 retweets.
In addition to showing support, several people also shared their own harrowing stories of being saved by a stranger — or saving someone they did not know.
“I hope you find him. When I was little, my grandpa died in the car my brother was driving with my sister and I. Two strangers took us to a bank where a family member picked us up,” one person commented. “My mom said she always regretted not putting an ad in the paper to find them. Kindness.”
“I don’t know anything about 12/27/2020, but I once stopped for a guy who crashed head on into an 18 wheeler, and 20 years later a car stopped to call for help when my dad crashed his motorcycle on a lonely road in the Rockies,” another person wrote. “It’s always good to know people care for strangers.”
There were many more stories like that. Andresen was stunned by the response to her thread.
“It’s incredible to see how many people have gone through something similar,” Andresen said. “It’s one of those things that makes you feel connected to humans.”
So far, Andresen’s quest has yielded two leads, though neither was the right guy. She still has hope that she will find her hero, but she said sharing her story publicly has been a worthwhile endeavor regardless.
“I’m going to be thinking about these whirlwind two days for the rest of my life, as much as I think about the accident,” she said. “It’s profound when you find yourself connected to people in that kind of way. It’s humbling, and anchoring.”
There is a chance, Andresen said, that her hero doesn’t want to be found.
“If he never comes forward, but sees this, I want him to know that I watch the road differently now,” she said. “I know what I’ll do if I see something. Because of what he did, I look for opportunities in the world to pay it forward.” | 2022-11-15T11:29:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rose Andresen asked Twitter for help finding the hero who saved her - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/15/twitter-hero-rose-andresen-accident/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/15/twitter-hero-rose-andresen-accident/ |
Perspective by Natalia Jiménez-Stuard
Christine T. Nguyen
Clad in jacket with an American flag, a supporter attends a campaign event for Republican senate candidate Joe O’Dea in Broomfield, Colo., on Nov. 5. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
The final weeks leading up to the midterm elections were a frenzy of activity as hundreds of candidates campaigned across the country in a slew of races. From newly created House districts to statewide Senate and gubernatorial contests, voters had the opportunity to assess their elected officials throughout much of the United States.
Candidates popped into diners. Canvassers knocked on one door after the next. Political leaders wooed supporters. And hands were clasped tightly in the hopes of inspiring the electorate to cast their ballot in an off-year election when turnout is traditionally low.
Throughout the election season, a team of Washington Post photographers traversed the country capturing moments big and small to tell the story of the midterms. We visited local fairs and listened to voters (and perhaps indulged in a fried Oreo), documented the final campaign push across the swing states and learned from those who turned out on Election Day, as well as those who stayed home.
Here we share our favorite moments from this year’s midterms, from the offbeat to the sweet and curious and everything in between. | 2022-11-15T11:46:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Offbeat midterm moments: Election images that caught our eye - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/11/15/offbeat-midterm-moments-election-images-that-caught-our-eye/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/11/15/offbeat-midterm-moments-election-images-that-caught-our-eye/ |
Some Democrats said they are concerned by the election wins of Derrick van Orden and George Santos.
Wisconsin 3rd District congressman-elect Derrick Van Orden is one of two newly elected House members who were at the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington, though he says he did not participate in the riot that happened at the U.S. Capitol. (Peter Thomson/La Crosse Tribune/AP)
As Republican Derrick Van Orden celebrated his victory with raucous supporters Tuesday night, he vowed to work with the Democrat he’d just defeated in a western Wisconsin House race, saying, “We have to get back to a place where we represent everyone.”
That bipartisan message was all the more remarkable given the journey that Van Orden has taken to Congress.
Van Orden was at President Donald Trump’s “Save America” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, and then joined the crowd that marched down the Mall toward the Capitol, saying in a television interview that “I went there to stand with them, to stand up for electoral integrity.”
Van Orden said he never entered the Capitol, which was ransacked by a pro-Trump mob that day seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election. But in two months, he will do so as one of at least two Jan. 6 rally attendees-turned-congressmen. The other, George Santos — a New York Republican who won in a district in Queens and Long Island — has described enjoying the “front-row spectacle” of an “amazing” Jan. 6 rally crowd on the Ellipse.
While the Republican Party suffered surprising losses in the midterms, including defeats of many who bought into Trump’s false election claims, the arrival of freshman lawmakers who had come to Washington as pro-Trump activists on that violent day underscores the extent to which the House Republican caucus remains a haven for election deniers. As of Saturday, at least 150 election deniers were projected to win House races, compared with the 139 who voted against certifying President Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021.
Van Orden and Santos stand out because of their presence at Jan. 6 events and subsequent election victories, which Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called “horrific and bone-chilling.”
“It is very difficult to serve with people who took part in any way, shape or form in what happened on Jan. 6,” said Jayapal, who was trapped in a House gallery with several dozen other members when rioters tried to enter the chamber. “There’s a very physical reaction for many of us who were trapped there and who went through a lot of traumatic experiences.”
Van Orden and Santos declined a request from The Post to discuss their actions on Jan. 6.
Rep. Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat who did not seek reelection this year in the district where Van Orden prevailed Tuesday over Democrat Brad Pfaff, doubted Van Orden’s pledge to be bipartisan.
“His worldview of things is that Democrats are the enemy that needs to be fought and contest[ed] every step of the way,” Kind said. “He will not be interested in working with Democrats.”
Others noted that the House already includes dozens of Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s election on Jan. 6 while echoing Trump’s falsehoods, further complicating hopes of comity.
“If they want to get anything done, with a small majority in Congress, you have to have bipartisan efforts,” said Rep. John Katko, a New York Republican who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the insurrection and did not seek reelection.
Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), who lost his primary after voting to impeach Trump, faulted other Republicans who blocked impeachment and voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election.
“There’s a whole lot of folks in Congress, not just people who are coming” who bear responsibility for not holding Trump accountable, he said. That, in turn, led to Republicans underperforming in this year’s midterm elections, he said.
Neither Van Orden nor Santos has spoken in depth on the campaign trail about their actions on Jan. 6.
Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has described how his service imprinted on him the importance of democracy, telling a podcast that watching Iraqis vote for the first time “made me more proud as an American and as a SEAL than I’ve really ever been.”
After writing a book — “Book of Man: A Navy SEAL’s Guide to the Lost Art of Manhood” — Van Orden said he got into politics in 2019 after Kind did not respond to his email asking the congressman’s position in Trump’s first impeachment trial. (Kind said his office responds to every email.)
After Kind beat Van Orden in 2020 by a 51.3-48.7 percent margin, Van Orden followed some in his party who suggested Trump may have lost due to fraud.
Four days after the election, Van Orden tweeted, “There is plenty of anecdotal evidence pointing to voter fraud in key states. Hold Fast.” On Nov. 12, 2020, he tweeted about a Trump-backed Wisconsin recount effort, “Every legal vote needs to be counted. We are a Constitutional Republic, not a Banana Republic.” Van Orden did later ask that his name be removed from a lawsuit seeking to overturn Biden’s victory in Wisconsin, tweeting on Dec. 1, 2020, that it was added without his permission.
Van Orden has also tweeted that Democrats are using the same techniques that have “been used historically by the most oppressive and criminal regimes in world history,” and more recently said that while “there are many God-fearing Christians who are Democrats, there’s not a single God-fearing Christian that is a leftist.”
On Jan. 4, 2021, wearing a red-and-blue tie, white shirt and dark suit, Van Orden filmed himself in D.C. walking to the Capitol. “We’re here to support voter integrity” he said in a video. On Jan. 6, he arrived late for Trump’s “Save America” rally on the Ellipse, his attorney later told the Federal Election Commission, and stayed on the “periphery” of the speech. When the crowd, urged on by Trump to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory, began marching on the Capitol, Van Orden “decided to walk down the mall to the Capitol and wait for people to march there,” he wrote in an op-ed.
As thousands streamed toward the Capitol, Van Orden wrote, he and two friends “stood on the parapet that lines the perimeter of the grounds.” Van Orden says he left “when it became clear that a protest had become a mob.” He tweeted at 4:35 p.m. to denounce the riots as “unlawful political violence.”
“We never went on the Capitol grounds,” he told Wisconsin’s News 9 later that week.
However, a photo published six months later by the Daily Beast shows Van Orden smiling in front of one of the Olmstead Lanterns, which the website of the Architect of the Capitol describes as being on the Capitol grounds. The Daily Beast reported that to get to that site, Van Orden would have had to go beyond police lines. Van Orden has not questioned the authenticity of the photo or that it was taken on Jan. 6. Van Orden did not respond to the Daily Beast’s questions about the trip, the publication said.
Santos, a 34-year-old Wall Street investor who lost a 2020 bid for Congress to Democrat Thomas Suozzi, also went to the Ellipse on Jan. 6 to watch the rally at which Trump falsely said that he had won the election and that he would join protesters marching to Capitol Hill. Santos said on a podcast hosted by Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, that it “was the most amazing crowd, and the president was at his full awesomeness that day. It was a front-row spectacle for me. And despite everything everybody says, I think Donald Trump will not go away.”
He said he did not go into the Capitol. Newsday reported he was filmed months later saying he wrote a “nice check to a law firm” to help get rioters out of prison and comparing the actions of those imprisoned to “breaking into your own house and being charged for trespassing.”
On the campaign trail, both Santos and Van Orden avoided discussing Jan. 6. When Wisconsin’s News 18 last month asked Van Orden about his actions on Jan. 6, he refused to comment, instead highlighting inflation.
Van Orden faced a complaint filed by Wisconsin Democrats with the FEC that alleged he improperly used $4,022.72 in campaign funds in relation to his Jan. 6 trip. His attorney argued that he’d gone to D.C. for political meetings, and that even if Van Orden’s sole purpose was to attend the rally, it would have been a legal use of campaign funds. The FEC dismissed the complaint, citing the small amount at stake.
Now, Van Orden and Santos will face colleagues who were inside the Capitol as the rally took place, followed by the deadly riot. Jayapal said she was particularly upset about Santos’s comparison of rioters to someone arrested for breaking into their own house.
“This is actually the people’s house,” she said. “It’s the country itself. This was an insurrection, not forgetting your key and breaking glass to let yourself in.” She said that “writing a check to get people out, saying they didn’t do anything wrong” was equivalent to condoning the violence that happened that day.
They’ll join a fractured Republican caucus in a House that is poised to have a narrow margin, whichever party ends up in control.
Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), who was among the members in the chamber on Jan. 6, said that Van Orden and Santos “are going to find themselves with considerably less muscle power than they thought they might have, given the direction of the election.” She said that “they will be freshman members of Congress with a whole lot of learning to do and I seriously doubt that I’ll have much interaction with them, which is just fine with me.”
Katko said he hopes — whatever their past actions — that they’ll consider joining the consensus-seeking Republican Governance Group that he chaired until recently. Katko, who said he will remain on the board, said the group has grown from 19 members a few years ago to 46, and that this week’s close election results should swell the ranks further.
“We got a lot of people coming in that would be part of that group, and that’s going to play a very, very, very important role,” Katko said. “You hear a lot about the House Freedom Caucus,” an assemblage of some of the House’s most conservative members, “but the fact of the matter is that the leadership’s going to need to rely on pragmatists to get things done.”
Alice Crites contributed to this report | 2022-11-15T11:46:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Derrick Van Orden's journey from Jan. 6 attendee to Congress - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/derrick-van-orden-jan-6-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/derrick-van-orden-jan-6-congress/ |
Man, 19, fatally shot in Southeast Washington
A D.C. police vehicle at a crime scene. (Peter Hermann/The Washington Post)
A young man who was shot Sunday in Southeast Washington’s Capitol View neighborhood has died, according to D.C. police.
The victim was identified as James Gillespie, 19, of Northeast Washington.
Police said the shooting occurred shortly before 1:55 p.m. in the 100 block of 58th Street SE, near East Capitol Street and Southern Avenue.
Gillespie was take to a hospital where he died, police said. No arrest has been made.
Homicides in the District are down 7 percent compared to this time last year, according to police statistics. | 2022-11-15T12:08:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man fatally shot in Southeast Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/shooting-homicide-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/shooting-homicide-dc/ |
Has the encore left the building?
Once a given in live concerts, the encore is now seen by some as an artifact of old-school showbiz, rather than an authentic exchange between performer and audience
“ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE!”
Ahh, can’t you just hear it? The crowd, hundreds or thousands strong, wanting — no, needing — to hear at least one more song, their chant energizing the room, desperate to keep the night going just a little bit longer, to stave off the silence another few minutes …
That’s rarely how it actually goes anymore. If a band walks offstage these days, they might stay there. Some bands have grown weary — not of the love an encore elicits, but of the charade that came to define the tease. As the encore disappears, so does that awkward period of time when audience members calculate if they should grab one last beer or head for the bathroom, or, if sated in every sense, consider getting a jump on traffic and leaving. There is increasing evidence that the encore itself has already left.
“They feel yucky to me. They feel forced,” says Stefan Babcock, frontman of PUP, a raucous power punk band. “We’re pretty self-deprecating people and a self-deprecating band, and it felt weird to leave the stage expecting to have our egos stroked.”
Encores probably “started with the right intention, where a band played what they intended on playing,” Babcock says. “And then on occasion, they just had such a spectacular set or people were so enthusiastic that they demanded more out of the band, and that’s a great sentiment, but when you start building it into the show because people have come to expect it, it just feels kind of disingenuous. Now, if you’re a band that does encores and you don’t do it, it’s just a slap in the face.”
PUP’s anti-encore stance held firm when they hammered out a 19-song set at the Fillmore in Silver Spring in May. Toward the end, Babcock offered the audience a brief explanation, the same one he’s been giving for years, that they weren’t about to take a break; they were done. The moshing fans didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. “I think audiences are more understanding now more than ever,” he says. Plus, he finds something almost respectful in “not wasting people’s time, knowing they want the show, and then they want to get back to their kids or get back to their homework or get back go to sleep, so that they can get up early in the morning and do what they gotta do.”
A small but growing contingent of artists seems to be following suit. At 9:30 Club in September, the Afghan Whigs, once known for their eclectic encores, pummeled the audience with bracing guitars and booming drums for a couple dozen straight songs. And that was it.
Ditto for Broken Social Scene, who played an encore-less set at Washington’s Lincoln Theater and, the following night, 9:30 Club in October. Singer/songwriter Maggie Rogers usually walks back onstage to perform “Different Kind of World,” an acoustic version of “Alaska,” or one of her other hits, but she recently wondered if fans enjoyed the familiar charade of the encore and put a poll up on Instagram Stories asking if her fans really wanted one. (Spoiler alert: She’s still playing them.) The Chicks, once fond of the encore, skipped it on their latest tour, opting instead for the iconic “Goodbye Earl” to signal the end of the show.
The Gaslight Anthem thundered through their set at the Anthem in October, straight through the end: two of their most popular songs, “45″ and “The ’59 Sound.” The band’s frontman, Brian Fallon, has tweeted that he does technically play the encore. He just skips the part “where I walk offstage and come back again because I can fit another song in the time it takes to do that. I’d rather people get an extra song for their money.” And, like most non-encore bands, he’s vigilant in making sure the audience knows not to expect the whole walk-off-stage part, tweeting last year, “Just to be clear — I guarantee you I will talk, will probably talk some more, will play a song, will then talk more, will not do an encore, and I will definitely talk. Also will be happy you are there. Also will talk. Oh and no encore. And talking.”
Other artists, such as the Foo Fighters and the Strokes, have never played many encores. We “don’t do encores,” Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl often announces to the crowd. “We just f---ing play 'til the show is over.” Pop star Grimes finds that they awkwardly disrupt the flow of her sets so she opts for longer ones. Same for Jack Antonoff’s Bleachers. Country artist Jason Aldean doesn’t like them. “I like to play you guys everything we’ve got and when the show’s over, it’s over,” he said at one concert.
“It feels more honest and direct to give the audience a fabulous show, without any nonsense at the end,” says Jay Siegan, an experienced club owner and promoter who has worked with artists like Celine Dion, Weezer and Imagine Dragons. “Why not leave them hungry for more? I find it really refreshing when an artist pours their heart out into a magnificent performance, and then runs offstage. That is rock-and-roll.”
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“It’s kind of wild to me that [encores] lasted through the ’90s with bands who were sort of cynical of showbiz tactics, because it’s such an old showbiz idea. Of course there’s going to be smoke and mirrors no matter what, but the encore is a pretty overt lie to the audience,” says Max Collins, the frontman of Eve 6 and BuzzFeed’s newest advice columnist, though he added that in the right circumstances, an encore can be an exchange of generosity between artists and fans.
Eve 6 faces an interesting challenge of sorts. Collins knows their audiences want to hear “Inside Out,” the band’s 1998 hit, which he affectionately refers to as the “heart in a blender song,” thanks to its chorus. So when should they play it?
“After we play the heart in a blender song, we know people are going to kind of start checking their watches, so sometimes I might do a little spiel about how we’re not going to insult you with the concept of the encore,” Collins says. “So we’re just going to play two more alternative rock barnburners for you right now. No break. But what I’m really doing is saying, ‘Hey, don’t leave, even though we just played the heart in a blender song.’”
Sometimes, he adds, they’ll play encores if the mood and the setting call for it — but it’s rarely “Inside Out.” Instead, they might bring out a special guest to “raise the energy,” either toward the end of the show or as a proper encore, such as when Patrick Stickles of Titus Andronicus joined them onstage in New York as surprise guest, three songs before the end of their set, to lend his imitable rasp to “Promise.”
For many, that seems to be the key. Don’t waste our time with the encore we expect. Put some effort in. Make it count. Create something special.
Josh Gondelman, a comedian who has worked as a writer on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” and Showtime’s “Desus & Mero,” counts himself as a big music fan and a fan of the encore — when done right. “I am ultimately for them, because I like hearing more songs,” he says. “But I think the de rigueur, pro forma encore that has become a concert staple” feels like “kind of manufactured drama no one believes in.”
He compares encores to “the expected post-credit scene in a Marvel movie,” which used to be this “special, exciting thing” but now the audience just “sits here because we know we’re not going to get the full experience if we don’t.” Or maybe, he says, the encore is like an act of kayfabe, referring to the portrayal of staged events in pro wrestling. Would it be possible, he jokingly muses, for an audience to be so quiet at the end of a set that a band would just skip the encore? What would it take?
For Gondelman, it needs to be special. Case-in-point: One of the “coolest” encores he’s seen came about 15 years ago at the end of a Beastie Boys concert in Worcester, Mass., when they played an instrumental song from the balconies, not the stage. “That was a thing that felt like it couldn’t be in the body of the set. Instead, it was a special, fun wrinkle for people who stick around.”
The point of the encore, he muses, is to give fans that feeling of something memorable, a little lagniappe to heighten the experience. Yet despite being an avid show-goer, Gondelman can count on two hands the ones that stand out. “I don’t remember most of them as much as I remember the time I saw Beyoncé sneeze, and the whole crowd said, ‘Bless you.’ That was a really organic moment.”
The one that shocked folk-rock singer/songwriter Matt Nathanson came at the Forum in Los Angeles during Metallica’s tour for 1991′s self-titled record known to fans as “The Black Album.” The band tore through more than two hours of hard rock, left the stage, returned for the encore and left again. The lights went up — the telltale sign that a show is truly over. As Nathanson remembers, about half the crowd split for the doors, but his two friends told him they couldn’t leave.
“I was like, ‘Dude, they just finished playing, like, two hours. They did an encore. They’re definitely done,’” Nathanson says. His friends insisted he was wrong.
“And sure enough, about 15 or 20 minutes later, the lights went back down and Metallica came out and played another couple of songs. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he says, in awe of how the encore wound up being a true gift to the remaining fans who waited it out. “I remember thinking, [this is] the way to do it, you know?”
He stopped playing encores at every show years ago, and would warn the crowd early that “we’re past that point of our dating. … The way I described it is … you eat spaghetti on like the 10th date or whenever you feel comfortable.” He’d tell fans “we’re past the third or fourth date now. I’m going to eat spaghetti in front of you. … We know each other well enough that I don’t need to be demure. And fans liked it!”
Occasionally, a crowd will motivate Nathanson to return to the stage — and he scrambles to figure out what song to play. But he likes that. It’s electric. It’s real. It’s earned. And isn’t that the point of a true encore?
“Aren’t we all sort of yearning for something genuine?” he asks. | 2022-11-15T12:12:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is the encore finished? Some bands think so. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/15/bands-not-doing-encores/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/15/bands-not-doing-encores/ |
‘America’s Got Talent’ breakout finds herself at home in ‘Chicago’
Registered nurse Christina Wells parlayed success in the 2018 TV singing competition to a full-time music career
Christina Wells, a 2018 contestant on “America's Got Talent,” plays prison matron “Mama” Morton in “Chicago” at the National Theatre. (Jeremy Daniel)
Decades before Christina Wells played a sashaying prison matron in the stage musical “Chicago,” the Houston native locked away her show business ambitions and seemingly threw away the key.
That was back in the mid-1990s, when she was a 19-year-old high school graduate with an immaculate voice and plus-sized frame. But as Wells recalls it, the music industry was in the market for “skinny, skinny” starlets amid a search for the next Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera.
“I used to be not that big, but bigger than people wanted me to be,” says Wells, 46. “So every time I [auditioned], people were like, ‘Yeah, you can sing, but you’re just too heavy.’ I just allowed that to become my truth.”
So Wells gave up on becoming a recording artist or musical theater performer, continued her education, and spent the next two-plus decades working as a registered nurse while raising two sons. But after dusting off her pipes and winning Houston’s Pride Superstar singing competition in 2016, the single mother got the attention of scouts from “America’s Got Talent,” won over the judges with a rendition of “I Know Where I’ve Been” — Motormouth Maybelle’s “Hairspray” showstopper — and made a rousing run to the NBC competition’s 2018 semifinals.
Within months, Wells quit nursing to at last take a crack at singing full time. Now, when she’s not recording her own tracks or working as a motivational speaker, Wells can be seen as Matron “Mama” Morton in the 25th-anniversary tour of “Chicago’s” Broadway revival that arrives at the National Theatre this week. In playing the lascivious jailer, who exchanges favors for bribes in the Cook County Jail women’s ward, Wells has found validation in Fred Ebb, John Kander and Bob Fosse’s jazzy sendup of celebrity criminals of the Roaring Twenties.
“I’m a dramatic woman — I’m loud, I’m over the top and, for so many years, I thought that I was just wrong,” Wells says. “I’m just too fat, I’m too dramatic, I’m too loud and nobody wants to hear me sing Broadway tunes at the top of my lungs. Now, I’m just the right size, I’m just dramatic enough and people do want to hear me sing Broadway tunes at the top of my lungs.”
In a phone interview earlier this month, during a tour stop in Austin, Wells discussed her “America’s Got Talent” experience, the appeal of playing Mama and her advice for others pursuing unlikely dreams.
Q: “America’s Got Talent” obviously changed your life. How validating was it to find success on that stage?
A: You know, it’s a mixed bag. [Executive producer and judge] Simon Cowell is not really known for liking people who are plus-sized, and I’m not a little fat — I’m a big woman. So a lot of people online were very angry about that at first. It was like, “Why is Simon saying yes to you when he said no to all of these other people?” A lot of people were really talking about my body online, and that was a journey. But I think what really happened is I just started to realize that [success in show business] isn’t as far away and magical as everyone thinks it is. For me to be doing a live national television show, it shows it’s possible.
Q: What’s been the trickiest part of pivoting to a new career in your 40s?
A: The hardest thing is the transition, I always say, from being a senior back to being a freshman. Because in nursing, I’m a trained, educated, certified person and I have years of experience. So when I walk into a hospital, I know what I’m doing. Coming into this field, I just sometimes feel like a fish out of water. I just don’t know all of the terms, all of the language, and it’s been really eye-opening. But I’ve been trusting that I’m talented enough, and also trusting that if I figured out how to navigate nursing and do “America’s Got Talent,” I can do this.
Q: How familiar were you with “Chicago” before joining the show?
A: People have asked me to sing “When You’re Good to Mama” because it fits my vocal type, but never have I delved into the role or really thought about it. Like, Motormouth Maybelle feels very, very cellular to me, but “Chicago” wasn’t like that for me. It’s a very sexy show, and I think it’s a challenge to view myself as sexy when it comes to being onstage. I see myself as motherly, I see myself as warm, I see myself as knowledgeable, but I don’t always see myself onstage as sexy. So I’ve been finding that energy onstage of being loving and smart and cunning, but also being sexy.
Q: What have you come to appreciate about Mama as you’ve explored the character?
A: It’s been interesting to figure out a woman in charge of a prison in the 1920s, who has the brass to be in charge of all of these murderers but is warm enough to love them and care for them — and savvy enough to make sure she keeps her wallet thick enough to protect herself. I find new things in her and the show every week.
Q: As a motivational speaker, what would you say to other people chasing improbable goals?
A: I’m not exactly what you would expect to see, so if you just feel different or feel otherness — like, if you’re “other” in a category of very clear choices — live in that otherness, because that uniqueness is what has afforded me my opportunities and that’s what has made me relatable to people who watch me, both on television and onstage. So I just want to encourage all of us out there that are different — which I’m learning is everybody — to be yourself. Be truly, rawly, uniquely yourself, and allow that to shine through.
National Theatre, 1321 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. broadwayatthenational.com. | 2022-11-15T12:12:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘America’s Got Talent’ breakout Christina Wells is at home in ‘Chicago’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/11/15/christina-wells-chicago-national-theatre/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/11/15/christina-wells-chicago-national-theatre/ |
Decades of neglect in nursing homes spur Biden plan for staff mandates
Industry opposes a federal minimum staff requirement, citing high costs and workforce shortages
Many experts and advocates have been demanding minimum staffing in U.S. nursing homes for decades. (Portland Press Herald/Getty Images)
Lisa Cabrera saw the warning signs of poor care at her father’s California nursing home — the bug bites on his back, the facial injuries from a fall, the times he was soaked in urine instead of being ready for trips to church. Still, she believed repeated assurances that the staff had inspected the pressure sore on his heel and changed the bandages.
But her dad, Louie Sira, 67, a disabled former janitor, kept gesturing to his right leg, indicating he felt pain. Finally, Cabrera peeled the dressing back herself, which had grown worse since the last time she looked.
“It stunk so bad, and it was bigger,” Cabrera said. The gangrenous wound had dug down to bone and tendon in his heel, according to court records. Doctors were forced to amputate his right leg above the knee. He died three months later, in August 2019.
A county jury awarded $13.5 million in civil damages to Sira’s family and other plaintiffs after lawyers argued Parkview Healthcare Center in Hayward, Calif., and its affiliated management company, Mariner Health Central, skimped on nursing staff to boost profits. State and county authorities are seeking civil penalties, alleging among other things that Mariner saved more than $4 million by short-staffing the Parkview facility in the last three years Sira lived there.
Parkview and Mariner, which are appealing the verdict, say the plaintiffs did not present sufficient evidence of neglect or, in the case of Sira, wrongful death. It has denied all allegations including that its facilities were understaffed and that it kept its nursing force low for financial gain.
Critics say the details of Sira’s suffering add to decades of accumulated evidence that residents suffer more complications, such as bed sores and falls, in nursing homes with inadequate numbers of front-line nurses and nursing assistants. Now, after years of debate and industry resistance, the Biden administration has set in motion plans for a federal minimum staffing requirement for the nation’s 15,500 nursing homes. The new rule is expected to be announced in 2023.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in an interview that the extraordinary toll of coronavirus deaths in nursing homes served as a catalyst for the Biden administration to take action. Nearly 160,000 nursing home residents have died of covid-19 in the coronavirus pandemic, a catastrophic impact on frail elderly people who were especially vulnerable to infection and living in closely packed quarters. About 2,700 staff members also have died in the pandemic.
“The dirty little secret was there,” Becerra said. “With covid, you couldn’t hide it.”
Many experts and advocates have been demanding minimum staffing in U.S. nursing homes for decades. “If we can finally get this accomplished, it’s not going to solve all the problems, but it’s going to make a big difference,” said Charlene Harrington, a professor emeritus at the University of California at San Francisco and a researcher on the impact of staff size and training on nursing home quality.
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A pivotal 2001 report produced for the agency that regulates the industry, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) found that nursing homes should deliver at least 4.1 hours of nursing care to each resident every day to avoid harm such as bed sores and falls — about the equivalent of one nurse for every seven residents on day and evening shifts.
Most U.S. nursing homes fall short of that minimum.
In 2019, the year before the pandemic, only about a third, or 5,200, nursing homes “frequently” reached the 4.1 hours threshold for each resident, according to an estimate by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It defined “frequently” as at least 80 percent of the days in a year.
On the bottom end of the spectrum, the GAO estimate said, roughly a fifth, or 3,000, nursing homes met the minimum standard on fewer than 20 percent of the days in a year.
Amid industry opposition to mandates, however, the 2001 CMS study guidelines have never become a requirement. In the two decades since, lawsuits, state inspections, academic studies and government reports have continued to show the negative impact of low nursing staff levels on quality.
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It is not yet clear what ratio the administration will impose, and whether it will adhere to the 2001 guidelines or pick another range. It is conducting a new analysis of nursing home operations to help it decide. Wherever it lands, Biden’s plan will run up against the lobbying clout of the nation’s nursing homes, which have won previous debates over a national staffing minimum, including in 2016, when President Barack Obama’s administration rejected the idea.
The industry contends minimum staff mandates of 4.1 hours per resident per day would cost up to $10 billion per year and are unworkable because of a shortage of workers willing to do the job. It says government has never provided enough funding, especially through Medicaid programs, to support that level of staffing, which it says could require 187,000 new workers.
“It’s one thing to announce we are going to get all these workers in all these buildings, but are we as a society willing to pay for it? So far the answer has been no,” said Mark Parkinson, president and chief executive of the American Health Care Association, which represents the nursing home industry.
“If you have more staff, it’s better than having less staff,” he added. But imposing a broad mandate does not make sense, he said. The association cites federal data showing total nursing home employment dropped to 1.34 million workers from 1.58 million during the pandemic.
“The administration can propose it and may require it to be done,” Parkinson said, “but the workers are not there and it will not happen.”
The association has said most nursing homes in the country are grappling with the fallout of staff shortages made worse by the pandemic. LeadingAge, an association that represents nonprofit nursing homes, also opposes the mandate. It said in written comments to the administration that the rule “unjustly punishes nursing homes that are unable to meet standards due to factors beyond their control.”
Critics counter that the nursing home industry has abundant profit available to boost staffing and make the jobs more attractive. But the industry’s business model, with multiple related corporate entities often receiving payments from a single nursing home, makes it difficult to follow the money.
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Shortchanging the direct-care workforce — primarily made up of women and people of color — with low pay, poor training and insufficient numbers is a tempting way for nursing homes to boost the bottom line, said Kelly Bagby, vice president at AARP Foundation Litigation and a former senior counsel in the Health and Human Services inspector general’s office.
“It’s the simplest way to maximize your profit,” she said.
‘Staffing is scary unsafe’
A review of enforcement actions and lawsuits filed against nursing homes illuminates the ways a poor ratio of residents to staff can lead to alleged poor care and neglect.
In Washington state, for instance, a state inspector documented staffing levels at the Arcadia Healthcare — University Place on Jan. 27, 2020. For 110 residents, there were four direct-care nurses on duty during the day shift, a ratio of one nurse assistant to 27 residents, according to the report. That day, multiple residents received their insulin hours late. The inspection report cited other examples of allegedly deficient care, including untreated pain and poor wound care.
A registered nurse at the facility told the inspector “staffing is scary unsafe here.” Representatives of the facility did not respond to requests for comment. A New York venture capital and private-equity firm listed in federal records as an indirect owner of the facility, Goldner Capital Management, also did not respond. In the facility’s corrective action plan included in the inspection report, the facility said it would provide 30 days of 24-hour manager coverage to ensure staffing levels were safe. The report said the facility also “consolidated resident rooms to provide safer staffing abilities.”
In Detroit, an inspection report for the Westwood Nursing Center said that on the weekend of Aug. 27 and 28 this year, several residents reported they could not find nursing staff and did not receive daily medications. Some of them called 911. Investigators confirmed in a review of records that multiple residents did not get their pills, including medications for pain, hypertension, blood clotting and heart problems. The inspection report said the nurses scheduled to work that weekend “called off” and that some managers, unable to obtain nurses from an outside agency, attempted to provide care themselves but did not distribute medications.
Subsequent inspections revealed a number of alleged violations at Westwood. In one, the inspection report found, a resident was restrained on multiple days in a recliner by an attachable table top. The resident was observed “pulling on the secured table and yelling out.” A staffer told the inspector the table was in place to keep the resident from falling. The resident was supposed to be released from the restraint arrangement every two hours, according to a physician’s order, but there was no evidence that order had been followed, the report said. The report also documented bedrooms allegedly strewn with garbage and swarming with flies. Westwood did not respond to a request for comment. Previously, a letter to the facility from the state in May 2022 said Westwood did not have any noncompliance issues at that time.
‘I couldn’t take care of everybody’
Certified nursing assistants provide the bulk of care in nursing homes. They earned a median wage of $14.41 an hour in 2021, according to the nonprofit policy group PHI, citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics data. They lift patients in and out of bed — a task that sometimes requires two people. They shower, bathe and groom. They are supervised by smaller numbers of higher-skilled nurses — registered nurses and licensed practical nurses — who dispense medications and monitor vital signs.
The federal staffing requirement for each facility is one eight-hour shift per 24 hours for a registered nurse — who can make vital judgments for medical interventions — and one licensed practical nurse on duty at all times.
For the total nursing staff needed — including the people who deliver most of the care, the certified nursing assistants — the government’s rule is vague: whatever an operator determines is “sufficient” to assure the safety and well-being of residents.
To fill the void left by the lack of specific federal requirements, 35 states and D.C. have adopted their own minimum staffing standards. With the exception of D.C., they fall below the standard the CMS study identified as appropriate in 2001. In a study by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, D.C. ranked No. 1 among states on Medicare’s quality rating system, with 53 percent of facilities listed at five stars.
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In Chicago, Jacinda Gaston, who was a trainee resident assistant, described her struggles this year trying to care for residents on what she said was an understaffed floor of the Alden Lakeland Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center. On many of her shifts, just two caregivers were available to take care of 72 residents, she said in an interview. Other times, there would be three caregivers and rarely there would be four, she said.
When she arrived at 3 p.m. for the start of the evening shift, she said, she would often find residents who had been lying in bed, soaked in urine and feces for hours.
“It was disturbing. I couldn’t take care of everybody,” she said. “Knowing that these people have been sleeping in their own waste all day, we had to figure out who was the worst” and prioritize them for cleaning and fresh undergarments.
Gaston worked at Alden Lakeland from March to August of this year, she said. She now works at a different nursing home that she says is better staffed. A state inspection report of Alden Lakeland in June cited Alden as deficient for failing to provide sufficient staff.
Alden Lakeland’s Chicago parent company, Alden Group, which operates more than 50 nursing homes, is the subject of a class-action lawsuit alleging chronic short-staffing and neglect.
Alden declined to comment on specific allegations, citing pending litigation. “Alden vigorously denies any and all allegations of wrongdoing set forth by the plaintiffs and their attorneys and is confident the judicial process will vindicate Alden in this action,” the company said. “Alden is committed to providing quality care, and the well-being of our residents has been and always will be our top priority.”
In Beaver, Pa., a federal investigation into alleged staffing violations led to criminal indictments on charges of conspiracy and fraud against executives and administrators of the 589-bed Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center. The facility was the scene of one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the country in the spring of 2020, requiring the intervention of Pennsylvania National Guard troops. As of early October, 94 residents had died at Brighton from coronavirus infections, according to federal data. A spokesman for the operators, Comprehensive Healthcare Management Services, did not respond to a request for comment. Comprehensive pleaded not guilty in the case, which is pending in U.S. District Court.
Unanswered phones
Bobbie Johnson’s mother, Shirley Mike, checked in to Brighton in 2016 after a bout of sepsis. Johnson said the facility seemed nice at first. But as time went on, she said, she saw signs that her mother’s care was lacking. Her room smelled bad and her toenails grew so long they curled under her toes and caused her to limp, Johnson said. She had an unexplained bruise on her hand.
“It looked like her hair, like they didn’t try to comb it,” she said. “It didn’t look right to me.”
Johnson would bring her McDonald’s cheeseburgers and a diet soda on visits. Then in 2020 the pandemic hit. Visitors were no longer allowed. On April 3, 2020, Johnson received a call saying her mother had fallen and had been taken to the hospital. She was returned to Brighton later that day. Desperate, Johnson said she called Brighton repeatedly to check on Shirley’s condition, but the phone would just ring and ring, unanswered.
She would not know the extent of her mother’s facial injuries from the fall until more than a week later, after her mother had died of covid-19 and an undertaker informed her that Shirley had stitches in her mouth.
Brighton had given Shirley a coronavirus test on April 11, which came back positive on April 14. But Johnson was not told of the positive test until after her mother died, on April 15, according to a lawsuit alleging neglect and short-staffing filed against Brighton by Johnson and multiple other families.
“I was desperate to find out what was going on,” Johnson said. “Did they just let her lay there and die?”
Wound care gaps
Allegations of inadequate staffing took center stage in the 2021 civil trial against the Parkview nursing home and its operating company, Mariner Central. The lawyer for Lisa Cabrera and plaintiffs representing nine other residents, Susan Kang Gordon, said Parkview failed to meet California’s minimum staff threshold of 3.5 hours per day per resident of direct nursing care on 328 days over a three-year period.
State and county officials also have cited Parkview in their sweeping investigation of Mariner’s operations: “The facility routinely failed to have sufficient staff to meet the needs of its residents,” they said in a court filing in January of this year. It also has alleged that Mariner submitted inflated staff reports to the government.
The companies denied all of the allegations in a statement: “Parkview Health Care Center and Mariner Central vehemently disagree with the judgment entered in the Alameda County Superior Court and are pursuing an appeal. The companies strongly believe the appeal will be successful and the judgment will be reversed.”
Responding to the state’s claims against it, the companies added, “Parkview and the affiliated entities look forward to vindicating themselves as they defend against these scurrilous allegations.”
In the case of Louie Sira, who arrived at Parkview in 2016 after a stroke and several heart attacks, the pressure sore on his heel started as a red spot the size of a fingernail in December 2018, Gordon told the jury in the civil trial. She contended the staff neglected to follow doctor’s orders and treat it correctly by relieving pressure. He also suffered six falls in the first four months of 2019, Gordon said. He allegedly was infected multiple times with scabies and head lice.
After his daughter peeled back the heel bandage and saw the horrible nature of his wound in May 2019, he suffered a cardiac arrest while his leg was being amputated. Lawyers said he was never the same. He required a feeding tube. An expert witness testified the root cause of his death in August 2019 was the pressure injury on his right heel.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers alleged during trial that huge gaps existed in documentation of his wound care. A doctor ordered an examination by a wound specialist on Dec. 28, 2018, but there was no record the wound was examined by the wound specialist until 55 days later, according to an analysis of Sira’s medical records by the plaintiff legal team. In April 2019, 14 days passed without any record that his wound had been checked by nurses, the plaintiffs said.
Mariner has countered in court records that Sira died of preexisting conditions and that plaintiffs failed to prove that the nursing home’s conduct caused the death.
It remains uncertain how much the Parkview plaintiffs will recover after the jury award (which was modified to $8 million plus $6.6 million in attorneys’ fees). In addition to appealing in state courts, Mariner Health Central filed under Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code in September 2022 to protect itself from paying the judgment, calling it a necessary step to keep its nursing homes open. Mariner, headquartered in Atlanta, is part of a network of 50 related companies, but only three are subject to the jury verdict, according to its bankruptcy filing documents.
Cabrera wonders now if she should have tried harder to move her father to a different facility after she noticed signs of neglect. But at the time she was concerned about moving him away from his family in Hayward, away from the community where he grew up as an avid Oakland A’s fan, where he worked for decades of his life before he was disabled by a series of strokes.
“I was always verbal about my dad’s complaints, and we did have a couple of meetings (with Parkview administrators) and we would come up with a plan of action, but nothing ever followed through,” Cabrera said. “I have never had to deal with somebody being in a home like that before. I trusted that they were going to take care of him.” | 2022-11-15T12:17:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nursing home staff prevent bedsores and falls but industry opposes Biden minimums - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/15/nursing-home-staff-neglect/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/15/nursing-home-staff-neglect/ |
Workplace absences for child-care reasons rose to an all-time high in October, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Jacob Terry takes care of his daughter, Mahaluna, while working in his office at his home in Santa Clarita, Calif., on Saturday. (Jenna Schoenefeld/For The Washington Post)
His 18-month-old daughter came home from day care with Respiratory Syncytial Virus a few weeks ago. Now he’s got it, too, while trying to juggle child care responsibilities with his job as a marketing freelancer.
“My daughter’s at home, she’s sick, I’m sick,” said Terry, 39, who lives near Los Angeles. “If I don’t work, I don’t eat. I’m medicating myself and staying up all night to catch up. It’s one big mess.”
A new round of viral infections — flu, RSV, covid-19 and the common cold — is colliding with staffing shortages at schools and day cares to create unprecedented challenges for parents and teachers. More than 100,000 Americans missed work last month because of child-care problems, an all-time high that’s even greater than during the height of the pandemic, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Caring for aging parents, sick spouses is keeping millions out of work
Those absences are rippling across the economy and straining families and businesses, just as many thought they’d turned a corner.
“We have sick kids at the same time we have a child-care crisis — you put the two together and there just isn’t any wiggle room,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG. “People are falling through the cracks. It means missed paychecks, disruptions at home, and staffing shortages that erode productivity growth and increase costs at a time when we’re already worried about those things.”
Nearly three years into the coronavirus pandemic, families, businesses and health-care facilities say they’re under renewed pressure. Children’s hospitals nationwide are at capacity, in large part because of RSV and other respiratory viruses. Workplaces are reporting unfilled shifts and lost revenue as employees call out for extended periods of time. And parents are, once again, caught in an impossible position, balancing sick children, school closures and workplace demands.
Amid teacher shortage, some states are lowering job requirements
For low-income parents, no day care often means no pay | 2022-11-15T12:17:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Parents are missing work at record rates to take care of sick kids - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/15/work-absences-childcare/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/15/work-absences-childcare/ |
FILE - A model displays the collection by Russian designer Slava Zaitsev during the opening of the Fashion Week in at Zaryadye Park with the Spasskaya Tower and St. Basil’s Cathedral in the background near Red Square in Moscow, Russia, on June 20, 2022. Luxury spending is growing faster than ever, fueled by pent-up pandemic demand and shifting demographics as younger, more diverse consumers buy into tiny handbag and post-streetwear trends, according to a new study by Bain consultancy released on Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022. The disappearance of the Russian market, representing 2% of sales before the war, due to sanctions imposed after the Ukraine invasion has had “almost zero impact,’’ Bain said. (AP Photo, File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-11-15T12:17:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Global luxury sales set to hit record this year, study says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/global-luxury-sales-set-to-hit-record-this-year-study-says/2022/11/15/79d0562a-64d7-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/global-luxury-sales-set-to-hit-record-this-year-study-says/2022/11/15/79d0562a-64d7-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Native American children are under threat — again
The integrity of territory and the integrity of Native families have long been entwined
Perspective by Hayley Negrin
Hayley Negrin is an assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she teaches courses on Native American history.
Rosa Soto Alvarez and her three siblings were removed as children from their mother in Tucson. After a social worker realized the children were Yaqui, a Yaqui couple became permanent guardians to them all. Soto Alvarez touches the grave of her foster mother, Carmen Alvarez, at Monte Calvario Cemetery in Tucson this month. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Native American children are far more likely than White children to be taken from their parents and placed in the foster care system. Now, the situation may get much worse. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Bracken v. Haaland regarding the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act. If the court dismantles the act, thousands of Native families could lose their children.
The Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, was put in place in 1978 to respond to an epidemic of child loss in Indian country, with some 80 percent of Indigenous families losing at least one child to the foster care system. ICWA put the brakes on this wave of child loss by requiring authorities to attempt to place children with members of their tribe if their families could not care for them. It created a checklist for officials in the broader system that dealt with child welfare to consider the political and cultural identities of Native American people as a factor in adoptions. The act also recognized the sovereignty of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States by stating that tribal nations should have a say in what happens to their youngest citizens.
ICWA was not perfect — as the number of cases of Native children in foster care today shows — but it protected hundreds of thousands of children from cultural loss. Members of extended families and kin networks were able to raise children within their own communities and offer them the strength of their people’s histories and religious values. While the Western approach to family privileges a nuclear two-parent model, Native families have never conformed to this — children have always been raised within extensive kinship networks, which ICWA also recognized.
The case now before the Supreme Court appears to be about a White family’s desire to give a Navajo child a home. But there is more to it than that. The plaintiffs are arguing that ICWA is racially discriminatory against the child they would like to adopt. They are using the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to claim that Native children are members of a racial group and are being treated unfairly. But casting Native children as members of a racial group instead of a political one is an attempt to unravel the legal identity of Native people as citizens and to dismantle tribal sovereignty as a whole. Doing so would enable the exploitation of Native resources, including tribal lands — a potentially rich source of oil, and profit, for extractive industries.
The argument that Native people are members of a race rather than a political community goes against 400 years of treaty law. Treaties between Indigenous groups and colonial governments established the sovereignty of Native people within Euroamerican legal frameworks starting in the 1600s. This sovereignty has long been concerned with the integrity of territory as well as the integrity of families.
For example, as early as 1618, English settlers in Virginia made plans to remove Powhatan children from their homes to be brought up in the “true religion” of Protestantism. But these “savages and infidels” — as John Smith and early settlers called the Powhatan people of the Virginia region — insisted that children remain in their tribes. The Powhatan leader Opechancanough made clear that this was both a family and a political issue. If parents wished for their children to leave for brief periods for education, this had to be done with a nation-to-nation agreement between settlers and Powhatans to respect tribal sovereignty.
Settlers consistently pushed against established legal boundaries that these early treaties had created. At the end of the 17th century into the 18th, for example, settlers in the American South enslaved more than 50,000 Native people, including large numbers of children. This destroyed Native families. Enslaved Native youths were forced to labor on plantations beside enslaved Africans whose family networks were also devastated. As the plantation system rose to prominence, planters positioned Indigenous children as “Indian” enslaved people who were racial others.
In the early 19th century on the eve of the Trail of Tears, Cherokees bravely fought this kind of racialization. They remembered the stories of their ancestors’ enslavement. They put their case for nationhood before the Supreme Court and won the right to tribal governance. The trio of cases that resulted, known as the Marshal Trilogy, established the system of dual sovereignty that has structured relations between all tribes and the U.S. federal government since.
But failure to honor treaties led to disaster again in the late 19th century. Treaty obligations established in the wake of the conquest of the American West obligated the United States to issue Native families food rations. When officials refused, leaving families hungry, Indian Agents swooped in and forced starving Native families to swap their children for sacks of flour and livestock. Between 1869 and the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Native children were taken to boarding schools across the United States where they were forced to give up their culture and accept Christian education and “civilization.” Once again, children were cast as “savages” who could not function in their tribal nations as future citizens.
ICWA came about in the 1970s as child advocates and members of the American Indian Movement reacted to hundreds of years of these attacks on children and tribal sovereignty. Many of AIM’s leading figures spoke of their elders’ and their own harrowing experiences being taken from their families in the boarding school era and the intergenerational trauma they were living with as a result. Big media moments like the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 caught the attention of Washington, and Indigenous leaders made careful use of the event. Recognizing that their children were the future, they focused on developing legislation that protected both Indigenous models for kinship and tribal sovereignty at the same time — ICWA.
Now as ICWA is under threat, Indigenous leaders are gathering once again in Washington to make their case before the public. They are arguing — as their ancestors have argued for hundreds of years — that their children are not for settlers to define. Congress drafted the 14th Amendment during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era to redress the wrongs of slavery and the disenfranchisement of Black Americans, not to divest Native Americans of tribal sovereignty — as the plaintiffs are now using it.
Unraveling tribal sovereignty would not only leave Native children vulnerable, but also could undermine tribal territory. Many in Indigenous communities and their allies worry that, as in the past, settlers may be using Native children to access Indigenous resources, especially oil on tribal lands.
Given the current composition of the Supreme Court and what history tells us about the federal government’s unwillingness to honor treaty agreements protecting Native children, it is likely that ICWA will be struck down or weakened. But the position of Native people will remain the same as it always has. As Fawn Sharp, vice president of the Quinault Indian Nation, said of the court during a news conference on Thursday. “We know that no matter what they do, we occupy a certain place in this life as Native people. … There’s not a single thing that any one of them can do to take that away from us, no legislation, no court decision. They can’t buy their way into that, and they can’t regulate us. We are sovereign tribal nations from the beginning of time until the end of time.” | 2022-11-15T12:18:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Native American children are under threat — again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/11/15/brackeen-haaland-indigenous-tribes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/11/15/brackeen-haaland-indigenous-tribes/ |
FTX’s downfall shows the problems exposed by Enron have only gotten worse
Social media makes it even easier to sell the aura of success that was pivotal to both companies
Perspective by Gavin Benke
Gavin Benke is a historian and senior lecturer at Boston University and is author of "Risk and Ruin: Enron and the Culture of American Capitalism."
The FTX Arena, where the Miami Heat basketball team plays, Saturday in Miami. (Marta Lavandier/AP)
To put it mildly, things aren’t good for Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto exchange FTX.com, which recently filed for bankruptcy. Reporting on FTX — once viewed as a milestone in securing crypto’s mainstream legitimacy — suggests that Bankman-Fried may have mishandled users’ deposits in a doomed effort to keep his operations afloat. The former Treasury secretary and Harvard economist Larry Summers has likened FTX to Enron — and he’s not alone in seeing echoes of the disgraced Texas energy company, which became synonymous with white-collar crime after its failure in 2001. CNBC’s Brian Sullivan even tweeted that “FTX may be worse than Enron.”
Certainly, FTX’s collapse mirrors Enron’s stunning failure in uncanny ways. Executives at both companies made last-ditch efforts to save them through mergers. When the deals fell apart, Chapter 11 bankruptcy was the next step. In fact, the lawyer now overseeing FTX’s bankruptcy played a similar role in the aftermath of Enron’s demise.
However, the parallels between the two companies go beyond any potential acts of fraud. Enron’s rise and fall at the turn of the century was, in part, the result of the economic fragility at the heart of the information age. The FTX debacle suggests that this problem has only gotten worse in a world with social media.
When Enron crashed, it seemed to symbolize the perils of a new, opaque way of doing business. Over the course of the 1990s, Enron and its leaders became famous for claiming to have discovered a way to dominate the energy business without really getting into the messy, laborious processes that had heretofore been inherent to it. Instead of owning power plants, Enron managers like Jeffrey Skilling insisted that buying and selling energy-related financial derivatives contracts — basically agreements that would help industrial customers lock-in or otherwise manage unpredictable natural gas prices — was the future of the industry.
Skilling, the architect of this “asset-light” strategy, claimed to have cracked the code for making money from just about anything. In 1997, Enron even began offering derivatives contracts connected to the weather. It was audaciously complicated stuff.
Many on Enron’s own leadership team couldn’t explain the company’s operations to reporters and financial analysts, but that didn’t seem to matter. If anything, it was a bonus. The company’s 1999 annual report to investors actually celebrated peoples’ inability to describe the business.
Enron’s apparent success seemed to herald the arrival of exciting new economic possibilities. Businesses no longer need be weighed down by costly physical processes and assets. Skilling, along with the rest of Enron’s management team, was celebrated in management books, business school classes and news stories. Just as importantly, an enviable stock price seemed to vindicate the company’s unorthodox approach to business.
Enron’s marketing team worked hard to reinforce this impression of innovation. In 2000, the company launched an ad campaign imploring business leaders to “Ask Why.” Television commercials with that phrase echoing over and over suggested the dawn of a new economic era. The future had arrived, and it promised to be full of incredible wealth.
However, despite Enron’s seemingly spectacular profits, the company, in reality, had a massive cash-flow problem. Fantastically complex derivatives deals were worth a lot on paper, but the money itself never really found its way into the company’s accounts. Famously, Enron’s finance team hid these problems for years by relying on a grab bag of accounting tricks that made the company look much healthier than it actually was.
When the company’s real financial picture became clear in late 2001, the crash was dramatic. Enron’s stock price and credit rating plunged so fast that by the end of the year, the company filed for bankruptcy — the largest in American history at that point.
Due to advancements in technology, the risks of this sort of balance sheet chicanery have only grown in the two decades since the company crashed. Andrew Fastow, Enron’s chief financial officer, relied on dizzyingly intricate derivatives trades with special-purpose entities (shell companies meant to do business with Enron). By contrast, reporting indicates that Bankman-Fried only needed special software to allegedly secretly move money to his other company, Alameda Research — allegations he denies. Tellingly, both cases also relied on shaky assets — Enron stock and FTX’s own crypto coin (FTT) — as collateral.
But this alleged fraud is just one of the problems exposed by both scandals.
In 2002, a few months after the Texas energy company’s demise, Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan remarked that “the rapidity of Enron’s decline is an effective illustration of the vulnerability of a firm whose market value rests largely on capitalized reputation.” In other words, Enron’s success depended on hype and the impression of incredible success — not doing or producing something tangible that all Americans could see. Enthusiastic stock recommendations and a public intoxicated by soaring stock prices were essential to the company’s existence, and to ensuring other companies felt comfortable entering into deals with Enron. As long as its managers could make the company look good on paper and people believed it, Enron thrived.
Enron’s business was at least nominally connected to things in the real world, but FTX trucked and bartered in crypto currencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are, in a sense, nothing but “capitalized reputation.” After all, most NFTs are digital images that lack any direct connection to a world beyond a computer screen. Likewise, crypto currencies might be used as units of exchange, but their history of wild price swings and, indeed, FTX’s sudden collapse, suggests that they are just as untethered from reality as Enron’s weather derivatives were.
And FTX’s business relied on many of the same strategies that Enron used to project success. Commercials starring comic Larry David suggested that the company had hit on a new way of doing business — one that could produce massive wealth, but which the public needn’t understand. What’s more, both companies aggressively courted Washington politicians and paid for the naming rights to sports venues, all for the sake of burnishing ultimately undeserved reputations. And it worked.
Today, though, the danger is greater. More than 20 years after Enron’s collapse, crypto businesses like FTX operate in an environment where it is even harder to navigate a haze of information to see what’s really going on. FTX’s history (just three years) is much shorter than Enron’s — and the lightning speed at which it attracted and lost billions sets off alarm bells.
The still-unfolding FTX scandal is spectacular enough that calls for regulation and oversight will surely follow (as they did with Enron). The major piece of regulation that emerged in Enron’s wake, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002), aimed to restore investor confidence by making financial statements more accurate. It was, in other words, a law focused on the quality of information.
This time, however, the discussion cannot be simply about financial reporting. Instead, lawmakers will need to consider the entire information ecosystem. At the start of the 21st century, Greenspan took a comforting lesson from Enron’s demise. Because businesses (and markets more generally) had “large quantities of data available virtually in real time,” it was possible to “address and resolve economic imbalances far more rapidly.”
But Greenspan did not anticipate the ways in which an unruly confusion of information would become a key feature of 21st century life. Crypto companies like FTX market products that are only as valuable as people think they are, incentivizing the sort of outlandish boosterism that kept Enron’s problems hidden for years.
Enron’s crash was ruinous for those who had put their faith in the company by buying up shares. Retirement savings evaporated at the same moment that the company’s workers lost their jobs. How much worse would the damage have been if there were Enron rumors and memes mushrooming on social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter in the late 1990s?
In a world in which real facts mix uneasily with misinformation, fantasy and hearsay, cryptocurrencies are as dangerous as they are enticing to investors and tech enthusiasts. As people begin to sift through the rubble of Bankman-Fried’s shameful end and the financial ruin of crypto traders on FTX, preventing future such cases will depend on asking deeper questions about a media environment hospitable to frauds like Enron and, allegedly, FTX. Otherwise, both episodes will be just two in a long string of crises endemic to business in the 21st century. | 2022-11-15T12:18:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FTX's downfall shows the problems exposed by Enron have only gotten worse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/11/15/ftx-enron-scandal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/11/15/ftx-enron-scandal/ |
A story about undiplomatic comments by Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh caught on a hot mic went viral -- before the U.S.-funded news agency removed it after complaints from his embassy
Vietnam's Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and President Biden meet at a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, last week. (Kith Serey/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
While waiting to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington in the spring, Vietnam’s prime minister and his subordinates had a few undiplomatic things to say.
In unguarded comments picked up by a live State Department video stream, the delegation proudly discussed its resistance to American demands for a statement condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “We made them back off,” one official said, amid laughter. Perhaps most shockingly, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh repeatedly used crude language to describe an earlier meeting with President Biden and other U.S. officials at a White House dinner.
The remarks soon found their way into a news story published by Voice of America’s Vietnamese-language service, and this rare unvarnished glimpse of Vietnam’s carefully stage-managed leaders soon went viral both inside Vietnam and among its worldwide diaspora.
And then it disappeared.
VOA offered no public explanation for what had happened to the story and why it was suddenly unavailable on its website, Facebook page and YouTube channel. In place of the missing footage, a notice in Vietnamese on its website simply said the video was no longer available following a review.
In fact, emails obtained by The Post indicate VOA took action after an official from the Vietnamese embassy in Washington complained that the hot-mic video violated Pham’s privacy. In a May 20 email to Voice of America, the official — Khahn Nguyen, the embassy’s press and cultural attache — said that the release of the footage was an “error” by the State Department.
“The conversation contains nothing special,” wrote Nguyen to VOA’s acting director, Yolana Lopez, requesting removal of the story. “The act of spreading [information about] a person without his awareness, knowledge and consent is unacceptable as it violates the principle of respect for privacy as well as journal [sic] professionalism and ethics. Moreover, the coverage of VOA has been abused and distorted for political purposes.”
VOA took down the video three days after receiving Nguyen’s email.
The decision disturbed journalists in VOA’s Vietnamese-language service, who objected to the removal in a meeting with senior editors shortly afterward but received no explanation.
One frustrated employee described it as a betrayal of the organization’s values and mission. “It’s detrimental to our reputation as a news outlet,” said the staff member, who asked not to be named to avoid retribution. “Our slogan is ‘A free press matters.’ This is so ironic.”
The appearance of pressure from a foreign government is a particularly sensitive issue at VOA, which was founded by federal decree in 1942 to counter foreign wartime propaganda. Since then, VOA has evolved into a government-funded but independent news organization, broadcasting and reporting in 48 languages. It typically provides news in countries whose governments restrict the media. It also chronicles instances of press censorship in other countries, including recent crackdowns in Iran, Somalia, Congo and Egypt.
From 2020: How Trump’s obsessions with media and loyalty coalesced in a battle for Voice of America
In VOA’s first public response about the matter, a spokeswoman, Bridget Serchak, said Monday that the video was pulled not because of Vietnamese pressure but because the language used by the Vietnamese officials in it was “objectionable,” and in violation of the organization’s standards. She compared the language used to “words considered obscene by the FCC,” although some Vietnamese speakers suggest the language was merely coarse but not broadly offensive.
Radio Free Asia — a sister news organization to VOA — also reported on the delegation’s comments on both its English and Vietnamese-language websites, using the State Department-supplied footage. Its story remains online. A spokesman, Rohit Mahajan, said the organization did not receive any requests to remove it.
On the same day the embassy formally complained about the video, VOA’s news standards editor, Steve Springer, wrote to staff members that he had been unaware of the language issue and would have recommended that VOA “bleep the offensive words” before posting it.
Instead, he recommended getting rid of it altogether. “The story is now one week old,” he wrote. “It’s been seen and read about.”
Although the Vietnamese delegation may have been unaware that cameras were recording their discussion, the State Department’s live stream is part of the public record, meaning news organizations are free to use it. Springer acknowledged as much in his email, saying he wasn’t aware of any directive from the State Department prohibiting its use.
But he added, “And just a reminder that no other government can dictate editorial policy or decisions to VOA.” Springer did not respond to a request for comment. | 2022-11-15T12:18:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Voice of America removes story that embarrassed Vietnam’s prime minister - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/11/15/voice-of-america-vietnam-hot-mic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/11/15/voice-of-america-vietnam-hot-mic/ |
The GOP prepares to tear itself apart
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and then-President Donald Trump attend a rally in Bakersfield, Calif., on Feb. 19, 2020. (David McNew/Getty Images)
The Republican Party has not had a moment’s rest since Donald Trump descended that escalator in Trump Tower in June 2015. And it might be about to enter its most tumultuous period in a long time.
In the wake of their surprisingly poor showing in the midterm elections, and with the former president apparently set to announce his 2024 bid for the White House, Republicans are preparing for a period of brutal intramural conflict. Suddenly, the party that remade itself in Trump’s image isn’t sure it likes what it sees in the mirror.
Or at least, some of them believe voters aren’t buying it. The GOP is chock-full of people who lined up behind Trump in 2016 not out of conviction but because they felt they had no alternative. His support among their constituents was undeniable, and he brought with him an intolerance for disloyalty and a petty vindictiveness. His win validated their decision, whatever moral compromise it entailed.
Yet each successive loss (the 2018 midterms, the 2020 presidential race and now 2022) has made it harder for them to believe that Trumpism is the only way to win — and that they can survive saying so. Which is why even some politicians considered Trumpy are now openly opposing him. Take Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who touted her support for Trump and put up posters of herself holding a military-style rifle when she ran in 2021. Two days after the midterms, she went on Fox Business to say she couldn’t support him in 2024. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, house organ of the conservative overclass, wrote an editorial titled “Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.”
It isn’t just Trump being questioned. A group of influential conservatives released an open letter calling on the party to delay its congressional leadership elections scheduled for this week. It’s less than clear what they’re after, but Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are both fending off doubts about their leadership.
One of the notable features of all this conflict is how disorganized it is. Some people have a beef with McCarthy or McConnell. Some are upset with Trump. Some want to put all their election denialism behind them. And many are just angling for their own advantage. Unlike in previous moments of tumult, it’s hard to draw a clear line between the establishment and the insurgents.
That’s partly because the person who still leads the party — Trump — always presented himself as a scourge of the old guard. Trump loyalists, no matter how high their position, fancy themselves rebels, iconoclasts or brave opponents of the stodgy and self-satisfied.
The truth is that Republicans always enjoyed a little rebellion, so long as it was contained. Even George W. Bush, son of a president and grandson of a senator, sold himself as “a different kind of Republican” — an outsider who could whip the capital into shape. In his 2000 convention speech he claimed to “lack the polish of Washington,” as though he were a dust-covered cowboy riding into town to give them varmints the what-for.
That was the kind of tame anti-establishment pose the party’s elite was comfortable with. But over the years, it became clear that many Republican voters really did regard the party’s leadership as a bunch of phonies and sellouts. It’s what the leadership struggled with all through the Obama years, and in 2016, Trump rode that discontent to the party’s nomination and then to the White House.
At the moment, it’s far less clear just what Republicans are fighting about. It certainly isn’t substantive issues; the party remains remarkably unified on policy, partly because outside of tax cuts and immigration, they don’t care much about policy at all. Instead, policy debates are increasingly about how radical Republicans should be to achieve their goals.
What is clear is that they now have a leader around whom all their political problems revolve. So some Republicans rush to Trump’s side while conservative commentators call the midterms “a blinking, blaring, screaming sign that reads ‘Republicans: Trump is your problem.’ ”
Trump himself will not stand by and watch, and that’s what will raise the stakes, and the intensity, of this iteration of the long-running intraparty debate. Trump has always believed that conflict and chaos work to his advantage, and he’ll demand that Republicans be maximally combative — even when doing so courts disaster for his party or the country. He could insist that they impeach President Biden, shut down the government, refuse to raise the debt ceiling and throw the United States into default. And who will stand up to him?
Some Republicans will, but which ones do and don’t matters a great deal. Will McCarthy and the extremists in his caucus force a debt ceiling crisis at Trump’s behest? If they think it serves the end of getting him back in the White House, there might be few limits to how far they’ll go, no matter who in their party objects. The more “responsible” Republicans oppose them, the more convinced Trump and his allies will be that they’re right.
One thing is for certain: This conflict will not be easily resolved. It will likely consume the Republican Party all the way to November 2024, and probably beyond. And we all may suffer the consequences. | 2022-11-15T12:18:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | After a midterm loss, the GOP prepares to tear itself apart - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/gop-trump-republicans-tear-apart/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/gop-trump-republicans-tear-apart/ |
Americans just elected two lesbian governors. Have attitudes changed that much?
Our research found sexism hurts candidates more than antigay attitudes, at least in Massachusetts
Analysis by Tatishe Nteta
Adam Eichen
Maddi Hertz
Ray La Raja
Jesse Rhodes
Alexander Theodoridis
Massachusetts Gov.-elect Maura Healey speaks during an election night party in Boston. (Michael Dwyer/AP)
The 2022 midterm elections delivered the most diverse slate of elected officials in the history of the nation, including breakthroughs by women and what’s being called a “rainbow wave” — a winning slate of lesbian, gay and bisexual candidates across the country. Republican Sarah Sanders became the first woman elected governor of Arkansas. Democrat Maura Healey rang in three firsts: first woman elected governor of Massachusetts; with her running mate, the state’s first all-female governor/lieutenant governor pair; and the nation’s first openly lesbian elected governor, soon followed by Oregon’s Tina Kotek.
In her acceptance speech, Healey argued her election showed that barriers were now down for women and lesbian, gay and bisexual candidates, declaring, “To every little girl and every young LGBTQ person out there, I hope tonight shows you that you can be whatever, whoever you want to be.”
Healey’s optimism contrasts with decades of research finding that voters who hold strong sexist or antigay attitudes are more likely to oppose women and lesbian, gay and bisexual candidates, respectively.
Is Healey right? Have attitudes changed?
How we did our research
To find out, we used Healey’s historic candidacy to study whether either sexism or antigay attitudes influenced voters in Massachusetts, one of the nation’s most liberal states — but which has lagged behind others in electing women to statewide office.
We ran a University of Massachusetts Amherst/WCVB poll of 700 Massachusetts registered voters, fielded online by YouGov from Oct. 20 to 26. We asked respondents, “If the 2022 election for governor were held today, which one of the following candidates would you support?” The options were Maura Healey (Democrat), Geoff Diehl (Republican), Kevin Reed (Libertarian), Other, and Don’t Know.
We also asked respondents whether they agreed with three statements that capture what political scientists call “hostile sexist” attitudes toward women. For example, one item in the index asks respondents whether they agree or disagree with the statement “women seek to gain power by getting control over men,” ranking their agreement on a scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” To measure antigay attitudes, we asked respondents to indicate “on a scale from 0 (coldest) to 100 (warmest) how do you feel about lesbian, gay, and bisexual people?”
Sexism mattered in Healey’s election
Among those with the most sexist views, 30 percent supported Healey and 65 percent reported that they supported the Republican candidate, Geoff Diehl. Among those with the least sexist views, 95 percent supported Healey and 4 percent supported Diehl. Meanwhile, attitudes toward lesbian, gay and bisexual people are also associated with Massachusetts voters’ choices in 2022. Those with the most antigay views preferred Diehl over Healey by a 74-22 margin, while those with the least antigay attitudes backed Healey over Diehl by a margin of 82 to 12.
However, these findings do not account for other important factors, such as partisan affiliation, ideology, gender, race, income, education or beliefs about the Massachusetts economy, which also influence voters’ candidate choices. When we ran a statistical model that included these factors as controls, we found that while sexism predicted Massachusetts voters’ decisions, attitudes toward lesbian, gay and bisexual people did not.
Antigay attitudes did not influence Healey’s election. We double-checked.
The finding that antigay attitudes were not influencing Massachusetts voters surprised us. We wondered whether they resulted from our using what’s called a “feeling thermometer” to measure antigay attitudes; we speculated that it might be overly blunt and subject to social desirability bias, or the desire to give the socially approved answer. To further investigate, in the same survey, we used a technique known as a list experiment.
We randomly divided our sample into two groups. We asked each group to read a list of candidate qualities. We then asked both groups, “Please tell us HOW MANY of these qualities you believe would prevent you from voting for a candidate in the 2022 election for governor. We do not want to know which qualities would prevent you from supporting a candidate, just HOW MANY.” [Emphases in original.]
We gave the control group four qualities to choose from: the candidate was born outside of the state; the candidate has a criminal record; the candidate is liberal; and the candidate is conservative. We gave the other group one more option to select: the candidate is gay or lesbian. We focused on the options “gay or lesbian” as Healey publicly identifies as a lesbian.
Because both groups were asked only to report how many qualities would get them to oppose the candidates and not which ones, respondents in the second group could feel they were making their choices without revealing their antigay beliefs. As a result, if the second group chose more qualities as deal-breakers than the control group, we would know that some of them wouldn’t choose someone who was gay or lesbian.
But there was no statistical difference between the average number of dealbreaker qualities cited by the control group and the experimental group. The share of respondents for whom a candidate’s sexual orientation mattered is vanishingly small, at least in Massachusetts.
Recent research finds that lesbian candidates fare better than gay male candidates and that lesbian, gay and bisexual candidates with previous government experience enjoy greater electoral support than lesbian, gay and bisexual candidates without prior governmental experience. Healey, of course, is lesbian rather than a gay man and was a highly popular two-term state attorney general — a position she ran for in 2014 after having served in the attorney general’s office for seven years. These factors have decreased the influence of antigay attitudes both in this election and among our respondents, who of course knew that Healey was the most prominent candidate on the state ballot.
Why Americans’ support for transgender rights has declined
Sexism remains, while attitudes toward lesbian and gay people change
Nevertheless, our findings suggest remarkable social change, at least in Massachusetts.
People of the same sex didn’t win the right to marry in the state until 2004 — although, of course, Massachusetts was the first state in the country that legally recognized and performed such marriages. Eighteen years later, voters in Massachusetts don’t appear to consider sexual orientation when voting. Arguably, this attitude also lies behind Massachusetts’ trend toward becoming strongly pro-LGBTQ in its politics and policymaking.
Some voters still penalize women, even after five decades of dramatic economic and social gains. But our results suggest that at least some of Healey’s optimism is warranted: Women and lesbian, gay, and bisexual candidates do face fewer barriers than in the past.
Tatishe Nteta is provost professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and director of the UMass Poll.
Adam Eichen is a PhD student in political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a research fellow for the UMass Poll.
Maddi Hertz is an academic adviser and instructional technology and design manager in the data analytics and computational social science program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a research fellow for the UMass Poll.
Ray La Raja is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and co-director of the UMass Poll.
Jesse Rhodes is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and co-director of the UMass Poll.
Alexander Theodoridis is an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and co-director of the UMass Poll.
11:31 AMAnalysis: Why the GOP’s popular-vote edge hasn’t translated to more House seats | 2022-11-15T12:19:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Did homophobia hurt Mass. governor-elect Maura Healey? No, sexism did. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/massachusetts-governor-healey-lgbtq/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/massachusetts-governor-healey-lgbtq/ |
Global sports put Qatar’s human rights record in the spotlight. That’s likely to continue — and may have prompted changes in the country.
Analysis by Danyel Reiche
Paul Michael Brannagan
A Qatar supporter in Doha on Monday. (Noushad Thekkayil/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The World Cup is set to begin Sunday, marking the first time one of the planet’s most popular sporting events will be held in a Middle Eastern country. Qatar’s World Cup, however, has been beset by an exceptional degree of controversy and criticism over alleged corruption in the selection process, Qatar’s harsh views on LGBTQ rights and its treatment of migrant workers, among other problems.
Our recent book on the politics and controversies surrounding the 2022 World Cup reveals that some of these controversies have had surprising effects in Qatar — and on the World Cup’s governing body, FIFA.
Qatar was a controversial choice
In 2010, FIFA awarded Qatar the rights to stage the 2022 World Cup. The Qatari bid was accompanied with accusations of bribery and corruption. In response, FIFA changed the selection process and gave each of its 211 member states a vote, ending the practice of just 24 executive committee members making the selection. The new system, which resulted in awarding the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, offers fewer opportunities for corruption. FIFA expects this will lead to fairer outcomes in bidding processes.
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When Qatar was awarded the World Cup, the desert summer heat was a big concern. In 2015, FIFA agreed to shift the schedule and hold the World Cup in November and December 2022. Major European soccer leagues complained about the disruption of their league schedules, which usually run from August to May. However, U.S. Major League Soccer and other leagues traditionally play from the beginning until toward the end of the calendar year and will thus compete for the first time in a World Cup that doesn’t interrupt their domestic seasons.
Qatar’s small size — just 4,473 square miles — and estimated population of 2.94 million (by 2022) also raised concerns about whether the country could safely and practically accommodate World Cup crowds. Qatar has engaged in a decade-long infrastructure overhaul, building roads, hotels and stadiums to accommodate the global event. As teams and spectators arrive, it remains to be seen whether this new infrastructure will be fully functional in time.
The World Cup has also intersected with regional politics. Starting in June 2017, Qatar was blockaded by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE over accusations that Qatar funded what the coalition labeled as “terrorist groups” and engaged in disruptive behavior across the region.
Qatar refused to meet any of the coalition’s 13 demands, and the blockade ended in January 2021. The World Cup, in fact, may have been a key motive in the coalition’s desire to restore relations with Qatar. Saudi Arabia shares the only land border with Qatar, and tens of thousands of Saudi fans are expected to attend the World Cup. And the UAE and other neighbors are scrambling to offer hotel accommodations and transportation options to fans.
Saudi Arabia just lifted Qatar’s 43-month blockade. How did this rift end?
Qatar’s human rights record is in the spotlight
Human rights advocates point out that Qatar criminalizes homosexuality and accords women limited sociopolitical rights. These issues have led to both athlete- and fan-led protests in recent months.
During the tournament itself, on-field protests by players — the wearing of armbands to support LGBTQ rights, for instance — aren’t likely to trouble Qatari authorities to the extent they feel they need to act. Off-field protests, however, may be a different matter. Some activists have already defied Qatari laws by staging public protests; Qatar’s response to date has been to stop protesters. With the media spotlight now trained on Qatar, the public arrest of peaceful demonstrators, including workers who protested going months without pay, seems likely to further tarnish Qatar’s global image.
Have worker conditions improved?
The harshest global scrutiny in recent years has been over working conditions for expatriate laborers, most of whom come from some of the poorest countries in South Asia. It’s not just Qatar — the controversial “kafala system” in place in countries in the region effectively denies foreign workers many social, political and legal rights. Foreign workers in Qatar are forbidden from unionizing, for example.
The global outcry against what some called “modern-day slavery” prompted a surprising number of policy changes in Qatar. In 2018, the government allowed the International Labor Organization to establish a Doha office to support workers’ rights. In 2020 and again in 2021, Qatar implemented substantial policy changes, resulting in what the ILO called the “dismantling” of the kafala system in the country.
Tangible changes include lifting the requirements for workers to obtain exit permits to leave Qatar and obtain no-objection certificates before changing employers. According to ILO data, more than 300,000 foreign workers changed jobs between September 2020 and March 2022. In addition, 13 percent of Qatar’s workforce saw their basic wages rise after the nondiscriminatory minimum wage was implemented in 2021. New legislation in 2021 reduced the number of hours in which employers could assign outdoor work during the summer months, a further move to protect workers’ health and safety.
Qatar’s first elected parliament may have more power than other Persian Gulf legislatures. Here’s why.
Will these policy changes last?
To some critics, Qatar’s efforts to protect workers came too late, as World Cup construction projects were wrapping up. Implementing changes to work conditions in 2021 was far easier than would have been the case in December 2010, when Qatar was awarded the World Cup and public criticism of the living and working conditions of expatriate workers first broke. In many ways, therefore, Qatar missed the boat when it came to meaningfully improving the conditions for expatriate workers.
It remains to be seen whether Qatar continues with its domestic social changes on workers’ rights in the post-World Cup phase and becomes more active in other areas such as women’s rights, by dismantling its discriminatory guardianship system or by decriminalizing homosexuality, as Singapore recently did.
With most global sporting events, once the tournament has come and gone, the media and other international onlookers usually turn their attention to the next host. However, Qatar will host the 2030 Asian Games, along with a series of Formula One races over the next 10 years. These events may ensure that sport-related global pressure on Qatar continues.
Danyel Reiche is a visiting research fellow and visiting associate professor at Georgetown University in Qatar.
Paul Michael Brannagan is a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. He and Reiche are co-authors of “Qatar and the 2022 FIFA World Cup: Politics, Controversy, Change” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) and co-editors of the “Routledge Handbook of Sport in the Middle East” (Routledge 2022). | 2022-11-15T12:19:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Have conditions in Qatar improved for foreign workers? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/qater-fifa-worldcup-2022-labor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/qater-fifa-worldcup-2022-labor/ |
Perspective by Kevin B. Blackistone
Kyrie Irving, shown in 2021, has not played since being suspended by the Brooklyn Nets. (Frank Franklin II/AP)
Eight months before I arrived as a freshman at Northwestern University, the Daily Northwestern picked up a revelation from the Jerusalem Post about a book written by a professor in the university’s engineering school. It was titled “The Fabrication of a Hoax.” It denied the Holocaust. The story threw the campus into tumult.
Faculty and students were outraged. They took out an ad in the Daily demanding that the university do something. The president and provost issued statements denouncing the book and the professor’s views.
Yet, four decades later — after the Fabrication metastasized into “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination European Jewry,” after the professor began using the university’s internet domain to disseminate his Holocaust denials, after his engineering colleagues petitioned in 2006 for him to leave by his own volition — Arthur Butz is still there.
Not only that, but Butz was never suspended or otherwise sanctioned by his employer as NBA star Kyrie Irving has been by the Brooklyn Nets over the past couple of weeks for tweeting a link to a four-year-old film that, in part, echoes Butz’s denial of the most-documented genocide in the 20th century.
The worst Butz suffered for his irresponsible faux scholarship in a field out of his bailiwick was the ignominy of being a Holocaust denier. Northwestern Provost Raymond Mack lamented in 1977, as would university executives in years after him, that Butz was insulated by tenure and protected by freedom of speech. “It is a right available to any citizen of the United States under the First Amendment,” Mack said of Butz’s Holocaust misinformation then. “It is a shame when that right is used to insult survivors of concentration camps.”
Or the progeny of enslaved Africans, or the native people who remain on this land despite the genocide they suffered.
Whatever Butz, now in his mid-80s, achieved in his academic career may as well be in the dust bin. Irving should consider Butz’s recklessness if he cares about being remembered as a great basketball player.
But being a seminal fabricator about an undeniable truth is but half of Butz’s legacy. The other is something the NBA should consider, no matter how repugnant the idea of letting an unsatisfactorily apologetic Irving play may be to the sensibilities of many among us. The league should consider elucidation. I think there is more for all of us to gain by dealing with Irving’s miseducation in the light than in the darkness.
For in the immediate wake of the first wave of the Butz tsunami, Northwestern started disinfecting Butz’s pollutant lies by shining a light on them with symposia on the Holocaust and courses constructed to explore it. It developed an endowed professorship on the Holocaust and began hosting a summer program around the horrific history. It funded a political science fellowship dedicated to study of the Holocaust.
It is not unlike how the NBA reacted with its “NBA Cares” motto in mind, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the eruption of the Black Lives Matter movement. The NBA and WNBA formed a Social Justice Coalition to focus on policing and criminal justice and voting rights.
It should now make antisemitism part of that outreach, particularly with the increase in hate crimes against Jewish Americans over the past decade trailing only one group — Black Americans. Indeed, a few weeks before Rolling Stone broke the story of Irving’s dalliance with Holocaust denialism, rapper Ye, known previously as Kanye West, was photographed sporting a shirt splashed with “White Lives Matter,” the racist response to Black Lives Matter. A few days after Rolling Stone’s Irving expose — and after Ye said on Twitter he would go “death con 3” on “JEWISH PEOPLE” — a group of suspected white supremacists dropped banners in support of Ye and denouncing Jews over a Los Angeles highway.
This is a good time to remember another piece of history — that there existed a notable solidarity between Blacks and Jews developed partially through sports, and heavily evidenced during the civil rights movement, fighting what historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. described not long ago as the “two hideous demons … under the floorboards of Western culture: antisemitism and anti-Black racism.”
There was Lester Rodney, Jewish sports editor of the American Communist Party newspaper the Daily Worker, who in the 1930s, before perhaps any sportswriter, agitated in writing for the desegregation of baseball. Shirley Povich, Jewish too, soon made Rodney’s one-man plea a choir.
Jerry Brewer: Delusional, defiant Kyrie Irving is a stain the NBA could no longer ignore
There was the support Jewish slugger Hank Greenberg, who had suffered all manner of derision as a Jewish ballplayer, extended to Jackie Robinson when he debuted as the first Black player in 60 years, only to suffer a barrage of racist slings and arrows from opponents, fans and some teammates. During a game after the two collided on the base paths, Greenberg was said to have told Robinson: “Don’t pay any attention to these guys who are trying to make it hard for you. Stick in there. You’re doing fine. Keep your chin up.”
There was the support broadcaster Howard Cosell, who was Jewish, extended to Muhammad Ali when most of the media — sports and beyond — made Ali persona non grata for refusing conscription into the Vietnam War.
It wasn’t always an altruistic and equitable partnership. Abe Saperstein, the founder of the Harlem Globetrotters in 1927 who happened to be Jewish, monopolized Black basketball talent on his barnstorming team. Along the way, he induced the early NBA, particularly when it was presided over by Maurice Podoloff, who also happened to be Jewish, not to draft Black players into its league. The Saperstein-Podoloff color line tripped up Black basketball players who hoped to play in the NBA until 1950.
All of which made the latest Irving disruption that much more troubling — at least if you believe, as sports and sports media have promoted, that sports are not only beyond stoking noxious -isms but can be elixirs as well.
Irving reminded that sports can still also be a conduit for the worst beliefs among us. That even his otherness — his Blackness and recently discovered and proclaimed Indianness — failed to make him naturally inclined to think otherwise. Indeed, he used his massive social media platform, grown because of his brilliance on the basketball court and not possibly from a single year at Duke — where he was availed the intellectual tutelage of an august collection of Black scholars — to promote trite, unsubstantiated analysis about Jewish and Black history from a self-purported scholar, questionably papered and certainly not traditionally peer-reviewed, who produced words as easily dismissed as claptrap now as they were when Butz penned them.
Butz’s toxic views at least provided an impetus for more education. We would be well served if we can say the same of Irving. This is a moment for pedagogy on the sports platform more than punishment. | 2022-11-15T12:19:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The NBA should use Kyrie Irving to shine a light on antisemitism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/kyrie-irving-antisemitism-nba/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/kyrie-irving-antisemitism-nba/ |
The message of Michelle Obama’s new book is familiar but much needed
‘The Light We Carry’ builds on the lessons and stories she shared in ‘Becoming.’ Also, she is still mad about Trump.
Review by Dawn Turner
Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir, “Becoming,” was a phenomenon: It broke sales records and turned the former first lady into a whole new kind of celebrity. To follow up, Obama had planned to write another inspirational book about how she overcame adversity. But the uncertainly and upheaval from the pandemic, the continued killings of Black people by police, the crimes against Asians and members of the LGBTQ community, and the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol broadened her reach and demanded a different course.
The result is “The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times.” The title refers to the importance of recognizing one’s own light and becoming empowered by it. The book emerged, in part, from admirers’ queries, and while Obama readily admits she doesn’t have all the answers, she can offer her “toolbox,” the techniques and strategies she uses to manage her own self-doubt and anxieties and ward against hovering cynicism and low-grade depression.
Her strategies range from the support of family and friends (particularly a group of women she calls her Kitchen Table) to hobbies such as knitting, which she picked up during the pandemic. It allows her to focus on the “power of small actions, small gestures, small ways you might allow yourself to reset and restore.”
In revealing new memoir, Michelle Obama candidly shares her story
She writes about learning to be “comfortably afraid” — using fear to steer, rather than hinder — and how her worries could have thwarted her husband Barack Obama’s run for the presidency because he’d offered her the final say on whether he launched his campaign. “It’s strange to think that I could have altered the course of history with my fear,” she explains.
A “Who knew?” moment focuses on her prime-time address during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. She walked onto the stage at the Pepsi Center, prepared to deliver a live speech — after being introduced by her brother, Craig Robinson — and realized that one of the two teleprompters wasn’t working. She was happy that she’d memorized her speech. The moment crystallized an important lesson: Always be prepared. (I attended the convention as a Chicago Tribune columnist and remember how poised and unflappable she was.)
One of my favorite chapters is on Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, who’s wholly recognizable to me as a no-nonsense, forthright matriarch who made me smile every time she was on the page. We all know that Mrs. Robinson wasn’t keen on moving into the White House and pooh-poohed the pomp and circumstance. But what’s new here is a wonderful story about how Robinson made her daughter, a kindergartner at the time, walk a block and a half alone to school — so she would learn how to be competent and unafraid. (Mrs. Robinson did watch from the lawn.)
Throughout the book Obama uses vignettes about other celebrities to serve as teachable moments or examples of resilience and resolve: Lin-Manuel Miranda on how pre-performance fear can be used as “rocket fuel,” the poet Amanda Gorman on overcoming disabilities, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on building “a mental wall between herself and the judgment of others.”
Dawn Turner is the author of “Three Girls From Bronzeville” and a former columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Overcoming in Uncertain Times
Crown. 336 pp. $32.50 | 2022-11-15T13:05:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Michelle Obama's The Light We Carry book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/15/michelle-obama-book/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/15/michelle-obama-book/ |
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