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The end of the Pelosi era
Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she would step down from Democratic leadership. Today on the show, we discuss Pelosi’s legacy and the new era of Democrats in line to take her place.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). (Andrew Harnik/Pool/AP)
Nancy Pelosi has spent 35 years in Congress. Last week, she stepped down as speaker of the House, ending her historic tenure as the first woman to serve as speaker. “She has been an incredibly powerful figure that has ruled the House of Representatives in this sort of iron-fisted way that is the stuff of legends,” says Paul Kane, The Post’s senior congressional correspondent. On today’s episode, we talk to Kane about Pelosi’s rise to power, the highlights of her career, and what the future holds for the new era of Democrats looking to take over leadership positions.
The Post is running a Black Friday all-access digital subscription deal. For just $0.99 for four weeks, that will cover you for your first 12 weeks. You’ll get our groundbreaking interactive stories, the most in-depth breaking news, our fantastic Well + Being and Climate coverage and so much more. | 2022-11-21T23:56:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The end of the Pelosi era - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-end-of-the-pelosi-era/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-end-of-the-pelosi-era/ |
World Cup watch party brings devoted soccer fans to D.C. park
Fans watch the World Cup game between the United States and Wales on large screens at Dupont Circle in D.C. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Britt Robinson could have stayed home or gone to a bar to watch the United States play Wales in its opening game of the World Cup on Monday afternoon. But what fun would that be? Instead the 27-year-old congressional staffer opted to join 1,000 or so other fans at Dupont Circle for Soccer in the Circle, an outdoor watch party for the U.S. men’s first World Cup game since 2014.
“It’s not every day you get to be outdoors with other people cheering for your country,” Robinson said. “It’s pretty special.”
That sentiment was echoed by many others who managed to clear their schedule to watch the midafternoon game on two large screens in the park, undeterred by the below-average temperatures that hovered in the mid to high 40s.
Hesham Ibrahim, 45, who moved to the United States from Egypt nine years ago, brought his sons and nephews to the circle. Draped in an American flag, the Fairfax resident said he had been waiting for this day all year to cheer on his team.
“The United States has given so much to me and my family,” Ibrahim said as his son Youssef Ibrahim interpreted. “This is the smallest thing we can do to show our thanks.”
The event was hosted by the Welsh government, so the Wales team had fans in the circle as well. Though distinctly outnumbered, they sang along to their national anthem with gusto and never stopped cheering.
Aubryn Walters, an American who studied in Wales, came to watch the game decked out in the Welsh colors. Walters would root for the red and green, she said, but she also hoped to meet other people from Wales and work on her language skills.
“I practice my Welsh on Duolingo and it’d be nicer to practice it in person,” she said.
Before kickoff, the atmosphere was light and cheery. Dance music played. Beers were consumed surreptitiously — the National Park Service park is an alcohol-free zone — and free popcorn and shortbread cookies were provided.
After kickoff it was all business.
Soccer is a full-attention sport, and this was a devoted crowd. There were long stretches of attentive and intense silence punctuated by bursts of applause or gasps of anticipation as the U.S. team dominated the first half. “U-S-A” chants started and then subsided. Yellow cards cautioning American players were jeered. A chorus of groans arose as yet another attack fizzled out.
But then, magic. The team’s star player Christian Pulisic threaded a deft pass to winger Timothy Weah who scored with style, and the Dupont crowd erupted in cheers, hugs and high fives. A man wearing an American flag as a cape dropped to his knees and raised his fists to the heavens. This is what they had missed out on in 2018, when the U.S. team failed to qualify for the tournament.
At halftime, Welsh fans were not holding out much hope.
“It’s very stressful. I’m not feeling very optimistic,” said Seth Thomas, 23, who came with his sister Rachel Thomas, 29, to root for Wales. The siblings grew up in Columbia, Md., but they were there representing their father, who is Welsh.
His sister checked her phone.
“If my boss asks, I’m monitoring emails,” she said.
This year marks the first time the World Cup has been hosted in a Middle Eastern country. The first full day of football from Qatar was not without controversy. The captains of seven European teams, including Wales, had planned to wear armbands in support of LGBTQ rights. But they abandoned the protest when FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, warned that players wearing the armbands would receive yellow cards. That would severely hamper the team as the player would be ejected were he to receive a second yellow card in the game.
The last-minute decision by FIFA to penalize players for wearing the armband was seen as an effort to not offend the host country where same-sex sexual acts between men is illegal and can subject them to seven-year prison terms. The teams relented on the armband-wearing but not without voicing frustration.
Qatar has also faced protests and condemnation for its treatment of migrant laborers who came to the country to build the stadiums and hotels in preparation for the event.
At the Dupont Circle viewing party however, the focus was entirely on soccer and the game being played. The United States needed only to build on its first-half attack and its first World Cup victory in eight years would be theirs.
But as dominant as the U.S. team was in the first half, they were sloppy and uncertain in the second half. Pressure from Wales built, the U.S. crowd groaning with each misplay by the Americans. After escaping from several dicey situations, the defense was finally overwhelmed and Welsh star Gareth Bale was fouled and awarded a penalty kick. He did not miss.
After 10 minutes of extra time, the game ended as it began: Tied. A deflating result for the U.S. fans at Dupont who had been thrilled by the team’s first-half performance and expected it to continue. There was no rejoicing to be had — except among the Welsh contingent. The park emptied out quickly.
“It wasn’t the outcome we were hoping for, but it was a good time,” said Elena Bachrach, 32, moments after the game ended. She was walking home from a doctor’s appointment when she decided to join the crowd in the circle. Now she wants another opportunity.
“I was surprised to see so many people out here,” she said. “I hope they do this again.” | 2022-11-22T00:51:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Cup watch party brings devoted soccer fans to D.C. park - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/21/world-cup-dupont-circle-washington-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/21/world-cup-dupont-circle-washington-dc/ |
D.C. United adds Pedro Santos to fill a gap at left back
Pedro Santos scores for the Columbus Crew on D.C. United goalkeeper Bill Hamid in 2021. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
D.C. United announced the signing of left back Pedro Santos to a two-year contract Monday, filling a hole in its lineup heading into Wayne Rooney’s first full season as coach.
Santos, a 34-year-old free agent, had spent the past six seasons with the Columbus Crew after signing with the club from Portuguese side Braga for a then-club record $2.3 million in 2017. An attacking midfielder who shifted to defense last season, the Lisbon native compiled 23 goals and 34 assists over 155 regular season matches with the Crew and was a key part of the team that won the 2020 MLS Cup.
“Pedro is an experienced veteran and has been a top attacking talent in the league since 2017,” United Sporting Director Dave Kasper said in a news release. “He will provide us with important versatility and will give us some creativity and playmaking ability. We’re excited to integrate him into the team as we continue to rebuild ahead of the 2023 season.”
Santos was a salary cap casualty in Columbus, where he was the club’s eighth-highest-paid player with guaranteed compensation of $687,500 last season, according to the MLS Players Association. He started 28 of the Crew’s 34 MLS matches.
“What an amazing player during his time at the club,” Crew General Manager Tim Bezbatchenko told the Columbus Dispatch. “He’s loyal, dependable, incredible work rate. His ability to play a large number of matches over a short period of time is something I’ve rarely seen. He fought through injuries. Whatever was asked of him, Pedro did and he did it without asking questions.”
Santos fills a void in the United back line after the club last week declined contract options for fullbacks Brad Smith, Sami Guediri and Chris Odoi-Atsem.
Smith, an Australian left back who arrived via a trade with the Seattle Sounders in January, played in 16 matches, making 14 starts, last season before suffering a torn ACL in July. Guediri, 25, signed with United from minor league affiliate Loudoun United in July following Smith’s injury and finished with 13 appearances (10 starts). Odoi-Atsem, a 27-year-old right back who often played on the left for United, logged 57 matches after being selected in the first round of the 2017 draft out of the University of Maryland.
D.C. remains in the market for a starting goalkeeper after it allowed longtime starter Bill Hamid to enter free agency. The club has been eyeing Tyler Miller, a 29-year-old MLS veteran and former U.S. national team prospect who spent the past three seasons with Minnesota United, according to people close to the situation. A deal probably would end talks with David Ochoa, the 21-year-old who is out of contract after joining United in a July trade with Real Salt Lake.
United, which appointed Rooney as coach midway through a 2022 season in which it finished with a league-worst 7-21-6 record, also remains in the market for an attacking midfielder. | 2022-11-22T01:00:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. United adds Pedro Santos to fill gap at left back - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/21/pedro-santos-dc-united/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/21/pedro-santos-dc-united/ |
Prosecutor Jack Smith must assemble a team, find office space and catch up on the long-running cases involving Donald Trump
Jack Smith, the prosecutor named as special counsel to oversee investigations related to former president Donald Trump, has a long career confronting public corruption and war crimes. (Robin van Lonkhuijsen/Pool Photo/AP)
Newly-appointed special counsel Jack Smith continues to work remotely from Europe as he assembles a team, finds office space, and takes over two high-stakes investigations into former president Donald Trump — complex cases that officials insist will not be delayed by Smith’s appointment, even as they also said they do not know when he will return to the United States.
Smith, a war crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, injured his leg in a recent bicycle accident and is recovering from surgery. He was tapped Friday to assume control over Justice Department investigations into Trump’s role in efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election, as well the department’s investigation into possible mishandling of national defense secrets at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club, where more than 300 classified documents were recovered months after he left the White House.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said it was in the public interest to put a special counsel in charge of the cases, rather than Justice Department officials, to avoid a perceived conflict as Trump launches his 2024 presidential campaign and President Biden — who defeated Trump in 2020 — says he will run as well.
Garland and Smith have both vowed that the appointment of a special counsel will not slow the work in either case, and Smith has already become involved, albeit from the Netherlands. For example, a court filing Monday said Smith has reviewed arguments in a months-long court fight between the Justice Department and Trump’s lawyers over papers seized in the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.
Investigators see ego, not money, as Trump's motive on classified papers
A panel of federal appeals court judges in Atlanta is set to hear arguments Tuesday over whether a federal judge was right to appoint an outside legal expert known as a special master to review most of those documents.
Justice Department officials declined to answer questions Monday about the mechanics of the special counsel’s start. Nor would they say whether some senior officials who have been intimately involved with investigating Trump will now step back from that work, or temporarily leave their agency roles to work at the special counsel office.
Mary McCord, a former senior national security official at the Justice Department, said in this case she does not expect political appointees to work in the special counsel office, though career prosecutors could continue on the case in that new structure.
The Justice Department may have to make key personnel decisions to decide which career employees will move over to work on the special counsel team. For example, Jay Bratt, who heads the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section, has played a large role in the Mar-a-Lago investigation so far, but is likely working on other major investigations within the department that are not related to Trump.
If Bratt is detailed to the special counsel, he would not remain in his current role, McCord said.
That means the Justice Department must determine whether it makes more sense for Bratt to forgo his other responsibilities and work on the special counsel full-time. McCord said if Bratt remains in his current role, the special counsel could still seek advice from him.
Beyond those types of decisions, she said, she wouldn’t expect the course of the Mar-a-Lago investigation to change much because of Smith’s appointment — primarily because the criminal probe is well underway, with prosecutors and federal agents having secured key evidence.
“The idea is that Smith will be leading the day-to-day of the investigation,” McCord said, noting that federal regulations state that Garland can veto Smith’s charging decisions if he deems them to be “inappropriate and unwarranted.”
Checking off the boxes
Most of Smith’s former colleagues at the Justice Department generally praised him as a dedicated prosecutor who never flinched from tough cases, though one investigator who worked with him on public corruption cases was less complimentary.
“I think he’s very talented, enthusiastic, fearless, and truly dedicated to the prosecutor’s mission,” said Alan Vinegrad, a former federal prosecutor in New York who worked with Smith in the early 2000s. “He will be enthusiastic and throw himself into it.”
In contrast, Jeffrey Cortese, who served as the acting chief of the FBI’s public corruption unit in 2011 when Smith was his Justice Department counterpart supervising the Public Integrity Section, said he did not see Smith as quick-acting or effective in prosecuting public officials.
“At that time, it was understood that the fastest way for a case to die was to give it to PIN,” Cortese said, using the common nickname for the Public Integrity Section. “The frequency with which they declined investigative techniques and prosecutions was often a point of conflict between the FBI and the Justice Department.”
It is not unusual for tensions to flare up between FBI agents and Justice Department officials in corruption investigations, and Smith took over the Public Integrity Section at a fraught time for both agencies.
“When Jack was in charge, assuming a similar series of facts or a similar situation, I’d be surprised that PIN would even allow the case to be opened,” Cortese said. “So it makes me wonder why he’d want anything to do with the case today.”
Dana Boente, a former senior Justice Department official, said that when he heard Friday that there would be a special counsel, he immediately started trying to think about who would be selected, given all the political and practical complexities of the choice. It wasn’t easy.
Boente said the person would need to have both public corruption and national security experience, not be perceived as a partisan — and be willing to take the assignment, which could mean giving up a lucrative private sector job.
“I was rolling through names, and I really came up with nobody,” he said. “I had nobody.”
Boente said Smith, who he knows professionally, did not make his list of possible candidates. But when he heard later in the day that Garland had appointed him, Boente said, he immediately concluded Smith was a good choice who ticked all necessary boxes.
The speed and duration of special counsel investigations has been the subject of intense debate in recent years. The 2017 appointment of Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel ended up lasting two years as he probed possible links between Russian election interference and the Trump campaign, and whether as president, Trump sought to obstruct justice. Mueller’s investigation led to a number of charges, including against people in Trump’s orbit, but no charges against Trump. Mueller also produced a lengthy report of his findings.
Garland inherited a different special counsel probe from his predecessor, one that continues but is expected to wind down in the coming months. Special counsel John Durham, appointed two years ago during the Trump administration to continue probing how intelligence agencies investigated the alleged Russian election interference and the Trump campaign resulted in two acquittals at trial, and a guilty plea by a former FBI lawyer. Durham’s work is also expected to produce a written report.
Defendants accuse U.S. of manipulating evidence in Oathkeepers Jan. 6 trial
While a special counsel has more freedom to manage cases and make decisions on their own, that person still works for the Justice Department and ultimately reports to the Attorney General.
Brandon Van Grack, a former federal prosecutor who worked on Mueller’s special counsel, said he suspects Smith will not require as much time as Mueller did to get his operation up and running.
Unlike the Russia probe when the Mueller special counsel was announced, Van Grack said, both the Mar-a-Lago and Jan. 6 investigations appear to already have significant resources and personnel dedicated to them. Mueller assembled a team that included a number of people who did not work at the Justice Department; Van Grack said he doesn’t think Smith will need to hire as many outside people as the Mueller special counsel did.
“Some of the most remarkable people in the Mueller investigation were the people who were able to make the office space and logistics happen in a seemingly seamless fashion,” Van Grack said. “It was an incredibly burdensome process, and it’s unclear if special counsel Smith will or will need to take it on.”
Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report. | 2022-11-22T01:04:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jack Smith launches special counsel role in Trump cases from The Netherlands - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/21/trump-investigations-jack-smith/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/21/trump-investigations-jack-smith/ |
George Lois, ad man and creator of iconic Esquire covers, dies at 91
His magazine covers were striking and controversial. He depicted Muhammad Ali as the martyr Saint Sebastian and drowned Andy Warhol in a can of Campbell’s soup.
On the cover of its April 1968 issue of Esquire, art director George Lois depicts an image of Muhammad Ali to dramatize the boxer’s persecution for his personal beliefs. (George Lois/Esquire/Hearst Magazine Media, Inc.)
George Lois, a Madison Avenue ad maven who in the 1960s injected counterculture ethos into Esquire magazine’s covers, wounding boxer and anti-war activist Muhammad Ali with arrows and drowning Andy Warhol in a can of Campbell’s soup to depict the collapse of avant-garde art, died Nov. 18 at his home in New York City. He was 91.
Mr. Lois’s son, Luke Lois, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.
Though Mr. Lois designed groundbreaking ad campaigns for brands such as Stouffer’s, Xerox, Tommy Hilfiger and MTV — his “I want my MTV” commercials and posters were a staple of 1980s culture — his Esquire covers, the subject of an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, were considered his magnum opus.
Working with photographer Carl Fischer, Mr. Lois depicted Ali, who had been convicted on draft evasion charges for refusing to fight in Vietnam, as the martyr Saint Sebastian in black and white boxing trunks — “a combo of race, religion, and war in one image,” Mr. Lois later said.
He put a halo over the head of Roy Cohn, chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his investigation into communist activity. In 1963, as racial tensions flared, he put a Santa Claus hat on boxer Sonny Liston for the December cover, angering “half the country,” Mr. Lois later said, and causing the magazine’s circulation director to ask Esquire editor Harold Hayes, “What the hell are you trying to do to us?”
Mr. Lois’s most shocking cover was of William L. Calley Jr., the Army lieutenant court-martialed and convicted in the brutal My Lai Massacre, smiling in uniform with Vietnamese children sitting on his lap. To get him into that pose, Mr. Lois told Calley about his own experiences fighting in the Korean War.
“I won him over,” Mr. Lois told New York magazine in 2010. “And the kids just looked at the camera, and I said, ‘Calley, give me a big s---eating grin!’ And he did it. It ran and, I’m telling you, people went crazy in America.”
“My kind of art has nothing to do with putting images on canvas,” Mr. Louis said told an audience at a Miami Beach design and advertising event in 2014. “My concern is with creating images that catch people’s eyes, penetrate their minds, warm their hearts, and cause them to act.”
In one story, it is 1959 and Mr. Lois is a young ad man with the Goodman’s matzot account. He designed a poster in a pop-art style with a colossal piece of matzoh under huge Hebrew script that translated to “kosher for Passover.” Goodman’s executives hated it.
“The owner was about 92 — all he knew how to do was say no,” Mr. Lois told New York magazine in 2003. “So I said, ‘Let me go out and sell it to them.’ That never happened back then — they just didn’t think that way. Back then, they wouldn’t let the art director go sell the job.”
So off he went to the Goodman office building in Long Island City. “I’m getting nowhere,” Mr. Lois recalled. “So finally, I had to do something.” He opened the window and stepped out onto the ledge. “You make the matzos,” he told Goldman’s owner, “I’ll make the ads.”
“That became a famous story on Madison Avenue,” said Mr. Lois, who told it in his 1977 book “The Art of Advertising.” In a review headlined “Flaunting It,” New York Times book critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote, “George Lois may be nearly as great a genius of mass communication as he acclaims himself to be.”
George Harry Lois was born June 26, 1931, in New York City and raised in the Bronx with two sisters. His father owned a flower shop. His mother was a homemaker. Being of Greek heritage made him a target in the neighborhood. “I had a fistfight with every kid on my block,” Mr. Lois told New York magazine. “I got about fifteen broken noses to prove it.”
But Mr. Lois also recalled being picked on because he “was always drawing, and I always had an artist portfolio with me.”
Mr. Lois left Pratt after a year, taking a job with New York designer Reba Sochis. After serving in the Korean War, Mr. Lois worked at several Madison Avenue firms, including Doyle Dane Bernbach, which he left with several colleagues in 1960 to start Papert Koenig Lois.
In 1962, Hayes, Esquire’s editor, asked him to help with the magazine’s covers, which were sober and boring. “The cover should make a statement, tell readers not only what that issue is about but what Esquire is about,” Mr. Lois told Hayes, according to Carol Polsgrove’s history of the magazine. “One cover would build on another, until people understood: this was a great magazine.”
Mr. Lois’s covers often resulted in complaints from readers, but Esquire stuck by him as the magazine became one of the hottest titles on newsstands, with the writing of Gay Talese, Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe, among other rising literary greats, filling the inside pages. Mr. Lois’s big personality grated on some of his Esquire colleagues, who thought he took too much credit for work that was actually more collaborative than he let on. He left the magazine in 1973 amid slowing newsstand sales.
Mr. Lois is survived by his son Luke and two grandsons. Another son, Harry, died in 1978.
Late in life, Mr. Lois was often asked about the authenticity of the hit television show “Mad Men,” an AMC drama about Madison Avenue executives in the 1960s. In 2013 interview with Newsweek, he referred to the show as human excrement, saying the characters — including Don Draper — were “no-talent bums.”
The show, he wrote in a CNN.com article, “is nothing more than the fulfillment of every possible stereotype of the early 1960s bundled up nicely to convince consumers that the sort of morally repugnant behavior exhibited by its characters -- with one-night-stands and excessive consumption of Cutty Sark and Lucky Strikes -- is glamorous and ‘vintage.’”
Mr. Lois had a loftier self-image. | 2022-11-22T01:27:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | George Lois, ad man and creator of iconic Esquire covers, dies at 91 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/21/george-lois-creator-of-iconic-esquire-magazine-covers-dies-at-91/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/21/george-lois-creator-of-iconic-esquire-magazine-covers-dies-at-91/ |
A University of Virginia football player spoke during a memorial service for three slain teammates — Lavel Davis Jr., D'Sean Perry and Devin Chandler — on Saturday at John Paul Jones Arena. (Steve Helber/AP)
The Virginia football team will not play its final game of the season against Virginia Tech, the ACC announced Monday night, following the shooting Nov. 13 that killed three Cavaliers players and wounded two other students, including another player. The game had been scheduled for Saturday in Blacksburg.
The decision came two days after a memorial service was held at John Paul Jones Arena honoring the lives of Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler and D’Sean Perry, who died when a gunman opened fire on a charter bus that had come back to campus following a school trip to Washington.
The Cavaliers canceled their game scheduled for this past Saturday against Coastal Carolina at Scott Stadium to allow team members, coaches and staff as well as their families and those of the slain players to attend the service.
Perry’s funeral is Saturday in Miami, meaning the cancellation of the matchup with Virginia Tech will allow his teammates to attend. Chandler’s funeral is set for Sunday in Virginia Beach, and Davis’s is scheduled for Nov. 30 in South Carolina.
Virginia finishes its season at 3-7.
The team has been attempting to process its unimaginable loss since the tragedy ignited a massive manhunt for Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., the accused assailant who was apprehended the next morning in Henrico County, some 80 miles from the university, according to law enforcement authorities.
Jones, 23, was a football walk-on for one semester in 2018, and his time on the team under then-coach Bronco Mendenhall did not coincide with that of the players killed, or that of Mike Hollins Jr., the junior running back recently discharged from a hospital following multiple surgeries.
The shooting has left many unanswered questions regarding the motive as the investigation continues into the past of the accused shooter, who had been convicted of a concealed weapons violation in 2021, school officials indicated.
The Charlottesville community took a step toward healing last weekend during a tribute that drew more than 9,000 people and included remarks from football coach Tony Elliott, Athletic Director Carla Williams, school president Jim Ryan and players.
Davis, 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 an overtime loss to Miami at Scott Stadium, where he finished with one reception for 47 yards.
The 6-foot-7 junior averaged 23.2 yards per reception, which is first among Virginia players with at least five catches. Overall, Davis had 16 catches for 371 yards and two touchdowns, matching a team high, after missing all of last season with a torn ACL suffered during spring practice.
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.
As a freshman, Davis amassed 515 yards and five touchdowns on 20 catches as part of a high-powered passing game.
Perry, a junior linebacker, played in the Cavaliers’ last game Nov. 12, recording two tackles in a 37-7 loss to Pittsburgh at Scott Stadium. He appeared in six games this season, notching a career-high four tackles in a 16-14 victory over Old Dominion Sept. 17.
In all, Perry played 15 games over three seasons with nine tackles. In 2020, he returned an interception 84 yards for a touchdown on the final play of the game against Abilene Christian to cap a 55-15 victory.
Chandler, a junior, did not appear in any games this season after transferring from Wisconsin, where he played primarily on special teams. | 2022-11-22T01:57:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U-Va. football cancels final game of season against Virginia Tech - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/21/uva-virginia-tech-football-game-canceled/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/21/uva-virginia-tech-football-game-canceled/ |
Marino de Medici, dean of Washington foreign correspondents, dies at 89
As a reporter for the Italian daily Il Tempo, he covered Washington for more than two decades and distinguished himself as a gimlet-eyed observer of American politics
Marino de Medici at a typewriter in the 1960s. (Family photo)
Marino de Medici, an Italian journalist who reported from Washington for more than a quarter century, becoming dean of the foreign press corps and distinguishing himself as a gimlet-eyed observer of American politics, died Nov. 15 at his home in Winchester, Va. He was 89.
The cause was cancer, said his wife, Nicki Furlan de Medici.
Mr. de Medici arrived in the United States in 1954 as a university student in the Fulbright scholars program, an initiative championed by U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.) in the wake of World War II to foster international understanding.
Mr. de Medici went on to spend nearly his entire career as an interpreter of American life for Italian readers, principally as a Washington-based foreign correspondent for Il Tempo, a center-right newspaper headquartered in Rome. He covered presidents from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, the successes of the American democratic tradition and the stains on it.
“The role of a foreign correspondent,” Mr. de Medici told National Journal in 1985, “is not just to report the straight news but to clarify, analyze and explain what is going on in the U.S. and to interpret its significance and meaning to his country and the rest of the world. He becomes a player in a sophisticated game and influences policy.”
By the time he retired, the New York Times reported, Mr. de Medici had been reporting from Washington longer than any other member of the city’s foreign press corps, which at the time included 500 accredited journalists from 60 countries.
He covered the civil rights movement, traveled to Southeast Asia to report on the Vietnam War, and chronicled the Watergate scandal for an Italian readership better acquainted than Americans with government instability.
As revelations of the scandal pushed President Richard M. Nixon toward resignation, “I found it difficult to explain to Italians,” Mr. de Medici told the Times, “that it was not a political maneuver to take over the White House but a moral, constitutional and judicial matter where the final outcome was not dictated by politics but by the full force of the law.”
Mr. de Medici took occasional detours from his Washington assignment to cover world affairs, including coups in Latin America. But he seemed most at home in the U.S. capital, where he lived for years, and where he filed his dispatches from the National Press Building.
One benefit of being a foreign correspondent was distance from one’s editor. “If you’re lazy,” he joked, “you can just rewrite The Washington Post and nobody would notice it.” But Mr. de Medici took pride in his role as not only a scribe but also an analyst of democracy.
“I love American politics — the interaction of politics with public opinion,” he told the Times. “In the final analysis, it is public opinion that decides, and that is uniquely American.”
Marino Romano Pietro Lorenzo Celso de Medici was born in Rome on May 16, 1933. He claimed no ties to the Florentine dynasty whose name he shared, although he once reputedly pulled off the sale of a property in the United States by passing as a Medici prince. Many Italians perceive Americans as ignorant of history, a reputation that Mr. de Medici’s real estate agents confirmed when they referred to him as “de Medicini.”
Mr. de Medici’s father was a noncommissioned officer in the Italian navy, and his mother was a homemaker. During World War II, Mr. de Medici lived for a period with an aunt and uncle in Rome before fleeing the city’s deprivations to join his parents in the Romagna region, not far from the German defensive positions known as the Gothic line.
He was 11, he wrote in a recollection of the war, when he experienced an event that he said stood out in his memory “like a massive boulder.”
“I was happily pedaling along with my books in my backpack, making good time with an old bicycle that I had borrowed from the owner of the farm,” he wrote. “Suddenly, I heard a screaming roar at my back that caused me to stop and look behind me. And then I saw it, a black plane spewing sparks from its wings. Those sparks were bullets that were raining down on the road.” It was an American plane.
Mr. de Medici was working for the Rome-based newspaper Il Messaggero when he was awarded his Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States. He received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Washington in 1955 and a master’s degree, also in journalism, from the University of California at Berkeley in 1963.
After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Mr. de Medici returned to Italy and began working for ANSA, the country’s leading news agency, which sent him back to the United States to open a Washington bureau in 1960. Four years later, he became a Washington correspondent for Il Tempo.
At first, he recalled, he did not fit in among American reporters, with their salty manner and slovenly dress. “I was a young, green reporter coming to a country that, for me, was a great cathedral of journalism,” he told the Times. “I wore cologne and a gold chain and they thought me very strange.”
Mr. de Medici retired from Il Tempo in 1987. He later returned to Rome to serve as communications director for the International Fund for Agricultural Development, an agency of the United Nations. In 1998 he settled in Winchester, where he taught at Shenandoah University. He continued writing for Italian publications and the Northern Virginia Daily.
Mr. de Medici’s marriage to Marianne Bengtson ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 38 years, the former Nicki Furlan, and their two daughters, Laura de Medici and Marina de Medici, all of Winchester; and three grandchildren.
Mr. de Medici was the author of the book “SCRIBE: 30 Years as a Foreign Correspondent in America,” as well as a book in Italian about Donald Trump and the risks Mr. de Medici believed the former president posed to democracy.
After years of offering Italians an insider’s view of Washington, he offered Americans an outsider’s understanding of their country, one that had become his, too.
The United States is “becoming less and less of the democracy that I knew, that I admired and that I wanted to experience” when he first came here, he told the Northern Virginia Daily in 2020.
But in past “crises of history,” America “always emerged … and became stronger than before,” he added. “It’s going to have that again, I’m sure. But we have to close this abominable chapter of the worst presidency in the history of the United States. And who can say that with more confidence than a foreigner who knows this country very well?” | 2022-11-22T02:36:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marino de Medici, dean of Washington foreign correspondents, dies at 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/21/marino-de-medici-italian-journalist-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/21/marino-de-medici-italian-journalist-dead/ |
FILE - Lainie Kazan attends the premiere of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” in New York on March 15, 2016. Kazan appears in the 1982 film “My Favorite Year,” which is celebrating its 40th anniversary. (Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File)
LOS ANGELES — Peter O’Toole was famed for his commanding, Oscar-nominated turns. Mark Linn-Baker was a fledgling stage actor. Richard Benjamin, who’d made a leading-man splash in “Goodbye, Columbus” and “Westworld,” had a few TV directing credits.
The inspirations for “My Favorite Year” included Sid Caesar, the decade’s reigning TV comedy star, and “Your Show of Shows,” the hit he topped from 1950-54 and was followed by “Caesar’s Hour.” The movie also is infused with the spirit of Errol Flynn's swashbuckling films such as “Captain Blood,” with Swann’s “Captain from Tortuga” seen in a faux clip.
“It’s one of the three best productions about live TV that I’ve ever seen,” said David Bianculli, a TV critic for NPR's “Fresh Air” and author of “Dictionary of Teleliteracy.” His other top picks: “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and Simon’s play “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.”
Linn-Baker (TV’s “Ghosts,” “Perfect Strangers”) found O’Toole a kind and generous mentor and remains awed by his body of work, which includes “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Becket” and “The Lion in Winter.” O'Toole died in 2013 at age 81. | 2022-11-22T02:58:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'My Favorite Year,' comic salute to TV's golden age, hits 40 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/my-favorite-year-comic-salute-to-tvs-golden-age-hits-40/2022/11/21/eb437f24-69de-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/my-favorite-year-comic-salute-to-tvs-golden-age-hits-40/2022/11/21/eb437f24-69de-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Police cars were parked at the scene of a shooting Saturday on the University of New Mexico campus. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Albuquerque Journal/AP)
A New Mexico State basketball player is in a hospital after getting shot and fatally shooting one of his assailants in an incident that unfolded early Saturday morning at the University of New Mexico.
State police said NMSU forward Mike Peake arrived at UNM’s Albuquerque campus early Saturday morning after students there conspired to lure him into an assault.
Police identified Brandon Travis, 19, as the UNM student who died after being shot by the 21-year-old Peake. One of the other students involved, 19-year-old Jonathan Smith, has been charged with aggravated battery, conspiracy and two counts of tampering with evidence. New Mexico state police stated that an unidentified 17-year-old girl, also said to be among the group of UNM students, was charged with aggravated battery and conspiracy and booked into a juvenile detention center.
Peake was described by a UNM official as in stable condition. He and his Aggies teammates were staying at a hotel in Albuquerque on Friday evening ahead of a scheduled game the next day against the host Lobos. In the wake of the shooting, that game was postponed. It is unclear if it will be made up. UNM is scheduled to play at NMSU on Dec. 3, and the status of that game is also uncertain.
In a Q&A released Monday by NMSU, the university said its athletes are not allowed to bring guns on team trips and that, going forward, their bags would be checked before they boarded team buses.
Per an affidavit for an arrest warrant filed Sunday with a New Mexico district court, a state police investigator summarized interviews with the parties involved that portrayed Travis, Smith and another student identified as “Eli” as hatching a plan to use the girl’s help to take “revenge” on Peake. Smith and the girl said that when Smith, Travis and “Eli” attended a UNM-NMSU football game in October at the Aggies’ stadium in Las Cruces, they were beaten up by Peake and others.
Brandon Travis conspired with a 17-year old girl to lure Mike Peake to the UNM campus to jump him for retribution from a fight at the NMSU/UNM football game last month according to police documents. It appears Peake is in the middle of this fight https://t.co/xtMvsbA4QE
Per the affidavit, in Travis’s dorm room Friday, the three men had the 17-year-old girl, who was in contact with Peake, text him to meet her on campus. Peake arrived at approximately 3 a.m. and was walking with the girl outside a campus housing complex when the three men approached. Surveillance video, according to the affidavit, showed one of them pointing a gun at Peake’s head while the other two stood behind the NMSU player. One of those two hit Peake on the right leg with a bat.
Smith and the girl told the investigator, according to his account, that Travis held the gun, and Smith said “Eli” swung the bat. Peake started to run away, Smith said, then pulled out a gun and shot at Travis, who fired back while Smith, “Eli” and the girl fled the scene.
Smith told the investigator, per the affidavit, that he knew Travis possessed a gun but that its usage during the planned assault had not been discussed beforehand. After fleeing, Smith said he and “Eli” went back to the latter’s dorm room and changed clothes, then threw the clothes they had been wearing into a sewer.
State police said Sunday they were working with the district attorney to determine possible additional charges in the case.
In a message shared Saturday by UNM President Garnett S. Stokes, he wrote: “The impact of this experience is life-changing for so many and will extend far beyond expressions of grief and sense of loss — and far beyond the Lobo community. I cannot express how deeply saddened I am by this tragedy on so many levels.”
NMSU Chancellor Dan Arvizu said in a letter shared Sunday: “Any untimely passing is a tragedy, but it’s especially heartbreaking when it involves students and happens on a university campus.”
Both officials noted that mental health resources were available for their university communities.
Per his Aggies bio, Peake transferred to NMSU before the 2021-22 season after playing at Georgia and Austin Peay. He started NMSU’s first two games this season.
The school said Monday that the Aggies would travel to Las Vegas this weekend, as scheduled, to play in a two-day tournament. | 2022-11-22T05:08:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New Mexico State basketball player 'lured' by New Mexico students before fatal shootout - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/21/new-mexico-state-university-basketball-player-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/21/new-mexico-state-university-basketball-player-shooting/ |
Dear Amy: I am moving in with my boyfriend in a few months. He is everything I’ve ever wanted in a partner, and I’m excited to move into the small one-bedroom condo, which he owns. I’ve been spending most nights there since we started dating a year ago.
I only have one concern … he is incredibly messy. We’re talking piles of laundry all over the place, trash overflowing, and months-long expired food in the refrigerator. I’m quite the opposite. I like everything neat and tidy. I know that I’m going to need the space much, much cleaner to comfortably live there.
What’s the right way to address this? And what is the right time to do so? I’m particularly conscious of the fact that I’m moving into his place. Right now, when I spend the nights, I’m technically still his guest.
I do some cleaning already, but feel like I can’t be too critical at this point about the piles of laundry and leftover food. I’ve tried to raise it gently. I don’t want him to be put on the defensive, especially in his own home, but things definitely need to change.
Clean, Please!: The best time to address these living conditions would have been when you two were hot to trot and you were on your way to staying the night in his bachelor pad for the first time.
Given that this didn’t happen, some blunt honesty on your part would have been well-expressed up until the fifth time you decided to stay in his apartment. Instead, you’ve chosen to continue to spend your nights there without ever honestly expressing how unacceptable this is (to you), so he has every reason to believe that you’re basically cool with his lifestyle.
And now — you’ve said yes to moving in. Further confirmation for him that you’re probably on the same page. You should not move in together until you achieve clarity: Whose home will it be? If cohabiting, you should not continue believing that you are a “guest.” And if you have been a guest all this time, take a good look around: This is how he welcomes guests into his home.
If things “definitely need to change,” then you must establish this thoroughly before you commit to moving in. This should not be delivered as an ultimatum, but as you stating a simple truth: “I’m not willing to live the way you live. It’s waaaaay too messy and dirty for me.”
Dear Amy: My husband and I were invited to a friend’s house for a takeout dinner. I asked what to bring and she asked for a bottle of wine and a dessert. When we arrived with the dessert and two bottles of wine, she informed me that she wanted us to pay for our part of the takeout. We have had them over for takeout before and never expected them to pay.
In the past when we had dinner at one of our houses, the person doing the inviting provides the main course, so I was shocked and didn’t know what to say. We paid them for the food, but I am really disgusted that they treated us like this.
When she invited us for dinner, she should have told me that she wanted us to pay and we could have declined the invitation. I don’t know how to handle this.
Dined: It seems as if your friends owe you for their portion of the wine and dessert you provided.
Dear Amy: Kudos from this reader for your exemplary response to “J in N.Y.,” the uncle who seemed way too focused on his toddler nephew’s “refusal” to hug him.
Grateful: A large majority of readers backed me up. Thank you. | 2022-11-22T05:09:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I’m excited to move in with my boyfriend – except he’s messy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/22/ask-amy-messy-boyfriend-move-in/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/22/ask-amy-messy-boyfriend-move-in/ |
But I’m pretty sure no one wants to invite me out again, because I’ve been a flake for so long. How do I make it up to these people and get back into having a social life without coming off as pushy or desperate?
— How to Mingle?
How to Mingle?: Stop flogging yourself! Please. I know the sting of being put down is familiar, so it’ll be hard to get yourself to the point where you recognize it as gratuitous. But kinder self-treatment is a small way you can start to trust your worth again.
Next: Choose the one to three buddies you most regret flaking on, get in touch and say why you flaked, that you’re sorry and that you’d like to see them. One on one, venture out.
Worst case, you’re exactly right: that you flaked one time too many and they’re done. But: 1. You’re prepared for that. 2. That isn’t what, anecdotally, most people I know would do to someone who is just emerging from a long-term crisis. (You wouldn’t want their friendship anyway if they aren’t able to grasp that you were in survival mode all those years.)
You don’t have to make anything up to anyone, either. Just be honest and present. That you’re letting yourself be vulnerable, after what you’ve been through, is enough for now. I hope they see that.
Re: Mingling: I wouldn’t be surprised if some of your people are happy to know that you’ve gotten yourself out of a bad situation and would be delighted to see you again.
Anonymous: Amen.
Dear Carolyn: The son of longtime friends of the family got married in a large wedding last year out of state during the height of the coronavirus in our area. They were very lax about covid protocols. We declined to attend the wedding and, because we were both unemployed at the time, were unable to send a gift.
Since then, the mother of the groom has been very distant and limited in her communication, especially with me. We are both now employed and can afford a wedding gift, but it feels as if it would be awkward to give a gift at this late date.
We will be seeing the family at a group reunion. Would it be appropriate to give a wedding gift to the couple at that time? Or would it be better to send a gift before that? And how do I deal with my perception that the mother of the groom is very upset with me for not attending the wedding/sending a gift and doesn’t really want to communicate anymore?
Anonymous: Send a gift if you want to send a gift. Now is better — less to haul with you, and less “Here’s your late gift” awkward conversation. Plus, the value of the gift is the giving, not the timing.
As for the mother of the groom, she can work her own [stuff] out. Really. Be yourselves. You’ve done nothing wrong. | 2022-11-22T05:09:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Out of an abusive marriage, hoping friends didn't give up - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/22/carolyn-hax-abusive-marriage-friends/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/22/carolyn-hax-abusive-marriage-friends/ |
FILE - This photo provided on Nov. 19, 2022, by the North Korean government shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, right, and his daughter inspecting a missile at Pyongyang International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, Friday, Nov. 18, 2022. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: “KCNA” which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File) (朝鮮通信社/KCNA via KNS) | 2022-11-22T06:02:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seoul: Kim's daughter unveiled last week is his 2nd child - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/seoul-kims-daughter-unveiled-last-week-his-his-2nd-child/2022/11/21/cfe06cf0-6a20-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/seoul-kims-daughter-unveiled-last-week-his-his-2nd-child/2022/11/21/cfe06cf0-6a20-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
PARIS, FRANCE - FEBRUARY 26: In this photo illustration, the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange logo (C) is seen on the screen of an iPhone on February 26, 2021 in Paris, France. Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase has filed for registration with the SEC on Thursday for an IPO via direct listing on the Nasdaq and will likely be the largest IPO of the year. Coinbase reported $ 1.28 billion in revenue in 2020 (+ 140% year on year), for net profit of $ 320 million. (Photo illustration by Chesnot/Getty Images) (Photographer: Chesnot/Getty Images Europe)
Banks go where the money is. So when a market overextends and subsequently collapses, it’s no surprise they’re sometimes left holding the bag.
Crypto is no exception. While major banks stayed away from what Jamie Dimon called a “decentralized Ponzi scheme,” many small lenders saw a profitable niche in helping to service companies operating in the fledgling space. They include Silvergate Capital Corp., Provident Bancorp Inc., Metropolitan Commercial Bank, Signature Bank and Customers Bancorp Inc., among others. The recent collapse of FTX puts their business in the spotlight.
Silvergate’s relationship with crypto goes back to the digital currency’s early days — when the market was largely limited to Bitcoin. Chief Executive Officer Alan Lane was an early believer and wanted to build products to cater to the market. “What I saw,” he says, “was an opportunity to bank these companies that were essentially being de-risked from other banks.”
Identifying a disconnect between the 24/7 trading cycle of crypto and traditional banking’s 9-to-5 five-day-a-week clock, Lane set up a payment network to offer an interface between the world of dollars and the world of crypto. His Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN) allows users to move dollars between each other so that they can settle the fiat side of their crypto transactions any time of the day or night. The network was used by many of the major players in crypto and passed $1 trillion in cumulative payment volumes earlier this year. One customer was FTX, whose now-disgraced founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was a fan.
“Life as a crypto firm can be divided up into before Silvergate and after Silvergate,” he said. “It’s hard to overstate how much it revolutionized banking for blockchain companies.”
Silvergate profited from deposits that digital asset customers left on its network. At the end of September, those deposits were 90% of the bank’s overall deposit base, amounting to $11.9 billion. The bank reinvested them in securities to earn a margin: Its $11.4 billion securities portfolio generated a spread of 2.2% over the three months to September.
The problem now is not only that FTX has gone away, but other customers are going away too. Silvergate has disclosed that FTX represented less than 10% of deposits from digital asset customers; then, it revealed that average deposits quarter-to-date were down to $9.8 billion. On Friday, crypto trading platform FalconX sent an email to clients stating, “we will not be using Silvergate’s SEN and wires, effective immediately and until further notice.”
To honor withdrawals, Silvergate will have to tap its securities portfolio to raise cash. But rising rates have impaired the value of that portfolio – the bank was already sitting on $1 billion of unrealized losses at the end of September. In addition, a chunk of the portfolio ($3.1 billion) is in a held-to-maturity sleeve, which accounting standards prohibit it from touching. Silvergate’s market value, which rocketed to above $4 billion at its 2021 peak from about $200 million in early 2020, is back down below $1 billion.
Provident has a different kind of exposure to crypto. Founded in 1828, it’s one of the oldest banks in the US, operating for much of its history as a mutual holding company, owned by its depositors. In 2019, the bank demutualized into a stock holding company, leaving it very highly capitalized as new shares were issued in the conversion process. Looking for ways to invest its excess capital, the bank stumbled into crypto. It first launched deposit and cash management services for digital-currency customers and, in late 2020, it rolled out lending as well. “Old banking is boring,” the company notes in its investor materials.
Provident made loans supporting crypto-backed lending, margin trading and crypto-mining operations. By mid-2022, it had built its crypto-related loan book up to $139 million, equivalent to 58% of its equity capital. But the collapse in digital-asset markets has made recovering some of these loans tricky. The bank has delayed its third-quarter earnings filing to review those loans, indicating that losses may amount to $27.5 million, stemming from impairments on $104 million of crypto-mining loans.
Several other small banks have exposure to crypto. New York-based Metropolitan Commercial Bank looked after $1.5 billion of deposits from digital-currency businesses at the end of 2021, equivalent to about a quarter of its total deposits. One of its major clients was Voyager Digital, whose July bankruptcy filing required Metropolitan Commercial Bank to return deposits to its end-users. By the end of September, deposits from digital businesses had halved.
For now, some banks are claiming their crypto businesses are resilient. Signature Bank, also based in New York, has been a receptacle of digital-asset related deposits since 2018, and in 2019 launched a payments network like Silvergate’s. It previously offered loans collateralized by certain types of cryptocurrencies but is no longer in that market. At the end of September, Signature Bank had $23.5 billion of digital asset deposits on its balance sheet, representing about a quarter of its overall deposits. Around $12.3 billion of the total derives from exchanges, of which FTX forms a sliver. Last week, the bank informed investors that balances were stable.
Customers Bancorp, of West Reading, Pennsylvania has also said that, for now, balances are stable. It operates a blockchain-based instant payments system using its own non-listed token, CBIT. Last week, deposit balances sat at $1.85 billion, compared with $1.9 billion at the end of September.
The banks’ compliance procedures are sure to attract greater scrutiny. Sam Bankman-Fried has indicated that transfers meant for FTX may have been directed towards its sister company, Alameda Research. The new CEO of FTX, charged with overseeing its bankruptcy, has said he’s never seen “such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”
All of which raises a new question facing banks that did business with FTX: Did you know your customer?
• Crypto Retreat’s Quantum Leap for Central Banks: Andy Mukherjee | 2022-11-22T07:33:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | These Banks Were Left Holding the Bag in Crypto Implosion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/these-banks-were-left-holding-the-bag-in-crypto-implosion/2022/11/22/b8de2096-6a2b-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/these-banks-were-left-holding-the-bag-in-crypto-implosion/2022/11/22/b8de2096-6a2b-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Indonesia counts fatalities, searches for missing after deadly quake
Rescuers carry the body of an earthquake victim recovered from under the rubble of a collapsed building in Cianjur, Indonesia on Tuesday. (Tatan Syuflana/AP)
MEDAN, Indonesia — Aid workers and officials are scrambling to respond to a 5.6-magnitude earthquake that hit Indonesia’s West Java province on Monday. As rescuers combed through the rubble for survivors, confusion spread over the exact death toll, with several government sources releasing different numbers.
Representatives of the Cianjur branch of Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency said late Monday night that the death toll had reached 162 — a number also shared by the region’s governor, Ridwan Kamil, with local reporters. But on Tuesday morning, staff at the agency told The Washington Post that they were still verifying the 162 figure.
Abdul Muhari, the agency’s national head, said in an interview Tuesday that the official death toll stood at 103. While others — including Kamil — have claimed that the majority of the casualties were children, it is still too early to tell, Muhari said. More than 30 people in Cianjur were still missing as of Tuesday and it will take days for officials to identify and verify who was lost in the quake, particularly in more rural segments of the affected area, he said.
“We are waiting for the hospitals in Cianjur to send us the data that they have about the sex and ages of the victims,” Muhari said.
Located about 60 miles away from the capital, Jakarta, the Cianjur area is home to about 2.2 million residents. Monday’s quake, which reduced rows of buildings into rubble and briefly cut off electricity to entire communities, could be the deadliest one in Indonesia since 2018, when twin disasters — a 7.5-magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami — killed more than 2,000 on the central island of Sulawesi.
Most of those killed in Monday’s incident died after being hit by collapsing debris, officials said. At least 13 schools were affected and more than 7,000 people have been displaced from their homes, according to Muhari’s agency. Officials are now in need of emergency supply items like tarpaulins, tents, medicine and drinking water, he said. | 2022-11-22T07:34:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Indonesia counts death toll after West Java earthquake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/22/indonesia-java-earthquake-death-toll/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/22/indonesia-java-earthquake-death-toll/ |
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers speaks during a news conference Nov. 21 about Saturday’s mass shooting at an LGBTQ bar. (David Zalubowski/AP)
A shooting at a Colorado Springs nightclub that left five dead last week has raised questions about Colorado’s red-flag law and whether it was implemented properly. But the town’s mayor said Monday that “we don’t know” whether the gun law would have applied in the case and possibly prevented the bloody incident.
Speaking at a news conference, Colorado Springs officials did not confirm that the suspect in the shooting at Club Q was the same man who threatened his mother with a bomb last year, despite sharing the same age and name. They also declined to say whether a red-flag law — through which authorities can remove guns from a potentially dangerous person — should have been applied because of such an incident.
Mayor John Suthers (R) said he would “caution against an assumption that the circumstances of this case would lead to application of the red-flag law — we don’t know that.”
Colorado Springs authorities said Nov. 21 that they are still investigating the motive, but they "do not tolerate bias-motivated crimes" in their community. (Video: The Washington Post)
The Colorado law, which passed in 2019, allows authorities to seize weapons from people who are deemed dangerous to themselves or the community. If it had been triggered after the report of the bomb threat, authorities would have temporarily seized the suspect’s weapons.
“Law enforcement agencies in appropriate circumstances should take advantage of it and utilize the law,” Suthers said.
But not all jurisdictions enforce the red-flag law equally. El Paso County, Colo., where the 2021 threat was reported, demonstrated its opposition to the law in 2019 by declaring itself a “Second Amendment preservation county.”
Police have also not yet said how or when the gunman acquired the guns.
No formal charges were brought after the 2021 bomb threat incident, and the records were put under seal — part of a state law that allows some arrest charges that were dismissed to be sealed automatically, said 4th Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen.
“The idea behind that is that that person shouldn’t have to carry that charge around them for the rest of their lives if there’s no way to convict them of that charge,” Allen said.
That same law “requires us to say in response to questions about it that no such record exists,” Allen said. “That’s the design behind it, I know that’s an unsatisfying answer, but that’s the status of the law as it exists right now.”
Red-flag laws, also known as extreme-risk protection orders, exist in 19 states and the District of Columbia. They have gained rare bipartisan traction in Congress as a way to reduce the risk of mass shootings but also uphold the Second Amendment. In June, President Biden signed a bipartisan law that aimed to encourage more states to enact red-flag laws.
Although implementation varies widely depending on the state, red-flag laws have been credited with preventing suicides, and in some cases possibly preventing mass shootings, according to preliminary research.
Florida’s version allows only law enforcement officials to petition the courts to take away someone’s guns, while those in Maryland and D.C. let mental health providers petition courts. New York allows school officials, and Hawaii allows co-workers. Colorado’s version permits law enforcement or members of the person’s family or household to petition judges.
A 2018 study showed that red-flag laws were associated with a 7.5 percent decrease in firearm-related suicides in Indiana and a 13.6 percent reduction in Connecticut, although the latter state’s decrease was offset by an increase in non-firearm suicides.
A 2020 study conducted in Washington state’s King County, which includes Seattle, found that red-flag laws succeeded in taking away weapons from people who had shown an intent to commit a mass shooting in five cases. A 2019 study reported that California’s red-flag law let authorities seize weapons in 21 cases that involved individuals who had vowed to shoot others. | 2022-11-22T09:04:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What's a red-flag law and why is it being raised after Colorado shooting? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/22/red-flag-law-colorado-shooting-explained/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/22/red-flag-law-colorado-shooting-explained/ |
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Best of Monday: U.S. men show they belong but settle for draw
Lionel Messi celebrates with teammates after scoring his team's first goal during the Qatar 2022 World Cup Group C match between Argentina and Saudi Arabia at the Lusail Stadium. (Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images)
The World Cup continues in Qatar on Tuesday with four games that include one of history’s greatest players and the reigning champion beginning its title defense. Lionel Messi, in what is probably his final World Cup, takes the field with Argentina against Saudi Arabia to kick things off (5 a.m. Eastern, U.S. broadcast on Fox Sports 1). Denmark vs. Tunisia (8 a.m., FS1) and Mexico vs. Poland (11 a.m., Fox) follow before France, the 2018 winner, faces Australia (2 p.m., Fox) to cap the day. Follow along for live updates.
Argentina is the class of Group C, and it is expected to breeze past Saudi Arabia, which is one of the lowest-ranked teams in the 32-nation field. Messi, the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner as the world’s best player, is being counted on to lift the spirits of a beleaguered nation. Tuesday’s other Group C game, between Mexico and Poland, should be more evenly matched.
France has a star-studded roster that includes Kylian Mbappé, among others, and Les Bleus will provide a stiff challenge for Australia’s “Socceroos.” The other Group D game between Denmark and Tunisia features Danish star Christian Eriksen, who is back in action after he suffered a cardiac event during the European Championship last year.
The World Cup continues with four more games Wednesday. Find the full schedule, results and group standings here.
Argentina briefly made it 2-0 when Lautero Martinez scored an easy goal that was disallowed on VAR review because he was offside.
It looked as if he might have been onside initially, but VAR detected some part of his body was offside.
By Noah Davis
No goal. Lautaro Martínez looks to have beaten the offside trap, takes a through ball and chips Saleh al-Shehri, but it’s pulled back after a short video review.
Messi scores, but referee Slavko Vincic calls it back for offside. Saudi Arabia’s high defensive line is holding for now. The score remains 1-0 in favor of Argentina.
Lionel Messi scores the first goal of the match — and, of course, his first in the 2022 World Cup — on an easy penalty kick in the 10th minute. Argentina is 39-5-2 when scoring first in World Cup matches.
Each of Messi’s past four World Cup goals have come in the first half of games, with his first three coming in the second half.
GOAL: Lionel Messi scores from the penalty spot, easily sliding the ball into the net past Saudi Arabia’s goalkeeper.
Leo Messi and Argentina test Saudi Arabia, attacking immediately with Ángel Di Maria delivering a pass to Messi, whose kick with his golden-booted foot is stopped by Saleh al-Shehri.
It didn't take long for Messi to get a shot on goal ⚡️🇦🇷 pic.twitter.com/z3qa3ayw4H
The strains of each country’s national anthem have faded, and the Group C match between Argentina and Saudi Arabia has begun.
No real surprises in Saudi Arabia’s lineup, led by captain Salman al-Faraj, for its first match against Lionel Messi’s Argentina.
Not that there was any doubt, but Lionel Messi is indeed starting for Argentina against Saudi Arabia.
Official: Messi is starting against Saudi Arabia. pic.twitter.com/pkPdMG60sE
Saudi Arabia is a long shot but, after a strong qualifying campaign, not necessarily a matchup that opponents can count on for an automatic three points.
This marks Saudi Arabia’s sixth trip to the World Cup in the past eight tournaments, though the Green Falcons have only made it out of the group stage once: at the 1994 World Cup in the United States that marked their debut. The 2019 Asian Cup was a disappointment for Saudi Arabia, which finished second to Qatar in its group and then lost to Japan in the round of 16. But Coach Hervé Renard’s team bounced back by going 7-1-2 in World Cup qualifying, edging Japan for first place in Asia’s Group B.
The narrative here is nothing new: Lionel Messi’s case as the greatest to ever play the game may well hinge on his ability to fill the glaring gap in his résumé and win a World Cup title. With Argentina coming off the 2021 Copa America title — its first trophy in 28 years — and an unbeaten World Cup qualifying campaign, this could very well represent the 35-year-old’s best and last chance at securing his legacy.
Few nations have a richer soccer history than Argentina, which won the 1978 and 1986 World Cup titles and advanced to the final in 1930, 1990 and 2014. But its more recent reputation has been one of disappointment, that 2014 run aside, with stacked Albiceleste squads crashing out in the 2002 group stage, 2006 and 2010 quarterfinals and 2018 round of 16.
RAYYAN, Qatar — The U.S. men’s national soccer team arrived at this World Cup primed to restore dignity and verve after an unfathomable absence four years ago. It set foot in this small country big on ideas but short on age, full of harmony but devoid of the international experience typically required to succeed under the sport’s brightest lights.
In their return, the young Americans looked every bit like they belonged, going ahead of Wales in the first half on a goal by Tim Weah, whose father, an African soccer legend and Liberia’s president, never got the chance to play in a World Cup. | 2022-11-22T10:36:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Argentina vs. Saudi Arabia: World Cup live udpates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/world-cup-live-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/world-cup-live-updates/ |
Colorado investigators seek motive behind deadly LGBTQ club shooting
By Scott Wilson
Colorado Springs Police Chief Adrian Vasquez addresses a news conference on the Club Q shooting on Monday. (Ross Taylor for The Washington Post)
A day after the 22-year-old man who allegedly opened fire inside a nightclub haven for Colorado Springs’s LGBTQ community was preliminarily charged with murder and hate crimes, investigators continued seeking a motive Tuesday behind the nation’s most recent mass shooting.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, wearing camouflage and a bulletproof vest, entered Club Q late Saturday night armed with a handgun and an assault-style rifle. Within minutes, police say, he had killed five people and wounded 18 others, until he was subdued by a club patron who tackled the gunman. Several other customers then pinned him to the ground until authorities arrived.
The city and much of the state, the site of several recent mass shootings, grieved Monday for those who died and for the tragic shadow now cast over a cultural landmark, where many gay men and lesbians found comfort in a city once-known as staunchly opposed to LGBTQ rights.
A makeshift altar near the club expanded overnight, and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) ordered flags flown at half-staff to memorialize the dead. Four years ago Polis was elected the country’s first openly gay governor. He was born and raised in Boulder, Colo., where in March 2021 a shooter opened fire inside a King Soopers grocery store, killing 10 people.
The investigation is in its earliest stages and appears to be focused on how the gunman obtained the assault rifle and why he opened fire.
In filing five counts of murder and five counts of committing a bias-motivated crime that caused bodily harm as preliminary charges against Aldrich, Colorado officials requested that the evidence supporting the charges be sealed, arguing successfully that releasing details would jeopardize the ongoing investigation.
So far this year there have been more than 600 mass shootings — defined as a shooting when four or more people die or are injured in a single incident — in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Asked about the shooting Tuesday while on a trip to the Philippines, Vice President Harris said it was “just tragic” that mass shootings keep happening, particularly in places “where people should have an expectation and a right to be in a safe place and to be able to be themselves and enjoy each other’s company.”
The victims spanned the spectrum of American life, both patrons and employees, a testament to the club’s appeal and the seemingly random nature of the shooter’s rampage.
A 40-year-old transgender woman visiting from Memphis was shot dead, as was a 40-year-old man who worked at a cosmetics company and was attending the club with his girlfriend. Witnesses said one of the club’s bartenders also died of gunshot wounds.
The shooting spree ended when Richard Fierro, a U.S. Army veteran, tackled Aldrich to the ground. Fierro was at the club celebrating a friend’s birthday with his family, watching a drag show that starred his 22-year-old daughter’s best friend.
Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report.
The latest: Officials on Monday identified the five victims killed in the Colorado Springs shooting. Their names are Daniel Aston, Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Ashley Paugh and Derrick Rump. Follow our live updates here.
The suspect: The suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, faces five murder charges and five charges of committing a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury, city spokesman Max D’Onofrio said. Prosecutors will later file former charges. | 2022-11-22T11:54:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Colorado Springs investigators seek motive behind Club Q shooting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/22/motive-colorado-springs-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/22/motive-colorado-springs-shooting/ |
For “Mickalene Thomas: Avec Monet,” the American artist created works that reflect on the French painter and move Black women into the foreground
Artist Mickalene Thomas sits in her studio in Brooklyn. “Mickalene Thomas: Avec Monet” is her first exhibition at a museum in France. (Elias Williams for The Washington Post)
Little distinguishes the exterior of artist Mickalene Thomas’s Brooklyn studio from the surrounding businesses and buildings. Her workspace is on an unremarkable street in the Fort Greene area, and its entryway is partially obscured by a block-long matrix of scaffolding as well as a truck delivering fittings for a neighborhood gym preparing for its grand opening. There’s only a discreet posting near her building’s buzzer to indicate that behind these industrial doors lies a magical, kaleidoscopic world of paint, paper and paillettes depicting Black women in repose, Black women indulging in the luxury of self-assurance, Black women existing in a world of their own creation.
Thomas, 51, has built her substantial art-world reputation by focusing on Black women and presenting them not as uniquely heroic or long-suffering, not as tools for cultural propaganda, but as self-affirming, sensual beings. Thomas hints at their complicated and layered identities with her use of collage; she heightens their beauty and glamour by incorporating crystals and rhinestones; she underscores their power with an aesthetic pulled from the “Black is beautiful” era of the 1970s. Thomas’s women often look as though they have stepped from a blaxploitation film, the pages of Ebony or Jet magazines, or the imagination of someone who keenly understands the importance of celebrating your own fabulousness when the world is stubbornly blind to it.
“We, too, can recline,” Thomas declares. “We, too, can relax and be seen doing so and have it be empowering and validating for our sense of self. We can be in the moment and in own our space and not be seen as being lazy.”
Her studio inside that bland building is light-filled and sprawling with high ceilings and plenty of room for pieces that are still in process, those that are complete, as well as an office area where she has settled into an uncomfortable-looking chair but one that has her slightly elevated above the facing sofa. It is the boss chair.
Thomas is a tall, sturdy woman with braids and deep brown, unlined skin that gives the illusion of porelessness. Her voice is warm and smooth, with the unaccented cadence of someone who has lived on both American coasts, as well as in Europe. She enunciates with the measured specificity of an English teacher, even though art has always been her vocation. She wears a T-shirt with a picture of the rapper Tupac Shakur. For an artist so devoted to the stories of Black women, the complicated poet of hip-hop is one of two exceptions to her fashion rule.
“I’m on this journey of collecting T-shirts with Black women,” Thomas explains. “I was going to wear my Janet Jackson one. I only have Biggie and Tupac as the men. Then it’s all the women, like Eartha Kitt, Whitney Houston. They’re my studio shirts.”
Thomas is a distinctive and recognizable cultural figure. She’s had a multitude of exhibitions, including at the Brooklyn Museum, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and numerous galleries. She moves effortlessly between the fine art world of mixed media and fashion’s universe of photography — between high art and artful consumerism — sometimes blending the two so that a supermodel and a frock convey a universe of complications. In her 2013 portrait “Naomi Looking Forward #2,” a reclining Naomi Campbell, her hair and lips encrusted with crystals, offers commentary on the 19th-century “La Grande Odalisque.” Thomas, herself, regularly makes a fine model, sometimes in a Gucci suit on the cover of a magazine, sometimes as the star of her own video installation.
Thomas’s fine art is now the subject of an exhibition that opened in October at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. The museum, in the Tuileries Garden, is known as the permanent home for eight of Claude Monet’s waterlily paintings. The exhibition organizers asked Thomas to create works that reflect on Monet and the time she spent as an artist-in-residence at his former home in Giverny, France, in 2011.
Monet's towering obsession
“Mickalene Thomas: Avec Monet” is her first exhibition at a museum in France. And geography means something. The show centers her at both the physical and artistic heart of Paris — or at least the version of the city that most of the world knows. Instead of having her work considered solely in the context of the present, it’s presented in relationship with the past; it’s dancing with the ghost of one of art history’s titans. The small museum was constructed in 1852, and over time, its collection has helped to tell the erroneous story of French art, establishing a narrative that European art is White when, in fact, it is Asian and African, too. Thomas disrupts that story in ways both obvious and subtle, by her mere presence and with her work.
“I feel very honored,” Thomas says. “Look, I’m a Black girl from Camden, New Jersey. Every once in a while, I’ve got to pinch myself: Is this happening? This is something that is a reality? Is possible?
“I never thought that I would have my first exhibition in conversation with Monet. I thought, actually, I would have a show at the Pompidou or something like that because it’s more of a contemporary museum,” she adds. “But I think this historical museum, in some ways, makes a lot of sense with my body of work over the years.”
Thomas attributes the existence of her exhibition to an art-world reckoning of sorts. In 2018, the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University presented “Posing Modernity: The Black Model From Manet and Matisse to Today,” which explored how the Black female form was essential to the development of modern art and the manner in which Black women were represented. The exhibition later traveled to the Musée d’Orsay.
“The Black model was always present but was omitted from the conversation,” Thomas says. “I think because of that [exhibition’s] exposure, because of that conversation around the Black model and looking back into history … we’re open to forging forth with some of these conversations that we’ve so long kind of circled around.”
Two revelatory exhibitions upend our understanding of Black models in art
In 2022, she created “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires avec Monet.” The mixed-media composition installed at l’Orangerie, along with three other collage paintings and photographs, as well as a video composition, depicts three women at rest in a landscape they have claimed as their own. Thomas created it in response to Monet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe,” which followed Édouard Manet’s painting of the same title. Like her predecessors’, Thomas’s work is lush with flowers and trees. But instead of ivory-skinned picnickers and sunbathers, she positions Black women in their glory, with brown skin and Afros. They look back at the viewer. They aren’t staking a claim on a White world; they’re inhabiting their own realm, one in which Monet exists but over which they have authority. They’re at ease and self-satisfied.
In “Salle à Manger et Sofa avec Monet,” the dining room of Monet’s home is reimagined to incorporate parts of Thomas’s realm, including a pale yellow sofa that has served as something akin to a throne for the subjects of her portraiture.
Thomas’s aesthetic — not just the pieces at l’Orangerie, but her entire body of work — is a corrective. It’s a reclamation of history and future history.
“What I respond to and admire and visually love about Mickalene’s work is she doesn’t shy away from the 19th-century images because they’re fraught with all the layers and stereotypes of women of color,” says Denise Murrell, who curated the “Posing Modernity” show in New York. “She reimagines these images and gives us a sense of the subject and how these women would have, could have been seen by themselves or been seen by others.”
Murrell zeroes in on one of Thomas’s works from 2012, “Din, Une Trés Belle Négresse 1.” It features a Black woman dressed in a floral print and posed against a floral backdrop. She’s wearing a large shell necklace, and her hair is styled in a grand Afro that surrounds her face like a sacred halo. Her full lips are lacquered in a deep blackberry hue, and her eyes are dramatically highlighted in dark shadow. The title, translated, means Din, A Very Beautiful Black Woman, but Thomas uses the discomforting “négresse,” which in art history often has rendered individual Black women as an anonymous commodity.
“She’s taking all the physical features, the hair and lips, that have been stereotyped in a derogatory way in the 19th century and giving them full beauty and lushness. She’s not just presenting a 19th-century woman, but the woman of the current moment,” says Murrell, who is the Merryl H. and James S. Tisch curator at-large at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In Thomas’s portraits, “the attire is of the late 20th century, the pose, the affect, the stance. You could see them at parties or on the street. She’s making these arguments in the artistic language of the current moment,” Murrell adds. “They’re gorgeous and self-possessed. They’re the opposite of the pictorial subordination in previous depictions of Black women. They claim all aspects of their being.”
Mother as muse
Thomas’s aesthetic was shaped, in part, by the world as presented in the pages of Ebony and Jet. They were on the coffee table of her home growing up, and they helped to define beauty and success among people who looked like her. The magazines, Thomas says, “had such a profound way of communicating to me as a young girl. It was where I first saw beauty and read about Diahann Carroll and all these moments of celebration of what Black folks were doing.
“It was really a window into a world outside of my world.”
What stays with her, though, is not just the outsize success of actors and business people, but also the smaller, notable moments acknowledged in those magazines. A person didn’t have to be one-of-a-kind to be noticed, to have their life documented in print. They could simply be an outstanding doctor or a college student or a piano teacher. They could simply be pretty. Today, the breadth of media, particularly social media, enhances the fame of the few but can blind the culture to everyone else. The beautiful, determined quotidian is ignored.
Thomas’s work responds to that lapse. Her women mostly aren’t famous, but they’re treated as extraordinary. They’re bedecked with crystals. They’re draped in florals and leopard print. They’re made up like starlets.
In Thomas’s work, her mother, Mama Bush as she’s called, is stylized, but also raw. Her mother struggled with addiction and suffered physical abuse, and Thomas photographed her often before her 2012 death. As a school project when she was attending Pratt Institute, Thomas photographed her mother dressed up like actress Pam Grier. Her mother, who had some experience modeling, warmed to the task, enjoying the role-play and, in particular, the fashion.
“Most Black people, we’re going to present ourselves a certain way,” Thomas says. “I think that comes from owning yourself and being present and making sure you’re treated and respected when you’re walking through spaces.”
In another portrait, “Madame Mama Bush,” her mother is reclining on a slipcovered sofa. When her red negligee fell open to reveal her breasts, she didn’t move to cover herself. She simply and quietly told her daughter: “Just take the damn pictures.”
The images — along with others Thomas took over the years — are intimate and self-confident from the perspective of both subject and artist. Her mother reveled in her body for Thomas’s camera, but also exposed her interior self during the sitting as the two discussed sex, men and the challenges of both.
“We didn’t always have the best relationship, and it’s not because she was a bad mother or she was a bad person. She had challenges in her life. She was human. And as I got older, I recognized that,” Thomas says. “Our relationship got closer through art. It was such a beautiful way of communicating with each other, and I learned a lot about myself, working with her, because I began to see the things that I was sort of pushing up against. I had to just, sort of, let my shoulders down and be open.
“Once we started collaborating, she was open to expressing herself within my art freely. I was so overwhelmed and blown away with her vulnerability and her strength and her willingness to just be free with her own sensuality and sexuality. It was a way for her to share herself.”
Her mother was empowered by Thomas’s lens. The act of making art created a kind of invincibility. Art creates a space where people can exist outside themselves.
Thomas realized this when she was in her early 20s and had an “aha” moment after seeing a Carrie Mae Weems exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art. It was Weems’s “Kitchen Table Series,” a collection of photographs set at a kitchen table that tell the story of love, loneliness, friendship, motherhood and self-reflection from the perspective of a Black woman — but really, women in general.
“I’m not that person that gets high, but I imagine this euphoria, this moment where you just feel like you can do anything,” Thomas says. “That’s what I saw. That’s what I felt when I saw Carrie Mae Weems [artworks] and being like, ‘I can do anything. I know this. I’m that little girl. I’m that person. I recognize these images.’ That was the first time I saw images of Black women, a Black family, in contemporary art. And that hit me so deeply. It’s like: ‘Wow, I didn’t know art could do this.’
“So whatever that sort of thing is that triggers someone positively, that’s what I want,” she says. “That’s why I became an artist.”
Serenity and energy
It’s late September and the works that Thomas has created for the Paris show are still in her Brooklyn studio. One of them, “Le Jardin d’Eau de Monet,” is in pieces. Its panels will be conjoined once they cross the Atlantic, and the museum visitor will have the experience of being immersed in Thomas’s world.
The work comprises photography and collage and, of course, rhinestones. At a distance, it’s a joyous celebration of nature. Up close, it’s Monet environment subordinated to Thomas’s. Instead of the meditative, indulgent serenity of Monet, one sees the urgent energy of Thomas with her deep faith in her own agency.
Although it’s a landscape, the work isn’t such an extreme departure from the sensibility and vision that has brought Thomas acclaim, which is her exploration of Black female sensuality and self-awareness; it’s a continuation along that artistic road. One could easily imagine one of Thomas’s women reclining languidly in “Le Jardin d’Eau de Monet,” but they don’t have to be present for their ownership to be evident. It’s still clear that this landscape, this space, belongs to Thomas and her muses.
The Paris show was an opportunity to express a specific kind of freedom and luxury that she discovered at Giverny.
“I really was inspired, during my time there, by how [Monet] as an artist really created space for himself and resource material to work from on a day-to-day basis. Like he could wake up and just have this landscape that he’s created,” Thomas says. “He specifically chose the flowers; he specifically created the pond in a very particular way. Everything was strategic for him — how he moved around and walked through this space.”
The ability to create, control and then thrive in one’s environment is a reflection of power and an enormous source of comfort. A viewer doesn’t have to know anything about the history of art to be moved by this idea. Anyone who has lived within the context of 21st-century culture might understand hashtags such as #Black Lives Matter and #BlackExcellence as not only political statements and personal affirmations, but also declarations of one’s right to simply “be.”
Thomas thought of this one midsummer day in Fort Greene Park. She saw a young Black couple who had tied a hammock between two trees. They weren’t doing anything remarkable. And that, to Thomas, was worth noting.
“They just claimed the spot. They were the only ones in the park with a hammock, and they just laid on it and swung and laughed,” she recalls. “I wanted to just bottle that. It was so beautiful.”
Instead, she has painted that joy and sense of relaxation. She has installed it in the center of Paris. At the heart of art history. Because geography means something. | 2022-11-22T11:54:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Artist Mickalene Thomas takes on Monet, and art history itself - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/22/mickalene-thomas-artist-paris-show/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/22/mickalene-thomas-artist-paris-show/ |
Douglas Brinkley describes a time, from 1960 to 1973, when Americans became alarmed by pollution and other problems — and trusted the government to fix them
Review by Matthew Dallek
A moose stands in the Colorado River in Rocky Mountain National Park. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres recently declared that the Earth was on “a highway to climate hell.” In “Silent Spring Revolution,” a panoramic history of environmental politics from 1960 to 1973, Douglas Brinkley describes a more hopeful age when awareness of ecological degradation was rising and government and activists were recognizing the need to act together to save the nation’s natural resources and defend the public’s health. Rather than take readers on a path to a Hieronymus Bosch landscape, Brinkley’s book recounts a decade-plus in which liberal action tackled some of the forerunners to our current environmental crises. The narrative captures an extended moment when the federal government implemented a host of laws, rules and regulations to protect rivers, seashores, oceans, parks, the air and wildlife. It was an era when a united effort established the public protections that remain in force today, even if entrenched climate deniers now hinder significant progress in meeting the challenges.
During the 1960s and ’70s, environmental problems demanded national attention. Crises were metastasizing, threatening the lives of Americans and endangering what President John Kennedy called “America the beautiful” during a conservation tour in September 1963. After JFK’s assassination, President Lyndon Johnson took up the mantle, warning Americans on his way to a landslide election victory in 1964: “The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing.”
Unrestrained consumption, technological wizardry and unchecked growth were assaulting the nation’s natural resources. During the early Cold War, ecologically minded citizens, Brinkley writes in his absorbing account, were “shouting into a maelstrom of commercialism.” President Dwight Eisenhower established the interstate highway system in 1956, a step that virtually guaranteed an emissions-heavy future. Federally controlled nuclear testing in Nevada put strontium-90, radioactive isotopes, into the nation’s rivers and soil, while the Army Corps of Engineers embarked on a dam-building spree that provided hydroelectric power to Westerners living in newly built suburbs but also destroyed rivers and habitats. DDT, a chemical spray used to kill crop-eating pests, was ubiquitous. (One university scientist, so sure that DDT was benign, at the beginning of each term’s class poured the chemical in his coffee and drank it in front of a roomful of students, Brinkley reports.)
“Silent Spring Revolution” is the third in a trilogy of books by Brinkley examining the intersection of presidential leadership and environmental politics; the first two covered Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. In this last volume, the most intriguing theme — and the reason the politics here seem so distant from our own — is the way that activists formed connections with presidents, environmental scientists and lawyers to build a nascent eco-consciousness. The result was a mass movement demanding vast changes in the nation’s environmental laws and attitudes, a movement to defend “the entire system of life on earth.” In contrast to our own time, this “protoenvironmentalism” wedded a politics of idealism to expansive notions of nonmaterialistic progress; a faith in the federal government to act responsibly in the national interest dovetailed with a liberal pragmatism. This movement was unapologetically pro-government, pro-science, pro-facts, and it revered nature as a spiritual home. Activism on the ground and leadership at the top defined these years, and often, the roles of politician and activist became indistinguishable.
The results were impressive. Raised in the sagebrush town of St. Johns, Ariz., and fond of “a rugged outdoors life,” Stewart Udall used his time as interior secretary from 1961 to 1969 to help create 64 new National Park areas, a record sum. Richard Nixon’s chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, Russell Train, was an expert on flora and fauna and a former director of the World Wildlife Fund who fell in love with wildlife while on safaris in Africa. Train became an “endangered species zealot,” shepherding landmark reforms into law during the early 1970s. Rachel Carson was the unofficial leader of them all, an ecologist whose brilliant prose, scientific precision and Thoreau-like spiritualism enabled the publication of her blockbuster book “Silent Spring” in 1962, exposing DDT as toxic to human health and revolutionizing how many Americans regarded their relationship to the natural world.
American culture became more attuned to the process of degradation during the 1960s. Organizations such as the Sierra Club; the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, known as SANE (and opposed to nuclear testing); and others massed protests against foul rivers and despoiled forests and polluted air. They drew the news media’s attention to environmental causes. At the same time, many Republican and Democratic leaders used their personal experiences as a springboard for environmental action. The Kennedys adored the ocean; the Johnsons loved the Texas Hill Country. Nixon, a California native, devoted one-third of his 1970 State of the Union address to environmental themes.
During the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations, a set of reforms came into being, establishing laws, rules and agencies as a defense against growing ecological threats. These steps yielded real progress. The Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty eliminated atmospheric nuclear testing. The U.S. government reversed itself and virtually abolished the use of DDT and other cancer-causing pesticides.
The combined record of three very different presidents is stunning, especially in light of today’s relative paralysis in the face of climate change. Taken together, JFK, LBJ and Nixon won passage of and signed into law the Water Quality Act, the Highway Beautification Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Wilderness Preservation System and multiple endangered-species laws. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more than 200 national wildlife refuges, and national parks and many national seashores were all established during their tenures. And that’s just a partial list of the environmental wins from that era.
Many Americans came to understand that protecting the environment was important not only to maintain the country’s natural beauty but also to protect their health, the economy and access to recreation. Brinkley’s book is a useful reminder that many Americans viewed the federal government as a reliable ally that traded in facts, championed science and enacted common-sense regulations to protect the planet. “Silent Spring Revolution” also reads as a paean to the individuals, movements and politicians who saw federal intervention as the necessary solution to address the myriad environmental crises triggered by the modern industrial system.
There are a few off-key notes. The book paints Big Oil and other large polluters, along with some government agencies, with a flat brush; these private- and public-sector entities are described simply as pro-pollution. One wonders if there were voices of dissent in the private sector, or how chief executives responded to the environmentalists with anything other than recalcitrance. At times, puzzles remain unanswered. The left criticized LBJ’s war in Vietnam as both a human and ecological catastrophe, but it’s not clear how Johnson attempted to square his brilliant record of environmental protection at home with his desecration of the natural resources of Vietnam. Robert F. Kennedy is depicted as a whitewater-rafting enthusiast and steward of the planet. His son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who makes a minor appearance in these pages, became an environmental lawyer and activist but later took on a role as a leading anti-science, anti-vaccine voice, an evolution that isn’t mentioned in the book.
Overall, “Silent Spring Revolution” is an impassioned narrative that transports readers to a different, more optimistic world of popular support for eco-awareness and collective action. It is a book that sticks with you. By rendering a time when citizens believed in the nation’s ability to respond to environmental crises with smart national policies, and by portraying the federal government as a pro-planetary powerhouse, Brinkley’s book implies that the “highway to climate hell” is far from our only choice.
Matthew Dallek is a historian and professor of political management at George Washington University. His book “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right,” will be published in March.
Silent Spring Revolution
John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening | 2022-11-22T11:54:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening by Douglas Brinkley - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/22/brinkley-environment-book-silent-spring/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/22/brinkley-environment-book-silent-spring/ |
Fred Kaplan closely examines the Founding Father’s written works to reveal his inspirations, resentments and myth-making
Review by Carol Berkin
A statue of Thomas Jefferson stands in the Virginia Capitol in Richmond. In his book, Fred Kaplan plumbs Jefferson's writings to explore his character and ideology. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
In “His Masterly Pen,” a thoroughly engrossing study of Thomas Jefferson, Fred Kaplan demonstrates that he, too, wields a masterly pen. Although the subtitle of the book describes it as “a biography of Jefferson the writer,” it is more accurately an examination of the insights into Jefferson’s character and philosophy that Kaplan has drawn from the personal and public writings of our most celebrated Founding Father.
The book is thus not a traditional biography. Readers familiar with Jefferson’s life, both public and private, will soon note some uneven coverage in Kaplan’s narrative. For instance, Jefferson’s flirtation with Maria Cosway is fully developed, while his long relationship with Sally Hemings is barely mentioned — largely, one must assume, because there are no letters to or about Hemings that would help Kaplan plumb Jefferson’s inner life.
The primary function of this nicely paced and well-written narrative is to serve as context for Kaplan’s exploration of a number of themes. Four of these themes stand out for this reader: the impact of class and region on Jefferson’s social attitudes and racial and gender assumptions; Jefferson’s seemingly unlimited capacity to rationalize his own behavior and to avoid unpleasant truths; the creation of and commitment to a romantic myth of America as a nation of contented yeoman farmers; and the intense Anglophobia around which his politics and policies took shape after the war. These do not, of course, exhaust Kaplan’s attention, for they do not take into account, for instance, Jefferson’s approach to intimacy or his philosophical ruminations on religion and slavery, both of which are fully developed in this volume. But these four themes illustrate Kaplan’s skill in discovering Jefferson’s character and his political ideology through the products of his “masterly pen.”
Consider Kaplan’s analysis of Jefferson’s emerging commitment to independence. In 1774, Jefferson composed an essay addressed to the Virginia Legislature and later published as “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” Like many if not most of the members of the Virginia planter class, Jefferson viewed Britain’s decision to impose taxes and new restrictions with visceral alarm. That it was done without consulting these elite White men constituted an insult to their status as gentlemen. The resulting resentment led Jefferson to place the blame for the intensifying political crisis squarely upon the British government. But Kaplan sees more in “A Summary View” than class-based outrage. The essay is only one example of Jefferson’s lifelong capacity to blame any crisis or failure on someone else, or on some other country than his own. “A Summary View” also introduces Jefferson’s hostility to Britain, its culture and its economic system, a hostility that would last long after American independence was won.
Kaplan reads the central argument of “A Summary View” as simultaneously specious and persuasive, the former because it is filled with “historical inaccuracy and special pleading” and because its author is unwilling to acknowledge any counterargument; the latter because of its “no-holds-barred emotional intensity, its … inventiveness in combining feeling, argument, language, and ideology.” “A Summary View” was, Kaplan concludes, an example of the highest form of propaganda.
Only the Declaration of Independence, written two years later, would surpass “A Summary View” in all these elements. Where many scholars have characterized the Declaration’s indictment of the king and his government as a perfect example of lawyerly argument, Kaplan sees in it the same intense undercurrent of rage against real or imagined tyranny that Jefferson displayed in “A Summary View.” And, as Kaplan notes, the Declaration required a “mental dissonance” for Jefferson, who owned hundreds of enslaved people, to claim that the king’s intention was to enslave his White colonists.
Kaplan later explores Jefferson’s capacity for mythmaking in support of his vision for the new republic. As Jefferson envisioned America’s future, he saw an agrarian society sustained by a free, independent and contented White yeomanry. These patriotic yeomen, whose act of tilling the soil ensured their moral superiority over urban tradesmen and merchants, were largely a fiction produced by Jefferson’s capacity to build an argument on unfounded generalizations and distortions of fact. Kaplan provides the reality that Jefferson stubbornly avoids, pointing out that many Virginia farmers, if not most, endured a subsistence-level existence that brought little satisfaction or contentment. Kaplan also dismisses as myth Jefferson’s insistence that city life was rife with immorality while rural life encouraged moral values. As Kaplan points out — and as Jefferson knew — Virginia’s agrarian population had its share of “loafers, wastrels, alcoholics, gamblers, sexual adventurers, and abusive husbands.” Yet Jefferson’s ability to paint a vivid picture of a bucolic American paradise was so persuasive that members of later generations have been known to embrace the myth and to mourn the passing of an era of happy yeomanry.
Kaplan recognizes the synergy produced when these themes overlap, as when Jefferson’s myth of a nation founded on yeomanry combined with his intense hatred of Britain to form the building blocks of his political ideology. Although many historians have narrated the rise of two opposing political parties in the 1790s, it is Kaplan who fully captures the emotional intensity of Jefferson’s hatred of Hamiltonian policies and the nationalists’ attachment to urban life. Kaplan does this not simply by examining the creation and eventual victory of the Jeffersonian Republican Party but by reading Jefferson’s letters and public texts on this subject with what might be described as a forensic attention to detail. Under his textural microscope, the reader can see clearly the obsessive Anglophobia that drove Jefferson to support an absolutist, anti-republican French king, as well as a French Revolution that devolved into dictatorship, in order to achieve his party’s success.
A less-adept historian might substitute parlor psychoanalysis for subtle interrogation of the texts. To his credit, Kaplan does not go further than what the accepted narrative framework and a sympathetic but critical reading of Jefferson’s papers allows. The skill with which the author wields his own masterly pen ensures a better understanding of this brilliant and talented 18th-century man who could not fully escape the moral failings of his social class or the weaknesses of his own character as he helped give birth to a new nation.
Carol Berkin is the author of “A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism.”
His Masterly Pen
A Biography of Jefferson the Writer | 2022-11-22T11:54:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of His Masterly Pen: A Biography of Jefferson the Writer by Fred Kaplan. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/22/jefferson-biography-writer-fred-kaplan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/22/jefferson-biography-writer-fred-kaplan/ |
How educational standards helped establish white supremacy
In ‘Teaching White Supremacy,’ Donald Yacovone documents how biases were passed on through textbooks and teacher preparation
Review by Cecilia Robinson-Woods
In “Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity,” Donald Yacovone makes it clear that the deliberate creation of white supremacy has kept inequity alive for Black people in America. Tracing the development of this repressive system from before the Civil War to the present day, he chronologically lays out the systemic assembly of structural racism. White Supremacy was, he shows, baked into history, as available as water and as consistent as cries for liberty.
In 1701, during America’s embryonic state, John Saffin was a prominent Massachusetts judge. Saffin claimed, Yacovone writes, that “God had set ‘different Orders and Degrees of Men in the World’ and that any idea of universal equality would ‘invert the order that God had set.’ ” This pronouncement immediately preceded the introduction of representative government and slavery in Virginia. According to Yacovone, this idea of “different orders and degrees for men in the world” would solidify the American ideology of racial inferiority and define who would be welcomed into citizenship in America.
As Yacovone shows, while slavery and racism are largely attributable to the South, the North also played a critical role in both institutions, albeit via a different channel. While the South’s treatment of Blacks was obvious, the North’s subtle dismissiveness of Blacks as inferior also had lasting effects. Indeed, this dismissiveness and “enduring cultural binding force” of white supremacy would outlast the overt treatment of Blacks via slavery in the United States.
Yacovone outlines how the principles of white supremacy played a foundational role in the development of educational standards. Samuel Train Dutton, one of the most notable educators at the foundation of public education and author of one of the originally circulated textbooks, the “Morse Speller,” wrote, “To the Caucasian race by reason of its physical and mental superiority, has been assigned the task of civilizing and enlightening the world.” This groundwork was laid and intentionally passed on by way of belief and bias to educators at all levels through textbooks and teacher preparation.
Yacovone further documents how the White South’s unwavering resistance to Reconstruction after the Civil War proved too heavy a burden for the North’s timid embrace of Emancipation. This, too, had educational ramifications: The ideas of white supremacy, seeded by the works of John H. Van Evrie, further influenced textbooks, contributing to the effort to promote a “vision of permanent national reunification.” The North’s quiet reception of the notions of white supremacy set the stage for the tale to be told throughout schools, public documents and history.
Although there were opportunities before Reconstruction for Black students to learn about their own background, that story was too often treated not as American history generally, but just a history of their people. Authors such as Elisha Mulford, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Hezekiah Butterworth and Charles Carelton Coffin were considered progressive due to their inclusion and depiction of enslaved Blacks. But their humanist presentation of people whom many had come to know as objects was ultimately drowned out by the weight of white supremacy narratives in U.S. history and textbooks. “Lost Cause” dogma characterized Black Americans as lazy heathens, and those attitudes would dominate in American textbooks — when Blacks weren’t left out of the telling of American history altogether.
The post-Reconstruction era allowed authors like John W. Burgess and William A. Dunning to once again present the stories and contributions of Blacks to America. The contributions of these scholars began shaping generations of students at all levels regarding race and history in the United States. Despite the pervasive Jim Crow discrimination, Blacks in the early 1900s began to achieve some social and economic progress. With the support of prominent Black thinkers such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as the establishment of Black colleges and flourishing churches, Blacks gained an ability like never before to tell their stories, according to Yacovone.
Nevertheless, in the first half of the 20th century, textbooks, many of them written by abolitionists — who focused on what was wrong with America — were dismissed as dangerous and violent agitation by many White Americans. In an anticipatory echo of more recent anger about critical race theory, the idea was that histories that sympathized with the enslaved would erase national memory of American achievements. Sadly, the generation born in America during this time are the people who taught and led many of today’s Americans.
Making your way through Yacovone’s history can be challenging. Reading page after page of documentation of the ideas that have demeaned and marginalized my existence proved exhausting for me. I found myself foolishly hoping for the part where Blacks are affirmed and our story matters, but it never came. Yet if all of this is hard to read, imagine how hard it is to live it.
As an educator today, I know that the proverbial knee of American white supremacy is on the neck of teachers across the country. In the final pages of the book, Yacovone offers some information for educators who want to teach diverse perspectives and embrace teaching the hard truths of America. I pray that the facts that he lays out will be consumed by educators across the country and recycled into instruction for all.
Cecilia Robinson-Woods is the superintendent of Millwood Public Schools in Oklahoma City.
Teaching White Supremacy
America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity
By Donald Yacovone.
Pantheon. 464 pp. $32.50 | 2022-11-22T11:55:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Review of 'Teaching White Supremacy' by Donald Yacovone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/22/teaching-white-supremacy-yacovone-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/22/teaching-white-supremacy-yacovone-review/ |
Matthew Gardiner’s ‘Into the Woods’ casts a spell decades in the making
Signature Theatre's production of “Into the Woods” is set in a decaying Victorian nursery. (Daniel Rader)
Blame is in abundance on a late-October afternoon at Signature Theatre’s Shirlington space as the cast of “Into the Woods” rehearses the Act 2 patter song “Your Fault.” Reeling from tragedy, the character of the Baker has cooked up a game of culpability hot potato with Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Witch in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1987 fairy tale mash-up.
As Matthew Gardiner observes from a corner of the rehearsal studio, the musical’s director-choreographer interjects and instructs with a calmness that belies “Your Fault’s” hurried tempo.
“This is hard, guys, but don’t let it get manic,” he tells his cast. “Its pace is defensive, but not manic.” Later, he decides to tweak the scene’s movement on the fly and add a moment when the Baker uneasily circles Jack. “This might get too busy,” he concedes, “but let’s try it.” As the power dynamics in the song shift and twist, Gardiner reigns over the room with soft-spoken authority.
“He has a very clear idea of what is going to happen in each rehearsal,” says Erin Weaver, who plays the Baker’s Wife, in an interview. “He’s got a very sure hand, which is comforting. But he still greets you with a hug, and it still feels like a really safe space, and it doesn’t feel like our choices and our ideas are excluded from that sure hand.”
The assertiveness is particularly unsurprising on this production: Gardiner remembers falling in love with theater when he was 6 years old and watching the PBS version of “Into the Woods” that was captured on Broadway in 1989. He subsequently wore out three versions of the “Into the Woods” cassette tape, he recalls, and had a penchant for draping a sheet over his shoulders and dancing around the living room pretending he was Bernadette Peters singing “Last Midnight.”
Although Gardiner worked as an assistant on the production of “Into the Woods” that inaugurated Signature’s Max Theatre in 2007 and helmed a student staging at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University in early 2020, this version of “Into the Woods” — which officially opened Nov. 9 and runs through Jan. 29 — marks his first crack at directing a professional production of the show.
“I mean, it’s everything for me,” says Gardiner, who took over as Signature’s artistic director last year after more than a decade with the theater. “I do get this nostalgia when this music plays. There’s a picture of me in my office as a little kid, and every once in a while — not all the time — I just see that picture and go, ‘This kid would not believe that he’s getting to do this right now.’ ”
Gardiner didn’t anticipate getting another journey with “Into the Woods” so soon, figuring a 2019 revival at Ford’s Theatre would hold over D.C. audiences for years to come. But when the inimitable Sondheim died a year ago at age 91, Gardiner says, “the entire season that we were planning fell away.” As the regional theater that has produced more Sondheim musicals than any other, Signature reimagined its 2022-23 programming as a “Season of Sondheim,” with “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd” joining the already planned “Pacific Overtures” on the docket.
‘Into the Woods’ has a magical cow. Meet the man who mooves her.
Cognizant of both past “Into the Woods” productions in the area and the star-studded revival now on Broadway, Gardiner and scenic designer Lee Savage set apart their retelling by placing it in a decaying Victorian nursery — playing up the darkly comic tale’s bedtime story aesthetic. The surrounding forest, meanwhile, creeps through the floorboards and bursts through the walls. Nodding to the show’s emphasis on community, Gardiner picked a cast almost entirely composed of local actors and veterans from his past productions, including Jake Loewenthal as the Baker, Katie Mariko Murray as Cinderella, Alex De Bard as Little Red Riding Hood and Nova Y. Payton as the Witch.
“I can see him imagining us as the characters that he’s imagined for 20, 30 years,” says David Merino, who plays Jack. “His obsession with the piece is palpable, and it makes us want to really reach for his goals and reach for his dream production.”
Gardiner also embraced the logistical challenges of staging a musical that calls for a sprawling 21-person cast and 15-piece orchestra — all within the confines of an intimate, 275-seat theater. It’s a skill he has honed over the years while tackling such imposing undertakings as “West Side Story,” “Billy Elliot” and “A Chorus Line” and showcased last holiday season when he marked his first season in charge of Signature by directing a raucous revival of “Rent.” While stage manager Kerry Epstein says Gardiner has a knack for making such thorny endeavors look easy, it’s all part of the spell he casts over his audiences.
“He can see where all the pieces are going to happen,” says Epstein, a Signature veteran who has worked with Gardiner on some two dozen productions. “It seems like so little effort went in to make it happen, when that is absolutely not true — it has been so painstakingly thought of and crafted.”
As well as Gardiner knows “Into the Woods,” the musical — largely about parents, their children and the traits we inherit — took on new meaning after he lost his father, Amos, in April. When Gardiner listened to the cast album as a child, he remembers regularly skipping the bittersweet ballad “No More,” sung by the Baker and an apparition of his father. “Now, it’s more grounded in something truthful,” he says. “And when they sing ‘No More,’ I am a wreck.”
It’s fitting for a show that conveys how the messiness of everyday life can complicate the happiest of endings, all while dwelling on the enduring timelessness of our childhood fantasies.
“As I get older, [‘Into the Woods’] becomes more and more profound and moving and deep,” Gardiner says. “Every time, you’re finding new things and hearing lyrics in new ways. I think that is what’s special about the show: It’s truly a show that’s not appropriate for all ages but rather speaks to all ages in different ways.”
Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. 703-820-9771. sigtheatre.org. | 2022-11-22T11:55:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Matthew Gardiner’s ‘Into the Woods’ casts a spell decades in the making - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/11/22/signature-theatre-into-the-woods/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/11/22/signature-theatre-into-the-woods/ |
In Michigan State’s strict but close-knit world of “OGs” and “shorties,” Black coaches learn from former NFL boss Mel Tucker’s successes and shortcomings.
By Candace Buckner
Mel Tucker just sat down, and he already sees something he doesn’t like.
It’s August, and a new season is on the horizon. In the Michigan State University football office, staffers greet each other with cheery salutes of “Happy first practice!” But Tucker, the head coach, is stoic as he eyes the spliced-up practice film playing on the big screen, which illuminates the otherwise dark room.
The potato salad and green smoothie in front of him go ignored. Tupac Shakur plays faintly in the background. Tucker’s eyes are locked not on a missed block or tackle but on a small white towel hanging from the back of a linebacker’s pants. In here, coaches call that “flair” — any adornment that juices up the uniform. Tucker considers armbands, compression sleeves and even towels flair. And he hates flair.
He strives to keep it off his practice fields, but he must’ve missed the towel during that morning’s practice, which is surprising because he seems to notice everything else. One player was abnormally quiet all day; another came off the field upset. Tucker let them be, not wanting to jump to conclusions. Now, though, in this darkened room, he shares what he observed. And he calls out the towel.
“Can’t take your eyes off that dude,” he seethes.
It’s an attention to detail that’s common, even cliche, among football coaches. But there’s more to it for Tucker, a Black coach intent on building not just a program but a pipeline.
Mel Tucker is in his third season coaching Michigan State. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
As he denounces flair, seven of the coaches in the room are Black and five are White. This is intentional. Tucker knows as well as anyone that the path to becoming a head coach, in college or the NFL, typically starts in these rooms. In 1997, he was the young Black graduate assistant on Nick Saban’s Michigan State staff. Eventually, he became an interim head coach in the NFL with the Jacksonville Jaguars during the 2011 season, a mirage of an opportunity that came as the league appeared on the cusp of progress with 10 Black men at the top.
But just four years after getting his one shot, Tucker was out of the NFL and back in college. Before the shortened covid season of 2020, he was named Michigan State’s head coach. The next year, the team went 11-2 and won the Peach Bowl. The school rewarded Tucker with a 10-year, $95 million contract extension, making him the highest-paid Black coach in any U.S. sport, college or pros.
This season, his Spartans (5-6) are struggling, and an ugly brawl in the stadium tunnel at the University of Michigan last month led Tucker to suspend eight players. With every loss and all the bad PR, his historic, guaranteed contract comes under greater scrutiny.
[How the NFL blocks Black coaches]
Still, Tucker has lofty aspirations for his program, with visions of five-star recruits and national titles. But perhaps no goal is loftier than Tucker’s desire to prepare young, Black assistants to enter the coaching ranks of top-tier college football and the NFL, where racial inequity still festers almost 20 years after the league implemented the Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview candidates of color.
Tucker meets with Saeed Khalif, general manager/executive director of personnel and recruiting (in back), and Darien Harris, director of player relations and program advancement. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Tucker employs 17 Black people as assistants, trainers or support staffers at Michigan State. He calls them his “shorties.” He’s their “OG.”
“I tell some of [my friends] this is probably more Black people than any other staff, other than HBCUs,” says Brandon “BT” Jordan, a Michigan State assistant who works with the team’s pass rushers. “I’ve got OGs to help me along the road and give me stories on how they started, obstacles they had.”
[Perspective: A white football coach, a historically black college and lessons that endure]
When Jordan gained a reputation as just a trainer — someone all-pro NFL pass rushers sought out for offseason workouts as he held down a maintenance job for a New Orleans apartment complex — Tucker created a position for him.
After Gerren DuHart, a former bartender, spent two seasons at a Division II school in Detroit coaching defensive backs, Tucker gave him a graduate assistant job, which essentially works like a scholarship. At 30, “this DuHart kid,” as Tucker calls him, also gets hands-on training, working directly under Tucker with the Spartans’ secondary.
Tucker landed a 10-year, $95 million contract extension last year. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Inside the coaches’ room, a new scene plays on the projection screen. In it, all of Tucker’s assistants are watching as the offense runs its play. But once the play, a handoff to the running back, is in motion, they take off running after the ball, just as Tucker demands of his staff during high-intensity practices.
“Who’s that chasing the ball?” Tucker asks the room.
It’s the coach with the long dreadlocks hanging beneath his hat.
“Is that DuHart?” Tucker asks.
Tucker knows the young Black men in this room have a lot to learn before taking the next step. And the lessons aren’t always on the field. For instance: Why won’t DuHart cut his hair? There has never been a Black head coach in the NFL with dreadlocks, Tucker points out.
[Perspective: NFL’s bleak record on diversity hiring ends with owners but starts with coaches]
But he likes what he sees on the screen, DuHart not just running behind the play but flying, which Tucker has been imploring him to do. He needs DuHart to know a Black man in this business has to do more, go harder, be better. This expectation is not always fair, but it’s the truth as Tucker has experienced it.
The play rewinds and replays again and again, and there’s DuHart in an endless loop, exploding out of the backfield — the Black man with long dreadlocks running, running, running. Tucker pauses for a beat, then mumbles.
Tucker began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Michigan State under Nick Saban. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
‘Don’t screw this up’
The landscaping that decorates the Michigan State University sign outside of the football complex is so impeccable that they call it “Spartan National,” after golf’s Augusta. It wasn’t always that way: When Tucker got here, he thought the area looked like a “goat ranch.” He requested more flowers and plants around the sign, offering a more beautiful backdrop when graduates and their parents take photos.
Appearances matter. Tucker learned that as a young boy growing up in Cleveland, where he toured residential buildings with his father, Melvin Sr., a property manager, inspecting every detail from the curb appeal to the laundry room.
He also followed his father into football. Melvin Sr. was an all-conference player at the University of Toledo; Mel played defensive back at Wisconsin before a brief stint in the Canadian Football League.
When he joined Saban’s staff as a 25-year-old, Tucker was still thinking about the little things. He removed the stud from his left earlobe and said “yes, sir” to every ask: filling the ink in the printer, picking up a coach’s daughter from school, shoveling another coach’s driveway after a snowstorm.
“Watching him in that role as a graduate assistant,” recalls Bobby Williams, who was a coach for 13 seasons at Michigan State, “… as a position coach, you say, ‘This guy is very organized.’ ”
When Saban promoted Tucker to an on-field position, Williams pulled the young graduate assistant into his office.
“Don’t screw this up,” Tucker recalls Williams telling him.
The message — simple words from his OG — still echoes in Tucker’s head. Everything about him, from his work ethic to his appearance, had to be on point. He had to say yes to the most menial of tasks. And even today, he insists on projecting a polished look. A fight in a stadium tunnel damages that image. In Tucker’s eyes, the same goes for shoddy landscaping outside the complex.
“It’s hard to get buy-in with people when there’s a lack of organization,” he says. “That’s almost like not knowing what you’re doing.”
Pressure to perform comes for anyone with that salary. But when a White coach signs a hefty contract and fails, the school buys him out and the world moves on. The path for a Black coach is more complicated.
“I think any minority coach understands that they carry the weight of not just the job itself, but you also carry the weight of your brothers who have aspirations of becoming head coaches,” says Hue Jackson, the former Cleveland Browns and Oakland Raiders coach who now leads Grambling State University. “If you do great, there’s a great opportunity that is going to move forward. And if you don’t, there’s a great opportunity you’re going to move things way back.”
[Free agency has come to college football. Not everyone is winning.]
Tucker knows this, and he knows his job is as much chief marketing officer as it is coach. A day before practice, he studies a mock-up of the new murals to be displayed outside Spartan Stadium. Later, he retreats to his office with Saeed Khalif, the team’s general manager and executive director of player personnel and recruiting, and younger brother Jordan, whom he hired to run his social media accounts.
But even these efforts are more complicated for a Black coach. Tucker is embracing his brother’s efforts, even agreeing to appear in TikTok videos. But trend dances do not fit the Mel Tucker brand. He can’t be the $95 million Black coach dancing. Appearances matter.
“You’re never going to see me dancing on TikTok,” he says. “I see a commercial and there’s like five people in the commercial and anytime they show the Black person, he’s dancing — every single time. Somebody else will be like driving a car, pushing a stroller — and then there’s the Black guy doing the Running Man.”
Jordan and Khalif laugh. Tucker doesn’t.
“When’s it going to stop, bro?”
Michigan State pass rush specialist Brandon Jordan works with linebacker Cal Haladay during practice. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
In the coaches’ room, every seat at the table is filled by more veteran coaches, so Brandon “BT” Jordan, the janitor-turned-pass-rush-specialist coach, sits directly behind Tucker’s right shoulder. At the head of the table, defensive coordinator Scottie Hazelton swivels his chair toward Jordan and asks about a lineman’s technique.
“He’s reaching,” Jordan says, pointing out how the pass rusher should be using his feet, not his hands, to beat his blocker.
“How’s that one, BT?” Hazelton asks later.
“That looked good. Put the inside move on him,” Jordan responds.
A native of New Orleans, Jordan played offensive tackle at a Division II college in rural Missouri. After graduation, he tried playing overseas and attended camp for an Arena Football League team in his hometown. Then he settled into coaching. Though he had only played offensive line, he was tapped as the defensive line coach at Austin Peay.
[The college football coaching carousel took one of its wildest spins]
In 2015, the entire staff was fired. Jordan returned to New Orleans and spent day after day emailing college coaches about potential openings. Football coaching is a network often fueled by nepotism and cronyism. Whom you know — and often whom you are related to — has helped countless White men land jobs in the NFL and in the college game. But Jordan had neither a famous last name nor a plugged-in mentor. He tried extending his network, and during his first few years out of work, he estimated that he reached out to more than 1,000 coaches at Division I, II and III schools. His emails went unanswered, and Jordan went on unemployment.
To stay in the game, he volunteered at a high school on New Orleans’s West Bank. He also went around the neighborhood making his pitch to kids: If they want to work out, they could find him at the park around the corner.
Jordan started with one player, who told his friends they needed to come to the park as well. The group kept growing, and one of Jordan’s friends said he needed to do a better job of promoting himself. So he began to post the workouts on social media with the title “Brandon Jordan Training.” The new kids would come to know him as “BT.”
Jordan never charged the kids he trained. Though he had little money, he would buy them pizza so they could take dinner home to their families. He knew the children of the West Bank were just like him — they just needed a chance.
“Lot of times, I almost gave up. I was just doing this for free to clear my mind,” he recalls. “I helped them out, but they were helping me out, too. Because it got me out of the mind-set of, you know, [being] a failure.”
College players in the area noticed Jordan’s posts and asked for their own free workouts. A high school trainer in Houston wanted Jordan to work with kids at his facility, then a trainer in Dallas reached out, too — this time offering pay.
Soon he heard from an NFL player, Damon “Snacks” Harrison, who was with the New York Giants at the time. More players sought him out: all-pro defensive tackle Gerald McCoy, all-pro linebacker Von Miller, recent draft picks, the entire Dallas Cowboys defensive line. In total, Jordan has trained more than 200 NFL players. He was getting paid, too, but once he finished training players in the offseason, Jordan would return to New Orleans and his day job.
Jordan built a training program in his hometown of New Orleans that helped him return to the college coaching ranks. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
“I used to be picking up trash, working with some of the best pass rushers in the NFL, and I’m like: ‘Man, how is nobody [hiring me]? Am I doing something wrong? What am I doing wrong? Do I need to change the way I act?’ ” Jordan says. “Other races will go and hire their families, [even though] their families never coached football, never played football. But a Black guy — you’ll never see that situation happen. Somebody will just get [them] from the street and pull [them] up. You got to go through the process. So it’s hard out here for us.”
The result is an inequity that exists at every level of the sport, including at its pinnacle. Nearly 60 percent of NFL players are Black. But over the past 32 years, only 20 Black men have held full-time head coaching jobs, compared with 154 White men. Black men are similarly underrepresented in top assistant jobs.
[Post Reports: How the NFL sidelines Black coaches]
College football, where many NFL coaches start, is no different. In 2021, across Division I but excluding historically Black colleges and universities, 44 percent of the players were Black. But just 8 percent of head coaches were Black — and 87 percent were White, according to the NCAA Demographics Database.
When he played Division II football, Jordan did not have a Black position coach, let alone a Black head coach. He remembers the exhaustion of feeling misunderstood while in rural Missouri. He’s a big, Black man, and since he’s not someone who smiles all the time, he had to be aware of his facial expressions and tone to not appear angry.
“People not knowing, not understanding you is a big thing,” Jordan says, “because it makes you feel like you’re doing the wrong thing, but it’s not wrong.”
Gerren DuHart works with Michigan State's defensive backs as a graduate assistant. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
‘Look around’
Gerren DuHart says he has mostly worked for Black coaches, so he has never had to worry about talking too loudly or looking too angry. And no one blinked when he came to work with dreadlocks down to his waist.
He started growing his hair after his final high school football season. He soon would continue his career at Wayne State University, and he thought the tiny twists would look good hanging out of his helmet — his version of flair.
Over time, he kept growing them — when he coached defensive backs at his high school alma mater, when he left behind coaching and moved to Miami, when he worked as a bartender at Dave & Buster’s, when he came home to Ohio after the death of his father. His hair grew longer and longer and became part of his identity.
Last year, DuHart was coaching at Wayne State when Hazelton, the Spartans’ defensive coordinator, reached out to his network seeking recommendations for a graduate assistant — a low-paying, entry-level job known for fueling nepotism in coaching. DuHart got the job. The first day, he met with Tucker, and for more than 45 minutes he listened as the head coach laid out his journey, everything he had to do to get here.
[Colleges are more willing than ever to pay football coaches not to coach]
Tucker asked DuHart about his career goals; DuHart wants to be a head coach one day. To get there, Tucker told him what he had to do. Every good college coach must be a master recruiter, Tucker said. And there was one other thing: his hair. As Tucker sees it, there’s always one more thing for a Black coach with aspirations.
For Washington Commanders secondary coach Chris Harris, his earrings were that one more thing. In 2012, he played his final season as a defensive back in the NFL. Tucker, who recently had been passed over for the top job with the Browns and the Jaguars, was his coordinator.
After Harris retired, Tucker, then the Chicago Bears’ defensive coordinator, hired him as a quality control coach. Before a game in Minneapolis, Tucker pulled Harris to the side — the same way Williams had huddled with him back in the late 1990s, an OG sharing a hard truth with his shorty.
“I will never forget, and I thank Mel for this,” Harris says. “I really respect Mel. He says: ‘Chris, come here. Look around.’ So I look around. He said: ‘Look at all the Black coaches around here. Do you see any of them with earrings in their ear?’ ”
To mute his personal expression, even in a slight way — Harris viewed that as a necessary sacrifice. He has never worn earrings since. It’s a discomfort experienced by people of color across corporate America: to be yourself and present a professional look — but one that conforms to White standards. To be Black but not too Black.
Harris was 30 when he entered coaching, the same age DuHart is now. He knew he had to work hard and stand out to move up. Still, Harris didn’t know all that his dreams and aspirations in coaching would demand from him. He hadn’t heard the talk.
“[Tucker and I] would talk about everything — how to move and navigate this system that is coaching,” Harris says. “Understand the dos and the don’ts. The things that you can’t get away with. ‘I don’t care if somebody else is doing it; you can’t get away with this. You can’t do this.’ We had those types of conversations the two years we were together. I’m forever grateful for that.”
[Perspective: As college sports change, coaches must stop whining and amplify new voices]
DuHart knows he can be the recruiter Tucker says he needs to be to climb the coaching ranks. He has an easy charm and a quick wit that will go over well in five-star recruits’ living rooms.
But while Harris removed his earrings, DuHart has refused to cut his dreads. He believes he’s just as professional as an assistant who sports a buzz cut. He says when peers look at him, they don’t see a threatening Black man. They see a football coach. So he doesn’t feel the need to conform.
Appearances may matter. But, he says, so does authenticity.
“I’ve always told myself when I was completely done playing football that I was going to let it go, start new and start fresh. But I’ve always loved my hair, so I kept it,” DuHart says. “They just represent — just me. It’s a part of me. It’s a part of my expression. It’s a part of my professionalism. I think it represents the whole package of who I am.”
DuHart on his dreadlocks: “It’s a part of me. It’s a part of my expression. It’s a part of my professionalism. I think it represents the whole package of who I am.” (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Leaning in
After Tucker’s dig about DuHart finally showing some hustle on film, some of the other assistants burst into laughter, responding in a way that makes it clear DuHart’s foot speed is a long-running joke in this room.
“He’s got you on that one, G!” Hazelton says.
DuHart remains quiet, eyes fixed on the big screen, then looks down at his phone.
Years ago, when Tucker was the young, silent one in the room while also working as the after-school chauffeur and driveway shoveler, he learned what it took to be a head coach. He was a shorty to Williams but also to Charlie Baggett and Marvin Lewis, the older Black coaches who showed him the way — and told him the truth.
“See, here’s the problem with some of these young guys — they look at me and they think, like, I just popped up here,” Tucker says. “When I started … I learned from Marvin. I didn’t know what they had gone through.”
Tucker’s eyes stay on the film, never shifting toward DuHart. But catching something that seems as inconsequential as an assistant coach running behind the play matters to him. It means DuHart is growing.
The film session continues for more than an hour. When the lights come back on, Tucker is rubbing his eyes. He grabs his second energy drink before 2 p.m.; the long first day of practice is not over.
“DuHart, let me holla at you real quick,” Tucker says while heading into his office.
DuHart walks in and knows to sit at the empty chair next to Tucker’s desk. Tucker tells DuHart what he wants cued up on the film they’ll show the defensive backs. But he also wants DuHart’s opinion about what he saw on the field that day. DuHart leans in close, his dreadlocks hanging low. His OG listens.
Editing by Joe Tone. Copy editing by Michael Petre. Photo editing by Toni L. Sandys. Design and development by Brianna Schroer and Joe Fox. Design editing by Virginia Singarayar. Project management by Wendy Galietta.
Candace Buckner is a sports columnist and critic. She previously covered sports and society from 2020 to 2021, and the Washington Wizards from 2016 until 2020. She joined The Post in August 2016. Twitter Twitter | 2022-11-22T12:03:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inside Mel Tucker’s pipeline for Black football coaches - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/interactive/2022/mel-tucker-black-football-coaches/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/interactive/2022/mel-tucker-black-football-coaches/ |
The way we tell #MeToo stories is changing
Joyce Chopra’s Hollywood memoir ‘Lady Director’ and the film adaptation of ‘She Said’ show that we’re still finding new ways to tell a depressingly familiar story
Review by Annie Berke
Carey Mulligan as Megan Twohey, left, and Zoe Kazan as Jodi Kantor in a scene from “She Said.” (Jojo Whilden/AP)
In her new memoir, “Lady Director: Adventures in Hollywood, Television and Beyond,” filmmaker Joyce Chopra describes her youthful efforts to break into the French film industry in the 1960s. She treks to various offices, “full of high hopes,” only to be groped once, twice or three times by some producers, one of them no different from “the creeps who plagued women on the Paris streets, walking just steps behind while whispering obscenities.”
This master class in cringe sits all too comfortably beside a scene in the film “She Said,” adapted from the 2019 book of the same title, in which three women, all reporters at the New York Times, meet at a bar to discuss their latest investigation. Their conversation is promptly derailed by an aggressive pickup artist, who keeps propositioning one of the women (Carey Mulligan), even as she explains to him that they are trying to work. Only a loud, expletive-filled rant finally scares him off.
Dolly Parton said it best: What a way to make a living.
“She Said” authors Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, with Ronan Farrow, put forth paradigm-shifting accounts of the Hollywood machinery in their reportage. There was a time, not long ago, at the height of the #MeToo era that followed, when each morning brought with it a new, shocking allegation. But “it was a different time,” a phrase that used to be the stuff of damage control, is now a legal argument. Just because things change doesn’t mean time’s up. But even if our cynicism is warranted, it’s not especially useful. How, then, can artists and authors make the movement new again, push back against the media eulogizing, and find a new way to tell a depressingly familiar story?
Into this toxic miasma called the “cultural conversation” arrive Chopra’s book and “She Said.” Chopra is best-known for her critically acclaimed 1985 film “Smooth Talk,” and her work often centers on mothers and daughters, ambitious women, and girls coming of age.
Her autobiography traces the evolving role of women directors in Hollywood by drawing extensively on her own five decades in film and television. Director Maria Schrader’s film adaptation of “She Said,” by contrast, seeks to transform long-form journalism into a textbook-journalism movie, the reporters remade as active protagonists who whisper with sources at shadowy bars, and whose home and work lives inevitably blur together into a bleak, gritty mess. These texts, despite their differences, take a common tack: They make us feel the stories we already know, fixing on the shared, embodied horrors of moving through the world while female.
In many ways, Chopra’s memoir is a standard account of working in the film industry, at turns grim and gossipy. She is groped by numerous producers, makes friends (cinematographer Jim Glennon, actress Laura Dern) and nemeses (Sydney Pollack, Diane Keaton), and cracks-wise about having made a name for herself as “a trustworthy woman director suitable for television movies about ‘relationships’ ” before adding, “and, if a murderous female was involved, so much the better.”
She positions herself as a historical subject, opening the book with a discussion of the silent-era filmmaker Alice Guy-Blache and closing with her participation on a #MeToo panel at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Chopra recalls being a “sound girl” at the documentary film group Drew Associates, mildly disapproving of the chauvinism while appreciative of the opportunities. “We were fair game,” she writes, “but not one of them made any crude advances toward us.” Her steady career as an art-house filmmaker and a work-for-hire television director is ordinary, but the insights she offers into the profession are rare.
Where the book most surprises is with its eruptions of violence and visceral pain. Chopra writes in a prose style that is both unflinching and unsentimental. Scenes of sexual violence begin when Chopra is a child, but these assaults are counterbalanced with upbeat anecdotes about Joan Baez and Arthur Miller. Describing what it was like after she was raped by her college ex-boyfriend, Chopra remembers “feeling separated from [her] own body … transported into a parallel universe of violence.” But only two pages later, Chopra details her discovery of Francois Truffaut and the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma as she studies abroad in Paris. It makes for a jarring transition, to be sure, but she writes of the rape as she writes of her two abortions: with remarkable directness, underscoring this commonality of female experience without apologizing for her grief in the former case, her relief in the latter.
Many big names and bigger personalities appear in Chopra’s account, including Harvey Weinstein, who locks her out of the editing process of her 1990 film “The Lemon Sisters,” telling her, “Go away, Joyce. No one wants you here.” His appearance is a reminder of how, at his peak, Weinstein was deeply enmeshed in American film production, an unavoidable and damaging presence within the industry, and that his downfall was not unlike the pulling-down of a despot’s monument.
In “She Said,” he is the central villain and the primary subject of the reporters’ inquiry into Hollywood’s sexual misconduct problem. The film turns him into a sort of invisible, instigating event, his voice only heard over the phone, his face never pictured.
It is this preoccupation with representation and repression that motivates “She Said” film's’s sharpest intervention, staging the stories of Weinstein’s assaults without reenacting them. One woman’s account is intoned over the images of an abandoned hotel room: a robe sprawled across the bed, an untouched turkey club sitting on the table.
Weinstein’s confession, secretly recorded by model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, rings out over a series of empty hotel hallways, decorated with creepily symmetrical sconces and geometric carpet patterns. It’s very “The Shining,” very “Psycho,” very much the horror familiar from Hollywood greats like Kubrick and Hitchcock, whose relationship to their leading ladies I’ll let you Google on your own time. One character in “She Said” refers to Hollywood as a “playground for rich white men.” This is meant as a bombshell moment in the film, but the truth is, these movies — beloved and respected works of screen art — never made a secret of any of it.
“She Said” connects what Kantor (Zoe Kazan) calls Weinstein’s “ocean of wrongdoing” to more universal experiences of misogyny and gendered pain; “this darkness, this constant violence,” as Twohey (Mulligan) describes it, is what all women must endure and what her own postpartum depression has brought into sharp focus. It’s all true, but in turning away from the specifics of Kantor and Twohey’s reporting, many of the fruitful revelations and ambiguities from their investigation are lost: the book’s extended discussion of Christine Blasey Ford, the #MeToo reunion held at Gwyneth Paltrow’s house, and the book’s detailed criticism of celebrity attorney Gloria Allred.
There will always be pieces missing when two years of journalistic inquiry are collapsed into a two-hour film or when a single director’s career stands in for all the so-called “difficult” women battling the Hollywood patriarchy.
There are limitations, too, inherent to the genres they are working in. Chopra’s account, for one, can only provide her side of the story when it comes to her high-profile, professional beefs and artistic failures, which is to be expected in any showbiz memoir. The film’s redactions, meanwhile, are chilling reminders of Hollywood’s self-protective impulses, raising the question of how much can we trust a call that comes from inside the building. Still, what these works share — the instinct to renew the #MeToo conversation through affect and empathy — is powerful. Each effort, each retelling, uncovers a new perspective, a new data point on the culture industries and, too often, a new horror.
Adventures in Hollywood, Television, and Beyond
By Joyce Chopra.
City Lights. 213 pp. $17.95 | 2022-11-22T12:07:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Review of "Lady Director" by Joyce Chopra - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/22/lady-director-chopra-she-said-metoo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/22/lady-director-chopra-she-said-metoo/ |
Why Malaysia Had Early Elections and What Is at Stake
Analysis by Kok Leong Chan and Anisah Shukry | Bloomberg
Malaysia’s early general election was called to try to end the messy politics that have plagued the Southeast Asian nation since the historic defeat of the long-ruling Barisan Nasional coalition four years ago. The opposition alliance that pulled off that shock victory fell apart after 22 months due to infighting, leading to the BN’s eventual return to power. Still, with multiple coalitions in the race this time and millions of young people newly eligible to vote, the era of one party dominating the political landscape is long gone. Indeed, the Nov. 19 vote ended with a hung parliament, setting off rounds of horse trading as parties try to form a governing coalition.
1. What was at stake going in?
Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob and his fragile coalition sought to capitalize on recent wins in local polls and an opposition in disarray to improve on their four-seat majority in the 222-seat House of Representatives, with the vote coming almost a year ahead of schedule. A stronger mandate could have enabled the government to plow ahead with plans for budget cuts to improve public finances without having to make deals with the opposition -- or even suspend democracy as the last prime minister did. Malaysia is a major trading partner of both the US and China, but foreign policy received little mention in the race. However, the results matter a lot to ex-premier Najib Razak, who is serving a 12-year prison sentence for his role in the multibillion-dollar scandal related to state investment fund 1MDB. Najib has petitioned for a royal pardon, a move that his BN party supports, so a big role in the next government would improve the chances of it being granted. That would echo opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s pardon following his coalition’s victory in the 2018 election.
2. Who are the players?
The main ones are:
• BN: Remodeled from the Alliance Front in 1973 after the 1969 race riots between ethnic Malays and Chinese, it has won 13 out of 14 previous elections. At the height of its power, BN comprised 14 parties, epitomizing the country’s identity politics and patronage system. The 1MDB scam finally turned voters against it. BN now consists of Ismail’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the Malaysian Chinese Association, the Malaysian Indian Congress and the United Sabah People’s Party.
• Pakatan Harapan: This alliance, helmed now by Anwar, brought to an end BN’s dominance of Malaysia’s political landscape. Its victory then was hailed as a milestone for transparency, accountability and racial tolerance, but the government, led by UMNO veteran-turned-critic Mahathir Mohamad, collapsed due to defections. The coalition comprises the People’s Justice Party, the Democratic Action Party and the National Trust Party. It has also formed an electoral pact with newcomer Malaysian United Democratic Alliance, which won a single seat this year.
• Perikatan Nasional: The grouping comprises two main parties -- Bersatu and the Pan Malaysian Islamic Party -- and is led by former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin. The pro-Malay, Islamist coalition increased its number of seats to 73 this year, from 39 lawmakers in the last parliament.
• Three small parties dominate on the island of Borneo. Gabungan Parti Sarawak won 23 seats, four more than in the last parliament; Gabungan Rakyat Sabah won six, down two; and Warisan Sabah just 3, down from seven. They are likely to partner with whomever wins the majority of seats in Peninsular Malaysia.
3. What are the issues?
Economic woes were front and center as Malaysians struggle with rising living costs, a weakening ringgit and concerns of a global slowdown next year. Some 70% of low-income households in a World Bank survey said they were unable to meet their monthly basic needs. Others include:
• Stability: Every party promises to end the political squabbling that followed Mahathir’s resignation in 2020. BN has pledged to retain Ismail as prime minister and continue with the 2023 budget his government unveiled Oct. 7 -- three days before he dissolved parliament, paving the way for a new election.
• Corruption: The 1MDB scandal is expected to take a backseat following Najib’s prison sentence. Still, it remains ready ammunition for opposition parties as UMNO leaders including party president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi face dozens of pending corruption charges.
4. Any wild cards?
There were 5.8 million new voters after the government lowered the minimum voting age to 18 from 21 -- and made voter registration automatic. But about 67% of Malaysian Muslim youths in a recent survey by Merdeka Center said they weren’t interested in politics, and 77% said politics was too complicated to understand.
5. How did Malaysia get here?
Mahathir, who was UMNO president for 22 years -- and Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister -- until his retirement in 2003, buried the hatchet with Anwar long enough to end BN’s uninterrupted reign and send Najib to jail. But the bad blood between Mahathir and Anwar ran deep, and it didn’t take long before their feuding caused the collapse of the Pakatan Harapan government in 2020. Ironically, both leaders lost out to their own deputies -- Muhyiddin and Mohamed Azmin Ali -- who led enough defections to replace them with the Perikatan Nasional government. The Muhyiddin administration didn’t last and he too was replaced by UMNO’s Ismail in August last year.
6. What is the country’s outlook?
Despite the near-constant political instability and the damage inflicted by the pandemic, Malaysia has rebounded swiftly. Boasting one of the world’s fastest Covid-19 vaccination programs, the country surprised everyone by logging a 8.9% GDP expansion in the second quarter of 2022. The recently passed $80 billion spending plan for 2023 aims to cut taxes while still narrowing the fiscal deficit through more targeted subsidies. Higher energy prices this year have led to higher dividends from Malaysia’s state oil company Petroliam Nasional Bhd., which helped the government pay its ballooning subsidies bill. But the uncertainty over the fate of the budget has created fresh headwinds for the ringgit, already languishing at a 24-year low versus the dollar. A weak currency is bad news for Malaysia, a net food importer. | 2022-11-22T12:07:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Malaysia Had Early Elections and What Is at Stake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-malaysia-had-early-elections-and-what-is-at-stake/2022/11/22/642de2c2-6a51-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-malaysia-had-early-elections-and-what-is-at-stake/2022/11/22/642de2c2-6a51-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Bulldozers took to the streets of Buffalo to clear mountains of snow left over from the Nov. 18 storm. Some areas experienced 77 inches of snow. (Video: The Washington Post)
In the aftermath of one of western New York’s most extreme snowfalls on record, a monumental effort to clear up to six-and-a-half feet of snow is nearly complete. The effort has involved armies of people and hundreds of plows, loaders, snowblowers and tracked vehicles.
Less than 48 hours since the historic snowfall, many of the hardest hit communities are back on their feet.
While some neighborhood roads are still buried in snow, Mark Poloncarz, Erie County’s executive, reports that all major highways, arterial roads and secondary routes are now open.
“Now we’re just kind of touching up and finishing the work that needs to be done to ensure that every neighborhood has been cleared,” Poloncarz told The Post Monday.
“We get lake effect snowstorms. They are not unusual,” Poloncarz said. “What’s unusual is the amount of snow that fell with this snowstorm.”
“I don’t think anybody in the country put in what our guys did and the recovery time that we had,” he said.
Teams from the New York Thruway Authority in Buffalo and the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) worked around-the-clock pushing snow from the roads to snow storage areas on road shoulders during whiteout conditions. There were large chunks of time where workers couldn’t see past the hood of their cars, Latko said.
Trucks that couldn’t plow the dense snow lifted and pushed the white heaps off the road. Overflowing snow was also moved into dump trailers and taken to abandoned parking lots or other open spaces in heaps.
“As of right now, there is a pile of snow that’s four and a half stories tall at one of our community colleges that we’re using as a dump site,” Poloncarz said.
As of Monday morning, travel bans were only in place in the city of Lackawanna and half of Buffalo while efforts were made to clear the roadways. It took workers a little longer to clear Lackawanna and parts of Buffalo because the areas are more densely populated and have narrower streets. Poloncarz hoped to lift Lackawanna’s driving ban by the end of the day.
Eighteen communities were originally placed under driving and travel bans on Thursday to allow snowplows to clear the streets when the snow wasn’t as deep. Some 400 trailer drivers were fined over the weekend for disobeying the order. Many of the vehicles got stuck.
Over 500 plow trucks from the NYSDOT were deployed to roadways across the region, according to Marie Therese Dominguez, the NYSDOT commissioner. Mechanics from around the state maintained heavy equipment all weekend and safety representatives made sure workers were trained.
Nick Belles, 26, a plowman clearing commercial lots in Buffalo’s south towns, said he got a total of three hours of sleep during a three-day stretch. He kept himself up chugging coffee.
“Just trying to stay going,” he said.
Residents joined forces to ensure that Buffalo Bills players were able to make it to the airport after their matchup against the Cleveland Browns was moved from Orchard Park, which received snowfall as tall as their quarterback Josh Allen, to Detroit. The Bills iced the Browns out with a 31-23 win.
Officials advised that the heavy lifting be left to professionals. Two people died of heart attacks in Erie County from shoveling.
“There are no generals in this war, so to speak,” Poloncarz said. “Everyone is working together.”
At the federal level, President Biden agreed to send aid to the 11 affected counties to assist state and local authorities with their cleanup efforts. The emergency declaration authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide disaster relief.
The aid falls on the heels of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D) plea to the president for emergency aid on Saturday.
“It’s been a monumental effort,” he said. “I don’t think there are many parts of United States that could have responded to this type of storm and recovered as quickly as we have.”
Dino Grandoni contributed to this report. | 2022-11-22T12:08:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Buffalo is clearing 80 inches of snow almost as fast as it fell - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/22/how-buffalo-is-clearing-80-inches-snow-almost-fast-it-fell/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/22/how-buffalo-is-clearing-80-inches-snow-almost-fast-it-fell/ |
Seven local sites where you can explore the area’s Indigenous history
In Paspahegh Town at the Jamestown Settlement in Williamsburg, Va., cultural interpreters demonstrate how the tribe made tools, prepared food and wove natural fibers into rope. (Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation)
Rather than hitting the mall and the web for Black Friday sales, head out the day after Thanksgiving to celebrate Native American Heritage Day. The Mid-Atlantic is home to numerous sites with deep historical and contemporary significance to the Indigenous people of the region. Now they are easier than ever to explore thanks to a trio of apps — the recently released Guide to Indigenous Maryland, the Guide to Indigenous D.C. and the Guide to Indigenous Baltimore — developed by Elizabeth Rule, an assistant professor of critical race, gender and culture studies at American University; author of the forthcoming book “Indigenous DC: Native Peoples and the Nation’s Capital”; and a member of the Chickasaw Nation.
The apps provide users with a guide to physical sites or offer virtual tours through write-ups and photography. Part of Rule’s goal in developing them is to get people to stop thinking of Native American life as something that only existed in the past. “I want people to know that our Indigenous contributions move beyond things you’ll see through anthropology and archaeology,” she says. “We have strong, vibrant, diverse, urban Indigenous populations that contribute to all areas of society — the armed forces, politics, arts and the humanities — so I encourage people to seek out the contributions and celebrate them.”
Wherever you live in the Mid-Atlantic, this history is probably closer than you think — if you want to see some of it for yourself, these seven spots in D.C., Maryland, Virginia and Delaware include both historical sites and contemporary Indigenous contributions, ranging from outdoor artworks and parks to museums and a re-created Native American town.
“The Duality of Indigeneity”
This striking mural in Baltimore’s Highlandtown neighborhood depicts two boys facing each other. One is bare-chested, long black hair falling past his shoulders, a feather stuck behind his ear; the other is wearing a blue hoodie and sports spiky hair. Multidisciplinary artist Gregg Deal, a member of Nevada’s Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe whose work is deeply informed by his Native identity, wants viewers to question which boy is Native American. It’s a trick question: They both are. Rule loves the piece because “it gives us insight into a commentary on the urban Indigenous experience.”
419 S. East Ave., Baltimore. Free.
“The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, the Black Canoe”
When Rule created the Indigenous Guide to D.C., she was living less than a mile from this bronze sculpture by the late artist Bill Reid, a member of the Haida Nation in British Columbia. However, she didn’t even know it existed. It took a trip to Vancouver, where she saw its sister piece, “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, the Jade Canoe,” for her to realize there was another work by Reid displayed outside the Canadian Embassy back home. The 20-foot-long, 11,000-pound piece depicts a traditional Haida dugout canoe carrying a diverse array of 13 characters, including Raven, Eagle, Grizzly Bear and Beaver, a nod to the mythologies of the Indigenous people from the Haida Gwaii archipelago off Canada’s northern Pacific coast.
501 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Free.
Piscataway Park
This 5,000-acre park runs along six miles of Potomac River shoreline — sitting across the water from Mount Vernon — and Piscataway Creek. Rule suggests visiting since it was home to the largest population of Piscataway (meaning “the people where the rivers blend”) when the first European colonizers arrived, and the area includes the tribe’s historic capital of Moyaone. In fact, it has been estimated that Indigenous people lived at the site for more than 5,000 years; the park’s cultural and natural history collection includes a dozen prehistoric stone projectiles and tools.
Open daily sunrise to sunset, except New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. 3400 Bryan Point Rd., Accokeek, Md.; 301-763-4600; nps.gov/pisc. Free.
Paspahegh Town
The traditional life of the Paspahegh Indians, part of the Powhatan tribal group, comes alive in this re-created town at the Jamestown Settlement, which features reed-covered homes, cooking and gardening areas, and a ceremonial circle. Costumed cultural interpreters demonstrate how the tribe made tools, prepared food and wove natural fibers into rope. In the exhibition galleries, visitors can learn more about the most well-known Powhatan, Pocahontas; see a scale model of the what the full town would have looked like; and peruse a collection of artifacts from the region, including arrowheads, copper ornaments and pottery shards.
Open daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., except Christmas and New Year’s Day. 2110 Jamestown Rd., Williamsburg, Va.; 757-253-4838; jyfmuseums.org. Adults $18, children 6-12 $9, children 5 and younger free.
Nanticoke Indian Museum
In 1984, a onetime Nanticoke schoolhouse was transformed into the only Native American museum in Delaware. Two rooms hold 14 exhibit cases brimming with artifacts from tribes across the country, such as baskets made by the Apache in Alabama and kachina dolls from the Hopi and Zuni in the Southwest. A pair of cases are devoted to items from the Nanticoke people, including a wampum belt and necklace featuring whelk and clam shells and a toy canoe crafted from pine needles and sinew. One highlight of the collection is a jingle dress covered in rows of rolled-up snuff can lids, which jangle cheerily as the wearer dances. “Those dances are prayers for people,” explains museum coordinator Sterling Street, who is Nanticoke. “It’s actually a healing dress.”
Open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 26673 John J. Williams Hwy., Millsboro, Del.; 302-945-7022; nanticokeindians.org/page/museum. Adults $3, children 11 and younger $1.
U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial
This iconic statue of Marines triumphantly raising the American flag over Iwo Jima, which commemorates Marines who died in service since 1775, has been visited by millions over the years. “But what most people don’t realize is that one of the service members on the memorial was also a tribal member,” says Rule, pointing out Ira Hayes of the Akimel O’odham people from what is now Arizona. “It’s an example of an Indigenous story that’s often left out of history, even though it’s very visible.”
Open daily 6 a.m. to midnight. Iwo Jima Access Road, Arlington, Va.; 703-289-2500; nps.gov.gwmp/planyourvisit/usmc_memorial. Free.
Monacan Indian Nation Museum
Learn about the rich history of the Monacan Indians of Virginia’s Piedmont region at this thoughtfully arranged museum. The tribe’s history is carefully plotted out, including major milestones. Artifacts on display include pipes, arrowheads, pottery shards, fishing lures, beads and more, as well as a model of a traditional domed home. Next door is the historic Bear Mountain Indian Mission School, where Monacan children were taught starting in 1868.
Open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sunday by appointment; closed Nov. 24-25 and every third Saturday. 2009 Kenmore Rd., Amherst, Va.; 434-946-5391; monacannation.com/museum.html. $5. | 2022-11-22T12:08:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Where to explore Native American history in the DMV - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/native-american-heritage-sites-dmv/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/native-american-heritage-sites-dmv/ |
Why don’t more men take their wives’ last names?
Even among couples who share progressive gender politics, it’s rare for men to give up their surname
(Juan Berrio for The Washington Post)
Like most men, Mike hadn’t really thought about what he’d do with his last name — Ambrogi — when he got married.
But when he was in his 20s, Mike, a game developer who lives in Portland, Maine, found out that a couple he knew had combined parts of their surnames into a new one they could share. Then a friend announced he would be taking his fiancee’s last name when they wed. Mike started thinking past the cultural default options, and when he got engaged to his now-wife, Sara, he floated to her the option of taking her last name.
He was “half-joking” at first. But she took the idea seriously, so he did, too. It didn’t hurt that she had a primo last name.
“‘Mike Primo,’” he said in an interview, stating his married name. Compared with what he had before, “that’s basically James Bond.”
Primo’s brothers have since followed in his footsteps. But outside of that inner circle, he has met exactly zero who’ve done the same, he said, and doubts most other men have even thought about it.
“I think it literally isn’t on the table, in any way shape or form, for the vast majority of couples in America, full stop,” he said.
It is exceedingly unusual for grooms to take their bride’s surname — though data on how rare is tough to find. The Social Security Administration doesn’t track it, nor does the Census Bureau. The Knot’s 2021 Real Weddings Study surveyed over 15,000 respondents and found that 78 percent of couples that got married that year had one partner take the other partner’s last name — but that survey doesn’t break that data down by gender.
The anecdotal evidence, however, is unambiguous: It’s rare.
“I’ve not seen one groom take a bride’s last name,” said Andrew Zill, an event planner who’s helped couples plan weddings for 20 years.
“I’ve never had a man take the woman’s last name,” said Heidi Hiller, CEO and creative director of Innovative Party Planners, who has done a half-dozen weddings a year for the past dozen years.
Sandy Yi-Davis, founder and head of event design of Chic Weddings and Events, estimated that she has planned over 250 weddings over the past decade. And how many of those couples had a groom taking his bride’s name?
“It’s actually zero,” she said.
HitchSwitch, an online name-changing service, estimates that about 5 percent of its newlywed clients are men seeking information on taking their wives’ names, a slight uptick from a few years ago. Matthew A. Wolff, HitchSwitch director of operations and compliance, said that occasionally: “When the husbands take the wife’s last name, the husbands are like, ‘Is this even allowed?’ ”
Why aren’t more men taking their wives’ names when they get married?
“There is this assumption that female last names are the changeable, malleable ones,” journalist and author Jill Filipovic said. “The fact that it’s only women making this choice — that it’s only women presumed to be making this choice — in and of itself, reflects a pretty deep gender imbalance.”
Currently, a woman marrying a man must both make a choice and deal with the judgment her choice will invite from loved ones and strangers alike, whether for keeping her name (divisive, selfish, does she even really love this guy?) or taking her husband’s (retrograde, traitor to the cause, aiding and abetting her own erasure). Meanwhile, her husband-to-be is above reproach regardless of the outcome. She can’t win, and he can’t lose.
For women, keeping their existing last name (most likely inherited from their father’s family) is typically considered the most-progressive option. About 20 percent of women made that choice in the years leading up to 2015, according to an analysis that year by the New York Times’s Upshot blog. But even in households where the woman keeping her name is a foregone conclusion, the idea that the man would change his name, more often than not, isn’t even on the table.
When author Laura Hankin got engaged to David Christie, a staffer for a female Democratic senator, she knew she would be keeping her name — “My name is my identity,” she said — but the prospect of Christie taking Hankin’s last name never came up.
Hankin is confident that had she “made a big argument about making a grand social statement for gender equality,” Christie would have been receptive to it. But she wasn’t interested in asking.
“I think it goes back to that question of identity,” Hankin said. “Marriage is a beautiful commitment between two people who aren’t necessarily changing themselves or becoming a whole new person. I think both of us felt like: We want to be two people who love and support and commit to each other, but don’t become each other. So if I didn’t want to change my name to his for that reason, why would he change his name to mine?”
What’s funny about the whole name-changing phenomenon, said Rebecca Traister, an author who has written extensively on women in America, “is that it’s a fundamentally weird thing to do — from any perspective.”
A name change is a symbolic reallocation of privilege (whose name displaces the other?) rather than a practical one (who takes off work early for day-care pickup?), which makes couples more likely to ignore the custom rather than reverse it. While the material concerns of parenting, cooking and cleaning must be attended to, “changing your name is not a necessary thing in life — in fact, it is a bizarre and anachronistic thing,” Traister said. And yet “the attitudes around it, those linger. Those are really hard to shake off.”
Ask why it is that women have historically changed their names when they marry, Princeton historian Tera Hunter said, and you’ll see why most men don’t.
The legal construction of marriage in the United States is modeled on coverture, the set of domestic laws imported from England by early colonists, which decreed that a married woman’s identity and existence was legally “covered” by her husband. Her money was his money, her body was his to do with what he liked, and her name no longer existed.
“The woman’s identity is essentially erased,” Hunter said, and the erasure of her name signified her submission to the authority of her husband.
Probably the average modern man isn’t thinking about the dehumanizing framework of coverture laws when he bristles at the prospect of taking his wife’s name (if he thinks of it at all). But as Hunter sees it, these norms are so deeply ingrained in our society that even people without any awareness of the history feel an imperative to abide by those customs, or are wary of the cost of rejecting them.
“There’s a lot of social pressure around naming practices,” she says, including “egos, ideas about masculinity, family traditions, all kinds of things that are influencing the ways men think about themselves and think about their names in particular.”
When Vogue asked the pop icon now known to the legal system (if not her fans) as Mrs. Jennifer Affleck if any part of her “might want Ben to be Mr. Lopez,” she laughed out loud. “No! It’s not traditional,” she explained. “It doesn’t have any romance to it.”
When actress Zoe Saldana wed Marco Perugo in 2013, Marco took Saldana’s name — and Zoe told InStyle that she “tried to talk him out of it.” She was concerned that he would be “emasculated” by his “Latin community of men, by the world.”
Mike Primo, the Maine man formerly known as Mike Ambrogi, has a theory: Most men have a visceral, even subconscious aversion to taking their wives’ names — one they may be unable to acknowledge, even to themselves.
“I wonder if — just getting into the deep, deep code of being a participant in our culture — most dudes are coding taking a woman’s name as straight-up emasculation,” Primo said. Maybe to “become more like a woman in any way, for a man, is to sacrifice status and caste placement in our culture.”
“None of the things you’d imagine would happen,” he said. “No one ever had any pushback of any kind or honestly even that much curiosity.” He used to call Ambrogi his “bachelor name,” but has since adopted the more classic “maiden name.” (“Again, you would think there would be some follow-up,” Primo said, “but there just isn’t.”)
One person Primo didn’t have to explain himself to was Josh Peek (né Goldston), the friend whose decision to take his wife’s name had influenced Primo’s decision to do the same.
As a kid, Peek had asked his mother why she’d taken his father’s name. “And she said, ‘Well, a family needs a name,’ ” Peek recalled. “And that was a compelling point to me, and a central one.” So when he and his wife, Katie, got engaged, and she said she wanted to keep her name, he pitched her on him taking hers. (Josh would keep “Goldston” as a second middle name, and his wife would “unofficially” take it on as well.)
His dad was “onboard quite quickly,” Peek said, but his mom needed a bit more time to come around.
“My reaction was a bit negative,” Ruth Goldston said. ‘What, you’re not going to have our name?’”
As the mother of two sons, she said, “your expectation is that a lot of other things aren’t going to happen. You’ll never be the mother of the bride, for instance.”
By the wedding, however, she had warmed to the idea, and she now takes a measure of pride in her son’s last name — even if it’s not the one she gave him.
“Their reasoning was they wanted to subvert the dominant paradigm,” Goldston said. “And I could hardly not get on board with that.” | 2022-11-22T12:08:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why don’t more men take their wives’ last names? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/22/married-men-taking-wifes-name/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/22/married-men-taking-wifes-name/ |
What if environmental damage is a form of capitalist sabotage?
Worker sabotage is a weapon of the weak, but capitalist sabotage causes much greater damage
Perspective by R.H. Lossin
R.H. Lossin is writing a book about sabotage and is currently a fellow at Harvard's Charles Warren Center for studies in American history.
A firetruck passes a "backfire" operation during the Mosquito fire near Volcanoville, Calif., on Sept. 9. (Benjamin Fanjoy/Bloomberg News)
A recent study in the journal Nature estimates that the current carbon emission rates from fossil fuels like coal and oil will cause 83 million deaths between now and 2100. That’s more than 1 million deaths per year as a direct result of rising carbon emissions. This number does not include harmful diseases caused by, for instance, water supplies tainted by crude oil, as we saw in Henderson, Tenn., last summer.
Early-20th-century-American radicals had an explanation for this sort of damage: “capitalist sabotage.” The term described destructive practices in the service of profit that are often treated as the mere unintended consequences of doing business. Determining culpability for rising temperatures, ever-expanding ocean garbage patches and raging wildfires is difficult. But capitalist sabotage offers a way to think about environmental destruction that neither exonerates bad actors for lack of clear culpability, nor lapses into conspiracies. It assigns blame for the harm that is done, knowingly, by a whole class of people who have common interests.
Sabotage, now associated with military intrigue and commonly used as a synonym for “undermine,” was first used in France to describe the intentional destruction of employer property by workers. The first to popularize the word “sabotage” in the United States were members of the radical labor union the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW was founded in 1905 by a group of American labor organizers disillusioned with the limited, and often racist and elitist, politics of craft unions such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The IWW saw the traditional organization of workers sorted into individual trades within an industry as a system that encouraged competition. Organizing all workers into “one big union” eliminated competition between crafts while allowing for the inclusion of “unskilled labor,” which meant welcoming women, immigrants and African Americans who had been shut out of the skilled trades.
Organizing laborers, regardless of skill, sex or race, was not only about strength in numbers. The IWW also incorporated American traditions of mutual aid, socialism and philosophical anarchism, ideas seen as radical and demonized as “alien” in the early-20th century.
A 1916 pamphlet by IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn defined sabotage broadly as “the withdrawal of efficiency.” For workers, this could include everything from slowdowns to the destruction of finished products. Whatever the act, it had to be “conscious” and intentional, not mere vandalism; it had to result in depleted profits or disrupted production; and it could not threaten the life or physical well-being of people.
The French labor leader Emile Pouget identified two types of sabotage that the IWW incorporated into its literature: worker sabotage and capitalist sabotage. Worker sabotage was “aimed only at the means of exploitation,” such as machines and other “inert lifeless things.” Workers engaged in sabotage for the same reason that they went on strike — as a way to exert real power in a very unfair fight.
Damaging or temporarily disabling machinery prevented replacement workers — often brought in trains and escorted into factories by armed guards — from resuming production while workers were on strike.
Unlike worker sabotage — a weapon of the weak aimed at leveraging power by controlling inanimate property — capitalist sabotage, Pouget said, “reaps human victims and deprives men of their health” to increase profits. Industrialists supplied warships with cracked boilers, they imported bad meat and made poisonous fertilizer.
Along with many harmful practices, owners and managers failed to maintain safe workplaces because to do so ate into profits. Mine collapses and other “accidents” killed tens of thousands of people every year and maimed many more. The owners of industry had an interest in increasing profits and so chose not spend money on maintenance or to let workers work at safe speeds. As the IWW leader William “Big Bill” Haywood put it, “human life is cheaper [than safety measures]. Therefore, they continue to murder us by the thousands every year.”
In the early-20th century, the economist Thorstein Veblen argued that sabotage was endemic to capitalist industry: “Whether employed by the workmen to enforce their claims, or by the employers to defeat their employees,” sabotage is “part of the ordinary conduct of industry under the existing system.” But, in Veblen’s view, it was capitalist sabotage — with the support of the state — that did far more damage to society than worker sabotage.
Often the state intervened against worker radicalism on behalf of industry. This included the use of the military to protect employer property, U.S. courts that consistently ruled against individual workers, and government legislation that targeted radicals, including the Espionage Act passed during World War I.
World War I had been a moment of gathering strength for the labor movement. The IWW had particular success organizing lumber workers in the Northwest. Lumber was an industry critical to the U.S. war effort, which gave workers leverage.
Along with a surge in radical labor activity, however, was a surge of jingoism and wartime expectations of “100% Americanism.” Enacted in 1917 to counter wartime dissent of all kinds, the Espionage Act both reflected and buoyed public fears of labor radicals and foreigners and enabled the prosecution of the IWW leadership.
In 1918, 109 members of the IWW were found guilty on five counts of conspiracy under the Espionage Act. Neither the organization nor the individual members could be shown to have done anything beyond advocating sabotage in print and speech, but their recent successes in labor organizing and the political climate of the time made it possible to convict them. Following the federal trial, any states where the IWW still had a presence passed laws that made it impossible for them to operate without serious legal consequences.
Years later, in 1935, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) formed as a new alternative to the still powerful AFL. The CIO was left-leaning, and worker sabotage continued to happen, but it was no longer named and encouraged by any major labor or political organization. The word “sabotage” had effectively been made illegal.
Yet it is worth revisiting the term and its meaning today.
As environmental activists and ordinary citizens grapple with the dire effects of climate change, and political leaders offer weak and inadequate solutions, some people have begun to consider more radical tactics including sabotage, typically in the form of property destruction against fossil fuel infrastructure.
For its advocates, this sort of eco-sabotage has the advantage of bypassing lengthy, often ineffective, legal procedures. But for eco-sabotage’s detractors, burning logging equipment or shutting off a pipeline is simply unprincipled vandalism. The meaning of eco-sabotage is currently a matter of public debate.
Meanwhile, oil leaks, wild fires, failed crops and dead fisheries caused by corporate pollution are rarely called what they are: property destruction. Borrowing the theories of sabotage being debated a century ago can help us see how the quest for profit can be destructive, and to recognize that capitalists — whether negligent or willful — are engaging in this practice for profit. The term “capitalist sabotage” is a potent reminder that not all property destruction is created equal or punished equally.
Following the Dakota Access pipeline protests in 2016 and 2017, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) drafted model legislation to enhance and streamline sentencing of anyone involved in sabotaging energy industry equipment. The law, passed in Iowa, created a new crime called “critical infrastructure sabotage.” It is clear from the bill’s language that it not only concerns the physical integrity of the pipeline. It enables the prosecution of anyone who gathers to protest the building or operation of “critical infrastructure.” In the name of protecting property, the Iowa law threatens First Amendment rights.
If something like the Iowa law gets passed at the federal level, protest itself — all of the nonviolent alternatives to direct action and property destruction — will become illegal. Meanwhile, the real saboteurs — the capitalists contributing to climate change — will continue to go about unrecognized and unpunished. | 2022-11-22T12:08:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What if environmental damage is a form of capitalist sabotage? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/11/22/what-if-environmental-damage-is-form-capitalist-sabotage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/11/22/what-if-environmental-damage-is-form-capitalist-sabotage/ |
As Britain’s productivity falls, Brexit’s promise remains unfulfilled
Amid Britain's cost-of-living crisis, a house for sale in London on Nov. 3. (Kin Cheung/AP)
Four and a half years ago, when I was in London to cover Brexit, I was surprised to find how many free-market, free-trade wonks were in favor of it. Yes, leaving the European Union meant sacrificing access to the world’s largest trading bloc, they argued, but it also meant getting Britain out from under the thumb of a ponderous bureaucracy that was insulated from public accountability by layers of byzantine governance. In theory, this would leave the country free to do broader, better trade deals and build world-class economic institutions.
This was, to be clear, not the only theory of Brexit, or even the most common. Many people who voted Leave just wanted to get control of the country’s borders, particularly its immigration policy; they didn’t care (or thought they didn’t) about what that might cost in terms of economic growth. But “Singapore-on-Thames” was a theory of how Brexit might turn out, and it was plausible, if not necessarily likely.
Four and a half years on, I’m afraid it looks even less probable.
In the interim, Britain negotiated its exit agreement with the E.U., suffered through a pandemic, and is now enduring the backwash of Europe’s energy crisis on top of soaring post-pandemic inflation. This has considerably complicated the urgent task facing the government: improving British productivity to make it competitive with peer nations.
Productivity has long been a problem for Britain. In 2015, when the Brexit referendum was barely a gleam in former prime minister David Cameron’s eye, Britain was already producing significantly less GDP per hour worked than northern Europe or the United States. Because trade tends to enhance productivity, by letting workers specialize in the things they do best, Brexit has pushed the trend in the wrong direction. Productivity has declined by more than 1 percent as a result of Brexit, a figure that Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility estimates will ultimately grow to around 4 percent. In 2015, Britain’s output per hour was 15 percent lower than America’s; by 2021, the gap had widened to 20 percent.
In September, under new prime minister Liz Truss, the conservative government introduced a controversial “mini budget” that offered the biggest tax cuts Britons had enjoyed since 1972, some 45 billion pounds worth of relief for individuals and corporations. Kwasi Kwarteng, the new chancellor of the exchequer, also promised reforms to child care, immigration, agricultural productivity, business regulations, digital infrastructure and barriers to home building. Here, in theory, was another opportunity for radical improvement, a kind of neo-Thatcherite program with tax cuts to attract capital and spur investment, and streamlined government services to clear the bottlenecks impeding Britain’s growth.
In practice, markets freaked out at the size of the bill and the potential for inflation to rise even higher than the 10.1 percent Britain was suffering. The government was thrown into chaos and, about a month later, Truss resigned.
She had clearly misjudged her moment, and for this, many of the conservatives I’ve spoken with are furious. By trying to move too far, too fast, at a time when inflation was high and the government was fiscally constrained by the fantastic sums it had spent on the pandemic, Truss gave a bad name to some good, much-needed reforms. Conservatives speak gloomily of needing years to recover before it will be safe to offer similarly bold ideas — many of which they are likely to spend in political exile, as it now seems a safe bet that the Labour Party will take over after the next election.
Many conservatives are now looking to play small ball, finding ways to open a few cracks in the regulations and other barriers that hold back British growth. Chief among these is a housing crisis that makes the U.S. situation look rather manageable. At least the United States has plenty of growing cities where it’s relatively easy to find an affordable home (if not as easy as it was before the pandemic).
In the dynamic cities and towns where Britain desperately needs housing — such as London, Oxford and Cambridge — building is constrained by outdated planning rules that make it easy for neighbors to block construction and by greenbelts where development is tightly restricted. At the same time, it’s hard to give stagnating secondary cities new life without public transportation to enable a lot more commuting.
Fixing these problems would enable British workers to move to better jobs, and employers to expand operations — both big productivity boosters. But Britain also needs streamlined processes for building infrastructure, an education system that does as well for the students at the bottom as it does for those at the top, and higher investment.
In theory, tweaking these systems even a small amount could yield big progress toward closing Britain’s productivity gap. In practice … well, we’ll have to see. | 2022-11-22T12:08:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | As Britain’s productivity falls, Brexit’s promise remains unfulfilled - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/brexit-britain-falling-productivity-gdp/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/brexit-britain-falling-productivity-gdp/ |
Pedestrians walks past an election board displaying the national flag in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Monday. (Vincent Thian/AP)
HONG KONG — There’s been so much bleak news about the global rollback of democracy in recent years that it makes sense to pause and take note of some positive — and perhaps overlooked — signs.
I’m not talking about the defeat of extremist candidates and election deniers in the U.S. midterms, or the loss of extremist president and climate-change denier Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, though those were both welcome developments. I’m talking about other promising green shoots of democracy that may have gone unnoticed in the cascade of daily news.
Let’s start in Kenya, where I was The Post’s bureau chief in the early 1990s. In September, William Ruto was sworn in as president after a hard-fought campaign and a razor-thin victory against longtime opposition stalwart Raila Odinga. Odinga cried foul and claimed the election was rigged, but Ruto’s win was unanimously upheld by Kenya’s Supreme Court.
What was most remarkable is that, despite some predictions of chaos, the election was largely peaceful. Most Kenyans accepted the result and the court’s affirmation, and the transfer of power was mostly drama-free.
Ethnic-based violence had been a hallmark of Kenyan elections since multiparty rule returned in 1990, culminating in the bloody post-election conflict of 2007-08, in which some 1,200 were killed and 300,000 displaced. That convulsion of bloodletting led Kenya to institute a series of reforms, such as bolstering the judiciary, greater use of technology (including a biometric voting registry) and setting up an independent election commission.
The election commission and Supreme Court showed their teeth when they nullified a presidential election in 2017, forcing a rerun. This year, the election commission was beset by internal squabbling. But the results were counted quickly and transparently, the institutions worked, and the guardrails held. Kenya took an important step toward becoming a more mature democracy — and a model Africa badly needs.
Elsewhere on the continent, in Senegal in July, voters denied the ruling coalition an absolute majority in parliament, forcing the government camp to put together a one-seat majority with the support of a single politician whose party won a sole seat. In Angola, the ruling MPLA and the opposition UNITA parties — longtime rivals from the country’s decades-long civil war — held their closest and most competitive election contest ever. President João Lourenço retained power, but with a reduced majority in parliament after a contest deemed largely free and fair.
During my time in Africa, the continent had about as many military coups as elections. But now, even autocrats try to legitimize their rule regularly through the ballot box.
Here in Asia, Malaysians went to the polls on Saturday for a snap election in which, for the first time since the country’s independence in 1957, no party or coalition won a majority.
Notable ahead of the vote was that former prime minister Najib Razak, once considered the “kingmaker” in Malaysian politics, is sitting in a prison cell. In July, Najib lost a final appeal of his 2020 convictions on a raft of charges — including money laundering and abuse of power — related to looting of the state-owned 1MBD investment fund.
Malaysians were surprised, and jubilant, that the courts both sentenced Najib to 12 years and denied his appeal, making him the most prominent Southeast Asian leader to be imprisoned for corruption. Many expected him to avoid prison, perhaps through a royal pardon. His conviction and jailing created a new era of uncertainty in Malaysian politics.
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, popular President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo squashed speculation this year that he was angling to change the country’s constitution and try to remain in office for a third five-year term, as some of his supporters had suggested. Potential successors are angling already for elections scheduled for 2024.
Twenty-four years ago, I covered the growing popular protest movement in Indonesia that led to the fall of the longtime dictator Suharto and his “New Order” regime. Nearly a quarter-century later, Indonesia — the world’s most-populous Muslim-majority country — is Southeast Asia’s most entrenched democracy.
In the Philippines, where I lived in the 1980s, many were dismayed this summer by the prospect of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son and namesake of the late dictator, being elected president. He campaigned on vague promises and a social media strategy, mostly on Facebook and TikTok, that largely succeeded in whitewashing his family’s corrupt history.
But Marcos won in a landslide, and the losing candidate, Leni Robredo, the former vice president, was gracious in defeat, telling her supporters, “We need to accept the majority’s decision.” Her concession was a model that should be emulated elsewhere, including in the United States.
The rise of authoritarianism around the globe needs to be confronted. But let’s pause a moment to acknowledge some democratic successes. Institutions do work. Guardrails can hold. And predictions of democracy’s demise may be, at best, premature. | 2022-11-22T12:09:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The democracy progress you may have missed — everywhere - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/malaysia-election-democracy-signs-progress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/malaysia-election-democracy-signs-progress/ |
Why letting your kids play alone feels like a revelation to modern parents
By Elizabeth Chang
In a recent child-rearing trend making the rounds of social media, parents have been posting photos of adorable youngsters playing alone — doing puzzles, digging in the dirt, building with Legos — and tagging them #sittervising.
The term, coined by Susie Allison, author and creator of the popular blog Busy Toddler, starting taking off in July, when she shared a video titled “The art of sittervising.” “You do not need to hover over kids while they play OR feel like you absolutely must be playing with them at all times," she wrote. "You can supervise kids from a seated position.”
The idea that it’s permissible to tell your children to just go play has been greeted with enthusiasm. “ ‘Sittervising’ is the latest parenting trend because it’s freaking genius” read a headline on Motherly. An online article from “Today” asked, “What is ‘sittervising’ and why is it the latest expert-approved trend for parents?” The Skimm, in somewhat retro fashion, ruled it “A Parenting Trend That Actually Helps Kids and Moms.”
Sittervising, of course, is only the latest parenting trend that isn’t. Allowing children to entertain themselves is a practice that has existed at least since hunter-gatherer societies. Its popularity probably tells us more about the anxiety-riddled state of privileged parenting than anything else.
But the fact that this concept is attracting such a passionate following offers an opportunity to revisit the reasons kids need solo play and to consider why so many parents seem to believe they must spend all their free time with their children.
The enduring mystery of kids and ‘growing pains’
Mark Sabbagh is a psychology professor and lead investigator at the Early Experience Lab at Queen’s University in Ontario. He agrees that, whatever you call it, encouraging your kids to play on their own is a good idea and always has been.
Kids use play to explore the world, Sabbagh said. “So sometimes they’re working through how physics works by building with blocks, or sometimes they’re working on how people work in a dramatic play kind of setting.” They’ve usually got ideas about how things work, he added, so through play, “they’re trying out those ideas, and then they’re observing the results of those ideas in an environment that they have themselves sculpted.”
This is an important part of development, Sabbagh said. When parents think they need to be involved or impart some kind of lesson, “they can interrupt this natural process of learning.” If you’re invited to play, great. But if you aren’t, "then let them do their thing,” he said.
Of course, don’t take it too far: Scrolling through your phone to the extent that you don’t respond when your child needs you isn’t good, either, Sabbagh noted. Parents should encourage exploration and autonomy in a supportive way that also makes it clear to their children that they’ll be there if needed.
Brandi Hawk, an expert in Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), which was developed as an intervention for children who are noncompliant and oppositional, looks at the issue of sittervising through the lens of attachment theory. “Attachment theory says that there’s two really important roles that a caregiver plays in a child’s life,” Hawk said. “One is to be a safe haven, so when your child is afraid, scared, upset, they know they can come to you for support.”
But, Hawk added, “the other, equally important piece is to be a secure base from which your kids can explore. So, to be the person that your child can look at and say, ‘you know, my mom or dad is there so I can go off and find out new things.’ ” Parents who need to be reminded that it’s okay for kids to play on their own are hewing closer to the safe haven role than the secure base role.
Birthday parties are back — and some parents are relieved to scale down
Kids also grow through measures other than play, said Nancy Darling, chair of the Department of Psychology at Oberlin College who has researched different styles of parenting. One way is watching parents as they do chores or run errands. “There’s a zillion things we learn about being adults by hanging around with our parents when they’re not paying attention to us,” Darling said.
Allowing children to explore the wider world means “they’re not just playing with us, they’re playing with other kids, they’re playing with dogs, they’re playing with random children who they have to learn to negotiate with, or slightly older and slightly younger kids.” And if they play without parents interfering, they have to learn how to solve problems on their own or with the help of other kids, which is empowering.
Of course, some children don’t receive much one-on-one time, often because their parents are working multiple jobs and have many responsibilities. This can lead to issues such as clinginess; throwing tantrums or displaying aggressiveness; or being anxious, moody or withdrawn, said Hawk, who is the supervising psychologist at the PCIT training center at U.C. Davis Children’s Hospital.
One of the components of PCIT is “special time” — five minutes when a parent engages in child-led play and practices some of the skills they have been taught in this therapy. Research into the efficacy of PCIT has shown that children whose families engage in special time have better outcomes than those whose families do not, said Hawk.
Recognizing that some parents struggle to find even five free minutes in a day, Hawk suggests incorporating one-on-one play with their child into daily activities such as bath time, or squeezing it into slivers of the day, such as right after school. “It’s amazing when kids go from nothing to a little bit” of one-on-one, she said. “Parents feel less stressed, too, because they’re getting to have a little bit of joy in their child.”
So where did many parents get the idea that they have to spend all of it with their kids?
Sabbagh says the internet plays a role. “I think that work at home tends to be undervalued,” Sabbagh said. “So that creates cultural pressure to publicize the work that one’s doing,” through blog posts and social media. Hawk agrees. “There’s this real push that if you’re a good parent, you should be posting pictures of you and your kids having a great time together,” she said.
Some parents feel obligated to stuff more parenting into fewer hours, Darling said. “One of the things that’s changed radically over the last couple of generations of parenting is we spend much less time with our kids, but we focus on them,” she said. “So it’s not like you’re with your kids and you do something, and they come with you, and they’re sort of part of an activity. They are the activity.” That makes any parent who isn’t 100 percent focused on their child when they’re together feel like a slacker.
But, Darling points out, that guilt is a feeling based on a misconception about the past. After all, the stay-at-home mothers of yesteryear did not spend every hour after school engaged with their kids. “It was just like, ‘Oh, you’re home now. Good, go play, do something fun, and then we’ll do something together as a family, like eat dinner or do something else,’ ” Darling said.
“I just think we’ve really upped the stakes of what we say is good parenting, and then we don’t give anybody support,” she added. “So, no matter what you do, it’s not enough.”
None of this is happening in a vacuum, Sabbagh said. “It's all happening in this kind of cultural landscape. And so I understand why people are doing it.”
But he also appreciates when that landscape produces someone who creates a term like sittervising, and tells parent that it’s okay to let your child play on their own. “That’s where developmental psychologists can come in and say, ‘Yep, we think so, too.’ ” | 2022-11-22T12:09:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Parents: Do you 'sittervise'? Then you're doing it right. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/11/22/sittervise-child-development-play/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/11/22/sittervise-child-development-play/ |
What Middle East scholars really think about boycotting Israel
The latest Middle East Scholars Barometer survey explored this contentious issue — and more
Analysis by Shibley Telhami
Israeli security forces deploy amid altercations between Jewish settlers on their way to visit the tomb of Othniel ben Kenaz and Palestinian residents in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron on Saturday. (AFP/Getty Images)
Earlier this year, the Middle East Studies Association passed a controversial resolution endorsing a nonbinding boycott of Israeli academic institutions. MESA, the leading multidisciplinary global organization for academics studying the Middle East, polled its membership in a referendum on a resolution that responded to the call by Palestinian civil service organizations for solidarity in the face of Israeli occupation and human rights violations.
Did the vote in favor of the boycott, backed by 82 percent of participating MESA members, reflect broader attitudes among Middle East scholars?
Yes and no. In the fourth round of the Middle East Scholars Barometer, fielded from Oct. 25 to Nov. 8, with a response rate of 32 percent, we found that only a slight majority (54 percent) of the more than 500 respondents said they support the Middle East Studies Association boycott. And there’s a significant disciplinary divide. Only 43 percent of political scientists supported the MESA resolution, compared with 62 percent of scholars from other disciplines.
To be clear, this latest survey found little evidence of blanket objections to boycotts targeting Israel. A resounding 91 percent of Middle East scholars, including 91 percent of political scientists, support at least some boycotts of Israel. But more than a third of survey respondents — and nearly half of political scientists — say that it’s the boycott of academic institutions they oppose. That’s an important finding about the conflicting interpretations of academic freedom on a deeply contentious issue.
Ukraine war has side effects on Middle East geopolitics
That’s only one of the intriguing findings from the fourth wave of the Middle East Scholars Barometer, a biannual survey of self-identified Middle East-focused members of the American Political Science Association, the Middle East Studies Association and the American Historical Association. The survey also revealed unique findings about the effects of the covid-19 pandemic on academic research and other issues.
Where should academic workshops be held?
Critics of the MESA vote, and of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign more broadly, often claim that these types of protests unfairly single out Israel. Why boycott Israeli academic institutions, they argue, when other Middle Eastern countries have equally bad or worse records on human rights? To assess that critique, as well as broader concerns across the discipline about the ethics and practical safety concerns of doing research in an increasingly repressive region, we asked respondents whether they believed it was appropriate to hold academic workshops in various Middle Eastern countries — and, if not, then why.
Respondents split almost evenly on holding workshops in Israel, just as they did on the MESA resolution. Of the 53 percent who objected to holding workshops in Israel, 94 percent cited ethical concerns, with far fewer mentioning issues of access or personal safety. There is a clear generational divide: 73 percent of graduate students opposed holding workshops in Israel, compared with 52 percent of full professors.
But Saudi Arabia, not Israel, held the dubious distinction of being the country in which the most scholars — 69 percent — would oppose holding an academic workshop. There was less opposition to holding workshops in other Middle Eastern countries: 38 percent objected to holding workshops in Egypt, 35 percent in the United Arab Emirates and only 20 percent in Qatar or Turkey.
Academic experts believe that Middle East politics are actually getting worse
About 80 percent of those opposing workshops in most countries cited ethical concerns. But objections to holding workshops in Egypt stood out for a different reason. More of those opposing workshops in Egypt cited concerns about personal safety (46 percent) or about access and/or safety of workshop participants (75 percent). Again, there was a disciplinary divide: political scientists were 19 percentage points more likely than non-political scientists to have such reservations. That’s probably a reflection of Egypt’s grim record of imprisoning academics on trumped-up charges over the past decade. Few members of the academic community, for instance, will have forgotten the killing of Italian graduate student Giuilo Regeni in 2016, allegedly by Egyptian security services.
Meetings in the United Arab Emirates also raised safety concerns. Political scientists were twice as likely as non-political scientists (67 percent vs. 33 percent) to cite concerns about access or safety of participants. The months-long detention in 2018 of British graduate student Matthew Hedges on allegations of espionage, as well as media attention to UAE use of surveillance technologies and intolerance of political dissent, may drive the concerns of political scientists.
Yet only 20 percent of respondents objected to holding workshops in Turkey despite the Erdogan government’s extensive assault on higher education in recent years. This finding perhaps reflects feelings of solidarity with embattled Turkish academics.
Do Middle East scholars self-censor?
A significant number of Middle East scholars report treading carefully in discussing their work. A solid majority of those surveyed say they feel a need to censor their speech when they speak professionally about the Middle East: 57 percent overall, including 75 percent of graduate students and 66 percent of untenured assistant professors.
It’s not primarily the “woke mob” they fear, though. Among those who say they feel a need to self-censor, more respondents cited concern about pressure from external advocacy groups (58 percent) than campus culture, or the risk of offending students (51 percent). That likely reflects the long history of pro-Israeli groups seeking to police permitted discourse on the Middle East, with advocacy organizations publishing dossiers of alleged anti-Israeli activities by university faculty and students.
And 30 percent of respondents note they self-censor because of government limitations on permissible speech, likely in reference to state laws such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s Stop Woke Act or Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s efforts to ban the teaching of critical race theory. The rapid proliferation of legislation prohibiting boycotts of Israel — which an overwhelming 97 percent of the respondents opposed — is another likely factor.
Is there a “Monkey Cage effect”?
Despite these fears, more than half of the respondents did nonetheless express the importance of explaining their work to the general public. We didn’t ask specifically about The Monkey Cage — but we did ask about how scholars disseminated their research.
This article, and others published by The Monkey Cage, offer political scientists one such platform for reaching the general public. And we found something interesting. We found that even though political scientists were 12 percentage points less likely than scholars from other disciplines to view the general public as an audience for their research, political scientists were 15 points more likely to have published an online post about their research in the past three years. Perhaps that’s some small Monkey Cage effect?
Shibley Telhami is professor of government and politics and director of the Critical Issues Poll at the University of Maryland, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Marc Lynch is professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and director of the Project on Middle East Political Science. | 2022-11-22T12:09:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Middle East scholars have become cautious about discussing their work. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/mena-israel-boycott-mesa/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/mena-israel-boycott-mesa/ |
Scientists weigh in on the geologic drivers of the tragedy
Rescuers transport an injured victim of the Nov. 21 earthquake at a hospital in Cianjur, West Java, Indonesia. (Adi Weda/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The earthquake that shook Indonesia’s West Java province on Monday might sound deceptively mild — the 5.6-magnitude quake struck at 1:21 p.m. local time in a seismic hot zone that frequently sees much larger temblors.
But this technically moderate quake has so far killed at least 268 people and injured hundreds more.
Scientists who study earthquakes named several factors that could have contributed to its tragic death toll. The epicenter of the quake was shallow, just about six miles beneath the surface of the earth, so the seismic energy didn’t have to travel far before it hit people and buildings. It also occurred on the densely populated island of Java, in a region of the world where many structures are not built to withstand earthquakes.
“A 5.6 [earthquake], in the scheme of things, is just not a huge earthquake. There’s lots of faults that can produce an earthquake that big,” said Susan Hough, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Pasadena, Calif. She noted that it was similar to a 2008 earthquake in California — one that most people probably don’t remember.
“Unfortunately, you put an earthquake like this in the wrong place, you can cause damage,” Hough said. “It’s kind of a perfect storm, in terms of damage relative to the magnitude.”
Indonesia sits in a notoriously active part of the world called the Ring of Fire, where the Pacific plate collides with several other tectonic plates in a roughly ring-shaped zone encircling the Pacific Ocean. As these plates grind past or dive under each other, seismic stresses build up until the energy gets released as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other activity along the plate boundaries.
In 2004, a 9.1-magnitude megathrust earthquake occurred under the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sumatra, causing a devastating tsunami. That kind of quake occurs at a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate dives under another.
By contrast, Monday’s temblor was a strike-slip earthquake, the same type of quake that occurs along California’s San Andreas fault. In a strike-slip quake, energy builds up as two tectonic plates grind against each other.
USGS scientists pinpointed the epicenter of the latest quake underneath Java’s landmass, not far from the capital of Jakarta. That’s part of why it did not generate a tsunami. The scientists also say that it struck about six miles below the surface. That may sound deep, but earthquakes can originate from hundreds of miles underground, and depth can be a factor in what’s felt at the surface.
Think of it like throwing a rock into the center of a pond, said Don Blakeman, an earthquake analyst for the USGS. The ripples radiate from the point where the rock plopped down, getting weaker until they dissipate.
“If you have an earthquake like this close to the surface, it’s close to people and buildings,” Blakeman said. “If it was 500 miles deep, they’d be 500 miles away from where it happened.”
Blakeman added that much of the destruction caused by an earthquake depends not only on how much shaking occurs, but also on how strict the building codes are in forcing people to make earthquake-resistant structures.
Hough said that while the destruction caused is sobering, from a scientific perspective this was in many ways a garden-variety earthquake. But she added that seismologists will be closely analyzing the data from the event, because similar magnitude earthquakes can sometimes generate different levels of shaking — something that seems possible to have happened in this case due to the level of destruction.
“The level of shaking seems high,” Hough said. “It was on land. It was close to people. There’s a chance it actually generated more than average shaking.” | 2022-11-22T12:10:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why the 5.6-magnitude earthquake in Indonesia was so deadly - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/11/22/indonesia-earthquake-explained/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/11/22/indonesia-earthquake-explained/ |
AL RAYYAN, Qatar — Gareth Bale converted a penalty kick in the 82nd minute to offset Tim Weah’s first-half goal and give Wales a 1-1 draw against the United States in the return to the World Cup for both nations.
DOHA, Qatar — Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford put last year’s European Championship loss behind them, combining to score three goals in England’s 6-2 rout of Iran at the World Cup.
DOHA, Qatar — Cody Gakpo and substitute Davy Klaasen scored late to give the Netherlands a 2-0 victory over Senegal at the World Cup.
LOS ANGELES — Attorneys asked a jury to award $55 million to the widow of a former USC football player in a landmark case accusing the NCAA of failing to protect him from repetitive head trauma that led to his death. | 2022-11-22T12:10:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/11/22/819f4b0c-6a56-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/11/22/819f4b0c-6a56-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Tuesday briefing: Colorado Springs shooting victims; Indonesia earthquake; World Cup; NASA’s moon mission; and more
Police have identified victims of the Colorado LGBTQ night club shooting.
Who were they? Daniel Aston, Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Derrick Rump and Ashley Paugh — two of whom were transgender — were killed Saturday night in Colorado Springs.
The latest: The 22-year-old suspect was charged with murder and hate crimes yesterday. He had a troubled past hidden by a name change as a teen.
What else to know: An Army veteran helped tackle the gunman and stop the rampage.
A devastating earthquake hit Indonesia yesterday.
What to know: At least 268 people died, officials said today. The 5.6-magnitude quake was felt in Jakarta, the capital city, but hit hardest in a region dozens of miles away.
Indonesia frequently gets earthquakes, but this would be the deadliest this year. It’s also monsoon season, when the country tends to be hit by dangerous natural disasters.
Russia is struggling to make territorial advances in Ukraine.
How we know: A new Post analysis shows that Russian forces haven’t taken more than 1,000 square miles in a week since April. (We visualized this here.)
The bigger picture: Russia still controls about 17% of Ukrainian territory, mainly in the east and south, and both sides are gearing up to keep fighting well into next year.
Tomorrow will be one of the busiest travel days of the year.
If you’re flying: Expect long lines, especially at Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver airports. However, airlines say they’ve been hiring aggressively and expect less chaos than this summer.
If you’re driving: Traffic will peak tomorrow afternoon. For the return trip, avoid driving between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Scientists are working on lab-made antibodies to fight the coronavirus.
The idea: These treatments, known as monoclonal antibodies, target vulnerable parts of the virus and can help prevent severe disease in at-risk people.
What’s new? Existing therapies are losing their healing power against new virus variants, so researchers are developing treatments that work better against mutations.
The U.S. men’s soccer team tied its World Cup opener against Wales.
The details: A first-half goal by winger Tim Weah was canceled out by a late penalty kick from Welsh star Gareth Bale for a 1-1 game in Qatar.
What it means: The U.S. will probably need to beat Group B favorite England on Friday or Iran next Tuesday to advance to the knockout stage of the tournament.
NASA’s Orion spacecraft reached the moon yesterday.
A camera aboard NASA’s Orion capsule captured a view of Earth from the moon on Nov. 21, akin to that seen during the final Apollo mission in 1972. (Video: NASA via Storyful)
What happened? The capsule passed within 81 miles of the lunar surface in an orbit around the moon, five days after launching from the Kennedy Space Center.
Why it matters: This unmanned flight is a key step in the space agency’s plan to return astronauts to the moon within a few years.
And now … internet providers are playing tricks to raise your bill: Here are the worst. Plus, here’s how to save your tweets in case they disappear. | 2022-11-22T12:11:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Tuesday, November 22 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/11/22/what-to-know-for-november-22/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/11/22/what-to-know-for-november-22/ |
My mother’s obsession with weight is not unique. Researchers have studied how a mother’s restricted eating habits can affect her children, particularly daughters.
Perspective by Rebecca Morrison
(Hanna Barczyk for The Washington Post)
My mother has been on a diet her entire life. Every conversation I’ve had with her in my 51 years has included information about her current weight, or something she ate that she shouldn’t have, or something she didn’t eat that she’s proud of having resisted.
Growing up in Iran, she saw in every example that a woman’s beauty was her power. To her, it was a fundamental part of being a woman — to be seen, you had to be thin and beautiful.
Unfortunately, I didn’t fit into this mold, which created a chasm between us.
I was her firstborn and her only daughter. I started out thin and tall for my age. But when I was 13, things changed. My house was filled with marital strife. My parents were immigrants trying to fit into a new homeland — my mother struggling to learn the language and culture, my father taking out his frustrations about starting over on her. My school life wasn’t much better. I was a lonely and awkward kid, walking the halls hoping for a connection. All of this as puberty took over my body like a beast.
I started gaining weight. My mother was devastated.
She saw her thin-daughter dreams fading by the day. But she didn’t give up without a fight. She did everything in her power to get me to lose weight: She pushed, pleaded, threatened, bargained.
A headstrong, insubordinate teenager, I fought back doing the very thing she hated: I ate more. And more. And more.
A mother’s eating habits can affect her daughter
My mother’s obsession with her weight and mine is not unique. Several researchers have studied how a mother’s restricted eating habits can affect her children, particularly daughters. One study followed 173 mothers and daughters, checking in when the daughters were ages 5, 7, 9 and 11. They found that mothers who were preoccupied with their own weight and eating were more likely to restrict their child’s foods and encourage daughters to lose weight.
There are many studies like this. One followed sixth-grade girls and found that when mothers encourage a daughter to lose weight, it puts the child at risk for bulimia and eating disorders. Another studied mothers and college-age daughters and found that a mother’s attitudes about her own body and dieting predicted a daughter’s struggle with body image and eating disorders.
“For most of us, our mothers are our first contact not just about what we should eat or how we should look but what it means to be a girl or a woman,” said Charlotte H. Markey, psychology professor at Rutgers University and author of “The Body Image Book for Girls: Love Yourself and Grow Up Fearless.”
My mother’s eating habits have centered on restriction and deprivation her entire life, which is something she has in common with a generation of mothers. In fact, the diets of many women born in the 1940s and 1950s would meet today’s criteria for eating disorders, Markey said.
One day after school, my mother caught me sneaking a bag of chocolate chip cookies into the basement. Instead of yelling at me, as she’d done hundreds of times, she sat me down and put her arms around my shaking shoulders. I remember her telling me, “Just control yourself.”
My battle with my mother was episodic. Sometimes I hid when my mother tried to initiate one of my mandatory weigh-ins, other times I succumbed and did as she wanted, but I never accepted her ideas of beauty. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was the supportive teachers at my school who propped me up, or the female protagonists in the books I devoured, or maybe because my father always assured me that I was fine just the way I was.
Settling into an average-sized body
My mother’s steadfast position on the importance of my weight widened our rift. She dug deep into her position and I into mine. She didn’t let up on the diets, on the comments, on the judgment. No matter what she said or did, all I heard was, “if you’re not thin, I won’t love you.”
I never got thin. Instead, I settled, more or less happily, into my average-American-woman-size body. The older I got, the more I learned to love and accept myself the way I was. I became a lawyer, got married and had children. An invisible war remained between us, but I still needed my mother.
Decades later, we still talked every day. I asked her whether she remembered the time we went to lunch before my driving test. I ordered a Caesar salad — and to please her, requested it with no dressing or croutons. The waiter came back with just a plate of lettuce.
Today, she agrees it was absurd.
It was during that conversation that she apologized, explaining that she had been young and didn’t understand the ramifications of her behavior. She acknowledged, with regret, that she had been cruel.
I was stunned, and didn’t know what to say.
Recovering from years of criticism around food and weight
Research shows that mothers have tremendous power over their children’s eating habits, and they can use it to model healthy behavior and set their children on course for a lifetime of healthy eating. And mothers who grew up with restricted eating need to be especially mindful to not repeat the pattern with their own daughters.
For those mothers and daughters whose relationships have been damaged by years of eating restriction and criticism around food, the solution is to start talking about it, said Alli Spotts-De Lazzer, a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified eating-disorders specialist in Los Angeles.
“Steps you can take to work toward healing include understanding what the other person is wounded by, taking ownership of your part in that and genuinely asking for forgiveness,” Spotts-De Lazzer said. “When the person knows they are understood, they can feel safe to potentially become close to you again.”
Every day, my mother and I talk over FaceTime, and while I try not to mention my weight, I still listen to her talk about hers. She still cares about it deeply.
The other day, I slipped up and told her about my pandemic weight gain. I instantly regretted it. All the terror and agony of that 13-year-old girl came rushing back. I asked her not to comment about it.
She gave me a knowing look filled with tenderness and compassion, and told me she was proud of the woman I’ve become.
I showed my mother this essay, and she approved of me sharing it. I still struggle with accepting my body’s size and imperfections. And my mother’s still on a never-ending diet. But she’s finally let go of the shame she carried for decades about her body — and mine. | 2022-11-22T12:11:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | My mother was always dieting. She wanted me to diet, too. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/22/weight-dieting-eating-disorders-mothers-daughters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/22/weight-dieting-eating-disorders-mothers-daughters/ |
Author Jacqueline Woodson stretches her creativity with new play
A musical adaptation of her book ‘The Day You Begin’ appears at the Kennedy Center through December 18.
By Vicky Hallett
“The Day You Begin” cast features Carla Duren, center, with, from left, Audrey Hailes, Noah Virgile, Camilo Linares and Ashley D. Nguyen. The musical is based on the book by Jacqueline Woodson, which explores how kids can shake off self-doubt. (Teresa Wood)
When you step inside a new classroom on the first day of school, anything is possible. “Every year is another chance to make friends and figure out where your dreams lie,” says author Jacqueline Woodson, who vividly remembers those moments from her own childhood. “Every time I start a book, it’s that same feeling. This is my chance to write something different and better.”
A similar sensation comes with being the Kennedy Center education’s artist-in-residence, transforming several of her stories for children into productions that families can enjoy. Most recently is a world-premiere musical based on “The Day You Begin,” a picture book that explores how kids — or anyone — can shake off self-doubt.
Woodson found inspiration from her great-grandfather William Woodson, who was the only Black child in an all-White school just after the U.S. Civil War. Even though she lives in a much more diverse world, Jacqueline Woodson can connect with how that must have felt. “There are very few rooms I walk into and say, ‘This feels like home,’ ” she says.
So Woodson filled her book with characters from different backgrounds, such as Rigoberto, who’s adjusting to life in the United States after leaving his native Venezuela, and Angelina, who must take care of her younger sister. She emphasized how common it is to feel like you don’t fit in, whether that’s because of how you look, what you pack for lunch or what you did over summer vacation.
The original title was “It’ll Be Scary Sometimes,” which Woodson borrowed from a poem she had written about William in her memoir, “Brown Girl Dreaming.”
Trying new things is usually scary but also exciting, Woodson says. She thinks about the freeing feeling of riding a two-wheel bike for the first time and finally getting to play double Dutch jump rope after years of watching older kids make it look so magical.
“Leaving the single rope behind felt like a rite of passage,” Woodson says.
The message of “The Day You Begin” is that whether you’re at a playground, in a classroom or any other place, it’s better because you’re there. You bring something special that no one else has.
Take, for example, the book “The Day You Begin.” Woodson appreciates that illustrator Rafael López didn’t just draw pictures to accompany her words — he also contributed his point of view. He scattered rulers throughout the pages to show how we compare ourselves to others. And he inserted an image of his nonverbal, autistic son, standing alone next to a tree.
His son has become the character Sam in the musical version of “The Day You Begin,” which taps into the talents of a larger team, Woodson says. There’s music (by her friend Toshi Reagon), plus dancing and unexpected visual effects, such as tiny flashlights shining to mimic rain. As they started planning, director Charlotte Brathwaite asked Woodson, “How do you feel about puppets?” She hadn’t considered them. Now they’re an important part of the show.
“I get shy, but not about creating things,” says Woodson, who’s loving the experience of seeing her story come to life in a different way. “It became once for me when I wrote the words. Now it’s becoming again in this world.”
Of course, as with anything new, it’s a little scary. Woodson’s worry last Saturday’s opening night: “Am I going to be sitting in an empty [theater]?” But she pushed away the fears and instead focused on the infinite positive possibilities.
What: “The Day You Begin.”
Where: Family Theater, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F Street Northwest Washington.
When: Through December 18.
How old: Best for ages 7 to 12.
How much: $20-$25. Buy tickets online at kennedy-center.org. | 2022-11-22T13:39:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Author Jacqueline Woodson stretches her creativity with new play - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/22/jacqueline-woodson-day-you-begin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/22/jacqueline-woodson-day-you-begin/ |
Hakeem Jeffries will lead. McCarthy will follow.
House Democratic Caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) arrives to meet with fellow Democrats at the Capitol on Nov. 17. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
The contrast between the man likely to be the next House speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and the likely House minority leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), could not be greater. Nor could the contrast be more indicative of the current state of the parties.
McCarthy remains hostage to the Christian nationalist base and the MAGA members who prioritize conflict with the Biden administration over governance. Jeffries, on the other hand, has broad appeal in his party and displays maturity and focus.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Jeffries showed the discipline and generosity of spirit that no doubt pleased his predecessor, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The key to her leadership, as it will be for Jeffries, is the ability to maintain unity in search of legislative deals and provide a contrast between a party that fights for working people and one that opposes reality and democratic governance.
Asked about conflict between moderate and left-leaning members, Jeffries refused to accept the “Democrats in disarray” framing. He responded:
The majesty of the House Democratic Caucus is that we are so incredibly diverse, in terms of race, and gender, and religion, and sexual orientation, region, life experience, and even ideology, from the left, to progressives, New Dems, Blue Dogs, moderate and centrist Democrats, all points in between. The thing about us, Jake, is that, while we can have some noisy conversations at times about how we can make progress for the American people … though people have doubted us, tried to create this frame of Democrats in disarray, we always are consistently able to come together, find the highest common denominator, get things done for everyday Americans, and make progress.
And when it comes to supplying votes to avoid a default on the national debt, he was serene. “Democrats have always been willing to lean in on making sure that we fully fund the government,” Jeffries said. “And Democrats have always been willing to lean in, in making sure that we meet our nation’s obligations and do not default on our debt for the first time in American history.” He added, that his party has “consistently fought against extremism on the Republican side, including when it manifested itself often during the former president’s tenure, while, at the same time, being able to find common ground to make progress for the American people.”
Jeffries underscored McCarthy’s inability to break with a radical, unpopular agenda. “Kevin McCarthy has said that he is willing to detonate the American economy, default on our nation’s debt in order to try to strip away Social Security and Medicare for tens of millions of Americans. That’s incredibly reckless.”
That’s the stark contrast Jeffries will need to maintain as Democratic leader. He will need to unite his members to shift the onus of keeping the government operating on the Republican majority. Will the GOP put forth an agenda crafted in MAGA cultists’ offices? If so, Jeffries will have to make the case for Democrats returning to the majority in 2024 by promising the restoration of competent and sober governance.
Meanwhile, McCarthy, who has yet to nail down the 218 votes he needs to become speaker, is still bowing and scraping to the MAGA radicals. He promised to remove a handful of high-profile Democrats from House committees, including the eminently qualified Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.). And he has little — if any — legislative priorities ready to go. The only thing teed up is nonstop investigations.
Such posturing will make it hard for McCarthy to accomplish anything of substance. As Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) explained on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “I would not be surprised if Kevin McCarthy has to cut deals with Democrats, which is something he needs to keep in mind, because he’s not going to get 218 votes for everything he wants to pass, including government funding, because he’s got people that will never vote yes on anything.”
McCarthy is widely regarded (by Democrats, many Republicans, the White House and the media) as a weak leader. He is seen as a glad hander who is willing to prostrate himself before the most unhinged elements in the party. As Kinzinger put it, “I think he has cut so many deals with bad people to get to this position that I think he’s not going to be a leader at all. … And I, frankly, don’t think he’s going to last very long.”
In some sense, maintaining unity in the minority is easier than governing in the majority. That is especially true when the majority is thin and under the leadership of someone who has never been speaker before. Jeffries may not find perfect agreement on all issues among his fellow Democrats, but he surely will find unanimity in opposition to a MAGA majority lacking a governing agenda. | 2022-11-22T13:39:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Hakeem Jeffries will lead. McCarthy will follow. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/hakeem-jeffries-mccarthy-house-democrats-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/hakeem-jeffries-mccarthy-house-democrats-republicans/ |
How the Biden administration wants to tackle foreign commercial spyware
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! It’s the season finale of “Andor” tomorrow. I finally got hooked for good with Episode 10.
Below: A U.S.-funded news agency says it was hacked, and a cybersecurity start-up gave product trials to spyware firms. First:
An executive order and more is in store for spyware fight
The Biden administration is preparing to roll out policy initiatives to combat commercial foreign spyware, including an executive order to limit whether and how the federal government can use it.
In a letter to Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) and other House Intelligence Committee members last week, Biden officials said the executive order would “prohibit U.S. Government operational use of commercial spyware that poses counterintelligence or security risks to the United States or risks of being used improperly.” The order could come as soon as early next year – and at a time when NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware is at the center of investigations by reporters and researchers, drawing calls for action from the United States.
Plans for that order have previously been reported, but there have been questions about what it might look like. A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans still under deliberation, provided me with more details about the administration’s intentions.
The executive order is a response to reports on spyware providers’ attempts to sell to the federal government and spyware abuse abroad, the official said. And there was a “recognition that there was no regulation within the U.S. federal government on how to address these tools,” they said.
“That raised for us the need to impose certain restrictions and certain guidelines for the federal government,” the official said.
The office acknowledged two risks. Spyware tools could be misused to target U.S. government personnel, U.S. government systems and information. But they could also be misused abroad. “That would undercut the U.S. government’s national security interests, would be reputationally damaging were the United States to be associated with that type of tools,” the official said.
House-passed legislation would authorize Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to ban contracts with such firms, but that ban would only apply to intelligence agencies. But Himes said last week that the legislation has run into trouble over congressional turf disputes, leaving its fate unknown. The official told me that the Biden administration’s executive order would pertain to the entire federal government.
A key question is whether there are any spyware vendors that don’t pose “counterintelligence or security risks to the United States,” which the letter said the ban would apply to. “We would have to see in its application,” the official said. “Right now, the companies that are most well-known in public are the ones that have taken steps that would be contrary to these parts of the executive order.”
More than just an order
Last week’s letter — written by Susie Feliz, assistant secretary for legislative and intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Commerce, and Naz Durakoglu, assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the Department of State — came in response to a request by Himes and fellow House Intelligence Committee members for the administration to take additional measures in response to the spyware threat.
Himes has noted that the letter’s caveats could leave the door open to spyware use.
“What I read there is, ‘Generally speaking we want to come down hard on this stuff, but we want to leave the door open for something and somebody,’” he said at an event last week hosted by the Center for a New American Security think tank, shortly after receiving the letter. “What they’re very clearly not saying is there should be an operational ban on the part of the U.S. government with respect to any of this technology.”
That letter, in turn, followed a rare public hearing on how foreign governments have used spyware to snoop on dissidents and even U.S. diplomats. Lawmakers also were inspired to hold the hearing after reports on the FBI’s exploration of a contract with NSO Group, the most well-known spyware maker. The New York Times’s Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman expanded on that reporting last week.
Separately on Monday, the Justice Department said the Supreme Court should not grant a request from NSO Group that it be given immunity in a suit brought by WhatsApp and parent Meta over allegations that the company targeted its users. Here’s David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine who previously served as U.N. special rapporteur and examined the growing surveillance industry:
🚨🚨🚨BIG NEWS: United States @TheJusticeDept urges the Supreme Court to deny cert in @WhatsApp v #NSOGroup, in which NSO was seeking official immunity protection in Meta's suit against it. Up to the court now, but it's a major rejection of NSO argument. https://t.co/THLSQ6H49N pic.twitter.com/wCHwvzGaMO
— David Kaye (@davidakaye) November 21, 2022
In his letter, Himes also called on the administration to withhold U.S. tax dollars from nations that have used foreign commercial spyware to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and residents, to publicly detail any instances of spyware being used against U.S. diplomats and to “reach an understanding to ban the use of foreign commercial spyware” at its forthcoming Summit for Democracy.
The administration is working to identify such spying on U.S. diplomats, and the State Department plans to present “Guiding Principles on Government Use of Surveillance Technologies and Subsequent Data Generation, Management, and Use” at the 2023 summit, the response letter states.
It’s too early to say whether the United States will forbid tax dollars from going to nations that use spyware on U.S. diplomats, or whether it will publicly detail such incidents, the senior administration official said, but they also did not rule it out.
“We’re working to understand the full extent,” the official said. “We’re going to devise a policy response based on that as we learn more.”
The time frame
The administration is targeting the first quarter of 2023 for the executive order, the official said. It’s planning a series of other actions around the same time, such as implementing congressionally ordered restrictions on former intelligence officials who seek work with foreign governments and companies, including foreign commercial spyware providers.
But it’s only a goal, one that requires working through the interagency vetting process and other steps that are “important for due diligence reasons,” the official said.
That being said, it looks like everyone is on the same page, the official said. “I don’t want to speak too soon. I’m sure there will be efforts around the edges to address particular concerns by particular agencies,” the official said. Referring to the response to Himes and his fellow committee members, “This letter can’t be sent out without approval by various departments and agencies.”
U.S.-funded Asia news agency discloses hack
Nearly 3,800 people were affected by the cyberattack, which may have included social security, driver's license and passport numbers, as well as addresses, medical and insurance information, and “limited financial information,” Radio Free Asia (RFA) disclosed to Maine’s attorney general in an incident that hasn’t previously been reported. It said it detected the cyberattack in June, around 11 days after it occurred.
RFA, which said in a letter that it has found “no evidence Information has been misused,” reports on Asia news. RFA is funded by the U.S. government through the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) but is private and independent. Its reporters have written about important stories like China’s repression and imprisonment of Uyghurs.
A “service provider’s vulnerability, unknown by RFA at the time of the compromise,” was exploited by a hacker, RFA said in the letter. RFA opened an investigation after it “became aware of the Incident within our email system which indicated unauthorized access to a limited number of servers.” It is working with law enforcement, changed passwords and moved to a “new cloud-based email environment,” it said in the letter.
RFA spokesperson Rohit Mahajan said in a statement that the news agency “has not received any communication from the unauthorized actors.” He also said the agency notified law enforcement and government agencies including USAGM, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Congress. Mahajan declined to provide technical information about the breach, citing the news agency’s “ongoing efforts to protect our environment.”
Cybersecurity start-up Corellium gave product trials to surveillance firms
Corellium sells software that lets its clients find vulnerabilities in iPhone software. A document apparently prepared by Apple for use in a lawsuit against the company said the firm “offered or sold its tools to controversial government spyware and hacking-tool makers in Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia, and to a cybersecurity firm with potential ties to the Chinese government,” Wired’s Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai writes. The document includes emails between Corellium staff and employees from NSO Group and DarkMatter. The emails with NSO appear to show Corellium offering the firm an invitation to try the software; DarkMatter asked for a quote in its emails, Franceschi-Bicchierai reports.
Apple, which apparently prepared the document obtained by Motherboard, settled a copyright case against Corellium last year. But Apple has appealed another part of the case.
Corellium told Wired that NSO and DarkMatter got access to “a limited time/limited functionality trial version of Corellium's software” but were denied requests to purchase the technology after being vetted.
Corellium chief executive Amanda Gorton said in a statement on the company’s website that it vets potential clients and it has “had opportunities to profit from these bad actors and have chosen not to.” Gorton said firms like NSO and DarkMatter “received automated invites for trial accounts” in 2019, but they didn’t become Corellium customers. Gorton also touted the court’s dismissal of part of the Apple court case.
US, Estonian authorities arrest two over $575 million cryptocurrency fraud (The Record)
The long, lonely wait to recover a hacked Facebook account (Tatum Hunter)
Hackers steal $300,000 in DraftKings credential stuffing attack (Bleeping Computer)
CISA seeks information for potential cyberthreat intelligence platform (NextGov)
IG dings State Department's information security program in annual report (FCW)
We’re winning the whole damn thing pic.twitter.com/gDYO2rZkqC | 2022-11-22T13:39:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How the Biden administration wants to tackle foreign commercial spyware - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/how-biden-administration-wants-tackle-foreign-commercial-spyware/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/how-biden-administration-wants-tackle-foreign-commercial-spyware/ |
Report details how Biden can protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 without Congress
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Today we’re reading this piece about why the climate impact of a Thanksgiving meal might surprise you. 🤔 But first:
Exclusive: Report details how Biden can protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 without Congress
Soon after taking office, President Biden committed to conserving 30 percent of America’s lands and waters by 2030, an ambitious goal aimed at protecting wildlife while slashing planet-warming emissions.
With Republicans set to take control of the House, the next Congress appears unlikely to pass major legislation that would deliver on this goal. But Biden can still fulfill his commitment to conservation if he acts with urgency and wields his executive authority, according to a report shared with The Climate 202 before its broader release Tuesday.
The report from the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the administration, focused on eight actions that the administration could take to conserve public and private lands while combating climate change, respecting tribal sovereignty, and expanding access to nature for underserved communities.
The actions include designating new national monuments and national marine sanctuaries; conserving old-growth and mature forests; barring future mining and drilling on public lands; and harnessing new conservation funding from the recently passed climate law and the bipartisan infrastructure law.
“The president and his Cabinet have taken some really important steps, but more urgency is needed to meet this part of his climate commitment,” Drew McConville, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the lead author of the report, told The Climate 202.
“The good news — and a major conclusion here — is that he and his Cabinet already have the tools to make it happen,” said McConville, who previously served as a senior adviser on conservation issues at the White House Council on Environmental Quality under President Barack Obama.
Here’s a closer look at two of the report’s top recommendations:
Monumental decisions
One of the most consequential steps that Biden could take, the analysis argues, would be to establish new national monuments by invoking the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that empowers the president to safeguard public lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans.
In October, Biden designated Colorado’s Camp Hale as a national monument, safeguarding the World War II-era military site that provides critical habitat for wildlife including elk, deer and migratory songbirds.
And last fall, Biden restored full protections to three national monuments that President Donald Trump had reduced in size, including Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.
But Democrats, climate activists and Indigenous leaders have urged the president to use his powers to protect several other sites of environmental and cultural significance.
In an issue brief accompanying the report, the Center for American Progress highlighted 16 national monuments and marine sanctuaries that Biden could create or expand, including:
Castner Range, a landscape in West Texas that is managed by the U.S. Army and harbors ancient cultural sites, rare plants and endangered wildlife.
A site in southern Nevada known as Avi Kwa Ame, or Spirit Mountain, that several Native American tribes consider sacred.
The site of the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Ill., an assault on a Black community by thousands of White citizens that catalyzed the creation of the NAACP.
“There are a number of national monument proposals that have really robust local support,” McConville said. “We’d encourage the president to listen to those communities and to act while he has the opportunity.”
The report also calls on Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to withdraw sensitive and sacred lands from future drilling and mining.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management on Monday announced two proposed oil and gas lease sales on more than 95,000 acres of land in Nevada and Utah. The lease sales were mandated by Democrats’ new climate law, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, as part of a deal with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.).
But Haaland has broad authority under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act to take other public lands off the table. The move could have a major climate impact: Fossil fuel extraction and production on federal lands accounted for nearly a quarter of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions between 2005 and 2014, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Of course, the fossil fuel industry would probably push back on any effort to withdraw these lands, especially amid high gasoline prices. In a recent 10-point plan to lower energy costs, the American Petroleum Institute called on the administration to swiftly hold mandated quarterly lease sales and to reinstate canceled leases on federal lands and waters.
However, McConville rejected the notion that any withdrawals would have a meaningful impact on prices at the pump, noting that roughly 90 percent of Bureau of Land Management lands are already open to oil and gas leasing and subsequent development.
Energy Dept. awards up to $1.1 billion to save California’s last nuclear plant
The Energy Department on Monday announced that it will give as much as $1.1 billion to Pacific Gas and Electric to help revive the electric utility’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California.
Two of the facility’s reactors, which represent the last remaining ones in the state, were scheduled to be shut down in 2024 and 2025. But the conditional funding “creates a path” for them to stay open, the agency said in a news release.
The funding is the first to come out of the bipartisan infrastructure law’s $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit program, which targets nuclear plants that are at risk of closure, despite their ability to provide emission-free electricity around-the-clock.
U.N. summit marks the latest hurdle in Kerry’s long climate crusade
In the wake of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, known as COP27, U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry has a mixed record as the face of America’s response to climate change on the international stage, The Washington Post’s Timothy Puko and Steven Mufson report.
Kerry, 78, faced criticism at COP27 from poor countries that said the United States was not matching its climate rhetoric with action. But by the end of the summit, Kerry, who negotiated virtually in the final hours after contracting covid-19, helped reverse the United States’ past resistance to creating a fund to help developing countries cope with the ravages of climate change.
Still, Kerry failed to garner enough support for his push to include language in the final agreement calling for phasing out all fossil fuels and implementing stronger emissions-cutting plans. Kerry and President Biden have also been unable to persuade Congress to approve climate finance for developing countries, even though the administration has pledged to deliver $11.4 billion annually by 2024.
Some E.U. leaders and others were surprised when Kerry stuck around through COP27. Kerry has not said whether he will step down from the administration anytime soon, although two individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid said he may consider that option and could easily find work in the private sector.
OPEC considers output increase as Russian oil price cap looms
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia, also known as OPEC Plus, is eyeing an increase in output ahead of a possible price cap on Russian crude sales, delegates said Monday, Summer Said and Benoit Faucon report for the Wall Street Journal.
The potential move comes a month after the group decided to cut production by 2 million barrels a day, despite calls from President Biden to help replace Russian oil amid the war in Ukraine and boost global supply for the winter months.
Saudi officials on Monday denied reports that they are backtracking on plans to cut production, Zack Budryk reports for the Hill.
“The current cut of 2 million barrels per day by OPEC+ continues until the end of 2023 and if there is a need to take further measures by reducing production to balance supply and demand, we always remain ready to intervene,” Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said through the state news agency SPA.
War in Ukraine spurs 27-year gas deal, as shelling at nuclear plant causes alarm
QatarEnergy on Monday signed a 27-year deal to supply China's Sinopec with liquefied natural gas in the longest such deal to date, as Russia’s war in Ukraine spurs intense competition for gas supplies, Andrew Mills and Maha El Dahan report for Reuters.
The deal could lock in gas infrastructure for decades to come, despite warnings from climate scientists about the need to rapidly phase out fossil fuels to stave off catastrophic consequences of unchecked global warming.
Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency warned on Monday that shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant over the weekend came “dangerously close” to hitting key equipment, including its six reactors, Francesca Ebel reports for The Post.
For months, sporadic bombing near the plant has sparked international fears of a radioactive disaster. A team of IAEA experts toured the plant — which is Europe’s largest atomic energy station and is in territory occupied by Russian military forces — to assess any potential damage from “one of the most serious such incidents at the facility in recent months,” the agency’s director general, Rafael Grossi, said in a statement. It is unclear whether Russia or Ukraine fired the missiles.
A surprising trigger of western New York ‘thundersnow’: Wind turbines — Bob Henson for The Post
Giving ‘Mother Nature a little bit of a boost’ on the Great Barrier Reef — Frances Vinall and Michael Robinson Chavez for The Post
Inside the Saudi strategy to keep the world hooked on oil — Hiroko Tabuchi for the New York Times
Idaho lawmakers working on additional ‘ESG’ legislation — Keith Ridler for the Associated Press
Climate change from A to Z — Elizabeth Kolbert for the New Yorker | 2022-11-22T13:40:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Report details how Biden can protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 without Congress - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/report-details-how-biden-can-protect-30-percent-us-lands-waters-by-2030-without-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/report-details-how-biden-can-protect-30-percent-us-lands-waters-by-2030-without-congress/ |
Deadline extended to apply for The Washington Post’s Top Workplaces
By Lori Montgomery
If you’ve lost track of time and thought you missed the opportunity to nominate your employer for the 2023 Washington Post Top Workplaces award, you have another chance: The deadline has been extended to Jan. 13.
Now in its 10th year, Top Workplaces is open to any public, private, nonprofit or government employer with at least 50 workers in the Washington area. Nominations may be submitted by visiting washingtonpost.com/nominate or calling 202-417-3866.
Energage, our Philadelphia-based survey partner, will contact the firms and seek permission to interview employees. Energage will ask employees to rate their companies on a seven-point scale that ranges from strongly disagree to strongly agree and covers 24 statements, including “My manager helps me learn and grow” and “I feel genuinely appreciated” by my employer. Last year, more than 65,000 employees at more than 500 organizations responded.
Based on the results, the survey company will rank the top 200 companies in the Washington area in four size categories — largest, large, midsize and small. Winners will be recognized in a special magazine published in mid-June, as well as at a special event hosted by senior Post editors. | 2022-11-22T13:41:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Deadline extended to apply for Washington Post Top Workplaces - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/11/22/top-workplaces-new-deadline/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/11/22/top-workplaces-new-deadline/ |
Jay Leno released from hospital after treatment for severe burns
His physician and burn center medical director Peter H. Grossman added that he was “pleased with Jay’s progress” and “optimistic that he will make a full recovery.”
He was admitted on Nov. 12 after a fire broke out at the Burbank garage where Leno, who is known for his enthusiasm for classic and other cars, stores his vast collection of vehicles. He underwent surgery for serious burns but was in good spirits during his hospital stay, telling jokes and handing out cookies to other patients, the Associated Press reported.
Leno was a staple of late night television in the United States and hosted “The Tonight Show” on NBC from 1992 to 2009, and again from 2010 to 2014. | 2022-11-22T13:56:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jay Leno discharged from hospital after garage burn accident - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/22/jay-leno-accident-hosptial-burns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/22/jay-leno-accident-hosptial-burns/ |
The UFC is synonymous with mixed martial arts. Has a new challenger emerged?
The PFL will host its championship event Friday in Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden. (Cooper Neill/PFL)
Davis has a long-term plan to shape the PFL into a legitimate competitor, but in the meantime, in the lead-up to its championship event this week in New York City, he is enjoying PFL’s recent growth. Fueled this year by an ESPN broadcast extension and a spate of new fighter signings, the league is thought to have distinguished itself among a crowded field of mixed martial arts challengers. While it remains in the UFC’s shadow, the league’s recent moves have elevated it into a promising hopeful in the sport.
Originally created as the World Series of Fighting in 2012, the promotion was relaunched with the backing of D.C. area sports and business executives as the PFL in 2017 and debuted the following year. Its inaugural roster featured several contractual holdovers including Kayla Harrison, a two-time gold medal-winning Olympic judoka who has evolved into its biggest star.
Over the past year, the PFL has continued to make strides. It renewed the ESPN deal in January, aiding the league’s 31 percent increase in linear television viewership this season over the last. The PFL said its total viewership per event in 2022 is 344,000. Last month it announced plans to expand into Europe next year, and it intends to plant roots in India or Latin America as part of a broader effort to create the “Champions League” of MMA, as Davis puts it, referencing European soccer’s esteemed international tournament.
Shane Burgos (15-3) is viewed as PFL’s most impressive addition, less because he is the only one to leave the UFC on a winning streak, and more because the 31-year-old Bronx native is a popular fighter in his prime.
Concerns over UFC fighter compensation aren’t new, and the departure of some of the promotion’s aged stars who have found more lucrative fighting opportunities elsewhere has opened the door for renewed criticism. Despite those concerns, UFC fighters such as Sean O’Malley and Israel Adesanya, the promotion’s budding and established stars, seem unlikely defectors — though Pettis and Burgos said dozens of UFC fighters contacted them with questions about compensation after their PFL deals were announced.
Pettis won the UFC lightweight title in 2013, and the following year he was voted onto the cover of the Wheaties cereal box. Despite less consistent results in subsequent years, Pettis ended his UFC career on a two-fight winning streak and held victories over some of the promotion’s best. Four months later, he suffered an upset loss in his PFL debut and eventually missed the playoffs.
World Cup live updates: Denmark faces Tunisia after an earlier stunner | 2022-11-22T14:57:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | PFL emerges as a potential MMA challenger to UFC - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/pfl-challenging-ufc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/pfl-challenging-ufc/ |
Ask Elaine: I finally made big changes but feel more unsure than ever
Hi Elaine: I’ve made some big changes over the past few years that I thought would bring me closer to the life I wanted, but I still feel discontent and unsatisfied. In early 2020 before the world shut down, I decided to stop attending the church I grew up in. In 2021, I went part-time at the job I held for a decade to focus on my business and finally left completely a month ago, beginning my career in full-time entrepreneurship. I convinced myself that I needed to make those changes to feel happier, but I feel more disconnected and uncertain than ever before.
I often wonder if I should move out of my home state of Arkansas — something I contemplated even before the big aforementioned changes, but I don’t know if I’m trying to run away or if a move is worth considering. I’ve literally lived within a 45-mile-radius my entire life.
In some ways, I love staying here because I have great pride in my community and want to do what I can to make it better. In other ways, I feel like a change of environment may be what I need. To sum it up, I’m someone who has recently pivoted in a direction I chose, yet I still feel like something is missing. How do I know if yet another external change is needed or if I just need to shift my mind-set and be grateful for the pivots I’ve made so far?
— Pivoted, but now what
Pivoted, but now what: Have you ever heard the saying, “Wherever you go, there you are?” Seems like it might apply here. Just because we make external changes, frustratingly, it doesn’t mean they will yield the results we want — especially not right away. I’m a big believer that the most meaningful and sustainable change happens from the inside-out. It isn’t necessarily the big, sweeping shifts in our external reality that usher in the lasting change we seek. Real change happens over time in the tiniest moments, day after day, choice by choice.
However, sometimes external shifts can support internal shifts. The question really is how much of what you’re feeling is environmental? I don’t know and neither will you until you do some deeper interrogation.
Take the pressure off a potential move and stop judging any of the other changes you’ve made recently. Detach from trying to answer the question of whether you are leaving or staying and prioritize learning more about where you are right now.
Let’s explore the root of your discontent, since it’s harder to figure out what would make you happy without understanding the depth and complexity of what’s contributing to your unhappiness. When you really sit inside your dissatisfaction with life, what is at the root of it all?
You mentioned that you made all of these changes to get closer to the life you want. I’d love to learn more about that life you’re imagining for yourself. Can you describe it? Have you written it down? If so, where are the gaps between where you are and where you want to be? Get really specific. This can help illuminate the deficits in your current lifestyle and help guide you toward the most impactful shifts.
It’s worth considering that some of the dissatisfaction you’re feeling could be a result of isolation. Starting a business is lonely. Doing it in a pandemic is even more lonely. On top of that, you walked away from some significant sources of community. As dysfunctional as church families and colleagues sometimes are, they provide a sense of familiarity that can become little anchors in our lives (for better or worse). Without any strong sense of belonging to a community, it’s easy to feel untethered. If stepping away from those communities was the healthiest decision for you, what other places can you tap into that are in line with the direction you want to go in? Seek them out.
Also, make a commitment to discovering what makes you feel good every day, knowing it may require other changes, such as adjustments to your diet, more time with the right friends, and perhaps breaking thought patterns that keep you feeling stuck. It may also require distancing yourself from places and people that reinforce the mind-set that you’re looking to leave behind.
In the meantime, congratulations on making big, brave leaps of faith some people hem and haw about for years and never actually live out. Just because you don’t like where you’ve landed doesn’t make these changes mistakes. Avoid thinking of happiness as a destination. Happiness is often fleeting and there are so many factors that play into our feelings, and many are out of our control. But introducing and reinforcing a renewed mind-set with daily positive self-talk practices can improve your reality, no matter where you live. And I highly recommend therapy to help navigate so much change all at once, and to rule out any mental health conditions that could be contributing to your sustained malaise.
Remember: No matter what other people’s lives look like from the outside, we are all figuring out how to be happy as we go. Give yourself permission and the patience to do the same. | 2022-11-22T15:10:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Elaine: I finally made big changes, but feel more unsure than ever - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/22/ask-elaine-big-change-unsure-move/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/22/ask-elaine-big-change-unsure-move/ |
(The third of a three-part series on immigration. The first and second parts are, respectively, “Biden’s Venezuelan Migrant Deal Won’t Fix the Border” and “ Mexico’s Faustian Border Bargain with the US Will Unravel.”)
It won’t. Republicans’ attempt to weaponize images of immigrants massing at the border failed to deliver a landslide. But that doesn’t mean the politics of immigration have become non-toxic.
Even President Joe Biden, who promised to end Trump’s COVID-era deportation policy, deployed it to stop Venezuelans from seeking asylum in the US. Rather than tear down Trump’s border wall, he is filling in some particularly trafficked gaps in it.
What would become MAGA America was a more contented place the last time the political system delivered “comprehensive immigration reform.” The nation was held together by the threat posed by a common Soviet enemy. China was poor and rural. Globalization wasn’t yet a thing. Critically, non-Whites amounted to only 20% of the population. The most famous living Latino was Desi Arnaz.
Ronald Reagan botched it. His Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which legalized millions living illegally in the US, promised to stop future unauthorized immigration by punishing employers who hired undocumented workers and offering a path to hire foreigners legally.
It failed. By 1990 the undocumented population had bounced back to 3.5 million. A decade after IRCA, the share of Americans who wanted less immigration reached its highest on record. And shots at reform by presidents George W. Bush in 2007 and Barack Obama in 2013 never made it out of Congress. The US had pivoted to building walls instead.
President Biden used his first day in office to send Congress another comprehensive immigration reform bill. But this is no longer Reagan’s America. Globalization and automation have deprived rural America of economic opportunity and decimated much of the industrial heartland. Immigration has more than doubled the non-White share of the population.
This presents a critical challenge for liberalism in the US and beyond. Forty-two million people in Latin America say they would like to migrate to the US, according to Gallup. A set of interlocking challenges, from conflict to climate change, is pushing millions out of Africa in search of a more secure, dignified life elsewhere. Migration pressures will not let up.
Foreigners make up more than 18% of the non-farm labor force, up from less than 15% in 2005.
There are many many immigrants who would love to come do the job and help the US — including MAGA America — become a more prosperous place. Sooner or later, a majority of American voters, and the politicians who represent them, will have no choice but to support legislation embracing that reality.
• Republicans Have a Special Obligation to Venezuelan Migrants: Matthew Yglesias
• More Soldiers Won’t Curb Mexico’s Rampant Violence: Shannon O’Neil | 2022-11-22T15:11:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Economic Necessity Will Ultimately Force Immigration Reform - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economic-necessity-will-ultimately-forceimmigration-reform/2022/11/22/498099c6-6a72-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economic-necessity-will-ultimately-forceimmigration-reform/2022/11/22/498099c6-6a72-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 02: U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Board Chairman Jerome Powell delivers opening remarks during a news conference following a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FMOC) at the bank headquarters on November 02, 2022 in Washington, DC. In a move to fight inflation, Powell announced that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, the sixth interest rate increase this year and the fourth time in a row at rates this high. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America)
The great quantitative easing experiment was a mistake. It’s time central banks acknowledge it for the failure it was and retire it from their policy arsenal as soon as they’re able.
Since the global financial crisis of 2008, an integral part of central banks’ play book in the US, the UK and the European Union has been QE — the practice of buying up long-term bonds and mortgage-backed securities. QE is supposed to work by lowering long-term interest rates, which boosts demand and increases lending and risk-taking.
There is little to show in terms of the economic benefits of QE, but there are plenty of costs. Now central banks find their hands tied as they try to curb inflation with interest rate increases and quantitative tightening, which means no more purchases of long-term bonds and mortgage-backed securities. But they’re finding that ending QE can itself be a threat to financial stability.
About a decade later, just as the Fed’s balance sheet finally started to shrink, along came the pandemic and the biggest QE ever. It lasted well after the immediate crisis passed, even as inflation and the housing market started to heat up.
Looking objectively at the evidence, it’s still not clear that all this bond buying ever did much for the economy. As Ben Bernanke once said, “The problem with Quantitative Easing (QE) is that it works in practice but not in theory.”
In cases where a market is in trouble, having the central bank step in and buy bonds can provide needed liquidity. But using QE to boost the entire economy, to lower unemployment or boost inflation, has a more dubious record. One study, called Fifty Shades of QE, assessed the many research papers that measure the impact of QE on the economy. It found that all the research coming from central banks view QE as a great success, but only half of the research from academics finds any benefits to economic output or inflation. When they do find some benefit, it tends to be smaller than the bank research claims.
Meanwhile, there are substantial costs. First there are direct costs: QE is essentially taking a leveraged bet that won’t pay off if interest rates increase. The Fed pays interest on the reserves it holds for banks, and it uses those reserves to finance its purchases of long-term bonds. Now that the interest rate has increased to fight inflation, the Fed must pay more for reserves than it’s getting from the bonds in its portfolio, and it’s losing money.
The indirect costs of QE could be even worse. Using QE to keep interest rates low distorts risk assessment since bonds are considered the risk-free assets in the economy — they’re used to price assets and act as a barometer on risk-taking. Long-term bonds are among the most systematically important assets in the economy, and when their price is distorted, risk prices have less meaning.
The Bank for International Settlements published a paper arguing that lowering long-term rates made corporate debt cheaper, which propped up zombie companies. The Fed’s interference in the mortgage-backed-securities market during the pandemic may distort the housing market for years.
Hanno Lustig, a finance professor at Stanford’s business school, is concerned that suppressing government borrowing rates “jams the signal” markets would otherwise give when the government is borrowing too much. “Bond traders have an incentive to invest more in figuring out what the central bank will do, less in figuring out what the [market] fundamentals are,” he said.
QE blurs the relationship between fiscal and monetary policy and threatens central bank independence because the Fed is essentially monetizing government debt. It also makes it very hard to follow monetary policy rules.
There was a long-running debate among macro economists over how the Fed should do monetary policy. Should it just respond to conditions as they unfold, depending on the monetary policy currently in fashion? Or should it follow pre-set rules based on data, such as setting the interest rate with a formula that accounts for inflation, unemployment and GDP.
Many economists think rules are better in most situations because they maintain the Fed’s credibility and promote transparency. There is no such formula or rule for QE; it’s always ad hoc. That may be necessary in an emergency like the financial crisis. But the persistent use of QE shows central bankers will then extend that emergency action into normal times.
Ending QE won’t be easy. Central banks now have enormous balance sheets that will take years to whittle down. And as we see in the UK, when a central bank stops buying bonds, it can throw markets into chaos. Now that QE has become the norm, the next time there is a recession markets will expect more QE, and if doesn’t happen that could cause more trouble in the debt market.
That’s why central banks need to admit QE was a mistake. Their credibility is already at stake after they underestimated inflation. Now is the time to take a hard look at monetary policy over the last decade and rethink what worked and what didn’t. Otherwise we’ll be stuck with QE forever. | 2022-11-22T15:11:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | It’s Now Clear That QE Was a Colossal Policy Mistake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/its-now-clear-that-qe-was-a-colossal-policy-mistake/2022/11/22/aae44470-6a6c-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/its-now-clear-that-qe-was-a-colossal-policy-mistake/2022/11/22/aae44470-6a6c-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 17: U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) (2nd L) speaks as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) (L) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) (R) listen during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on November 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. Rep. Greene is introducing a resolution to request documents from the Biden Administration related to funding to Ukraine between January 20, 2021 to November 15, 2022. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) (Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images North America)
There are roughly two dozen House Republicans who, based on the midterm results or their districts’ makeup, are likely to face difficult re-election battles in 2024. While these Republicans typically get far less attention than the party’s anti-democratic extremists — those who praise autocrats like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and spread former President Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election — they potentially have far more leverage.
That’s because moderate Republicans could undermine the GOP’s slim House majority by reaching across the aisle to work with Democrats. Extremists, for all their bluster, have no such option.
The narrow GOP majority means moderate Republicans could exercise their influence to press for centrist priorities that could help them with voters in 2024. But their leverage will only be helpful if they choose to take advantage of it. In recent years, the majority of House Republicans, fearful of being labeled Republican in Name Only, have allowed the party’s extremist fringe represented by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan to intimidate them.
That’s increasingly looking like a risky electoral strategy. As we learned in the midterms, voters in closely divided districts tended to reject the anti-democratic inclinations of candidates backed by former President Trump. In a tightly divided legislative chamber, any small group from the majority party can cause disruption by threatening “no” votes on legislation. But only the relatively moderate group can offer — or threaten — constructive alternatives that involve finding common cause with some Democrats.
A major indication of which direction the Republicans will choose will come on Jan. 3, when the House votes to elect the next speaker. Most leaders of House and Senate parties are chosen by internal party votes; Mitch McConnell, for example, has already been elected minority leader for the next Congress because he won a vote of Senate Republicans.
But thanks to a constitutional quirk, parties only nominate candidates for House speaker, with the winner chosen in a vote by the entire House, Republicans and Democrats. That’s usually a formality; until recently, party loyalty required every member of the majority party to support the party’s nominee, ensuring his or her victory. But party loyalty on the speakership vote has eroded in the last two decades, with handfuls of dissenters willing to vote “present” or for someone else.
The prospective speaker needs to win a majority of the whole House to be elected. If Republicans wind up controlling the House by a 222-to-213 margin,(1)five Republicans voting for someone other than Republican leader Kevin McCarthy for speaker would mean that no candidate would have the 218 votes needed for a majority.(2)
The GOP’s anti-democracy faction has been using that math to pressure McCarthy for concessions, threatening to sink his chances unless he gives them everything they want. They apparently believe that they are in the driver’s seat; indeed, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, a Tea Party supporter perhaps best known for delaying a vote on the original bipartisan pandemic relief bill in March 2020, has publicly expressed his wish for a smaller Republican majority on the idea that it would give him more sway.
But what if instead of allowing a tiny group of fringe figures to call the shots the party was compelled to heed the influence of Republicans in vulnerable seats and of others who resist being defined by Matt Gaetzes of the world? This faction, which could include some of the newly elected Republicans from New York State, could decide to take a page from Senator Joe Manchin and other relatively moderate Democrats, either by crossing party lines in key votes or by seeking to build a center-against-the-extremes bipartisan coalition.
On the Democratic side, Manchin had one big advantage that House Republicans in Democratic districts lack: The most ideologically extreme Democrats such as Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the House are basically pragmatic politicians who want to get things done and are willing to cut deals to achieve what’s possible. The House Republican fringe is more concerned with elevating their media profile than with passing legislation.
But that’s all the more reason for anyone who doesn’t want to be defined by the fringe to stand up to it at the outset of the new Congress. Make clear to McCarthy and any other speaker candidates what they want and show that they’re willing to walk away — even to work with Democrats — if they don’t get it.
Two weeks after the midterms, we’re seeing the first stirrings of resistance from some of these Republicans. But vague notions of wanting to appear less partisan won’t cut it. If they are to make use of the clout they can have, these Republicans will have to quickly figure out what to ask for and then fight for it, and to be prepared for the ferocious pushback they will face from conservative media outlets and, for that matter, from former President Trump.
(1) That’s the most likely margin as of writing, though a number of races have yet to be called.
(2) Technically, McCarthy needs a majority for those who vote for a person; those who vote “Present” or don’t vote at all don’t count for the purposes of determining the majority. So if five of 222 Republicans vote “Present” McCarthy would win, 217 to 213; if five vote for Kanye West, then the vote would be 217 to 213 to 5, no candidate would have a majority of the 435 votes, and another vote would have to be called. | 2022-11-22T15:11:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Joe Manchin Charted a Better Course for House GOP - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/joe-manchin-charted-a-better-course-for-house-gop/2022/11/22/9564eb6a-6a6a-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/joe-manchin-charted-a-better-course-for-house-gop/2022/11/22/9564eb6a-6a6a-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
One person is dead after a house fire in Northern Virginia
One person is dead after a house fire on Pine Road in Northern Virginia, fire officials said. (Courtesy of Fairfax County Fire)
One person who was missing after a house fire in Northern Virginia has been found dead, according to local fire officials.
A Twitter posting from Fairfax County Fire officials said a two-alarm fire occurred Monday in the 6600 block of Pine Road near Braddock Road, in the Lincolnia area. One person had been reported missing and was found dead inside the home, fire officials said.
Investigators are trying to determine the cause of the blaze. | 2022-11-22T15:11:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | One person is dead after a fire in Fairfax County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/fire-one-person-dead-fairfax/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/fire-one-person-dead-fairfax/ |
Fire officials recommend not frying turkeys at home. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
We published this editorial on Thanksgiving in 2002. Since enthusiasm for deep-frying turkeys seems not to have dimmed, we republish it here as a public service.
“There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.” That observation, often attributed to the 19th-century German prime minister Otto von Bismarck, has always seemed unnecessarily harsh to us, and it’s certainly not the right thing for Thanksgiving Day meditations, which tend to draw on the wisdom and eloquent expressions of gratitude of our forebears.
But then, our forebears never envisioned the culinary trend currently spreading across the great land and threatening to engulf Thanksgiving in flame — perhaps not to Bismarck’s great surprise. We are speaking of the deep-fried turkey, which is produced by plunging a whole, huge turkey into a pot of boiling oil and cooking it till it’s done. That is, if all goes well. If it doesn’t, what ensues are scenes of the kind you may have been viewing on cautionary segments of the local news this past week: hot oil pouring over the side of the turkey pot, hitting the fire and shooting skyward in a dramatic eruption high enough to ignite the backyard deck. Many dwellings have been lost in this way, and more likely will be as this formerly regional delicacy becomes a national enthusiasm. A computer search this week under “fried turkey” produced nearly 8,000 citations — recipes, recommendations, helpful hints — probably enough to burn down every house in America.
To be fair, turkey-frying (which seems to be done mostly by men) reflects features of the national character for which we can, as a nation, be thankful: inventiveness, imagination, a desire for excellence in all things, including poultry, and an unconquerable individuality. Unfortunately, it’s also a procedure that requires a very un-American degree of preparation, attention to detail and patience: thorough thawing of the turkey, meticulous measurements of oil and volumes, careful placement of the frying apparatus as far as possible from the house and other combustible structures. All this by men who are just trying their hands at a little holiday cooking.
It may be, as one recipe-writer on the Internet assures us, that deep-fried turkey is “worth the risk.” We think we’ll stick to conventional methods of preparation again this year, while still taking time to give thanks for all the benefits and especially the freedoms we enjoy, along with the things that sometimes accompany their exercise: fast, efficient fire and medical services, reliable insurance coverage and an abundance of back yards large enough to let us fry anything we care to.
Update on Nov. 21, 2012: A computer search this week for “fried turkey” yielded 27,100,000 citations.
Update on Nov. 22, 2022: A Google search this week for “fried turkey” yielded 177,000,000 citations. | 2022-11-22T15:12:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Deep-fried turkey is not worth the risk - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/deep-fried-turkey-thanksgiving/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/deep-fried-turkey-thanksgiving/ |
Republicans are still afraid of Trump
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas on Nov. 19. (David Becker for The Washington Post)
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie declared on Saturday, “We keep losing and losing and losing. And the fact of the matter is the reason we’re losing is because Donald Trump has put himself before everyone else.” Likewise, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo tweeted, “We were told we’d get tired of winning. But I’m tired of losing.” And former Republican House speaker Paul D. Ryan proclaimed on Sunday, “I think what we now know, it’s pretty clear is, with Trump we lose. … we get past Trump, we start winning elections. We stick with Trump, we keep losing elections. That’s just how I see it.”
In yet another entry in the poor argument sweepstakes, former vice president Mike Pence on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday to opine, “Candidates that were focused on the issues that people are facing today and solutions for tomorrow, focused on the future did quite well. But candidates that were focused on the past, candidates that were focused on re-litigating the 2020 election did not fare as well.”
In a normal presidential primary campaign, candidates would go out of their way point out their opponents glaring weaknesses. For example: “The party could not possibly nominate someone who tried to overthrow an election and might be indicted before the first primary.” Likewise, in a functional party, candidates would be jockeying to put forth a vision that would at least give the impression they were concerned about the problems voters face. | 2022-11-22T15:12:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Republicans are still afraid of Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/republicans-afraid-trump-presidential-contenders-2024/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/republicans-afraid-trump-presidential-contenders-2024/ |
The Supreme Court has lost its ethical compass. Can it find one fast?
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch chats with Justice Elena Kagan at an event in Arlington in October 2018. Alongside Kagan are Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and his wife, Martha-Ann. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court must get its ethics act together, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. needs to take the lead. After a string of embarrassments, the justices should finally subject themselves to the kind of rules that govern other federal judges and establish a standard for when to step aside from cases — one that is more stringent than simply leaving it up to the individual justice to decide.
Recent episodes are alarming and underscore the need for quick action to help restore confidence in the institution.
Last week, the Supreme Court wisely rebuffed an effort by Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward to prevent the House Jan. 6 committee — the party in this case — from obtaining her phone records. The court’s brief order noted that Justice Clarence Thomas, along with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., would have sided with Ward.
Thomas’s involvement, though it didn’t affect the outcome of the dispute, is nothing short of outrageous. Federal law already requires judges, including Supreme Court justices, to step aside from involvement in any case in which their impartiality “might reasonably be questioned.”
Perhaps back in January, when he was the only justice to disagree when the court refused to grant former president Donald Trump’s bid to stop his records from being turned over to the Jan. 6 committee, Thomas didn’t realize the extent of his wife’s involvement with disputing the election results. (I’m being kind here: Ginni Thomas had signed a letter the previous month calling on House Republicans to expel Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois from the House Republican Conference for participating in an “overtly partisan political persecution.”)
But here’s what we know now, and Justice Thomas does, too: The Jan 6. committee has subpoenaed and interviewed his wife. We — and he — know that she contacted 29 Arizona lawmakers, urging them to “fight back against fraud” and choose a “clean slate of electors” after the 2020 election.
Some recusal questions are close. Not this one. Did the chief justice urge Thomas to recuse? He should have. This will sound unthinkable, but if Roberts asked and Thomas refused, maybe it’s time the chief, or other justices, to publicly note their disagreement.
More than a decade ago, in his 2011 year-end report on the state of the judiciary, Roberts declared his “complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted.” If he still thinks that, he is deluding himself.
Thomas’s poor ethical antennae are not the chief justice’s only headache. Roberts was still dealing with the aftermath of the unprecedented leak of a draft opinion in last term’s abortion ruling when the New York Times reported on Saturday that the former head of a conservative lobbying group warned Roberts in a July letter that he had obtained advance information about the outcome of the court’s 2014 ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, about religious employers and contraceptive coverage.
The letter writer, Rev. Rob Schenck, who headed a D.C.-based nonprofit called Faith and Action, described having been informed weeks in advance that Hobby Lobby would win the case and that Alito was writing the opinion. He said he had been tipped off by an Ohio woman he had recruited to the cause, Gayle Wright, who had dinner with the justice and his wife, Martha-Ann, at their Virginia home.
Alito said any suggestion that he or his wife had leaked the information was “completely false,” and Wright denied the account as well. But contemporaneous evidence, including an email from Wright, lent credence to Schenck’s account. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” she wrote Schenck the day after the dinner.
Politico and Rolling Stone had previously reported on Schenck’s “Operation Higher Court.” The Times added smarmy details about the operatives’ astonishing level of access to the justices, while making six-figure donations to the Supreme Court Historical Society, were chilling. “Lunch with CT on Monday, Sam on Wednesday, dinner at court on Monday, Dinner with Maureen on Wednesday,” Wright wrote in a 2016 email, apparently referring to Thomas, Alito, and Justice Antonin Scalia’s widow, Maureen.
Roberts didn’t deign to acknowledge Schenck’s letter, but this episode can’t be ignored; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) are right to press for answers, not just about the leak, but to how the nominally independent historical society may have been used in a pay-to-schmooze influence scheme.
Justices get to have social lives but justices also need to be mindful about their behavior — on and off the bench — and the signals that, especially when they accept travel and entertainment from those with an interest in the court’s work. Some disclosure is already required, but it’s spotty.
One obvious step is to follow the ethics rules that apply to other federal judges, perhaps adapting them to the particular needs of the high court. That would send an important — and overdue — message that the justices are not a law unto themselves. It’s symbolic, but symbolism matters.
The longer the court delays acting, the more likely it is that Congress will impose rules on them.
Three years ago, Justice Elena Kagan testified before the House that the justices were “studying the question of whether to have a code of judicial conduct that’s applicable only to the United States Supreme Court,” calling it, “something that’s being thought very seriously about.” That’s the last we’ve heard from the court on this topic.
Roberts has had a rough 2022. Tackling his court’s ethics problem would be a smart way to finish a bad year on a good note.
Ruth Marcus on the Supreme Court
Opinion|You thought the Supreme Court’s last term was bad? Brace yourself.
Opinion|The Supreme Court has lost its ethical compass. Can it find one fast?
Opinion|The biggest and least known fight of the 2022 election | 2022-11-22T15:12:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What happened to ethics at the Supreme Court? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/supreme-court-ethics-alito-ginni-thomas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/supreme-court-ethics-alito-ginni-thomas/ |
BAMAKO, Mali — Mali’s government has announced a ban on aid groups that are funded by France, the latest attempt by the coup leader in charge to distance the West African country from its one-time colonizer and former ally in the fight against Islamic extremism.
Analysis: Report details how Biden can protect lands and waters without Congress | 2022-11-22T15:12:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mali govt bans aid groups receiving funds from France - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mali-govt-bans-aid-groups-receiving-funds-from-france/2022/11/22/682b8726-6a6a-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mali-govt-bans-aid-groups-receiving-funds-from-france/2022/11/22/682b8726-6a6a-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Ala. pauses executions after third lethal injection fails
Alabama's lethal injection chamber at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., in 2002. (DAVE MARTIN/AP)
Alabama’s governor has requested a pause in executions and ordered a thorough review of the processes involved in the state’s executions, after the state’s second failed lethal injection in two months — and the third since 2018.
Gov. Kay Ivey (R) asked the state’s attorney general Monday to withdraw requests to set execution dates for two prisoners, the only two such cases pending before the state’s Supreme Court, and to refrain from seeking further executions for other inmates on death row, according to a statement from the governor’s office.
Kenneth Eugene Smith, 57, was convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire of a preacher’s wife, and was due to be executed on Thursday, according to the Associated Press. However, the process was halted after officials failed to find a vein through which they could administer the lethal drugs.
Prison staff spent “about an hour” trying to find a vein, trying “several locations” on the prisoner’s body, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told reporters.
“We started our protocol and at 11:21 [p.m.] we decided we would not be able to finish that protocol before the midnight hour, when the death penalty expires,” the commissioner told reporters.
The team gained access to one vein, Hamm said, but was unable to establish the second IV line required by protocol for executions involving lethal injection. Attempts to establish a central line, where a catheter is inserted into a large vein, were also unsuccessful, he said.
The same issue arose when prisoner Alan Eugene Miller, 57, was due to be put to death in September. His planned execution was halted after 2½ hours when no vein could be found — although the state later blamed the suspension on a flurry of last-minute legal filings over the method to be used to execute Miller, which went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Execution halted at last minute when Ala. prison staff can’t find vein
In 2018, the execution of Doyle Hamm was also stopped following issues connecting the intravenous line, AP reported at the time. Doyle Hamm, whose veins were damaged by disease and previous drug use, later died in prison of cancer.
In her statement, Ivey denied that law enforcement or corrections officials were to blame for the problems plaguing the executions, and said she believed that “legal tactics and criminals hijacking the system are at play.” She added: “For the sake of the victims and their families, we’ve got to get this right.”
The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that reports on issues concerning capital punishment, welcomed the call for a review, but said that the investigation needed to be fully independent. “The Alabama Department of Corrections has a history of denying and bending the truth about its execution failures, and it cannot be trusted to meaningfully investigate its own incompetence and wrongdoing,” the organization’s executive director saying in a statement Monday.
Other executions in the state have also been controversial. In July, Joe Nathan James — who shot his former girlfriend dead in 1994 — was put to death despite the objections of his victim’s family. According to a private autopsy, James’s execution took more than three hours and once again involved issues in establishing an IV line, the AP reported.
States such as Oklahoma have carried out grand jury investigations into the use of lethal injection. One of the most infamous cases, which was condemned by both President Barack Obama and the United Nations, was the botched execution of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett. During the execution, Lockett, who had been deemed unconscious, began twitching and convulsing on the gurney. After 43 minutes of apparent anguish, he died of a heart attack.
According to Pew research from June 2021, around 64 percent of Americans believe the death penalty is morally justified for crimes such as murder — although a similar number of respondents agreed that the punishment does not deter people from carrying out serious crimes. Seventy-eight percent of people said there was “some risk” that an innocent person could be executed. | 2022-11-22T16:24:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alabama pausing executions after third lethal injection fails since 2018 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/22/alabama-pausing-executions-lethal-injections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/22/alabama-pausing-executions-lethal-injections/ |
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) on Capitol Hill on Dec. 16, 2021. After unsuccessfully challenging a subpoena, he has testified before a grand jury in Georgia that is examining possible interference with the result of the 2020 presidential election in the state. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
ATLANTA — After months of failed legal challenges, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) appeared Tuesday before a special grand jury investigating efforts by former president Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, the latest high-profile witness in a probe that is believed to be nearing a conclusion.
A spokesman for Graham did not respond to a request for comment on the grand jury proceedings, which are legally secret. A spokesman for the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Graham’s testimony follows an extended legal challenge to block his appearance that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which this month declined to overturn lower court rulings requiring him to appear.
The South Carolina Republican and Trump confidant was first subpoenaed in July by the Fulton County district attorney’s office, which sought to question Graham about phone calls he made to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in the weeks after the 2020 election, and other issues related to the election.
Trump personally urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in the state, where Biden claimed victory by fewer than 12,000 votes. Trump has insisted that the election there was marred by fraud, although multiple legal inquiries have found no evidence of that.
Raffensperger later told The Washington Post he felt pressured by other Republicans, including Graham, who he said echoed Trump’s claims about voting irregularities in the state. He claimed that Graham, on one call, appeared to be asking him to find a way to set aside legally cast ballots.
Graham and his attorneys have strongly rejected that characterization, describing the senator’s interactions with Raffensperger as “investigatory phone calls” that were meant to inform his decision-making on whether to vote to certify the election for Biden and to inform other Senate work.
In court filings, Graham has claimed that his actions were legitimate legislative activity protected by the Constitution’s “speech or debate clause” and that he should not be required to answer questions from a grand jury.
But May cleared the way for prosecutors to question Graham about his coordination with the Trump campaign on post-election efforts in Georgia. The judge also said Graham also could be asked about his public statements about the 2020 election and “any alleged efforts to ‘cajole’ or encourage” Georgia election officials “to throw out ballots or otherwise alter Georgia’s election practices and procedures.”
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit later upheld that lower court ruling. The Supreme Court rejected a final appeal by Graham this month, paving the way for his appearance this week. Graham’s attorneys have said he has been told he is a witness, not a target, in the Fulton County investigation.
Graham’s testimony came as the grand jury appears to be nearing a conclusion in its work. Jurors have heard testimony from several Trump lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Boris Epshteyn. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who also unsuccessfully sought to quash a subpoena in the case, appeared before the panel last week.
District Attorney Fani T. Willis also has sought testimony from other high-profile Trump advisers including Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows; former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former House speaker Newt Gingrich. All three continue to pursue legal efforts to quash their subpoenas — ongoing appeals that could delay proceedings.
During a court hearing in Florida last week where Flynn was challenging his subpoena, Assistant Fulton County District Attorney Will Wooten told a judge there are “very few” witnesses remaining.
“The likelihood is that this grand jury is not going to be hearing testimony much longer,” Wooten said, according to CNN.
Bailey reported from New Orleans and Brown from Atlanta. Ann E. Marimow and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report. | 2022-11-22T16:29:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lindsey Graham testifies before Georgia grand jury in election probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/22/lindsey-graham-georgia-grand-jury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/22/lindsey-graham-georgia-grand-jury/ |
This year, give thanks to the Ukrainians. They’re fighting for our values.
Ukrainian soldiers take a selfie with President Volodymyr Zelensky during his visit to Kherson, Ukraine, on Nov. 14. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Thanksgiving is an American holiday; arguably, the American holiday. But there is no reason that the objects of our gratitude have to be American. This year, I am grateful, above all, to the brave people of Ukraine for all their sacrifices and successes in the battle for freedom. They are fighting not just for the right to determine their own future. They are fighting for the universal principles embodied in our own Declaration of Independence.
Not the Ukrainians. Twice in the recent past — in the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution and the 2013-2014 Maidan Uprising — they took to the streets to show their refusal to allow their country to be dragged back into the Kremlin’s odious orbit. After pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country in 2014, his patron, Vladimir Putin, retaliated by seizing Crimea and launching a proxy war in Donbas. On Feb. 24, 2022 — a date that deserves to live in infamy — Putin expanded his invasion of Ukraine in the expectation that Kyiv would fall within days.
It grieves me to report the price that Ukraine has paid for defending itself. Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently that roughly 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured along with 40,000 Ukrainian civilians. Altogether, 7.8 million Ukrainians have fled to Europe, 6.5 million have been internally displaced and 2.8 million have gone to Russia, many against their will. That’s more than 17 million refugees out of a prewar population of about 43 million.
Those who remain face growing privation as Russian airstrikes target electrical, heating and water systems to make life unbearable this winter. The Ukrainian economy has been devastated. Gross domestic product fell this year by almost 32 percent — more than U.S. GDP fell during the Great Depression.
Through it all, Ukraine’s will to fight has not flagged, any more than Britain’s did during the Blitz in 1940-1941. A Gallup poll in September found that 70 percent of Ukrainians want to fight until they win the war. More than 90 percent said victory would entail liberating all of their territory, including Crimea.
I am ashamed that a growing number of Americans — Republican, mostly — say we are doing too much to help Ukraine. Since the Russian invasion, Congress has approved $65.9 billion in assistance for Ukraine. That’s a lot of money, but it’s a paltry 0.3 percent of U.S. GDP.
Most Americans aren’t making any real sacrifice to support Ukraine; in fact, we are making a small but invaluable investment in our own security and that of our allies. It is the Ukrainians who are sacrificing everything to fight for the liberal democratic values that we hold dear. If they win — and, make no mistake, they are winning — Ukrainians will strike a mighty blow for freedom that will resonate across the world. Liberal democrats will cheer; dictators will cower.
Opinion|This year, give thanks to the Ukrainians. They’re fighting for our values. | 2022-11-22T16:33:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ukrainians are fighting for our freedom, too. They deserve our thanks. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/ukraine-fighting-freedom-gratitude/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/ukraine-fighting-freedom-gratitude/ |
Analysis by Kathryn A. Edwards | Bloomberg
For one, finding child care is harder than ever. Employment in the sector is still 9% below what it was in January 2020 – a good proxy for how many fewer spots there are in day-care centers and preschools. And the prospects of attracting more workers isn’t great: The typical annual pay is a mere $27,000 a year, even though child care services cost more than public universities in many states.
That’s already 44 out of the year’s 260 workdays: My two-year-old skimmed 17% off the top before we reached Thanksgiving. My husband and I split the days, but 8.5% of days lost isn’t nothing. And we recently had another kid.
Add the lack of paid parental leave, guaranteed sick days or subsidized child care, and it’s little surprise that having a child in the U.S. is associated with a permanent, 20% to 30% drop in women’s total lifetime earnings potential. This “motherhood penalty” accounts for at least half of the gender pay gap.
• An Iconic Brand Pulls New CEO Off the Glass Cliff: Beth Kowitt
Kathryn Anne Edwards is an economist at the Rand Corp. and a professor at the Pardee Rand Graduate School. | 2022-11-22T16:42:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Working Moms’ Winter Math Is Getting Tougher - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/working-moms-winter-math-is-getting-tougher/2022/11/22/27790638-6a77-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/working-moms-winter-math-is-getting-tougher/2022/11/22/27790638-6a77-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
‘Strange World’: Beautiful to look at, but not much below the surface
The latest from Disney Animation is visually stunning but hamstrung by a basic story and thin characters
Review by Kristen Page-Kirby
From left, Ethan (voice of Jaboukie Young-White), Meridian Clade (Gabrielle Union) and Searcher Clade (Jake Gyllenhaal) in “Strange World.” (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
Animation is a genre that often carries with it an assumption of excellence. Part of it is audiences get fewer animated films per year compared with live-action counterparts, but part of it is because of artistic, emotional and commercial successes like “Up,” the Toy Story series, this year’s “Turning Red” and the rest of the extensive list. It’s now almost expected that when viewers walk into a theater for an animated film (notice we don’t call them “cartoons” anymore?), they assume they’re going to walk out visually awed and emotionally devastated — especially when Disney or Pixar is at the helm.
Maybe that’s the problem with Disney’s new feature “Strange World.” Co-director Don Hall helmed films like “Moana” and “Big Hero 6,” and his co-directing partner in this adventure (and the film’s writer) is Qui Nguyen, who penned the solid “Raya and the Last Dragon.” Maybe “Strange World” only seems to falter because it can’t handle the weight of its own expectations.
Nah. It’s just not very good.
“Strange World” kicks off by introducing us to Jaeger Clade (voiced by Dennis Quaid), a burly, mustachioed explorer from the tiny country of Avalonia, which is surrounded by unscalable mountains and whose people live a technologically simple life. Jaeger is fixated on what lies beyond the mountainous limits, and reaching the world outside is his life’s work.
It’s not a goal shared by his son Searcher Clade (Jake Gyllenhaal), who would prefer to stay home and study plants. On their last mission together, Searcher spots a plant that’s like a type of electrified tomatillo; he elects to take the plant and return home, while Jaeger continues on. The plant, now known as Pando, has given the Avalonians superior technology, and Searcher is hailed as a modern hero. His statue stands in the town square next to his father’s; Jaeger never returned home.
Twenty-five years later, something is wrong with the Pando crop, so Searcher, his son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White), wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union), Avalonian leader (and former Clade squad member) Callisto (Lucy Liu) and a diverse crew head off to figure out what’s killing the plant their lives and livelihoods now depend on. But what’s this? Exploring seems to … agree with Ethan? Searcher frets that this is a case of like grandfather, like grandson — a worry that intensifies when they find that Jaeger has been eking out survival in the weird biome they now all find themselves in.
If the plot sounds typical, that’s because it is. While the characters are fine, there’s not much below the surface. The twist is more of a bend, and the emotional arc is more of a line. Even the two nonhuman sidekicks — dog Legend and Splat, who’s basically a sentient Wacky WallWalker — feel repetitive.
Credit must be given where it’s due, though, and most of it goes to the visual team. If nothing else, “Strange World” is a reminder of why animation exists as an art form — when it comes to creating an immersive experience, here the artists are limited only by the number of tentacles they can fit on the screen. There are homages to old-school Disney adventure films like “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” nods to different animation styles, and some breathtaking stills that are reminiscent of “splash pages” in comic books, which pause the action so you can soak in the art. The score is also thrilling, serving to amp up scenes where the action alone just isn’t cutting it.
But in the end, the story fails. It tries to dig into what happens when someone tries to be the parent they needed growing up rather than the parent their kid needs now, with an environmental cautionary tale tucked somewhere in there, but the story is too basic and the characters too slight for “Strange World” to pack a punch. The visual beauty of the film isn’t enough. After all, pretty is as pretty does — and in “Strange World,” pretty doesn’t do much.
PG. At area theaters. Contains action, peril and some mature thematic elements. 112 minutes. | 2022-11-22T17:12:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Strange World’: Beautiful to look at, but not much below the surface - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/11/22/strange-world-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/11/22/strange-world-movie-review/ |
Live updates:World Cup live updates: Mexico and Poland scoreless at halftime
BEIRUT — The shock that reverberated around the world when Saudi Arabia beat Argentina in Tuesday’s World Cup upset quickly turned to a wave of euphoric joy not just in the kingdom, but across the region.
The 2-1 score was celebrated by Muslims and Arabs everywhere as win for them. Across the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East people found pride and joy in the Saudi underdog beating a famously much stronger team.
The Arab world in particular witnessed a rare moment of shared ecstasy. The fragmented region is brimming with avid, obsession-level football fans who are particularly enamored with South American teams. And now they just witnessed the incredible spectacle of one of their own nations beating the team whose jerseys are must-have fashion items for their children.
Hend Amry, a popular Muslim voice on Twitter, noted how the win is celebrated by Arabs “regardless of regional politics.”
“In fact I’d say this [Saudi] win will have done more for regional unity than if the host country won its game—now there’s regional buy-in, vested interest and identification of national pride with a tournament hosted by a rival,” she wrote.
“This win was an opportunity to remember why football is such a dynamic force in the Middle East,” she told the Post. “It has the power to bring people from different nations and across different political contexts like nothing else. And when that unbelievable goal clinched a historic win for KSA, Qatar’s World Cup was truly celebrated as the Arab World’s World Cup,” she said, using an abbreviation for Saudi Arabia.
She also noted that since their reconciliation Saudi Arabia and Qatar would be better described as “former” rivals.
In a shocking upset victory, Saudi Arabia beat heavily favored Argentina 2-1 in a Nov. 22 group stage game at the 2022 Qatar World Cup. (Video: The Washington Post)
Emotions ran especially high around the Persian Gulf after Qatar’s ruler, Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, was filmed waving the Saudi flag around his shoulders — unimaginable just a few years ago in 2017, when a Saudi-led blockade severed diplomatic relations and transport links with Qatar. The air, land and sea blockade was only lifted in January 2021.
People tweeted the hashtag “Our Gulf is one” alongside the photos of the two leaders, among other images, including a clip of an interview with goalkeeper Mohammed al-Owais saying, “today, as Arabs, we are playing on our land, and among our fans. This gives you an advantage on our opponents, whoever they may be.”
In Egypt, a popular news website sent an emailed a newsletter titled “Good on ya, Saudi,” telling its subscribers that today they are “working with big grins on our faces after Saudi’s shock 2-1 victory against Argentina in the first of today’s World Cup matches.”
In Lebanon, a journalist with Al Mayadeen, a news channel whose leanings are generally anti-Saudi, tweeted about the performance of the Saudi goalkeeper, saying he was “practically defending the Kaaba not the goal posts,” referring to the holy building revered by all Muslims, located in the heart of the holy city of Mecca.
Saudi social media, however, was especially in a joyous uproar. Many public figures such as religious leaders were quick to ascribe the win to the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the de facto ruler, in addition to thanking his father, King Salman.
But the real celebrities were the team members themselves, especially the goalkeeper. Saudis posted their photos alongside hashtags such as “Our Falcons are our pride” and “Our green ahead of all.”
Fan videos of player Salem al-Dawsari scoring the winning goal at 53 minutes peppered Saudi social media accounts, overlaid with love ballads and live commentary from Arab football announcers — many of whom are celebrities of their own right, famous for their impressively overwrought prose and explosive energy.
Turki al-Sheikh, chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Entertainment and a close adviser two the crown prince, had tweeted a photo two days before the match of Argentinian fans, hands half-covering their faces as they nervously watched a game. “Soon,” the caption read.
After the Saudi upset, he replied to his previous tweet pointing out his prediction, and congratulated the team, the crown prince, and others including “the great Saudi people.” He also announced free access for the remainder of the day to Riyadh-based carnivals and recreational complexes such as Winter Wonderland and Boulevard World.
Subsequently it was announced that Wednesday will be a public holiday in Saudi Arabia.
Siobhan O’Grady in Cairo contributed to this report. | 2022-11-22T17:17:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Saudi World Cup win over Argentina unites divided Middle East in celebration - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/saudi-arabia-world-cup-upset-celebration/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/saudi-arabia-world-cup-upset-celebration/ |
U.K. police hires applicants with history of crime, harassment, watchdog finds
A police officer patrols in London. (Tolga Akmen/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
LONDON — An independent investigation commissioned by the British government has revealed serious culture and security lapses in police forces in England and Wales, leading to applicants with questionable backgrounds being cleared to join, and officers going unpunished for harassing women.
In one case highlighted in the 161-page report published this month, a prospective officer was granted clearance despite an overseas conviction for attempted theft and intelligence possibly linking them to drug crime and an incident of aggravated burglary.
The watchdog also identified a “culture of misogyny, sexism and predatory behaviour” within the police force.
In another case, an officer misused force resources to search for the work location of his ex-girlfriend, who was a police staff member, the report said. She reported him and alleged that he had previously stalked her. The professional standards department didn’t investigate her claim, and the officer in charge of the case chose only to issue an informal warning.
The cases were among hundreds of vetting files and complaint and misconduct investigations reviewed by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), a government watchdog. Among the files, investigators found applicants with criminal records or with family ties to organized crime being cleared to join police forces with insufficient scrutiny, and allegations of misconduct not being properly assessed.
The watchdog linked this to lax standards in police vetting and the mishandling of complaint allegations, adding, “it is too easy for the wrong people to both join and stay in the police.”
This police chief is hiring female officers to fix ‘toxic’ policing
The report’s findings are “mind-blowing,” according to Rick Muir, director of the Police Foundation, an independent British think tank that researches how to improve policing. Its release comes as the United Kingdom and other countries, including the United States, engage in national conversations around police misconduct and the future of policing.
British police forces have come under fire in recent years for their treatment of women both inside and outside their own ranks.
The Home Office, which oversees policing in England and Wales, ordered the watchdog inquiry in October 2021, seven months after a woman named Sarah Everard was abducted in London by a Metropolitan Police officer who then raped and murdered her. It later came out that the officer, Wayne Couzens, had been the subject of past complaints for indecent exposure, and the Independent Office for Police Conduct watchdog launched investigations to determine whether the forces he worked for failed to investigate or act on them. The findings of these investigations have not yet been made public, and a spokesperson for the group told The Washington Post via email that it is “currently unable to make any further comment due to ongoing proceedings” against Couzens.
London police officer gets life sentence for Sarah Everard murder in case that shook confidence in police
The HMICFRS report looked at eight police forces across England and Wales. It reviewed 725 vetting files and 236 complaint and misconduct investigations, among other documents; carried out an online survey of over 11,000 officers, staff and volunteers; and used focus groups and dozens of one-on-one interviews to reach its conclusions.
In a statement shared with The Post, British Home Secretary Suella Braverman said of the report: “It is no secret that recent high-profile incidents have shattered the public’s trust in policing,” adding that police chiefs “must learn these lessons and act on the findings of this report as a matter of urgency.”
Watchdog report: London police officers engaged in misogynistic, racist, discriminatory behavior
While many of those interviewed and surveyed said the culture of policing had improved in recent years, some officers and staff made allegations against colleagues ranging from misconduct to sexual assault. The report found that prospective officers with past convictions for offenses such as indecent exposure and domestic abuse were cleared to join police forces, and that officers with “a history of attracting complaints or allegations of misconduct” were allowed to transfer between forces.
In one example cited in the report, an officer reported inappropriate behavior and language by his supervisor, a senior officer in the force, that “appeared to amount to sexual harassment.” The investigator decided that the senior officer’s behavior fell short of misconduct, and appeared to blame the junior officer for not objecting more clearly and for failing “to nip this behaviour in the bud.” The watchdog report found that this amounted to victim-blaming, and said the case “should have been investigated” as a possible criminal offense.
Investigators reviewed hundreds of decisions made by police forces on vetting and misconduct, and agreed with the majority of them. But they disagreed in almost one in five cases, finding some clearance decisions “questionable at best.”
Part of the problem, experts say, is that forces are under pressure to recruit more officers to meet targets set by the British government’s Police Uplift Program, launched by former prime minister Boris Johnson in 2019. Under that program, the government committed to recruiting 20,000 new police officers across England and Wales by March 2023.
To meet that goal, vetting units are told to “recruit, and recruit quickly, and recruit under difficult circumstances,” says Tim Newburn, a professor of criminology and social policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the author of several books on policing. “That doesn’t in any way justify the failures that are drawn attention [to] in this report, but it possibly goes some way — and only some way — to explaining why such failures possibly exist.”
Braverman, the Home Secretary, said the government has given funding to individual forces as part of the Police Uplift Program to improve recruitment processes, “so it is disappointing that HMICFRS have found that, even in a small number of cases, forces are taking unnecessary risks with vetting.”
Britain has a long history of reckoning with inappropriate behavior within law enforcement. Police misconduct, and particularly corruption, has been the subject of internal investigations and official inquiries in recent years, and has been enshrined in popular culture through television series such as “Line of Duty” and “Between the Lines.”
In the 1960s and 70s, corruption was a problem in the police force, and led to a large-scale investigation into police activity. Operation Countryman, which ran from 1978 to 1982, investigated police officers accused of taking bribes from criminals. Investigators claimed their work was stymied by police leadership; none of the suspects was convicted.
The 1990s saw a greater focus on racism in the force, particularly after the failed investigation into the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, a Black teenager who was stabbed to death by a group of White boys while waiting for a bus in London. An inquiry found that the Metropolitan Police Service investigation “was marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers.” The so-called MacPherson Report led to changes in police regulations and criminal justice.
Now, a reckoning around misogyny and violence against women in the police force is underway.
British police officer pleads guilty to kidnap and rape of Sarah Everard — a case that outraged the nation
Following Everard’s murder, Michael Lockwood, the director general of the IOPC watchdog, said that it was “now or never for policing to change.”
This report makes 43 recommendations to change police culture, vetting and complaints procedures, including setting minimum standards for prospective officers’ preemployment checks and defining improper behavior at the national level.
On March 13, Londoners paid their respects to Sarah Everard, 33, whose body was discovered after her disappearance. (Video: Karla Adam, Blair Guild/The Washington Post)
The authors of the report are scathing in their indictment, and warn of the dangers of not implementing these changes. A monthly survey of British people conducted by YouGov shows that, earlier this month, 17 percent had no confidence at all in the police’s ability to deal with crime — up from 12 percent this time last year.
“Given the risks involved with recruiting officers at the scale and speed required by the uplift programme, it is essential that police leaders act now on our recommendations,” said Matt Parr, an HMICFRS inspector and lead author of the report.
“Our report highlights that they simply cannot afford to wait any longer.” | 2022-11-22T17:17:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. police hires applicants with history of crime, harassment, watchdog finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/22/uk-police-harassment-background-report/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/22/uk-police-harassment-background-report/ |
A Supreme Court police officer on the plaza of the Supreme Court building in D.C. on Oct. 3. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
There are two Washingtons.
There’s the one that populates elementary school textbooks, in which the three branches of government assiduously and sincerely push against one another for power, eyes fixed on the best possible outcome for the American republic.
Then there’s the one that shows up in the newspapers, the one in which the attention of elected officials is distracted by fundraising goals and 24-hour news cycles and ambition — and those are the least nefarious options. “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is a heartwarming film, but its message is that overcoming corruption is the exception in our nation’s capital.
For years, the Supreme Court was fairly effective at portraying itself as residing in that first Washington, the idealistic one. Its members, after all, were seated for life, indifferent to the vagaries of public opinion and immune to the need to raise campaign contributions. It heard arguments from lawyers, evaluated those arguments and decided on an opinion.
This is the perception that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has been diligent about defending: that his court retains its impartiality. Even as the increasingly robust conservative majority expanded its targets, Roberts insisted that the court was acting solely within its traditional, rigid — conservative, one might say — boundaries. But that argument has become increasingly difficult to defend, and Americans have become increasingly likely to reject it.
Over the weekend, the New York Times revealed that the leak in May of a draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, was not the first such leak of a result. In 2014, a couple dined with Justice Samuel Alito, the paper reported, at which they were apparently told that the justice would be writing an opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores favoring Hobby Lobby. This was conveyed to a conservative activist named Rob Schenck, and was reinforced by contemporaneous emails. Alito denied that he or his wife disclosed the opinion in advance.
Alito, also the author of the leaked Dobbs opinion, has been nearly as fervent as Roberts in defending the impartiality of the court. He’s attacked members of the media who are critical of how the court operates and haughtily objected to questions about the court’s integrity and politicization. He is also the second-most conservative member of the court.
The most conservative is Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been at the center of a different swirl of questions. His wife, Ginni Thomas, was involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including attending the rally outside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021. Thomas was also the sole vote in support of protecting records from Trump’s White House from scrutiny by the House select committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol on that day.
The indirect connection to activism revealed by Ginni Thomas’s engagement echoes what is perhaps the more important part of the Times report on Alito’s activity in 2014. The couple with whom he was dining were donors recruited by Schenck specifically to engage Supreme Court justices in social activity.
He “recruited wealthy donors like Mrs. Wright and her husband, Donald” — the couple at that dinner — “encouraging them to invite some of the justices to meals, to their vacation homes or to private clubs,” the Times reported. “He advised allies to contribute money to the Supreme Court Historical Society and then mingle with justices at its functions.”
The justices described as “amenable” to the outreach? Alito, Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia.
Again, this is not the perception of the Supreme Court that Roberts would like the public to have. None of this is to suggest that the intertwining of activists and justices is new, since it isn’t. It is novel, however, for one justice to be at the center of two reported leaks, for the spouse of another justice to have worked to reject the results of a presidential election and, of course, for this to overlap with those justices being part of a majority so actively reshaping precedent and bolstering one ideological domain.
The issue is not that the court is conservative. The issue is that the court appears to have become enmeshed in the politics above which it claims to sit — turning the lack of accountability that was intended to preserve the court’s objectivity into a defensive moat allowing justices to behave as they see fit.
Earlier this year, Gallup reported that public confidence in the court had reached a new low in a half-century of measurement. This was largely a function of Democrats viewing the court with new skepticism, given the leak of the Dobbs decision and the court’s measurable rightward shift.
What’s interesting about Gallup’s data, though, is that perceptions of the court have generally tracked with confidence in the presidency. The percentage of Americans saying they had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in each was in the 40s for much of the 1980s and 1990s. By the second term of George W. Bush’s administration, both had fallen into the 30s. In 2022, each had dropped into the 20s.
Congress, meanwhile, has been in the teens for more than a decade.
But while perceptions of the court and the White House have moved in tandem, the triggers for the movement vary. Views of the presidency are heavily influenced by partisanship, with members of an incumbent president’s party having a lot of confidence in that presidency and members of the out party having very little. That results in a wide partisan gap.
There’s far less of a gap in views of the court, as is the case with Congress. Republicans and Democrats both generally dislike Congress, in part because there are leaders of the opposition party for each to find objectionable. But views of the court have been much less pressured by partisanship — until 2022. The gap between the parties is more than 25 points at this stage, with Republicans much more positive than Democrats about the court.
It is certainly possible that perceptions of the court will rebound and be colored less robustly by partisanship. But, unlike the presidency or even Congress, there is no election in which the court might be reshaped. Democratic elected officials have called for the court to implement rules on ethics and behavior that, thanks in part to schoolbook-Washington perceptions of the court, don’t exist to any robust extent.
That, of course, wouldn’t change frustrations about how the court decides — which is the central reason for Democratic skepticism. Conservative activists like Schenck have gotten what they wanted from the court. So did Donald Trump, seeking to deliver for his conservative base. There was a specific, energetic effort to build a court that would release opinions favorable to the political right. That court has arrived — and is cemented in place until justices retire or die.
And that, by itself, is why the court’s struggling effort to present itself as being above the fray will not work. The forces that shape the court pushed to make one that would not be above the fray but instead be responsive to the cultural moment. By all appearances, they were successful.
Analysis: The Supreme Court has lost the benefit of the doubt | 2022-11-22T17:25:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Supreme Court has lost the benefit of the doubt - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/supreme-court-conservatives-alito-roberts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/supreme-court-conservatives-alito-roberts/ |
Analysis by Selcan Hacaoglu | Bloomberg
For the US, the group was a critical ally in the campaign to defeat Islamic State in Syria and remains an important force keeping the jihadists from rising up again. Turkey, a US ally within NATO, views it as a terrorist threat. The group is the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, a militia in Syria made up mostly of fighters representing the minority Kurdish community. Disagreements over the YPG have repeatedly stressed relations between Turkey and the US and threaten to provoke Turkey’s veto of a proposed expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
1. What is the YPG?
As the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party of Syria, it seeks autonomy for Syria’s Kurds and has shown a willingness to work with any power capable of advancing that goal. The party itself was formed in 2003 as an offshoot of the PKK, a group that seeks an autonomous region for Kurds inside Turkey. The PKK has fought Turkish forces on and off since 1984 and is outlawed by Turkey and considered a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union. Turkey views the YPG, whose ranks are thought to include tens of thousands of fighters, as a security threat due to its ties to the PKK.
2. What was the YPG’s role in the Syria war?
The YPG wasn’t part of the Free Syrian Army, the Western-backed coalition that was the main opponent of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in the early years of the country’s civil war. But YPG members formed the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces, created in 2015 under US auspices to fight Islamic State, the violent movement that at one time controlled a chunk of territory in Iraq and Syria as big as Iceland. In 2019, the final Islamic State stronghold fell. Afterward, the Syrian Kurds and Arabs allied with them formed an autonomous zone in the northeast of the country that is aligned neither with Assad’s government nor with its opposition.
3. How did Turkey respond?
The Turkish government strongly objected to the US arming the Syrian Kurds. In response to territorial gains by the YPG, Turkish forces have repeatedly made incursions into Syria to set them back. In mid-November, Turkey carried out air strikes against the group in retaliation for a deadly bombing that targeted civilians in Istanbul. Turkey’s interior ministry blamed the bombing on the PKK and its Syrian affiliate.
4. What do Syrian Kurds have to do with NATO’s expansion?
When Sweden and Finland moved toward applying to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed reservations, throwing their candidacy in doubt since the alliance admits new members only by unanimous consent. Turkey criticized Swedish officials for meeting with Kurdish politicians, citing an encounter between Foreign Minister Ann Linde and Elham Ahmad, who represents the political wing of the YPG. Another focus of tension was the Syrian Democratic Council, the political arm of a group of Kurdish-dominated forces in northern Syria. Turkey says the SDC is dominated by terrorists. Sweden says it cooperates with the SDC, but not with the YPG. Sweden and Finland, which got caught in the crossfire, have pledged to address Turkey’s concerns.
5. Who are the Kurds?
They are an Indo-European people, mostly Sunni Muslims, numbering about 30 million, whose homeland is divided among Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Kurds have been persecuted in those countries in a variety of ways: stripped of their citizenship, excluded from some professions, barred from giving their children certain names and restricted in speaking their own language. They’ve pushed for equal rights and autonomy over their affairs and periodically rebelled. National authorities have responded at times severely, expelling Kurds from their villages in Syria and attacking them with chemical weapons in Iraq, where they now have an autonomous region in the north that is recognized by the Iraqi constitution. | 2022-11-22T18:13:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | All About the YPG, the Syrian Kurds Dividing Turkey and the US - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/all-about-the-ypg-the-syrian-kurds-dividing-turkey-and-the-us/2022/11/22/1d617816-6a85-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/all-about-the-ypg-the-syrian-kurds-dividing-turkey-and-the-us/2022/11/22/1d617816-6a85-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
How Iran Protests Over Dress Codes Stoked Broader Public Anger
Analysis by Golnar Motevalli | Bloomberg
The death in September of a young woman after she was detained for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code has sparked violent protests across the country. Popular anger was focused initially on the so-called Guidance Patrol -- police officers who target women they deem to be improperly dressed in public -- but soon broadened to encompass decades-long grievances toward the whole theocratic system in place since Iran’s 1979 revolution. Unlike previous protests, the current demonstrations have unified people across class and ethnic lines. Protesters have faced a violent crackdown by security forces, who have killed hundreds of people, according to rights groups. Yet the demonstrations have persisted.
1. What provoked the protests?
The immediate trigger was the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, which was announced Sept. 16. According to state media, she’d traveled from the western province of Kurdistan with family to Tehran, where a Guidance Patrol team detained her outside a metro station claiming she was inappropriately dressed. The Guidance Patrol increased its activity after the election last year of conservative Ebrahim Raisi to the Iranian presidency. Amini was taken to a police station, according to an account in the reformist Shargh newspaper. After news of her death emerged, Iranian state TV released CCTV footage of Amini collapsing over a chair and onto the floor. Tehran’s police force said she suffered “heart failure.” Her father, Amjad Amini, told the BBC that doctors found her collapsed outside the hospital with no explanation of who she was or what had happened to her. She went into a coma and died two days later. Her family have accused authorities of beating her and covering it up, saying she had no underlying health conditions.
2. Who’s protesting?
The protests have transcended ethnic lines, touching an especially raw nerve in Amini’s Kurdish community in western Iran, where people have long complained of being sidelined by the state. The response of the security forces in that region has been especially harsh; Kurdish rights groups frequently report that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s premier military force, have used heavy weapons to kill protesters. Authorities have accused Kurdish activists and political parties, which operate from exile in Iraq, of separatism and of stoking the protests, allegations they have denied. The protests have also drawn support from industrial workers, who have staged several strikes, including at key oil and gas refineries. Young women, who’ve had a heavy presence in the protests and led them in the beginning, have removed and in many cases burned their head scarves or cut their hair in public to show solidarity with Amini. They’ve also been targeted by security forces. Hundreds have been arrested, and human rights groups have reported cases where they’ve been tortured and raped in jail.
3. Why has the anger spread to other causes?
The unrest has tapped into broader frustration over what many see as the clerical establishment’s prioritizing its pious base of supporters over everyone else. Religious restrictions, such as an official ban on mixed gender parties and laws allowing a husband to control his wife’s movements, are seen as stifling, particularly to younger Iranians. Many of the protesters’ chants call for unwinding the Islamic nature of the state and specifically target Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, clerics, the Revolutionary Guards and the Islamic plainclothes militia whose members storm gatherings looking for opportunities to reprimand people for what they consider to be unholy behavior. Those who are disenchanted tend to blame the regime’s anti-Western rhetoric, hostility toward the US, and involvement in regional conflicts for the state of the heavily sanctioned economy. There’s also longstanding anger over entrenched corruption, and many citizens complain that the regime has become more authoritarian since Raisi became president.
4. What are protesters demanding?
At the start, the minimum the protesters wanted was a fundamental reform to the laws imposed after the revolution mandating hijab, the term used in Islam to describe modest dress, on all females from the age of nine. The rules stipulate that females wear a “chador” -- a black cloak that envelopes the body from head to toe -- or long, loose-fitting overcoats and tightly tied head scarves. Over the years, women have gradually pushed the boundaries of what’s permissible. Loose shawls and robes, often open and worn with leggings, are common attire in most cities; that’s how Amini was dressed when she was detained. As the demonstrations have expanded, protesters have broadened their demands to making Iranian law in general less governed by religious dictates.
5. How have authorities responded to the protests?
Multiple videos shared on Twitter by human rights groups and dissident news outlets, which can’t be verified by Bloomberg, have shown heavily armed riot police beating many protesters with clubs and shooting at them. According to the US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran, which monitors the protests, at least 419 people have been killed by security forces, including 60 children. The group says at least 17,000 people have been arrested and Iran’s judiciary has so far sentenced at least six people to death. On Oct. 4, in his first comments addressing the protests, Khamenei pledged his support for the security forces, denouncing protesters for challenging the police and claiming the demonstrations are designed by the US and Israel. There were reports that the Guidance Patrol had disappeared from the streets, but it was unclear whether this would last. Officials haven’t released a death toll since Sept. 24, when they said 41 people had died. They also deny that the security forces have been responsible for any of the deaths of protesters. The authorities have blamed many of the deaths on unknown “terrorists,” suicide, accidental death, poison and, in one case, infection from a dog bite. | 2022-11-22T18:13:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Iran Protests Over Dress Codes Stoked Broader Public Anger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-iran-protests-over-dress-codes-stoked-broader-public-anger/2022/11/22/1d163540-6a85-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-iran-protests-over-dress-codes-stoked-broader-public-anger/2022/11/22/1d163540-6a85-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Trazy Collins (left), director of food and clothing programs, and Melvin Pearson, food rescue coordinator, at Bread for the City on Seventh Street NW. They're in the back of the truck that delivers frozen turkeys to the charity, which distributes them to needy Washingtonians before Thanksgiving. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)
“We weren’t sure we were going to have a Thanksgiving,” Zenaida Massey told me last Thursday. “If it wasn’t for this place, I don’t know what we’d do.”
We were at Bread for the City, a nonprofit that helps alleviate hunger and homelessness in the District. This month, the charity has been distributing instant Thanksgiving from its two locations, on Good Hope Road in Southeast and here on Seventh Street NW. People have been lining up every day to receive a grocery bag full of food, a $50 debit card and a turkey.
“Or a chicken, if that’s a better option for them,” said Trazy Collins, director of the food and clothing programs at Bread for the City.
Massey, who lives in Northeast, had stood in line for two hours. She was planning on getting a turkey for herself and her three children.
“I grew up in North Carolina,” she said. “We don't play when it comes to eating.”
Different holidays mean different things to different people. Some aren’t celebrated by everyone. But if there’s one American holiday that’s for everybody, it’s Thanksgiving.
“It centers on food,” Collins said. “For those who are food insecure, they worry about how to provide a Thanksgiving meal. That’s at the top of people’s minds starting in September and October: making sure they can do that for the family.”
Bread for the City helps. The organization does a lot — runs medical and dental clinics, provides legal services, operates a diaper bank — but providing food is central to its mission. All year long it distributes bags of groceries, some 305,000 last year. November is for turkeys.
Or it usually is, anyway. The pandemic and supply chain issues meant no turkeys in 2020. Instead, Bread for the City distributed $50 debit cards. In 2021, it distributed $75 debit cards. This year, clients were able to receive groceries, a turkey or chicken, and a $50 debit card.
“This is like the ultimate choice,” Collins said. “You have 50 dollars you can spend however you want for your family’s needs at Thanksgiving.”
Some people use the cards at grocery stores, others to order something from Amazon.
“The ones that always get me are the children’s clothing stores,” Collins said. “That really speaks to my heart.”
On Thursday afternoon, a line stretched from the door of Bread for the City and down Seventh Street NW to P Street. Inside, volunteers from the law firm Perkins Coie, along with businesses Prosek and Energetics, were filling bags and handing out turkeys. Howard University students have been volunteering this month, too.
“Howard's been holding it down," said Izzy Moody, associate volunteer coordinator for Northwest.
At the head of the line, Bread for the City staff asked for basic information: identification and proof of District residency. They also entered demographic details to help get a picture of who they’re serving.
“We try to keep it as simple as possible and be as low barrier as possible,” Collins said. “The biggest takeaway is we are seeing people from all eight wards, from every corner of the city, people from all different backgrounds, people who have never used our services before, people who never expected to need our services but are in a position this year where $50 is life-changing.”
The groceries vary from day-to-day. Typically they include a combination of canned and fresh fruits and vegetables. Today it’s tangerines and acorn squash. There’s stuffing, too, and macaroni and cheese.
Bread for the City entered the season estimating it needed 12,000 turkeys, which it gets from a wholesaler. It quickly realized the need was higher. By Thursday, it had distributed 14,000. (By the time Holiday Helpings came to its close on Friday, 16,000 birds had been handed out.)
Collins said turkeys have been expensive and hard to come by this year.
“We’re paying 15 to 20 percent more than I have ever paid for turkeys wholesale,” she said. “If they're expensive for us to get, just imagine how much more expensive they are for people to access outside the wholesale realm.”
The aim is to give without question, to give without judgment.
“There’s enough judgment in this world,” said Collins.
Too many people who don’t have to stand in line for food question the motives of those who do.
“We’re not here to do that,” she said. “We’re here to help. We can’t help with everything but we’re here to lighten the load a little bit this holiday season.”
Bread for the City is a partner in The Washington Post Helping Hand, our annual fundraising campaign. I hope you’ll consider making a donation to this worthy group. Just go to posthelpinghand.com.
To give by mail, make a check payable to “Bread for the City” and send it to Bread for the City, Attn: Development, 1525 Seventh St. NW, Washington, DC 20001. Thank you. | 2022-11-22T18:14:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For those in need, Bread for the City provides turkeys and more - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/bread-for-city-turkey-giveaway/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/bread-for-city-turkey-giveaway/ |
FILE - The house featured in the Steven Spielberg film “The Goonies” is seen in Astoria, Ore., on May 24, 2001. The Victorian home, built in 1896 with sweeping views of the Columbia River as it flows into the Pacific Ocean, is now for sale has been listed with an asking price of $1.7 million. Since the film was released in 1985, fans have flocked to the home, and the owner has long complained of constant crowds and trespassing. (AP Photo/Stepanie Firth, File) (STEPHANIE FRITH/AP) | 2022-11-22T18:14:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Famed 'Goonies' house for sale in coastal Astoria, Oregon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/famed-goonies-house-for-sale-in-coastal-astoria-oregon/2022/11/22/b994c1ee-6a8e-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/famed-goonies-house-for-sale-in-coastal-astoria-oregon/2022/11/22/b994c1ee-6a8e-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
‘Indians’ mascots are out. The problem of cultural erasure remains.
(Ellen Weinstein for The Washington Post)
The “Indians,” “Braves” and “Warriors” that decorate team jerseys, gym floors and scoreboards across New York state are finally on their way out.
The state’s education department just announced that all districts must stop using Native American mascots by the end of the school year. Some of the 60 or so districts affected by this directive were already in the process of making this change. Others, however, seem determined to stay on the wrong side of history as long as possible.
Take, for instance, the contentious debate involving the Cambridge Central School District, whose two-year fight to cling to its “Indians” mascot most likely inspired New York’s action. Most recently, the Cambridge board of education had voted to appeal a court ruling forcing the district to retire its mascot. When the board learned of the state’s directive, it vowed to continue its appeal — now more obviously futile than ever.
At issue (beyond school pride and “tradition”) is the question of what exactly Native-themed mascots convey: condescension or respect. You might think that’s obvious, given that the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) calls them “symbols of disrespect that degrade, mock, and harm Native people.”
But Cambridge board member Dillon Honyoust, of Haudenosaunee ancestry, says that as a Native American, he sees retiring the Indians mascot as “another effort to remove or cancel the American Indian culture.”
Is it? The retirement of race-based mascots is endorsed not just nationally by the NCAI but also locally, by the Stockbridge-Munsee Tribal Council, the Seneca Nation, the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Council and the Onondaga Nation, part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Their intention is surely not cultural cancellation.
Honyoust’s concern brings up a fair question, though: how to keep the Native American experience in the public consciousness. Will we lose something when “Grizzlies” and “Tigers” replace “Indians” and “Braves”? Are stereotypical images of Native Americans better than no images of Native Americans?
Consider Thanksgiving. Many non-Native children first learn about Native Americans through the whitewashed myth of the First Thanksgiving, that friendly potluck featuring generous Indians welcoming pilgrims to Plymouth.
This staple of elementary school curriculums obscures the racism, genocide and displacement that decimated Indigenous peoples. It’s an American origin story that leaves out most of the truth. But it does leave in Native people, and that’s worth something, according to Paul Chaat Smith, a Comanche and associate curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian: “Thanksgiving says, however imperfectly, we remember Indians, we’re remembering Indians. And, with all the problems with it, it’s still a powerful idea, and it’s still powerful to not Photoshop Indians out of the national narrative.”
That’s in a video, “The Invention of Thanksgiving,” in a museum exhibit on Native Americans in pop culture — from the Tomahawk missile to the Jeep Cherokee to the Cleveland Indians. (Cleveland’s team is now called the Guardians.) Smith told the New York Times that although some imagery is “obnoxious,” it “doesn’t help us to eliminate everything. The problem with Native Americans is the invisibility in American life.”
“Native American” as an idea is ubiquitous in our culture — that’s the point of the exhibit — but Native American reality remains unseen.
Surely there’s a way to erase the cartoon Indian and draw more accurate representations in its place.
One solution you might have heard lately is the “land acknowledgment,” an official statement recognizing that an institution occupies specific ancestral lands. These statements are common in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Every morning, Toronto schoolchildren hear some version of the following:
“We acknowledge we are hosted on the lands of the Mississaugas of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Wendat. We also recognize the enduring presence of all First Nations, Métis and the Inuit peoples.”
Land acknowledgments are becoming more common in the United States, too, from college events to city council meetings to the Oscars, even as the number of race-based mascots dwindles. That’s a big step forward, from a tomahawk chop of a stereotype to a bow of respect.
But it’s just a step. The problem with land acknowledgments, as Indigenous activist John Kane told me, is that “acknowledging that we once lived in a place or somehow contributed to someone else’s society does nothing for ours.”
Kane, a graduate of Cambridge schools, a Mohawk and the host of the podcast “Let’s Talk Native,” started the petition in 2020 that led the Cambridge community to face the mascot question.
“Don’t tell us how great we were,” he wrote to me. “We are still here and we AREN’T doing that great now. We fight everyday over taxes, autonomy and our distinction. We fight poverty, racism, abuse of our women and children, drugs, alcohol and depression on our territories. We fight against the lack of opportunities of any prospects for the future of our people on our lands.”
Land acknowledgments risk doing — albeit in a far less offensive way — what mascots do: relegate Native people to a hazy past, while relieving us of the responsibility to do anything to know or help Native Americans in the present.
No institution should get to make a land acknowledgment unless it is also backing it up with action, whether financial, political or educational. A university, for instance, could offer courses in Indigenous languages, grant free tuition to Native students, repatriate tribal artifacts and even return land.
And a school district? If it’s truly searching for a way to honor Native culture, it could start each day by recognizing the Indigenous peoples whose land it occupies. Then it could develop curriculums that teach Native American reality, past and present. That would all take time, money and effort. But fighting to hang on to a racist mascot does, too. | 2022-11-22T18:14:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | ‘Indians’ mascots are out. The problem of cultural erasure remains. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/indian-racist-mascots-new-york-school-ban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/indian-racist-mascots-new-york-school-ban/ |
Still, more than 95 percent of Americans are younger than the president.
President Biden boards Air Force One to leave Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C., on Nov. 21. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Someone, working for some political campaign at some point in the past, had a brilliant idea. You know how campaigns want to vacuum up as much information about voters as possible? Well, why not send out an email asking people to sign a card for the candidate’s upcoming birthday! Confirm support, get names, maybe even a contribution — all in the guise of the innocuous act of celebrating the candidate growing a year older. Genius.
In the years since, the tactic has become pervasive, if not a pestilence. It has expanded from signing a card for this candidate’s birthday to signing one for any popular politician’s birthday. Political action committees send out cards on behalf of various popular politicians so they can vacuum up all that data for themselves.
In 2021, for example, President Biden’s birthday prompted emails encouraging people to sign cards from Sens. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, PACs including I Vote For America, Latino Victory, March On, Never Again and Save Democracy, and candidates Dwight Evans, Derek Kilmer, Tom O’Halleran and Josh Shapiro.
This year, though? Less enthusiasm about the day. (Casey had a “card,” though, as did March On.) In part this may be a function of Biden having been unpopular for longer. But part of it is certainly that the White House has not been eager to remind people that Biden just turned 80 — the oldest president in history turning a year older.
There’s an interesting bit of context to this, though. When the United Nations earlier this month marked the world’s population hitting 8 billion, I noted that this was in part because people were living longer — a contributor to the United States skewing much older than it used to. In 1900, for example, only about 4 percent of the population was 65 or over. In 2020, more than 17 percent was. Thanks to extended life expectancies and to the aging baby boom, America is older now than it has ever been.
This made me wonder how Biden’s age compared to the nation’s. He’s the oldest president ever, but America is the oldest America ever. Did that make his age less exceptional? I pulled data on the country’s population over the last 120 years and compared it to the age of the president during that period. And I can say: yes, Biden’s age is still exceptional.
The chart below shows the percentage of the population each year that’s the same age as or older than the president who served the majority of that year. (President ages are as of Dec. 31 of the year.)
The president in 1900 was William McKinley, aged a relatively young 57. But in 1900, 88 percent of the country’s population was younger than that, so he was an old president relative to the nation’s population that year. In 2003, when George W. Bush was 57, he was older than only about 71 percent of the population.
The youngest two presidents in history were Teddy Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. When Roosevelt took office after McKinley’s assassination in 1901, he was about to turn 43, older than about 80 percent of the population. When Kennedy took office six decades later the year he turned 44, he was older than only 69 percent of the aging population. The youngest president relative to the population, though, was neither of them. Instead it was Barack Obama, who was older than 65 percent of the country’s population when he took office in 2009, the year he turned 48.
There are a few interesting patterns in the graph. There was the Teddy Roosevelt-to-Woodrow Wilson period in which the presidents were all born within a two-year period and so the relationship to the population remained fairly constant. And of course, the Bill Clinton-George W. Bush-Donald Trump periods, given that all three were born in 1946.
But then there’s Biden. Yes, America is older than it used to be, but Biden’s age is still fairly exceptional. He’s older than almost 96 percent of the population — the second-biggest gulf between a president’s age and the population’s. The victor here is Ronald Reagan who, in his last year in office, turned 77, making him older than a fraction more of the population than Biden is now.
There’s certainly some fuzziness at the boundaries here. The population numbers are Census Bureau estimates; where and when you measure age matters, too. But one can certainly say that Biden is older relative to the population than any other president save Reagan — even as the population gets older.
Of course, the situation for Biden is relatable in its own way. Doesn’t everyone, reaching some milestone of age, get less enthusiastic about birthday cards celebrating it? | 2022-11-22T18:15:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden is the oldest president ever. And America is oldest America ever. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/biden-age-population-americans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/biden-age-population-americans/ |
A lawyer for the Maryland Department of Transportation said opening the hearing to the media and public could disclose confidential information
Maryland plans to add toll lanes to Interstate 270 and the western part of the Capital Beltway as part of a public-private partnership. The project's first contract, for a team of companies to design the lanes, is the subject of a bid protest in Montgomery County Circuit Court. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The protest by a losing bidder concerns the first contract the state awarded last year in a project potentially worth billions of dollars to widen Interstate 270 and part of the Capital Beltway with toll lanes.
Lawyers for both the Maryland Department of Transportation and the winning bidder, a team of companies led by Australian toll road operator Transurban, asked that the hearing be closed and its transcript sealed to prevent the possibility of proprietary bid details being discussed publicly.
“The state is certainly in favor of transparency but also does not want to run the risk of accidentally disclosing the confidential information of any of these proposers,” said Lydia Hoover, an assistant attorney general representing MDOT.
Maryland contract delayed in blow to Hogan's traffic-relief plan
Circuit Court Judge Kevin G. Hessler said Maryland law allowed him to weigh the need for public access against the state’s and companies’ needs to keep competitive business information confidential.
“I’m certainly aware of the fact that there is an important public interest in transparency in regard to proceedings of this significance,” Hessler said.
However, the judge said he would close the hearing and seal the transcript to “balance that against the need for confidentiality with regard to proprietary and commercial information.”
The bid protest concerns a “predevelopment agreement” in which the Transurban team committed to design the lanes at its own expense. Winning that first contract was most significant, however, because it also gave the Transurban team the right of first refusal on a 50-year contract — expected to be worth billions of dollars — to build and operate the lanes. The winner of the long-term contract also would finance construction in exchange for keeping most of the toll revenue as part of a public-private partnership.
Maryland appeals court hears arguments in toll lanes bid protest
A losing bid team, led by Spanish firm Cintra, has argued the state improperly awarded the first contract because the Transurban team lacked a construction contractor at the time and had “gamed” the selection process by assuming unrealistically low construction costs. MDOT has countered that the bid protest was filed too late and that the state’s selection process was proper under the project’s procurement rules.
MDOT announced last week it will hold off on seeking approval of a 50-year contract until this spring. State officials said they needed to give the Transurban team more time to submit a long-term contract proposal because the project’s federal environmental approval, which is needed to design the lanes, was delayed by 10 months. The delay was a political blow to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who leaves office in January and has made the toll lanes plan his signature traffic-relief proposal.
A Washington Post reporter in the courtroom asked that the judge allow the news organization time to consult with a lawyer before he closed the hearing, but the judge said the case needed to proceed, noting the eight lawyers present and “ready to go.”
Opponents sue over Maryland plan to add toll lanes to I-270, Beltway
It’s unclear when the judge will issue a decision, but either side is expected to appeal an unfavorable ruling. The state’s Court of Special Appeals is already considering whether the Cintra team filed its bid protest in time.
The project also faces a federal environmental lawsuit filed by opponents. | 2022-11-22T18:16:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montgomery judge closes hearing in I-270, Beltway toll lanes bid protest - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/22/maryland-toll-lanes-bid-protest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/22/maryland-toll-lanes-bid-protest/ |
Chris Sununu on his reelection and the Republican party
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu just comfortably won his fourth term as governor and is seen as a rising star in the Republican party. On Thursday, Dec. 1 at 9:30 a.m. ET, he joins Leigh Ann Caldwell, author of The Washington Post’s Early 202 newsletter, for a conversation about his agenda for his next term, his analysis of the midterm results and his outlook for the 2024 presidential contest.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) | 2022-11-22T18:16:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chris Sununu on his reelection and the Republican party - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/12/01/chris-sununu-his-reelection-republican-party/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/12/01/chris-sununu-his-reelection-republican-party/ |
Live updates:World Cup live updates: Mexico and Poland finish in scoreless draw
Perspective by Steven Goff
Tyler Adams and the USMNT settled for a draw on Monday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
There is no shame in tying a good European team, one that hadn’t qualified for the World Cup in 64 years but made the 2016 Euro semifinals. There was justified anger at Walker Zimmerman, a 10th-year pro, for conceding a late penalty with a sloppy challenge. More than anything, though, there was disappointment in relinquishing a late lead and settling for one point instead of rejoicing over three.
U.S. supporters worked through these same mixed feelings in the team’s previous two World Cup appearances. In 2010, there was the thrill of Landon Donovan’s dramatic goal against Algeria that won the group, but then the unfulfillment of losing to beatable Ghana in extra time in the round of 16.
Four years later, there was the drama of John Brooks’s late header in the group-stage opener against Ghana, followed later by a brave fight and heroic goalkeeping by Tim Howard but ultimately an extra-time setback against far-superior Belgium in the round of 16.
It’s unfair to say the Americans squandered all these opportunities. Situations vary. But they were in position to make a mark, to take the next step, to show they have the sophistication and gumption to win hard games.
Most of the key U.S. players here are young, but they’ve also grown up fast at the highest levels of European club soccer. They’ve played for and against the best of Europe and in the late stage of the UEFA Champions League. They are not naive.
After Monday’s match, Coach Gregg Berhalter and the players spoke of a first-half performance punctuated by confidence, ambition and a terrific scoring sequence, capped by Tim Weah’s goal that Christian Pulisic assisted in brilliant fashion. They played like a team unfazed by the tournament’s gravity.
They also acknowledged shortcomings of the second half, one in which veered off-course and left them desperately clinging to the lead.
One point in the opener, Berhalter said, is not the end of the world. And he’s right. His team sits in a second-place tie with Wales with two matches left in a group that will reward two teams with tickets to the knockout stage. Things are not great, but they’re not bad. They’re okay.
At some point, regardless of age and experience, circumstances and expectations, okay can no longer be good enough. The United States needs to win these games, not settle for draws or claim moral victories.
It’s nice to be competitive with European teams at the World Cup, but since 1990, the Americans are 1-11-6 against the sport’s preeminent continent.
Responding to a question about the impact of a good World Cup on growing the sport in the United States, Berhalter said: “For us, it’s about trying to build some momentum, both within the team but also with the American public. We think good performances here can do that.”
Monday’s performance was better than good for 45 minutes. The subsequent 45 was fragile. The Americans were bending but not breaking until Zimmerman took down Gareth Bale from behind with the Welshman’s back to the goal. It was a bad decision in one of those moments that can turn a match and alter a team’s trajectory in the tournament.
“World Cup, you’ve got to be focused,” Berhalter said. “Every single play can have a potential outcome on the game.”
Zimmerman, the lone U.S. starter from an MLS club, has been a reliable regular with the national team for several years and has appeared in about 250 matches across all competitions in his solid career.
With three points from the opener, the United States probably would’ve needed just a draw in either of the last two to advance. For the second-youngest squad at this tournament (behind Ghana), the success-failure threshold is qualifying for the round of 16. It remains a realistic goal in a group with a clear favorite (England) and three teams scrambling for second.
But now things get tricky. And hard. On Friday, the Americans will play England, a 2018 World Cup semifinalist, a 2021 Euro finalist and a 6-2 winner over Iran on Monday. Several hours earlier, Wales gets its shot at the wounded Iranians.
“The hallmark of U.S. teams is we don’t quit and we keep going,” defender Tim Ream said. “You take a point and you look forward to the next game. … It’s just another game [against England]. We’re not going to get too up, too down. You have to go in levelheaded every single match.”
With whom they will go into the England match remains to be seen. Having not played much in recent weeks because of injuries, Weston McKennie and Sergiño Dest left early Monday. Others struggled physically in the second half. Is three days enough recovery time?
And what of Gio Reyna, the 20-year-old sensation who didn’t play Monday? Berhalter said he was held out for precautionary reasons after feeling muscle tightness last week but he might be in the mix against England.
Ah, England. The United States does not have to beat England to remain in contention for a place in the knockout stage; no matter the outcome, the group won’t be settled until the last set of matches Nov. 29. But what better way to show they’ve finally arrived than, against all odds, to upset the Three Lions? | 2022-11-22T18:22:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | USMNT looks ahead to England after draw with Wales - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/usmnt-world-cup-expectations-england/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/usmnt-world-cup-expectations-england/ |
Sick kids are filling hospitals. But there aren’t enough beds.
Jordan “JoJo” Maeng, 6, who was diagnosed with RSV, spent seven days in the emergency room at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md., last month while he waited for a pediatric intensive care bed to become available in the region. (Family photo)
Kristi Maeng didn’t panic when oxygen levels for Jordan, her 5-year-old son with Down syndrome, plummeted, sending him to the hospital. She could accept one week in a tiny windowless emergency department room. She even learned to cope with the broken TV and nonfunctioning nurse call button.
What truly alarmed this Silver Spring mother of three was seeing doctors scramble to find beds for their sickest pediatric patients.
As the nation grapples with a surge in respiratory illnesses making very young children and babies ill, the high demand for inpatient and pediatric intensive-care-unit beds means children are spending days and weeks in emergency rooms designed for short-term evaluation and treatment.
The surge has hit states in the East and Southeast particularly hard, with D.C., Maryland and Virginia reporting the highest incidence of influenza-like illness, which includes RSV, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
Pediatricians last week asked President Biden and Xavier Becerra, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to declare an emergency to give providers and hospitals more flexibility to care for sick children.
The letter from the heads of Children’s Hospital Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics said that in some states, more than 90 percent of pediatric beds are full, meaning more children like Jordan will languish in emergency departments and makeshift spaces.
A CHA spokeswoman said conversations with the administration and Congress continue but that further action has not yet been taken.
Experts say the high demand for pediatric ICU beds is due to the early onset of RSV, which is making children sicker than usual, along with the start of flu season and the continued circulation of the novel coronavirus on top of an overall decrease in pediatric beds and chronic staff shortages.
“It’s not fair for an ER doctor to have to decide which kid am I going to send to the bed,” Maeng, 42, said. “The system is not working.”
Responding to the surge
Theodore R. Delbridge, the governor-appointed head of a Maryland state agency responsible for coordinating statewide emergency management systems, saw this coming. One year ago, clinicians reported an out-of-season increase in RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, and worried that flu and covid surges could overwhelm the system.
He expanded C4, the federally funded Critical Care Coordination Center, created in December 2020 to find intensive care beds for adults with covid, to a pediatrics call center called C4 Pediatrics. At all times, two doctors with pediatric expertise and two clinical coordinators with a bird’s-eye view of pediatric inpatient and intensive-care-bed capacity across the region field calls from doctors seeking transfers for their critically ill patients.
The pediatric division staffed up in October 2021, but, to his surprise, Delbridge said, it was not very busy, taking only about 20 calls a month, with a peak of 64 calls in June.
“That all changed in September,” he said.
The center fielded 194 pediatric requests that month and more than three times as many — 639 — in October, including nearly 600 for respiratory illnesses, Delbridge said. The center is on pace for a busy November as well, with 359 calls as of midday Tuesday.
“For the last several weeks it’s been constant phone calls,” said Jennifer Anders, medical director for C4 Pediatrics and a pediatric emergency physician at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. “As soon as one ends, another one begins for a 12-hour shift. It’s pretty unrelenting.”
Calls typically come from emergency department doctors at community hospitals who may be treating RSV patients with intravenous fluids and oxygen at a high-flow rate to prop open lungs, interventions that in the best of times call for the constant monitoring available in an intensive care unit.
Patients tend to be very young, with most under 5 years old, Anders said. They struggle to breathe and can’t pause the struggle for breath long enough to drink, ending up dehydrated. Most recover with treatment but they may become worse before they improve, or their condition may deteriorate rapidly.
Doctors argue their case to call center staffers who categorize patients by low, medium and high severity and repeatedly call hospitals in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia, but also in Delaware, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, in search of beds. In the meantime, doctors offer treatment guidance, knowing patients may never get ICU beds.
“The system is overwhelmed,” Anders said. Sometimes, a doctor with a patient in severe distress will activate a pediatric transport team or call a colleague’s cellphone — whatever it takes, she said.
“They all look sick; they all need ICUs,” she said. “My goal with C4 Pediatrics is that no kid dies in a community hospital waiting for a critical care bed.”
Seven days in the ER
In September, when a seemingly simple cold sank Jordan’s oxygen saturation levels, paramedics took him by ambulance to Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center in Rockville. It took all night for doctors to find the boy a pediatric intensive care bed. At 3 a.m. he was transported to Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, where he stayed for the next four days.
Then, on Oct. 11, his oxygen levels dropped again and his other rushed him to the nearest emergency room, Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. He was diagnosed with RSV and assigned an emergency department room with a small bed for him and, later, a small reclining chair where Maeng slept, leaving only when her husband could relieve her after his workday.
“It was miserable,” she said. “I have never seen my son look so down and sad and depressed. You’re in this teeny tiny room, constantly different doctors coming in.” Only visits from his siblings Katelin, 7, and Michael, 4, seemed to cheer the boy, who goes by “JoJo.”
Holley Meers, the chief of emergency medicine at Holy Cross Hospital, declined to speak about any specific case, including that of the Maeng family, but said her staff makes accommodations, such as setting aside medicine measured according to a child’s weight, pediatric gowns and oxygen-supply tubing, to care for children awaiting transfer.
“We are going to care for patients as long as they need care — if that means at our hospital, [then] that is what we are going to do,” she said. “When beds are not available, care still goes on.”
The ER was not an ideal place for Jordan, who turned 6 after this stay. Besides the discomfort and close quarters, the constant coming and going of different doctors and nurses meant his mom constantly had to explain his situation and unique needs.
Friends, family members and their church community came through with gift cards for hot meals, allowing the family to skip the boxed meals available in the ER.
Maeng watched doctors transfer a child even sicker than her son to a PICU bed first, a decision she said she understood, given the other child’s condition. She said one doctor explained to her that “there is literally not a pediatric intensive care bed to be had in the whole DMV area.”
Doctors eventually found a bed for Jordan back at Sinai in Baltimore, where he stayed a second time for another four days. Once home, his face was rubbed raw from the high-flow oxygen cannula used to support his breathing, and being stuck in a hospital bed affected his gait; he walked like a penguin for a few days, Maeng said. Now, he takes a daily steroid to keep his lungs open and avoid another ER visit.
Maeng said their Christian faith helped her family see a higher purpose in the suffering her middle child endured.
“While it was a crazy stay, seven days, I’m thankful,” she said. “I can share our story and bring light to the situation right now.” | 2022-11-22T19:45:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | High demand for pediatric beds stresses system - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/rsv-pediatric-beds-emergency-room/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/rsv-pediatric-beds-emergency-room/ |
A number of factors — potentially including the color of a room — can influence how we experience temperature
How to choose a blanket that will keep you warm all winter
Advice for making your home more energy-efficient
One major factor in how you “run” is whether you’re used to hot or cold. If you’re accustomed to a freezing climate, you’ll be less tolerant of heat and likely to feel it more intensely than someone who grew up in Miami (and vice-versa), though this can change over time. | 2022-11-22T19:45:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is your thermostat reading temperature wrong or are you just cold? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/11/22/thermostat-wrong-temperature/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/11/22/thermostat-wrong-temperature/ |
Moderna bivalent coronavirus boosters in a clinic on Thursday in Richmond. (Steve Helber/AP Photo)
Now comes the big hurdle: Thanksgiving and winter holidays in crowded indoor rooms, filled with family and friends. Those are conditions ideal for spreading covid-19. Everyone should consider common-sense precautions such as wearing masks in packed public indoor areas, trying to improve air ventilation and testing often. Meanwhile, preliminary scientific reports about the efficacy of the new bivalent boosters have carried a hint of disappointment. So are the boosters really worth getting? The answer is yes.
The core issue is that the new bivalent boosters from Pfizer and Moderna are aimed at both the original pandemic virus and the omicron variant, BA.5, that was prevalent for much of this year. When the bivalent shot was formulated during the summer, BA.5 was raging, and the Food and Drug Administration urged the manufacturers to proceed based on extrapolations from limited human clinical trials. But now BA.5 is receding, giving way to a mix of new subvariants, including a few, such as BQ.1 and its offspring, that are evolutionary descendants of BA.5. As of Saturday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that BA.5 accounts for 24 percent of the cases in the United States, while BQ.1 is 25.5 percent and BQ.1.1 is 24.2 percent, trends that are likely to continue in the weeks ahead.
Even though the vaccine match to the variants is not ideal, the bivalent boosters might provide protection against hospitalization and death, and thus are especially important for the most vulnerable, including the elderly and immunocompromised. Moderna announced Nov. 14 that a clinical trial involving more than 500 people showed the booster worked significantly better against the BA.5 variant than earlier boosters, and these results were consistent across age groups from 19 years old to over 65. In a much smaller study involving just 40 people, the booster also showed some effectiveness against one of the new variants, BQ.1.1. Pfizer and its partner BioNTech reported similar results Friday for people 55 years and older with its bivalent booster.
One explanation for these positive indications is that the new variants are evolutionary offshoots of BA.5; thus, the vaccines are still partially effective. At the same time, the new crop is gaining ground in large part because they are better at evading the body’s immune system. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulator, told the New York Times, “It’s true, we’re not sure how well these vaccines will do yet against preventing symptomatic disease,” but added that “even modest improvements in vaccine response to the bivalent boosters could have important positive consequences on public health.”
Unfortunately, national vaccine uptake continues to lag. According to the CDC, only 13.1 percent of the eligible population 18 and older has gotten the bivalent booster, and only 29.6 percent of those 65 and older. This defies good sense. The booster shots are still free, readily available and work better than the previous boosters even as the virus evolves.
Much still needs to be done to build better vaccines that protect longer and against more variants, including those that might emerge in the future. But it is worth grabbing the booster that exists today, the jab being a small price for any measure that can help keep covid at bay. | 2022-11-22T19:46:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The booster isn’t perfect, but still can help against covid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/covid-vaccine-booster-variants/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/covid-vaccine-booster-variants/ |
Anthony S. Fauci speaks Tuesday during his final White House press briefing before retiring at the end of this year. (Ken Cedeno/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Fauci, 81, has announced he will leave government service next month, stepping down as President Biden’s top medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he has led for 38 years.
“My message and my final message — maybe the final message I give you from this podium — is that please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated covid-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible to protect yourself, your family and your community,” he said.
Fauci became the face of the coronavirus pandemic response, drawing widespread praise and harsh criticism while he and his family received death threats. Some Republicans, most notably Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have called for Fauci’s firing, questioning the science behind vaccines, masks and other public health measures and pushing conspiracy claims about Fauci having a role in the origin of the coronavirus.
Jean-Pierre and Jha offered kind words for Fauci, who was reflective in answering reporters’ questions about the toll of the pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 6.6 million worldwide, including about 1.1 million confirmed deaths in the United States.
Fauci took over the little-known National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984 after joining the parent agency, the National Institutes of Health, as a 27-year-old doctor just out of a medical residency. Viewed as a rising star when he joined NIH in 1968, Fauci ultimately advised seven presidents and ended up being on the front lines of every major health event since then, including AIDS, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax scares. During that time, the institute grew from having a $350 million annual budget to its current budget exceeding $6 billion.
Fauci was well known and widely cited in the scientific community before the coronavirus pandemic made him the target of Republican lawmakers and media figures. During the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic, it was activists who frequently criticized the government for its slow response to the deaths of many members of the LGBT community. In the era of social media and 24-hour news, criticism — and conspiracy theories — aimed at Fauci and the government were multiplied.
Missteps in the earliest days of the pandemic, such as failing to recognize that asymptomatic people were prime spreaders of the virus and dismissing the necessity of masks, seriously hurt his credibility with some people, including Donald Trump, who questioned Fauci’s expertise toward the end of his presidency.
“When you’re dealing with an evolving outbreak with the information, you get changes from week to week and month to month,” Fauci said. “We’ve got to probably do a better job of when we talk to the public, explaining that this is a dynamic situation that could change.”
“The only thing people heard when they throw it back at you is, ‘Well, you said we don’t have to worry about anything,’ so you just got to make sure you always underscore the dynamic nature of what you’re dealing with,” Fauci added.
Several Republicans — including some in the GOP-controlled House — have pledged to investigate Fauci’s handling of the pandemic in the next Congress. Fauci said Tuesday that he will cooperate with the potential requests of lawmakers.
“If there are oversight hearings, I absolutely will cooperate and testify before the Congress,” he said. “Obviously, you may not know, but I testified before the Congress a few hundred times over the last 40 years or so. So I have no trouble testifying. We can defend and explain and stand by everything that we’ve said. So I have nothing to hide.”
Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report. | 2022-11-22T19:46:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fauci urges updated coronavirus shots in ‘final message’ from White House - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/fauci-final-white-house-coronavirus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/fauci-final-white-house-coronavirus/ |
Georg Bätzing, head of the German Bishops' Conference, attends a news conference Saturday, at the end of a six-day visit to the Vatican. (Riccardo De Luca/AP)
VATICAN CITY — German bishops departed the Vatican with mixed feelings of “relief and concern,” after renewing their loyalty to Rome over the weekend but leaving questions about sexuality, the role of women and how to reform power structures in the church still unanswered.
Speaking at a news conference Saturday, the president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, said that despite a ban from the Vatican, he plans to personally continue blessing same-sex couples.
“For me, as a bishop, these blessings for people who ask God’s blessing for their committed relationship, I would not take that away from them,” Bätzing said.
Sixty-two German bishops came to Rome last week for the traditional “ad limina” visits with members of the Vatican departments and offices that make up the Roman Curia. The bishops also had a private audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican and an extraordinary meeting with all the Vatican department heads.
This was the first time the German bishops had visited the Vatican since they started their “synodal path,” a series of nationwide discussions among clergy and laity to address clerical sex abuse in the country, in 2018. A report issued the same year showed that a pervasive culture of coverup and clericalism had led to numerous abuse scandals in the church.
U.S. bishops’ report to Vatican shows a Catholic Church split by politics
The German synodal path has included discussions challenging the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality, female ordination, and the role of clergy and lay people in the church. It adopted a number of resolutions but has encountered pushback from Rome as the Vatican attempts to rein in the German bishops.
In March 2021, the Vatican’s doctrinal department banned the blessing of same-sex couples taking place in the German church. Some German priests continued to bless the unions anyhow. That summer, the Vatican secretariat of state reminded German bishops that the synodal path “does not have the power to compel bishops and the faithful to assume new modes of governance and new approaches to doctrine and morals.”
While conversations between bishops and Vatican officials were “tough but civil” last week, Bätzing insisted that “it is wrong to speak of a so-called ‘showdown’ in Rome.”
German bishops had a chance to voice their concerns with Vatican officials on Friday, including Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin; Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the head of the department overseeing bishops; and the Vatican’s doctrine czar, Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer. Bätzing said the topics of power structures, priestly life, female leadership and sexuality were openly addressed.
In his speech to the Vatican curia, Bätzing said he was “astonished” that some within the Vatican departments fail to recognize the need for renewal in the church’s practice and teachings. He pointed to clericalism, understood as “the use of power and the exploitation of dependence” of the faithful, as the main culprit for the sexual abuse crisis and called the question of the role of women in the church “the decisive question for the future.”
The bishop underlined that “the synodal path of the church in Germany neither seeks a schism nor leads to a national church,” pushing back against critics. There are tensions, Bätzing said, and, like in many families, “it sometimes gets loud.” But the German church, he said, seeks to participate in “a better Catholic Church” where “we will stay together.” A joint statement between German bishops and the Holy See states that Ferrer and Ouellet spoke “frankly and clearly” about their reservations regarding the German synodal path.
Notably absent from the meeting was Francis, a move Bätzing described as characteristic of “a clever Jesuit” who left the prelates to “argue like brothers.” The bishop said he was “encouraged” when he met with the pope the day before.
Francis has been ambivalent toward the German synodal discussions, which are taking place amid a global consultation of lay and religious faithful, to be concluded in 2024. While promoting open discussions and ideas, the pope, in a 2019 letter to the German church, also reinforced the need to avoid becoming too polarized or political.
The German synodal path, though, will go on. A fifth general assembly is scheduled for March.
“The follow-up phase begins now,” Bätzing said, “as does the phase of reflection on what was said and heard: our concerns, which we raised in Rome, and the considerations that Rome gave us to take home.” | 2022-11-22T19:46:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | German Catholic bishops meet with Vatican over homosexuality, women - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/11/22/german-catholic-church-homosexuality-vatican/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/11/22/german-catholic-church-homosexuality-vatican/ |
Same-sex marriage, long a divisive issue, could be what that brings Americans together, said Troy Williams, executive director of Equality Utah
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) leaves the Senate floor after voting yes on a procedural vote on federal legislation protecting same-sex marriages on Wednesday. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
An earlier version of the story incorrectly said that a California court ruled a ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional after the state passed Proposition 8, a referendum that would restrict marriage to heterosexual couples. Proposition 8 passed after that ruling. This version has been updated.
In the summer of 2008, leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints drew a line in the sand against same-sex marriage, urging Mormons in California to do all they could to support Proposition 8, a referendum that would restrict marriage to heterosexual couples in the state via a constitutional amendment.
“Our best efforts are required to preserve the sacred institution of marriage,” the church’s First Presidency wrote in a letter read to all California Latter-day Saint congregations that June.
Voters narrowly approved Proposition 8. But the church’s public image took a beating, said Benjamin Park, a scholar of Mormonism at Sam Houston State University. “Church leaders recognized the writing on the wall,” said Park.
The defeat led LDS Church leaders to back the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would protect same-sex marriage that Congress is now expected to pass with bipartisan support. In Wednesday’s 62-37 Senate vote to end debate on the bill and advance it, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah was among the yes votes.
The LDS Church’s backing of the bill, which came as a surprise to many who haven’t followed the church’s history, didn’t stem from their disappointment over Prop 8 alone — church leaders converted to a strategy of compromise on LGBTQ rights, at least in the public square, Park said. They saw that expanding rights for same-sex couples could also provide protection for religious groups.
That realization eventually led to the “Utah compromise” of 2015, in which LDS leaders backed an anti-discrimination law to protect LGBTQ people in Utah that carved out religious-liberty protections.
The current bill, church leaders said, guarantees the rights of both LGTBQ Americans and religious groups with more traditional views of marriage.
“We believe this approach is the way forward,” church leaders said in a statement Tuesday (Nov. 15). “As we work together to preserve the principles and practices of religious freedom together with the rights of LGBTQ individuals, much can be accomplished to heal relationships and foster greater understanding.”
Park said the LDS Church realized that its support for nondiscrimination creates the social capital needed to protect the rights of churches to govern their own affairs.
A billionaire and the tech industry are trying to shape LGBTQ rights in deeply Mormon Utah
Other religious leaders who believe that same-sex marriage is sinful took a different approach.
Catholic bishops have labeled the Respect for Marriage Act a threat to both marriage and religious liberty and claimed in a letter this summer that it could open the door to legalizing polygamy.
Writing on Facebook on Tuesday, evangelical leader Franklin Graham mocked the proposed law as the “Destruction of Marriage Act,” while approving of an article by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler that called the bill a threat to religious liberty and to conservative values.
“Anyone who would redefine marriage, the most fundamental building block of society, is no conservative, no friend of the natural family, and no defender of family values,” Mohler wrote at World Opinions, a conservative site where he serves as editor.
The Respect for Marriage bill, introduced this summer, gained traction this week after a group of senators proposed an amendment adding protections for religious liberty and banning polygamy. The law also protects interracial marriage.
“I guarantee the church was happy that polygamy is not protected,” said Patrick Mason, a professor of LDS history at Utah State University. “The church does not want to touch polygamy with a 10-foot pole.”
The LDS Church gave up polygamy in the 1800s because leaders realized that keeping plural marriage as a religious practice threatened the church’s survival, Mason pointed out. He said while revelation from God might have played a role in giving up polygamy, there was a pragmatic side as well.
“Church leaders realized that the necessary thing they had to do was protect the right to retain their temples, perform their sacred ordinances, and send missionaries in the world,” he said. “Everything else was negotiable.”
That kind of pragmatism has stuck with church leaders, said Mason. In some ways, he added, LDS members know that being a faithful citizen means being a good loser.
But the Prop 8 fight had at least as much impact on the church’s attitude toward this week’s vote. Troy Williams, executive director of Equality Utah, said the episode actually forged a closer relationship between marriage equality activists in Utah and LDS Church leaders.
When supporters of marriage equality learned in 2008 that money was flowing from Utah to California, they contacted church leaders to see whether the two sides could find common ground, said Williams.
Those early meetings were tense but eventually led the church to support for local anti-discrimination laws and then for a statewide compromise drawn from similar laws in California and New York, which have long carved out exemptions for religious groups. “It’s not like we invented something new,” Williams said.
He said marriage equality activists in Utah wanted to change public policy, not church doctrine.
“That’s not up to us,” he said. “That’s between church members and their leaders. The key to living in a pluralistic society is that we have to be able to figure out how to coexist and respect people where they are.”
The willingness to compromise has helped change public opinion about marriage for same-sex couples in Utah, said Williams, pointing to a recent survey, published by the LDS Church-owned Deseret News, that found that 72 percent of the state’s residents support same-sex marriage.
A similar poll in 2014, according to the Deseret News, found that 57 percent of Utah residents opposed same-sex marriage.
“What happened is that people started going to their children’s same-sex weddings and having a blast,” said Williams. “And they saw the love and joy in their children’s hearts. That’s what has truly shifted in this moment.”
Williams sees the hoped-for passage of the Respect for Marriage bill as a sign that same-sex marriage, once a polarizing issue, can bring Americans together.
“We all need a success story right now,” he said.
Robin Fretwell Wilson, a University of Illinois law professor who helped craft the Utah compromise, agrees. Wilson has long argued that same-sex marriage supporters and religious groups can work together and has advocated for the Fairness for All bill, a stalled piece of federal legislation modeled on the Utah compromise.
Wilson has described civil rights — such as same-sex marriage and religious liberty — as “puzzle pieces” that can fit together if people of good faith work together.
She said the apocalyptic thinking that fueled much of the opposition to same-sex marriage has largely disappeared.
“It was panic, panic, panic — and then it was gone. | 2022-11-22T19:47:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How the Latter-day Saints came to back Senate’s same-sex marriage bill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/11/22/lds-same-sex-marriage-senate-bill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/11/22/lds-same-sex-marriage-senate-bill/ |
Cristiano Ronaldo, Manchester United agree to part ways
Cristiano Ronaldo's second stint with Manchester United ended Tuesday, the team announced. (Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images)
Manchester United announced Tuesday that it has parted ways with star Cristiano Ronaldo, adding in a statement that the departure is “by mutual agreement, with immediate effect.”
“Cristiano Ronaldo is to leave Manchester United by mutual agreement, with immediate effect,” the statement read. “The club thanks him for his immense contribution across two spells at Old Trafford, scoring 145 goals in 346 appearances, and wishes him and his family well for the future. Everyone at Manchester United remains focused on continuing the team’s progress under Erik ten Hag and working together to deliver success on the pitch.”
Manchester United signed Ronaldo, 37, from Juventus in August 2021, opening the Portuguese striker’s second stint with the Premier League powerhouse following a previous spell from 2003 to 2009.
The termination of his contract follows his recent interview with broadcaster Piers Morgan, which aired last week on TalkTV in the United Kingdom. In the interview, Ronaldo said he felt “betrayed” by the team and that he didn’t respect Manager Erik ten Hag, among other grievances. Hours before the interview was broadcast, Manchester United tore down a giant mural outside its stadium containing its now-former star’s image.
Ronaldo is competing for Portugal in Qatar, where it opens World Cup play against Ghana on Thursday. | 2022-11-22T19:47:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cristiano Ronaldo, Manchester United agree to part ways - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/cristiano-ronaldo-manchester-united/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/cristiano-ronaldo-manchester-united/ |
Hebe de Bonafini, strident voice for Argentine ‘dirty war’ victims, dies at 93
She drew international attention as a leader of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo but was a polarizing figure at times within Argentina
Hebe de Bonafini during a protest march in 2019. (Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty Images)
There were moments when Hebe de Bonafini inspired the world: defying Argentina’s military junta to lead a mothers’ campaign seeking justice for thousands of people “disappeared” by the dictatorship — including her two sons and daughter-in-law.
There also were times of disunity and scorn. Her strident views divided the famed Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo movement, and her caustic tongue could leave her isolated because of comments seen as antisemitic and justifying the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as payback for America’s bullying.
Her contrasting legacies — unwavering and alienating — became a fixture of Argentine political life for more than four decades as the country grappled with the horrors of the right-wing junta’s rule from 1976 to 1983 and rebuilt a democracy still haunted by the past.
Ms. de Bonafini, once a homespun mom with a grammar-school education, moved through that arc as a voice of conscience over the regime’s “dirty war,” yet also as caretaker of her own combative political brand that allowed almost no middle ground.
“It’s true that I am very radical,” said Ms. de Bonafini, who died Nov. 20 at a hospital in La Plata, Argentina, at 93. “The mothers always ask for the maximum, and what is the maximum that we ask for: to have justice, to maintain principles and to live with ethics.”
The group was first galvanized by rage and sorrow. Ms. de Bonafini and 13 fellow mothers — all with missing children or relatives — gathered in 1977 outside the main government palace in Buenos Aires. It was a courageous challenge to the dictatorship and its violent crackdowns against anyone it perceived as a threat, including journalists, authors, professors, leftist students and political opponents.
The mothers returned each Thursday. And more joined each week, walking around a clock tower and holding images of their missing loved ones. A simple white headscarf, emblazed with the names of the disappeared, became the movement’s hallmark. Ms. de Bonafini was rarely seen without a scarf with wisps of hair — chestnut, then gray — peeking out as the years passed.
When police seized one of the original protest leaders, Azucena Villaflor, in December 1977, Ms. de Bonafini assembled the group in the plaza and quickly steered the tone of the marches in a more aggressive direction. Ms. de Bonafini later brought in megaphones and loudspeakers, shouting insults against the junta and crying out the names of those missing. (Villaflor was taken to a prison camp, and her remains were found by forensic teams in 2005.)
An estimated 30,000 people were “disappeared” and presumed killed by the military regime. The Argentine mothers inspired similar movements over the decades, including women-led peace rallies during the Balkan wars and Russian mothers opposing the war in Ukraine.
“We are not fighting over whether our children are alive or dead,” Ms. de Bonafini said in 1986. “We have a much more wide-ranging fight. We are looking for justice, and all that might mean: that people not forget.”
In February 1977, security forces took away Ms. de Bonafini’s eldest son, Jorge, who was part of a leftist guerrilla faction. In December 1977, her other son, Raúl, was hauled away. Six months later, Jorge’s wife, María Elena Bugnone Cepeda, was arrested. None were seen by their families again.
“Before my son was kidnapped, I was just another woman, another housewife,” Ms. de Bonafini said in 2017.
Miguel Etchecolatz, enforcer of Argentina's 'dirty war,' dies at 93
Even after the collapse of the junta, Ms. de Bonafini kept up her confrontational style with its democratically elected successors to demand answers and mete out punishment. All the while, she said, threats against her never stopped. In biographer Alejandro Diago’s 1988 book, “Hebe Bonafini, Memoria y Esperanza,” she described herself as a “mother-lion” always on the hunt.
That zeal, however, brought rifts and recriminations. The mothers’ movement split in 1986 along the with-me-or-against-me lines drawn by Ms. de Bonafini. Some joined her. Others broke away into a separate faction, complaining that Ms. de Bonafini’s political leanings had become too extreme and her temperament too unpredictable.
She adopted staunch anti-U.S. views — a principled position, she argued, given U.S. backing for Argentina’s dictatorship and other right-wing regimes in Latin America — and embraced some of Washington’s main foes, such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and FARC guerrillas in Colombia’s civil war. After the 9/11 attacks, Ms. de Bonafini said she felt “happiness.”
“The blood of so many in that moment were avenged,” she said, pointing to NATO bombings, U.S. embargoes and military alliances with authoritarian governments. “That was due to this power that those men attacked, with their own bodies,” she added. “And everyone knew it.” (Others, too, around the world draw links between the attacks and U.S. foreign policy.)
Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky called her out for the remarks. She shot back by noting his Jewish faith and calling him a “servant of the United States,” bringing accusations of an antisemitic smear.
In 2005, she also denounced Pope John Paul II, saying he would “go to hell” for his credited role in helping nudge the collapse of communism. She later sought support for her anti-poverty efforts from Pope Francis, who was born in Argentina and became the first Latin American pontiff.
Yet a plan led by Ms. de Bonafini to build apartments for residents of Buenos Aires slums unraveled in 2011 in a scandal that deeply tarnished her image as a social crusader.
Ms. de Bonafini’s political ally, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, then the Argentine president, set aside $45 million for Sueños Compartidos (“Shared Dreams”), a charity group founded by Ms. de Bonafini’s group, Foundation Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.
Ms. de Bonafini’s pick of builders raised eyebrows: a company called Meldorek, linked to a friend and adviser, Sergio Schoklender, who had been jailed along with his brother Pablo for torturing and killing their parents in 1981. Ms. de Bonafini had befriended Sergio Schoklender in prison over shared human rights issues before his release in 1995.
Allegations soon were raised of alleged overcharging by Meldorek and failure to make pension payments for workers. Schoklender, meanwhile, traveled on a private plane and allegedly used company money to buy a Ferrari and yachts — although he claimed he did not own the firm.
Schoklender was charged with fraud and fiscal mismanagement. A judge in 2017 expanded the indictments to Ms. de Bonafini. She claimed the allegations were mounted by political enemies. The case is still open.
Argentine leaders, however, were effusive with tributes after her death. “We lost a tireless fighter,” said a statement from President Alberto Fernández. “She faced the genocidal when collective common sense went in another direction,” he added.
Protests and threats
After democracy was restored in 1983, Ms. de Bonafini decried the limited scope of the trials of former junta officials. Then in 1986, an amnesty was passed that covered many security officers in attempts to avoid post-junta upheavals in the military and police. Her protests branched out.
In 1996, Ms. de Bonafini was beaten by police during a student-led protest over the introduction of university entrance exams. “Never before has blood spilled onto a scarf of the mothers,” Ms. de Bonafini told the New York Times. “If they could have, I believe they would have killed me.”
Her polarizing effect was evident in the aftermath. A caller on a morning radio show grumbled that Ms. de Bonafini “is always sticking her militant nose where it does not belong.”
Five years later, Ms. de Bonafini said she had received anonymous threats that attackers would hit her “where it hurts the most.” In May 2001, two men posing as phone company workers entered her home and severely beat her daughter, María Alejandra Bonafini, and burned the woman’s arms with a cigarette.
Ms. de Bonafini’s death was announced by her daughter, her only survivor, and statements from Argentina’s political leaders. No cause was given.
The election of leftist President Néstor Kirchner in 2003 brought a new political alliance with Ms. de Bonafini. Kirchner lifted the amnesty and resumed prosecutions for alleged “dirty war” crimes. Ms. de Bonafini stood by the family, including Kirchner’s widow Cristina and political successor, amid allegations of corruptions. (Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is the current vice president.)
“We are their voice, or try to be their voice,” Ms. de Bonafini said of the disappeared.
The band U2 paid homage to the protests in its 1987 song “Mothers of the Disappeared.” When U2 visited Argentina in 1998, singer Bono took time to meet Ms. de Bonafini. | 2022-11-22T20:16:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hebe de Bonafini, who led Argentine mothers of the 'disappeared,' dies at 93 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/22/hebe-bonafini-mothers-argentina-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/22/hebe-bonafini-mothers-argentina-dies/ |
The Supreme Court can protect checks and balances
The Supreme Court on Oct. 31. (Eric Lee/For The Washington Post)
I want my grandchildren to grow up in a country where their votes cannot be extinguished by an extremist state legislature with unchecked power over our elections.
On Dec. 7, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear Moore v. Harper. This case is about a lot more than gerrymandering; it is about the authority of state legislatures over the running of elections. The independent state legislature theory (ISLT) represents the idea that state legislatures have the constitutional authority to pass resolutions regarding the conduct of federal elections without any oversight from their state courts. All reputable constitutional scholars view this as unlawful and a dangerous assault on our democracy.
I beseech the court to consider the entirety of the Constitution, not simply one phrase. Checks and balances are a cornerstone of our free society, and they are mentioned often in our founding documents. They provide each branch at every level of government the means to limit the reach and power of the government itself. With ISLT as the law of the land, state legislatures would no longer have those checks in place with regard to federal elections. Checks and balances, including court review for constitutionality, do apply to the congressional power to set election regulations, and it would be a distortion of the framers’ intent to rule that they do not apply to state legislatures as well.
Martin Wulfe, Silver Spring | 2022-11-22T20:24:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Supreme Court can protect checks and balances - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/supreme-court-can-protect-checks-balances/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/supreme-court-can-protect-checks-balances/ |
Capitals goaltender Darcy Kuemper and defenseman Erik Gustafsson lament a goal earlier this month by the Penguins' Brock McGinn, right. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Here are the Washington Capitals, welcoming the comfort and familiarity of a pair of home games bracketed around Thanksgiving, in a completely uncomfortable and unfamiliar position. They have lost four in a row. They are in second-to-last place in the Metropolitan Division. They have the second-worst goal differential in the Eastern Conference. Twenty games in, they’re chasing the season.
“It’s very frustrating,” veteran defenseman John Carlson said. “It weighs on a lot of guys. And that’s kind of the vicious cycle when you are going through these things. It’s not in February or something where you were doing real good and you need to kind of reset and get back into it. This whole beginning of the season has been rocky.”
And early-season rockiness is not something with which these Caps — with such a stable, reliable core — has had to deal. In the relentlessness of an NHL season, lulls are inevitable. The Capitals, almost invariably, have pushed them off. In the previous 14 seasons, only once have they finished the first 20 games with a losing record. The last time they posted fewer points in 20 games than the 17 they have now — a 7-10-3 record — they fired their coach. (Calm down. We’ll get to that.)
The easy answer for the struggles: injuries. Tom Wilson and Nicklas Backstrom, two foundational pieces, haven’t yet played — which was expected. The unexpected parts: T.J. Oshie has missed 11 games. Dmitry Orlov has missed seven. Carlson missed six. Connor Brown, a major offseason acquisition, blew out a knee in his fourth game. On and on.
So on a nightly basis, the lineup that takes the ice only vaguely resembles the lineup they expected. Yeah, there’s some truth in the thought that this is what you signed up for: assemble an old team, and not everyone’s going to lace up the skates 82 times.
But there’s a little bit of a perfect storm to how these injuries have upset the lineup, and tiny daggers that make it all sting that much more. Example: Darcy Kuemper, the Stanley Cup-winning goalie the Caps brought in to stabilize an unstable position, is 25th in the league in goals against average. The two goalies he replaced — Vitek Vanecek, now with New Jersey, and Ilya Samsonov, now with Toronto — rank third and fifth, respectively. (Yeah, GAA is a flawed stat for individual evaluation, and Samsonov responded to securing the top job with the Maple Leafs by getting hurt. Still.)
Back to the injuries. Brown, acquired in an offseason trade with Ottawa, was supposed to help offset the absence of the physically impactful Wilson, who is still working his way back from the torn ACL he suffered in last year’s playoffs — and may not be back till after the new year. That hasn’t happened. Last season, when the Caps suffered a similar run of early-season injuries — particularly to Oshie and Backstrom — Wilson was around to team with Alex Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov, providing the Caps a line that could carry a team.
Now, there are nights when no Caps’ line can carry a period. Dylan Strome, an offseason free agent signing, was meant to fill in for Backstrom, and has done fine. The problem: He’s not Backstrom. Conor Sheary is not Wilson, either. Alexei Protas is not Oshie. There’s a pattern here. The Capitals have decent depth. But that’s what it has to be: Depth. Not bunches of bit players thrust into starring roles.
So a franchise that, from 2007-08 to 2021-22, scored the second-most goals in the NHL and won the second-most games and piled up the most standings points now must take a different approach. That formula has to be measured out to the milliliter. The Caps must make the most of their power-play opportunities. (They’re 1 for their past 26.) They must excel on the penalty kill. (They have allowed five goals on 12 power plays over the past four games.) They must play consistent defense. (They’ve allowed four or more goals in six of their past seven games.)
And they have to, somehow, scrape and claw to net a third goal. When they score at least that many, they’re excellent: a 7-1-1 record. When they score two or fewer — which they have done in more than half their games — they are 0-9-2.
So here come the Philadelphia Flyers, just ahead of them in the standings, on Wednesday. Then the Calgary Flames on Friday. Then — gulp — a stretch in which they play eight of nine on the road, trips that span from New Jersey to Vancouver, Seattle to Philadelphia. The landscape includes no layups, not anymore.
“This group’s got to find ways to win hockey games,” Coach Peter Laviolette said. “I think everybody sees players when they come back [and start practicing], so that’s always a positive sign. But the reality is we’ve got to work with what’s available to us, and these are the players that are available to us, and we work every day to try and get better and win hockey games.”
A word about the coach: This isn’t on him. Yes, the last time the Caps suffered through a start worse than this was way back in 2007-08, when the first 20 games yielded six wins and 13 points. After a loss in the 21st, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Glen Hanlon was fired and replaced by Bruce Boudreau. It was the spark those Young Guns Caps needed. They changed both their style and their results. They won 11 of their final 12 games and pushed a 22-year-old Ovechkin into the playoffs for the first time.
But if you’re sharpening your knives for Laviolette, save them for Thursday’s turkey. Laviolette won’t say it, and he shouldn’t, but Scotty Bowman could replace him tomorrow and struggle with this lineup and this schedule. Laviolette’s tone through it all is the following: “We expect to win. We’ve got good players in the lineup.”
He understands the production through 20 games doesn’t match the expectations this franchise has established. He also understands the first 20 games don’t make a season.
“Doesn’t guarantee anything,” he said. “There’s four or five teams this year that have had a strong start that have now drifted. There’s plenty of history that shows that somebody who maybe didn’t have the first month-and-a-half that they want, they make the playoffs and the push deep into the playoffs. …
“Ultimately, we’ve got to make our way. You can’t keep putting it off for too long, either.”
For the Capitals, late in the season has come much earlier than expected. Eventually, important pieces will return to a tattered lineup. The questions, right now, are many: What will the standings look like when they return? What do these Capitals look like at full strength? And how does an aging core so used to playing from ahead respond to having to chase a season, with yet another playoff berth at stake? | 2022-11-22T20:55:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Captials' injuries contributing to unusually slow start - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/washington-capitals-injuries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/washington-capitals-injuries/ |
The former NAACP legal secretary married Marshall in 1955 and burnished his reputation as the leading legal architect of the civil rights movement
By Bart Barnes
When Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall took his seat at the court for the first time on Oct. 2, 1967, his family was on hand to watch. The justice was joined by his wife, Cecilia “Cissy” Marshall, and two sons, Thurgood Jr. and John. (Henry Griffin/AP)
Cecilia “Cissy” Marshall, a former NAACP legal secretary who safeguarded the reputation and legacy of her late husband, Thurgood Marshall, a towering civil rights lawyer who became the first Black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, died Nov. 22 in Falls Church, Va. She was 94.
The daughter of Philippine immigrants, Mrs. Marshall — then known as Cissy Suyat — grew up in Hawaii and arrived after World War II in New York, where she took night classes to become a court stenographer. A clerk at an employment office “saw my dark skin, and she sent me to the national office of the NAACP,” she told The Washington Post years later.
Her duties also included accompanying Defense Fund officers on trips to the Deep South, where they faced down sometimes menacing local opposition. Once, she recalled in a government oral history, she was riding in a car when one passenger asked another to open the glove compartment.
Inside was a Bible and a pistol. If threatened, she recalled the man saying, “We use the Bible first.”
In May 1954, Thurgood Marshall triumphed at the Supreme Court as the NAACP’s lead lawyer in Brown v. Board, the landmark ruling that outlawed racial segregation in U.S. public schools. In the ensuing months, he became distraught as his first wife, Vivian “Buster” Burey, succumbed to lung cancer. She died in February 1955.
Soon thereafter, Marshall “began assiduously courting” Suyat, journalist Wil Haygood wrote in his 2015 biography “Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America.” They often left the office together and were seen dining in one another’s company at Harlem restaurants. Among NAACP staffers, it did not go unnoticed that, at 26, she was 20 years Marshall’s junior.
Interracial marriage was an especially sensitive issue then at the NAACP. In the late 1940s, after executive director Walter White divorced his wife and married a White woman, he faced a backlash from Whites and Blacks. “His two sisters … excoriated him, telling him he had let the Negro race down,” Haygood wrote of Walter White.
“I don’t care what people think. I’m marrying you,” she remembered him saying. He persisted, and she finally accepted. They were married Dec. 17, 1955, at an Episcopal church in Harlem, where Roy Wilkins, then executive secretary of the NAACP, gave her away. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks were among the visitors to pay their respects at the couple’s apartment.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York. The couple settled in the Washington area in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson tapped him as U.S. solicitor general. Marshall was named to the Supreme Court in 1967.
The Marshalls also started a family. Cissy Marshall took the lead in the guidance and care of their two sons and the management of their home in Falls Church, Va., while her husband was often absent, either traveling or working long hours.
“Who’s that man?” her son Thurgood Jr. once said upon seeing a picture of his father, according to Haygood’s book. Mrs. Marshall tried to explain to her children the importance of his work and the sacrifices it entailed for their family. He retired from the Court in 1991 and died in 1993.
In a 1998 biography, “Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary,” journalist Juan Williams wrote that, especially in Justice Marshall’s later years, he became known for a gruff and distant manner even with staff and friends — the result of what Williams characterized as a gnawing “frustration with the conservative court and what remained of the civil rights movement.”
“Once in a while he’ll explode,” she told Williams. “I wish he would explode more and get it out of his system. But he keeps a lot in.”
Cecilia Suyat was born in Pu’unene, Maui, on July 20, 1928. She was young when her mother died. Her father, who owned a printing business, sent her to New York to live with relatives, in part to keep her away from a boyfriend of whom he disapproved because he spoke a different Filipino dialect.
“For my father, that was a no-no,” she told The Post. “Imagine that? Another dialect, instead of another race? So he said, ‘You go to New York with your aunt and uncle and take some business courses. And if you still love him in a year, come back and marry him.’ ”
She instead married Marshall. She told The Post they had a playfully combative relationship based partly on the fact that he was a strapping 6-foot-2, and she was 4-foot-11.
“How’s the weather down there, gal?” he sometimes teased her.
“Same as up there, man,” she would answer. “I’d keep telling him: ‘I don’t care how tall you are. I could still beat you up. I’ll get on a chair.’ ” | 2022-11-22T20:55:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cecilia ‘Cissy’ Marshall, keeper of Thurgood Marshall’s legacy, dies at 94 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/22/cissy-marshall-thurgood-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/22/cissy-marshall-thurgood-dead/ |
Voting for House speaker doesn’t work the way you might think
GOP defections might not hinder McCarthy’s bid for speaker after all
House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is handed the gavel by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) after being elected as speaker on Jan. 3, 2019. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) got some bad news. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) became the fifth member of the Republican caucus in the upcoming 118th Congress to announce skepticism about voting for McCarthy as speaker.
Republicans will have a majority in the House come January, and therefore will have the opportunity to elect one of their own to lead the chamber. But with the party’s majority shaping up to be remarkably narrow, losing five votes might bring McCarthy below 218 votes in support of a speaker bid — which is to say below the level that would constitute a majority of the chamber.
The good news for McCarthy? It very well may not matter.
Election of the speaker of the House is governed by different rules than other votes in the chamber. For example, legislators cast votes for specific individuals, either one nominated by party caucuses or literally anyone else. In the 2019 speaker election, Joe Biden received a vote despite not only not serving in the House but not serving in any public office at all. Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.) said “Joseph Biden” and his vote was recorded.
In other ways, though, the election follows normal rules. It’s not that the speaker must get the support of a majority of the chamber any more than any legislative vote requires 218 votes. Instead, the speaker simply needs to earn a majority of votes cast “for a person by name,” like voting “Joseph Biden.” So if 20 legislators decide not to vote at all or vote “present,” which is not a name, only 208 votes of the 415 votes cast would be needed for a speaker to be elected. (There have also been occasions in which the House couldn’t reach agreement on a speaker, so they simply voted to allow a plurality of cast votes to determine the speaker, though not recently.)
Imagine that McCarthy’s majority lands at, say, 222 Republicans. If Norman and the other GOP skeptics choose to vote “present” or to abstain, McCarthy needs only 216 votes to be elected speaker — out of 217 other Republicans.
Similar situations have happened before. The House moved to a permanent 435-seat composition in 1929. Since then, there have been 49 votes for speaker, excluding two in which the speaker was chosen by voice vote. Most but not all of these votes were held at the beginning of a new Congress.
Here are the results, with the 218-vote mark indicated.
You can see that there are a lot of votes for people besides the two parties’ nominees; we’ll come back to that.
But there have been four elections in which the winner has received a majority of votes cast but fewer than 218 votes. That includes the election of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in 2021. Only 427 votes were cast for named individuals, meaning Pelosi needed 214 votes to be elected speaker. She got 216.
It used to be that speaker votes for people who weren’t nominated by one of the two major parties were for third-party members of the House. In the 1930s, Progressive legislators regularly earned a handful of votes. In recent years, though, there has been an explosion of protest votes — usually carefully orchestrated to avoid actually imperiling the path to the speakership of the major-party nominee who ends up winning. In 2019, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) received five votes for speaker, but Pelosi was elected speaker anyway.
In other words, the question isn’t whether McCarthy has 218 votes. It’s whether those legislators who don’t want to vote for him vote for someone else, potentially forcing the speaker election to a second or third ballot. Or further; those speaker votes that settled for a plurality followed dozens of votes that resulted in no one getting a majority.
The bigger question, really, is whether the legislators loudly protesting McCarthy’s leadership actually want to block it or just to be heard loudly protesting. We won’t know the answer to that until the votes for speaker are cast. | 2022-11-22T20:55:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Voting for House speaker doesn’t work the way you might think - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/house-speaker-mccarthy-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/house-speaker-mccarthy-republicans/ |
More than a third of Twitter’s top 100 clients have not advertised on the platform in the past two weeks, data shows
More than a third of Twitter’s top 100 marketers have not advertised on the social media network in the past two weeks, a Washington Post analysis of marketing data found — an indication of the extent of skittishness among advertisers about billionaire Elon Musk’s control of the company.
“Mars started suspending advertising activities on Twitter in late September when we learned of some significant brand safety and suitability incidents that impacted our brand,” said a statement to The Post from Mars, which, in addition to its namesake candy, makes other foods and pet products.
Pathmatics data is generated from collecting the ads shown to a sample of Twitter users in the United States. The company estimated that each top marketer’s ads were shown tens of millions of times per week or more during their busiest weeks on the site, with some of the advertisers’ ads being shown billions of times over the six months before the pause.
Wall Street has long viewed Twitter as a company that moved too slowly to push out products that would convert its viral popularity into revenue. And while Musk has been scrambling to cut costs and find alternative forms of revenue, Twitter is still heavily reliant on advertising. Last year, nearly 90 percent of the company’s $5 billion in revenue came from advertising, while the rest was derived from data licensing and other services, according to regulatory filings.
Meanwhile, Twitter recently laid off some employees in its sales division, continuing the mass exodus of employees at the company, the Wall Street Journal reported this week.
Since taking ownership of Twitter CEO Elon Musk has laid off thousands, many tasked with maintaining crucial services. Former staff worry the site may collapse. (Video: Jonathan Baran/The Washington Post)
Twitter is best known as a platform for big corporations to increase awareness of their companies with a large and diverse audience through brand advertising campaigns — the kind many companies are eager to cut when the economy sours or a given marketing platform no longer seems like a solid investment, according to experts.
Marketers are reevaluating Twitter during a moment of chaos as Musk makes dramatic changes to both the staff and the platform. The billionaire slashed roughly half the workforce and then issued an ultimatum that spurred hundreds of other employees to quit, including many involved in making sure the site was free from content that advertisers would prefer to not be associated with. In the hours after Musk took over, Twitter experienced an influx of racist and antisemitic posts that tested the boundaries of Twitter’s rules under a new owner who for months had signaled he would ease many of Twitter’s content moderation practices.
Matthew Quint, director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School, said that many companies are under “pressure, from a range of their stakeholders and consumers, around being connected with content that is viewed as inflammatory.” The challenge for them and for Twitter, he said, is that Musk is becoming “a very strong brand himself, and a controversial brand.”
“The more he is out in the front, the more advertisers may … just choose to say I’m still not ready to be heavily associated with a Musk platform at this point,” Quint said.
Even before Musk took over, marketers were pulling back on their digital advertising as worries about the economy proliferated. The chaos at Twitter and the advertising pause come at an inconvenient time: The final months of the year generally are when advertisers increase spending in an attempt to capture the holiday shopping rush and plan for prime-time events such as the Super Bowl, experts say. This year, the falloff in advertising also hits Twitter during the World Cup, a time when advertisers might be interested in reaching an international audience; 75 percent of Twitter users are outside the United States.
Brand advertising is particularly vulnerable because it is generally intended to develop recognition and loyalty among future potential customers. Companies have a plethora of other platforms to reach large audiences, such as television shows, publishers and other social media companies, experts say.
By contrast, tech companies such as Facebook and Google are known for offering marketers the ability to target their advertising campaigns to a narrowly tailored section of users who are most likely to buy the product after seeing or clicking on the ad — a phenomenon known as direct response marketing.
“Twitter, for most of these brands, has never been a critical part of their ad buy,” said Andrew Lipsman, an Insider Intelligence analyst who covers retail and e-commerce. “It’s a big enough channel that they are going to get those dollars, but it’s one of the easiest pools of spending to remove.”
Musk has had an evolving relationship with marketers and civil rights groups. Late last month, Musk posted on Twitter a letter to advertisers vowing that the site wouldn’t become a “free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” As reports surfaced that Musk had frozen some employees’ access to content moderation tools, civil-society groups pushed Twitter’s top 20 advertisers to tell Musk they would suspend their marketing campaigns if he undermines the social network’s community standards.
In early November, after a private meeting with civil rights groups, Musk appeared to offer an olive branch by pledging not to reinstate banned accounts without a clear process — a task he said would probably take weeks and meant former president Donald Trump would not rejoin the site before the midterm elections.
Two days later, Musk handed half of Twitter’s workers pink slips, prompting civil rights groups to launch a full-on boycott of the social media site. The groups argued that Twitter can’t maintain its same level of content moderation if it doesn’t have enough people to enforce its rules.
Soon after, Musk was on a private call that lasted roughly 90 minutes with Twitter’s influence council, a group of marketers, to discuss brand safety and content moderation issues, according to Lou Paskalis, a member of the council. During the meeting, Musk was questioned about his personal tweeting habits and how they might reflect poorly on the platform, according to Paskalis.
“What he does on his personal handle is taken into consideration by large advertisers who have very big risk mitigation and government apparatus as a consideration,” Paskalis said.
A few days later, Musk held a public Twitter Spaces chat for advertisers in which he reiterated that the company hadn’t made any changes to its content moderation policies and that the company’s new push to charge users $8 to be verified would lower the amount of hate speech on the platform. The plan was later delayed after some used the service to impersonate brands and famous people.
After Musk took over, many advertisers flocked to Twitter’s top executives, such as Robin Wheeler, who served as vice president of U.S. Twitter client solutions, to relay their concerns about what the site would look like under Musk’s leadership, according to Paskalis.
“There’s only 24 hours in the day,” Paskalis said Thursday. “And I get the sense that they’re working around-the-clock to keep their fingers in the dike.”
Their efforts might be short lived. On Friday, Wheeler left the company after Musk had previously persuaded her to stay when she wanted to resign, according to media reports. And on Saturday, Musk restored former president Donald Trump’s Twitter account, eliciting a round of criticism from the civil rights groups organizing the advertiser boycott.
Musk’s “decisions over the last month have been erratic and alarming, but this decision is dangerous and a threat to American democracy,” tweeted Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “We need to ask — is it time for Twitter to go?” | 2022-11-22T21:12:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Key advertisers no longer are on Twitter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/22/twitter-advertiser-exodus-musk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/22/twitter-advertiser-exodus-musk/ |
DOHA, QATAR - NOVEMBER 21: (L-R) Morteza Pouraliganji, Milad Mohammadi and Roozbeh Cheshmi of IR Iran line up for the national anthem prior to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Group B match between England and IR Iran at Khalifa International Stadium on November 21, 2022 in Doha, Qatar. (Photo by Matthias Hangst/Getty Images) (Photographer: Matthias Hangst/Getty Images Europe)
Iranians, like much of the rest of the world, are soccer mad; the country comes to a halt when Team Melli, as the national squad is known, plays in the World Cup. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself stayed up late to watch the famous win in Lyon. When the team returned home, he reportedly invited Hamid Estili, who scored the first of two goals against the US, to his residence and kissed him on the forehead.
That won’t work this time, no matter how the Iranian team fares against the US when they clash in Doha next Tuesday in the latest iteration of the tournament. For one thing, the streets are now a stage for protest, not celebration. For more than two months, Iranians have been calling for the regime’s downfall. It would be hard for the regime to boast of resistance against the West when even on the day of the first game, security forces were intensifying their violent crackdown on protesters, especially in the northwestern city of Mahabad.
Team Melli’s defiance is doubly remarkable because officials had warned the players not to express solidarity with the protests. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself had admonished them not to “disrespect” the country. Ahead of the tournament, the team met with President Ebrahim Raisi and gave him the No. 12 jersey.
Meanwhile, you can bet that Iranian officials will be putting enormous pressure on players to sing lustily before their game against the Americans — if nothing else, then to push the narrative that Iranians hate the US more than they despise their own rulers. But the World Cup’s propaganda value to the regime will have already been drained. | 2022-11-22T21:16:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iran’s Regime Is Already a Big Loser at the World Cup - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/irans-regime-is-already-a-big-loser-at-the-world-cup/2022/11/22/da17b5d8-6aa3-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/irans-regime-is-already-a-big-loser-at-the-world-cup/2022/11/22/da17b5d8-6aa3-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
In hearing appeal of special master appointment, judges seem skeptical that court-approved search was improper or unlawful
Pages from a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta ruling that lifted a judge's hold on the Justice Department's ability to use classified documents seized by the FBI at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, are photographed Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
ATLANTA —A panel of three appeals court judges appeared extremely skeptical Tuesday that the federal government violated former president Donald Trump’s rights when it searched Mar-a-Lago in August, questioning whether a lower court judge erred in appointing an outside expert to review documents seized from the Florida property.
During oral arguments at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, the Justice Department attempted to convince the judges that the neutral arbiter, known as a special master, should never have been appointed. Justice Department attorney Sopan Joshi told the panel Trump has failed to prove that he suffered the “irreparable harm” from the seizure that would legally necessitate a special master. He called the appointment an “intrusion” on the executive branch.
In response, James Trusty, an attorney for Trump, argued that a special master appointment didn’t significantly hamper the government’s investigation of potential mishandling of classified documents, obstruction and destruction of government property. Trusty said the Aug. 8 search of Trump’s home and private club was overly broad and agents took personal items of the former president, including golf shirts and a photo of singer Celine Dion.
But that argument didn’t seem to win over the judges, who repeatedly said Trump’s team has not proven that he needs these items returned to him and that the search was an overreach. Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr said he was concerned about the precedent the case could create by allowing the target of a search warrant to go into a court and request a special master that could interfere with an executive branch investigation before an indictment is ever issued.
Pryor also seemed to criticize Trump’s team for asking for a special master without proving that the initial search was illegal.
“If you can’t establish that it was unlawful," he said, "then what are we doing here?”
Garland names special counsel to lead Trump Mar-a-Lago, Jan. 6 probes
Both Brasher and Grant were on the panel of three judges that ruled against Trump in September in a more narrow appeal of the lower court’s decision to appoint the special master.
Joshi, who argued the case for the Justice Department, is a former clerk for conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who now works in the solicitor general’s office — argued the case for the Jo. This is the first time the Justice Department has used a lawyer from the solicitor general’s office in the special master proceedings, a sign that the government views the appeal as an important case that could potentially reach the Supreme Court.
This was the first public proceeding around the Mar-A-Lago document case since Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed prosecutor Jack L. Smith on Friday to serve as special counsel of the investigation, giving him control of the day-to-day operations of the criminal probe. The Justice Department said this week that Smith had reviewed the arguments made in the appeals court.
But while Trump’s lawyers had raised the jurisdictional issue in a previous filing about the special master, Trusty did not focus on the matter during his argument on Tuesday.
The judges Trump’s team for seemingly making different arguments in different venues. For instance, in a recent filing to the appeals court, Trump’s team argued that, under the Presidential Records Act, the former president had the right to deem presidential records as personal ones — thus allowing him to rightfully possess former White House records at Mar-A-Lago.
Trusty did not delve deeply into that argument Tuesday. But he did introduce a new one, saying that the warrant used to search Mar-A-Lago was a “general warrant” that was too broad and sifted through personal possessions of the president. Joshi disputed that characterization and said the court-approved warrant was for specific materials and only allowed a search of specific parts of Mar-a-Lago, such as Trump’s office and storage area.
“It seems to be a new argument,” Pryor said after listening to Trusty. “This really has been shifting sands of the arguments.”
Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a federal judge in Florida, had sided with Trump in September and appointed a special master to review the seized documents, barring the Justice Department from using any of the materials — including 103 documents marked as classified — until the outside examination concluded.
The Justice Department’s earlier appeal allowed the government to immediately resume using the classified documents in its criminal investigation, which is focused on whether classified material was mishandled and potential alleging obstruction or destruction of government property.
This latest appeal is asking the court to overturn the entire appointment of the special master, which would end the review process and give prosecutors access to the documents that are not marked as classified.
Dearie is expected to complete the review of the 13,000 documents that do not have classified markings next month. In an initial hearing, he expressed skepticism that Trump had personal or privilege-related claims to the seized material; he has not yet said whether any should be considered privileged and shielded from criminal investigators.
Any recommendation to shield or not documents would have to be approved by Cannon, unless the special master appointment is overturned. | 2022-11-22T21:17:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Appeals panel grills Trump lawyer over FBI search of Mar-a-Lago - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/22/trump-appeal-mar-a-lago-search/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/22/trump-appeal-mar-a-lago-search/ |
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, center, attends the United States vs. Wales match at the Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday. (Francisco Seco/AP)
DOHA, Qatar — Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday rejected criticisms that his World Cup appearance in Qatar contributed to indifference about human rights, as some activists denounced the Persian Gulf state’s treatment of migrant workers and LGBTQ people.
Blinken, an avowed soccer fan, said his visit meant the opposite. It resulted, he said, in deeper U.S. cooperation with Qatar on human rights, labor standards and counter-human trafficking efforts while serving as an opportunity to root for the U.S. national team, whose opening match against Wales ended in a 1-1 draw.
“I make no bones about having the pleasure to actually come and cheer on Team USA,” Blinken said during a news conference, when asked by reporters how he justified the trip. Members of Congress, including Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), also attended.
Blinken’s visit represents the Biden administration’s difficult balancing act with regard to Qatar, which is fast emerging as one of Washington’s most valuable partners in the Middle East despite its policies toward migrant laborers and LGBTQ people. The secretary made pointed statements about both issues.
The gas-rich state in the Persian Gulf has transformed itself to become the first Middle Eastern country to host the World Cup, spending $220 billion to build seven stadiums, renovate an eighth, and erect a network of roads and railways to connect fans to the matches.
To complete the transformation, it employed hundreds of thousands of workers from poor countries such as Pakistan and India but faced criticism for hazardous working conditions that resulted in an unknown number of migrant deaths.
In response, Qatar implemented labor reforms that some independent analysts have praised and Blinken pointed to on Tuesday. “We appreciate the work that Qatar has done to improve labor practices,” he said, noting efforts to investigate, prosecute and convict human traffickers. “Our hope and expectation [is] that some of the progress that’s been made continues and expands after the World Cup is over.”
During Qatar’s mad-dash development, it has also provided crucial assistance to the United States during the most challenging chapters of President Biden’s tenure.
Its massive Al-Udeid Air Base, which hosts several thousand U.S. troops, was a central node in the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, evacuating more Americans and Afghan civilians than any other base in the world. Qatar’s ambassador to Afghanistan personally rode in buses carrying fleeing Americans, negotiating their passage across Taliban checkpoints.
“The U.S. owes Qatar a lot and that trumps widespread criticism of its mistreatment of foreign workers right now,” said David Ottaway, a gulf expert at the Wilson Center.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it supported the U.S. push to isolate Russia diplomatically and helped stabilize the liquefied natural gas market in Europe.
Unlike Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Israel, “Qatar has taken a clear political stance on Ukraine and, while this has not translated into actively working to weaken Russia in the gas market, it has translated into giving high-profile platforms to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for example,” said Cinzia Bianco, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“Blinken’s presence in Qatar is an acknowledgment of these efforts and his high-level presence is very important as this World Cup has been marred by controversy,” she said.
Qatar’s steadfast support for U.S. interests in the Biden era stands in stark contrast with relations with other Middle East allies.
Saudi Arabia, for one, enraged U.S. officials in October by announcing a decision to cut its oil production weeks ahead of the midterm elections. Israel has openly defied Biden’s desire to reopen a consulate in Jerusalem for the Palestinians, and relations are expected to dip further with the return of right-wing firebrand Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister. The UAE, meanwhile, has meddled in U.S. politics in recent years, sparking fears among the U.S. intelligence community about its clout in Washington.
“Qatar stands out as the most reliable Arab partner the U.S. has today and remained relatively free of congressional criticism even though it has refused to establish diplomatic ties to Israel as the UAE and Bahrain have,” Ottaway said.
U.S. intelligence report says key gulf ally meddled in American politics
But Blinken’s visit hasn’t been all compliments.
The diplomat sharply criticized a decision by FIFA, soccer’s governing body, to punish World Cup players with yellow cards if they wear “OneLove” armbands in support of diversity and inclusion.
“It’s always concerning from my perspective when we see any restrictions on freedom of expression; it’s especially so when the expression is for diversity and for inclusion,” Blinken said at a news conference alongside Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani. “No one on a football pitch should be forced to choose between supporting these values and playing for their team.”
Many of the scores of fans who poured into the Qatari capital to watch the games said economic and social issues should take a back seat to the sports on display.
Chris Wixson, who along with his wife and son flew from Colorado to Qatar for the World Cup, said he was glad the secretary came to support the U.S. team despite the controversy.
“It’s the type of thing you’d hope to see, right? A team like this should bring everyone together, but everything’s so damn divisive,” he said.
Not everyone felt the same.
Michael Page, a Middle East expert at Human Rights Watch, said he wished Blinken would have used his public remarks to advocate more forcefully for migrant workers. “It’s disappointing Secretary of State Blinken has chosen to ignore widespread demands from migrant workers and their families as well as soccer players and fans to publicly call for FIFA and Qatari authorities to establish a compensation fund for workers who faced serious abuses.” | 2022-11-22T22:04:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At Qatar’s world cup, Blinken balances firmness and flattery - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/22/world-cup-blinken-qatar/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/22/world-cup-blinken-qatar/ |
Saudi Arabia stunned Argentina on Tuesday in one of the biggest upsets in World Cup history. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
In a World Cup result for the ages, Saudi Arabia bested Argentina, 2-1, in Tuesday’s Group C opener in Lusail, Qatar. The Green Falcons not only equalized the heavily favored Argentines’ first-half goal but scored again five minutes later with a galvanizing shot from Salem al-Dawsari that ultimately stood as the game-winning goal.
When it was over, it looked as if no one on the field could believe what had just happened: The 51st-ranked Saudis had toppled World Cup stalwarts and ended Argentina’s 36-match unbeaten streak in international play. Saudi Arabia’s win was even more impressive given the long odds it faced: The squad was given an 8.7 percent chance of victory, according to data analyst Nielson Gracenote, making its win statistically the biggest upset in World Cup history.
At the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, the American squad was a “band of no-hopes”: Its bench was full of amateurs and unknowns, including a student, a hearse driver and a dishwasher. But a single goal, on a shot by Philadelphia schoolteacher Walter Bahr that was redirected into the net by Haitian-born student Joey Gaetjens, stunned the world — including the English press. According to FIFA’s history of the game, the results were such a shock that pressmen in England assumed the 1-0 score was a misprint and reported England winning 10-1. At the end of the match, Brazilian fans raced onto the pitch to hoist American players on their shoulders in a game that became known as the “Miracle on Grass.”
Switzerland 1, Spain 0 (2010)
Top-ranked Spain sailed into the 2010 World Cup in South Africa as heavy favorites to take the tournament. They were expected to breeze through their group along with Chile but instead were surprised by the Swiss. A messy attack that broke up just outside the goal area was saved when a speedy Gelson Fernandes tore through the play and buried the ball in the back of the Reds’ net. It was a thrilling upset by the Swiss, but the Spanish were able to get past it. After the unexpected opening loss, Spain regrouped and won the rest of their matches before topping the Netherlands, 1-0, in the World Cup final.
The Germans, during the group stage of the 1982 World Cup in Spain, were so sure of their chances against a first-timer Algerian squad that one German player boasted of “dedicating our seventh goal to our wives, and the eighth to our dogs,” according to FIFA archives. But West Germany never got the chance to run up the score against the Greens; instead, it was caught off-guard by the quickness and creativity of the Algerian squad and never recovered after a flawless goal by attacking midfielder Lakhdar Belloumi.
Following the upset, Algeria failed to advance from its group after Austria was accused of colluding with West Germany to throw the match so both European teams could advance to the Round of 16 in a game that became known as the “Disgrace of Gijón.” Neither West Germany nor Austria was officially found guilty of wrongdoing, though the match prompted changes to how group-stage games are scheduled. Algerian defender Chaabane Merzekane later told FIFA: “To see two big powers debasing themselves in order to eliminate us was a tribute to Algeria. They progressed with dishonour. We went out with our heads held high.”
Group E, the “Group of Death” in the 2006 World Cup in Germany, was full of surprises — but the showdown between Ghana and the Czech Republic delivered the biggest shock. The Czechs, fresh off dismantling the United States, 3-0, encountered a Ghanaian squad that had just been downed by Italy. But instead of an easy win, the Czechs were stunned by Ghana’s first goal just 70 seconds into play. Midfielder Sulley Muntari delivered a gorgeous second goal later in the game, helping the Black Stars advance to the round of 16 along with Italy, which went on to win the tournament.
But that hope was buried when Uruguay’s Alcides Ghiggia dribbled down the right flank and into the box and launched a shot with 11 minutes left in the match. The stadium reportedly went silent as the ball sailed past the fingertips of Brazilian goalkeeper Moacir Barbosa.
Nelson Rodrigues, the late Brazilian author and playwright, once described the loss this way: “Everywhere has its irremediable national catastrophe, something like a Hiroshima. Our catastrophe, our Hiroshima, was the defeat by Uruguay in 1950.”
#MundialTelemundo Heung-Min Son de #KOR pone el último clavo al ataúd de #GER pic.twitter.com/zHm5xqaq1v
— Telemundo Deportes (@TelemundoSports) June 27, 2018
“Today’s victory is a victory for all of Africa and Senegal,” forward El-Hadji Diouf said at the time. “No one expected that Senegal will beat France. But we did.” | 2022-11-22T22:17:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biggest World Cup upsets: Saudi Arabia vs. Argentina is the latest - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/biggest-world-cup-upsets/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/22/biggest-world-cup-upsets/ |
NEW YORK — The holiday travel rush is already on, and it could spread out over more days than usual this year. Travel experts say the ability of many people to work remotely is letting them take off early for Thanksgiving or return home later. Crowds are expected to rival those of 2019, the last Thanksgiving before the pandemic. The Transportation Security Administration screened more than 2.6 million travelers on Monday, surpassing the 2.5 million screened the Monday before Thanksgiving in 2019. AAA predicts that nearly 55 million people in the U.S. will travel at least 50 miles from home this week, an increase over last year and only 2% less than in 2019.
NEW YORK — On the heels of a messy ticket rollout for Taylor Swift’s first tour in years, fans are angry. They’re also energized against Ticketmaster. While researchers agree that there’s no way to tell how long the energy could last, the outrage shows a way for young people to become more politically engaged through fan culture. This isn’t even the first time a fandom or an artist has targeted Ticketmaster. And Swifties say it’s not just about getting a ticket. The ticket debacle has spurred broader conversations about economic inequality and political action.
OMAHA, Neb. — American consumers and nearly every industry will be affected if freight trains grind to a halt next month. One of the biggest rail unions rejected its deal Monday over concerns about demanding schedules and the lack of paid sick time. The U.S. hasn’t seen an extended rail strike in a century. Many businesses only have a few days’ worth of raw materials and space for finished goods. If a strike goes past a few days, makers of food, fuel, cars and chemicals would all feel the squeeze, as would their customers. That’s not to mention the commuters who would be left stranded because many passenger railroads use tracks owned by the freight railroads.
NEW YORK — The lawyers for FTX disclosed Tuesday that a “substantial amount” of assets has been stolen from the accounts of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange, diminishing the odds that its millions of investors will get their money back. The admission came during FTX’s first court appearance since the company filed for bankruptcy protection on November 11. Such hearings typically happen days after a filing, but this one was delayed because FTX’s collapse came suddenly and management kept few if any records. Judge John Dorsey did temporarily grant FTX one order that had generated some controversy: redacting the names and addresses of FTX’s client list.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has cleared the way for the handover of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to a congressional committee after a three-year legal fight. The Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee had asked for six years of tax returns for Trump and some of his businesses, from 2015 to 2020. The court’s order Tuesday leaves no legal obstacle in the way. The Treasury Department refused to provide the records during Trump’s presidency. But the Biden administration said federal law is clear that the committee has the right to examine any taxpayer’s return, including the president’s. Lower courts agreed, rejecting Trump’s claims that the committee only wanted the documents to make them public.
OMAHA, Neb. — A Wisconsin company that cleans hundreds of meatpacking plants nationwide is defending itself against allegations that it employed more than two dozen minors working overnight shifts cleaning massive saws and other dangerous equipment. Labor Department officials said in court documents that they believe Packers Sanitation Services Inc. might be employing underage workers at other plants but investigators have only just starting reviewing thousands of pages of employee records at plants besides the ones in Nebraska and Minnesota where they confirmed teenagers were working. A judge already issued a temporary order prohibiting the company from employing minors and interfering in the investigation. The company says it’s cooperating and already prohibits hiring anyone younger than 18.
NEW YORK — Stocks rose on Wall Street and solid earnings helped jolt a mix of retailers higher ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. The S&P 500 rose 1.4% Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1.2% and the Nasdaq added 1.4%. Financial and technology companies gained ground. Energy stocks rose along with oil prices. Treasury yields slipped. Best Buy soared more than 12% after the Minneapolis-based consumer electronics chain did better than analysts expected and said a decline in sales for the year will not be as bad as it had projected earlier.
PARIS — Hobbled by high interest rates, punishing inflation and Russia’s war against Ukraine, the world economy is expected to eke out only modest growth this year and to expand even more tepidly in 2023. That’s the sobering forecast issued Tuesday by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In the OECD’s estimation, the world economy will grow just 3.1% this year, down sharply from a robust 5.9% in 2021. Next year, the OECD predicts, would be even worse: The international economy will expand only 2.2%. In its latest forecast, the organization predicts that the U.S. Federal Reserve’s aggressive drive to tame inflation with higher interest rates will grind the U.S. economy to a near-halt. | 2022-11-22T22:48:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Thanksgiving travel, Swift ticket woes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-thanksgiving-travel-swift-ticket-woes/2022/11/22/8e62c55c-6ab1-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-thanksgiving-travel-swift-ticket-woes/2022/11/22/8e62c55c-6ab1-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Fairfax County detectives make arrest in 34-year-old sex assault case
Fairfax County police arrested a 61-year-old man Monday in a 1988 rape of a woman in the Baileys Crossroads area after matching a recent fingerprint record and a DNA sample to evidence recovered more than 30 years ago.
Police charged George Thomas Jr. with two counts of rape, one count of sodomy and one count of abduction.
“In this case, justice is delayed, but justice is not denied,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said at a news conference about the arrest Tuesday.
Maj. Ed O’Carroll said at the conference that the incident occurred at 5195 Leesburg Pike, when two people approached a then-22-year-old woman and attacked her.
Genealogy tests give answers to family of woman missing for 47 years
The woman was forced into her vehicle and driven by the men to a secluded location in Northern Virginia, where she was raped, O’Carroll said. O’Carroll said the men then drove her to a different location and raped her again. The victim was able to flee in her car, police said.
Fairfax County police collected forensic evidence, including fingerprints found on the car. Sketches of potential suspects were also created, O’Carroll said. There were no DNA matches in the case for decades.
“Then a break comes. An astute FCPD fingerprint examiner matched a fingerprint that was found on the victim’s vehicle to a fingerprint on an unrelated, new Alexandria city arrest record that was on file,” O’Carroll said.
Gregory Allen Thomas, the man in that 2020 case in Alexandria city, had since died, O’Carroll said, though officials believe he was one of the men involved in the case. But detectives learned that he had an older brother: George Thomas Jr. O’Carroll said detectives did a forensic evidence analysis on a cigar George Thomas discarded recently and found that it was a direct match DNA match to evidence that was collected in the 1988 case.
“He might have smoked his last cigar,” O’Carroll said.
Dick Cline, a detective on the case who retired in 2007, said at the conference that he was thankful the case was closed.
“It is rewarding that even though it’s more than 30 years later, it’s just it’s a blessing,” Cline said. “It’s a blessing from above.”
Thomas was booked into the Montgomery County jail after being arrested at a Metro stop, though he will be transported to the Fairfax County jail. He was denied bail. No lawyer could immediately be located for him. | 2022-11-22T22:48:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fairfax County detectives make arrest in 34-year-old sex assault case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/fairfax-arrest-cold-case-rape/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/fairfax-arrest-cold-case-rape/ |
I got my covid booster to help stay safe, and I hope other seniors join me
Health officials are encouraging more people to get boosted, especially as we head for holiday gatherings
Matthew Carroll, one of a team of pharmacists at the independently owned Accokeek Drug & Health Care in Prince George's County, Md. Three days a week, Carroll gives coronavirus, flu, shingles and pneumonia shots. (Courtland Milloy/The Washington Post)
A few days ago, I went to Accokeek Drug & Health Care, a wonderful, independently owned pharmacy not far from where I live in Prince George’s County. My mission: to overcome a long-standing needle phobia just long enough to get that third coronavirus booster shot.
Matthew Carroll, a pharmacist who handles immunizations, told a story while preparing the jab.
A friend of his had a ticket to the recent football game between Ohio State and Maryland in College Park but ended up bedridden with the coronavirus. The friend hadn’t gotten the third booster, which might have helped him avoid infection or at least severe symptoms. “It was a pretty bad case,” Carroll said.
The upshot of the story was that Carroll, who is boosted, got the ticket and enjoyed a thrilling game. But the story also served to distract me. By the time he had finished telling it, I had been boosted and had barely noticed the jab.
I appreciated the deft touch. Our region has an abundance of dedicated pharmacists. But that might not last much longer if their workloads continues to skyrocket. Many people are finally seeing their doctors again after two years — and returning to the pharmacy with notebooks’ worth of prescriptions to be filled.
One pharmacist told me that residents in some of the poorer neighborhoods are finally getting job opportunities but that they often need proof of a coronavirus vaccine to work. “I asked one young man why he waited so long to get his first jab, since the shots are free,” the pharmacist recalled. “He said the vaccine contained trackers, and he didn’t want to be followed. So in addition to giving the shots and filling prescriptions, we have to take time to dispel myths that people are getting from social media.”
Carroll showed me five large containers filled with used needles, ready for disposal. That represented three days of giving shots.
“We have excellent participation in the booster program,” he told me. “I’m really proud of our neighbors.”
On Monday, outgoing Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) declared the state a leader in coronavirus vaccinations — with more than 1 million residents having received the latest booster since September.
After a poor start in 2020, Maryland rallied in response to covid. Mobile loudspeakers rolled through the county advertising the free shots. A “cash for vax” program persuaded more of the resisters to get the shots. A concerted effort by teachers, principals, preachers and community leaders helped dispel myths about the vaccine.
Two years ago, seniors like myself, 65 and older, were leading the way on the first series of coronavirus shots. We had a participation rate of about 92.4 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a recent KFF survey, only 8 percent of elderly people say they have received the latest bivalent booster shot, while only 37 percent say they intend to get that third booster as soon as possible.
And yet, flu season is already here. More than 300 people are dying from covid every day. The Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group, forecasts that more than 75,000 lives might be needlessly lost in the United States if more people don’t follow up with the booster shots.
I recall what Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s outgoing chief epidemiologist, said during a webinar hosted by Prince George’s County last year: Getting vaccinated was not just for personal safety but for the safety of the community. He echoed that sentiment during a meeting with The Washington Post.
“If you want to prevent the evolution of mutations, you’ve got to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible,” Fauci told The Post. “If you have vaccine hesitancy or reluctance to get vaccinated, you’re never going to get … that blanket or umbrella of what we refer to as ‘herd immunity.’ ”
Did we listen?
All totaled, only about 105 million U.S. adults — roughly 40 percent of those eligible — have received the third shot booster, according to federal data. By contrast, more than 70 percent of eligible residents in Britain have received their third dose.
Carroll said part of the problem is that many people think the pandemic is over. Death rates are down significantly, even though more than 11,000 seniors died from the virus in both July and August, according to the CDC.
“I hear people say it’s just like the flu,” Carroll said. “I tell them not to downplay the flu. It can be pretty deadly. They say only a few hundred people are dying from covid each year. I say, ‘I wouldn’t want to be one of them.’ ”
As the virus continues to mutate, Carroll expects more effective vaccines will have to be developed. New remedies will also be needed for a growing list of covid symptoms and side effects. Although few in number, there have been substantiated reports of covid-related conditions such as “hairy tongues,” “purple toes,” mysterious “welts” and “sores.”
A day after getting my booster, I began to feel a soreness in the arm, muscular aches and fatigue. Discomforting, yes. But not as bad as dying.
The good news for the non-vaxxers: If someone does come up with a remedy for hair tongue and purple toes, you’ll probably find it on the shelves of your local pharmacy. | 2022-11-22T22:48:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | I got my covid booster and I hope other seniors join me - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/milloy-covid-booster/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/milloy-covid-booster/ |
Bison’s relocation to Native American lands revives a spiritual bond
A herd of bison grazes at a Cherokee Nation ranch in Oklahoma on Sept. 27. Decades after the last bison vanished from their tribal lands, the Cherokee Nation is part of a nationwide resurgence of Indigenous people seeking to reconnect with the humpbacked, shaggy-haired animals that occupy a crucial place in centuries-old tradition and belief. (Audrey Jackson/AP) | 2022-11-22T22:48:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bison’s relocation to Native American lands revives a spiritual bond - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/22/bisons-relocation-native-american-lands-revives-spiritual-bond/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/22/bisons-relocation-native-american-lands-revives-spiritual-bond/ |
The Proud Boys keep popping up at LGBTQ events
In this Sept. 7, 2020, photo, a protester carries a Proud Boys banner while other members of the right-wing group start to unfurl a large American flag in front of the Oregon Capitol, in Salem. (Andrew Selsky/AP)
In the months before the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, researchers at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project noticed that the extremist group the Proud Boys had become more heavily intertwined with Donald Trump’s reelection bid. Members of the group had increasingly appeared at rallies explicitly focused on Trump’s reelection and, after the election, at rejecting his election loss. Then, of course, members of the groups were prominently involved in the riot itself, leading to seditious conspiracy charges.
Since that point, the group has not been entirely quiet. On Monday, ACLED shared data about one new nexus of Proud Boys activity: protests and events focused on LGBTQ issues.
Violent far-right groups like the Proud Boys are taking an increasingly large role in anti-LGBT+ mobilization around the United States. pic.twitter.com/XsUBObwpsT
The Proud Boys have shown up to protest drag shows in various states, for example, and have served as protesters at events focused on showing support for the gay community. At times, those appearances have devolved into violence.
ACLED shares its data publicly, including robust documentation of when and how events are included in its database. That allows us to see the progression of the Proud Boys’ involvement in LGBTQ-related activity since Joe Biden was inaugurated — and the national scope of the activity.
In the first quarter of 2021, after Jan. 20, ACLED tracked Proud Boys involvement in 20 events or protests. Only three were related to LGBTQ issues. As LGBTQ-related issues became a talking point in right-wing political circles (as with the passage of a law restricting discussion of same-sex relationships in Florida schools earlier this year), Proud Boys involvement in events with that focus increased. In the second quarter of this year, a third of the group’s 40 appearances were focused on or involved LGBTQ issues. In the third quarter, with the midterms looming, more than half did.
Every American has a right to peacefully protest, of course, though the Proud Boys’ appearances do not always fall into that category. If anything, the group’s engagement in anti-LGBTQ activity serves as a thermometer for where the political right is putting pressure.
In worst-case situations, the presence of the extremist group foreshadows the risk or threat of violence. That’s particularly concerning, given the deadly shooting this past weekend at an LGBTQ club in Colorado. | 2022-11-22T22:49:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Proud Boys keeping popping up at anti-LGBTQ events - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/proud-boys-keeping-popping-up-anti-lgbtq-events/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/proud-boys-keeping-popping-up-anti-lgbtq-events/ |
District faces disability rights lawsuit over bike lane designs
Two women allege they can’t easily get in and out of their vehicles in places where the city has installed protected bike lanes
Bicyclists ride in the 15th Street bike lane in downtown Washington. (Keith Lane/for The Washington Post)
A lawsuit filed by two disabled women this week accuses the District of adopting protected bike lane designs that make it harder for them to find safe parking in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington, is seeking to have the District Department of Transportation rethink its approach to designing bike lanes and provide more accessible parking across the city.
The bike lanes at issue include those on a stretch of 17th Street NW in the Dupont Circle area. The lanes run alongside the curb, separating bikes from traffic with a line of parking spaces. The lawsuit alleges that design makes it difficult for people who use wheelchairs or walkers to get safely from their vehicles to the sidewalk.
“It’s dangerous,” said Theodosia Robinson, 70, one of the plaintiffs. She uses a walker and described close calls with cyclists. “There has to be a safer way.”
District Department of Transportation officials declined to comment, citing the litigation.
The protected bike lanes are favored by cycling advocates in many cases because they create a physical barrier of parked cars between cyclists and moving vehicles. The District plans to install 10 miles of the lanes annually for the next three years.
But as cities have installed them, officials and advocates have also grappled with the obstacle they can create for people with disabilities.
“If not planned carefully, separated bike lane installations can potentially impede access to the curb for alighting motor vehicle passengers or transit users,” the Federal Highway Administration notes in a design guide.
The guide includes an example of how the lanes can incorporate dedicated disabled parking and loading zones with safe crossings to the sidewalk. Such a design provides enough space for someone to deploy a wheelchair ramp from their vehicle without having to enter the bike lane.
D.C. wants to double its 24 miles of protected bike lanes
The lawsuit says the District has taken that approach in rare instances, and includes an image of a blue-painted parking bay next to a bike lane on K Street NW near 4th Street NW. But it alleges that officials have determined they are not generally required to provide dedicated accessible parking outside downtown areas.
“Without accessible parking spaces, residents and visitors with disabilities are forced to park in spaces that put them at risk of serious injury or death,” the complaint alleges. “Wheelchair users require dedicated space around their parking spaces to ensure their safety when entering and/or exiting their vehicles.”
In the complaint, Robinson alleged she has had to rely on rides from friends to get to appointments because of the lack of reliable parking. Dana Bolles, the other plaintiff, said she accesses her van using a wheelchair ramp but has found since moving to the District this year that many places are inaccessible.
“Now, she limits her travel,” according to the lawsuit.
Robinson and Bolles were joined in the lawsuit by the DC Center for Independent Living, which provides services to people with disabilities, and the Dupont East Civic Action Association, a neighborhood group that has long tangled with bike-lane advocates.
The complaint also alleges that the District does not have adequate parking for people with disabilities across the board, pointing to red-capped meters that are too close to trees, planters, bike racks and trash cans. The complaint alleges that only 400 of the city’s 20,000 metered parking spaces are accessible.
Maia Goodell, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the case could end with an expert developing a plan to ensure the District improves accessibility while making changes to existing projects.
“It’s both forward-looking and looking to remedy some of the things that have gone in that are just violations of the law,” she said. | 2022-11-22T22:51:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Americans with Disabilities Act suit challenges DC bike lane designs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/22/disabilities-bike-lanes-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/22/disabilities-bike-lanes-lawsuit/ |
Sam Bankman-Fried speaks during a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., in December 2021. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg)
A lawyer for collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX said at a bankruptcy hearing on Tuesday that “a substantial amount of assets” belonging to the company have “either been stolen or are missing.”
Same Bankman-Fried charmed Washington. Then his crypto empire imploded.
At the hearing Bromley also described FTX as a company “run by inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals,” adding that “some or all of them were also compromised individuals.” FTX, he said, “is one of the most abrupt and difficult company collapses in the history of corporate America.”
FTX filed for bankruptcy earlier this month after a bank run caused a liquidity crisis. Shortly after, the company’s 30-year-old chief executive and co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried resigned. “What we have is a worldwide organization, but an organization that was run effectively as a personal fiefdom of Sam Bankman-Fried,” Bromley told the court.
A message left for Bromley’s office at his New York firm of Sullivan & Cromwell was not immediately returned.
The Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission have launched probes into FTX. They are investigating whether the exchange skirted rules on safeguarding consumer deposits and relationships with trading affiliates, said four people familiar with the inquiries.
The Southern District of New York’s cybercrime unit has also opened a criminal investigation into FTX, Bromley told the court on Tuesday. Bromley said he is in “constant communication” with that office, as well as the Justice Department, SEC, CFTC and other regulators at the state level and abroad.
Bromley said he is fielding requests from lawmakers in both the House and Senate to have John Ray, FTX’s new CEO, testify in December. The Senate Banking Committee, Senate Agriculture Committee and House Financial Services Committee are all planning to hold hearings on the implosion of Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire next month.
In a filing last week, new FTX chief executive John J. Ray III, who has been brought in to oversee the company’s restructuring, described a firm whose communication and record-keeping were in disarray.
“One of the most pervasive failures of the FTX.com business in particular is the absence of lasting records of decision-making,” Ray said.
Last week one of the nation’s most prominent lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit, seeking to extract extensive sums from Bankman-Fried and celebrities who appeared in advertisements or otherwise endorsed FTX, including quarterback Tom Brady, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, comedian Larry David, NBA star Stephen Curry and tennis star Naomi Osaka. | 2022-11-22T23:14:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FTX lawyer says crypto exchange has 'substantial' missing assets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/22/crypto-exchange-has-substantial-missing-assets-ftx-lawyer-says/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/22/crypto-exchange-has-substantial-missing-assets-ftx-lawyer-says/ |
A pre-Trump Republican probes for an opening in the 2024 field
Then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) answers questions at a news conference on Capitol Hill in March 2014. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Mike Rogers, a Republican former congressman from Michigan, is a snapshot of what his party looked like before the Donald Trump circus arrived. He is a free-market conservative, and a former FBI agent with strong national-security experience from his years running the House Intelligence Committee.
This brand of mainstream conservatism has seemed on its way to extinction. But maybe it has a second life, with Trump newly vulnerable and Republicans increasingly worrying that they won’t win without a broader, steadier image.
It’s a sign of the ferment in the Republican Party these days that Rogers has been spending time recently in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — giving speeches and meeting activists. He’s not running for president; he’s not even formally exploring a bid yet. As Iowa Republican public affairs strategist John Stineman, who’s advising a Rogers policy group, puts it: “He’s exploring whether to explore.”
The bet that Rogers and a long list of other prospective candidates are weighing is that Republicans don’t want to be the party of crazy anymore. The GOP wants to win in 2024, and after the drubbing that extreme Trump-backed candidates took in the midterms, the former president looks like a loser. Trump remains popular with his base, but the latest polls show that less than half of Republicans back him for 2024. “This race is wide open,” argues Stineman.
Rogers is among the least known in the potential field of candidates. He doesn’t register in the latest Harvard-Harris poll, which shows Trump with 46 percent support; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 20 percent; former vice president Mike Pence at 7 percent; Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) at 3 percent; former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley at 2 percent; and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) at 1 percent each. But so early in the game, this is mostly a name-recognition exercise.
Rogers told me this week that, as he visits early primary states, “I’m getting a lot of encouragement from people to turn that into something for 2024.” He confronts the dilemma that every other would-be candidate faces — how to repudiate Trump without alienating the voters he brought into the party. “Trump’s time has passed, but we still want to speak to people who are frustrated with where America is going,” Rogers said. He wants Trump voters, even if the former president’s tactics are “clearly destructive.”
What interests me about Rogers is that he actually got things done when he was in Congress. He became chairman in 2011 of a House Intelligence Committee that had become so partisan it was dysfunctional, and with support of the ranking Democrat, C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.), he made it work. The committee passed authorization bills for the first time in years. Rogers became his party’s most prominent foreign policy spokesman, appearing on more Sunday talk shows than any other member of Congress in 2014, the year he announced he would be retiring.
During Trump’s presidency, Rogers went into the wilderness, which might be an advantage now, because he doesn’t carry any Trump-era baggage. Now, Rogers is direct and unambiguous in rejecting Trump’s claims that he won the 2020 election, and in condemning the violence that followed. “Biden was lawfully elected to the presidency,” he says. As for the Jan. 6 insurrection: “There is never a time in American democracy when violence accomplishes what you want. … It is giving up on our Constitution when you storm the Capitol to try to change an election.”
For Republicans such as Rogers and a half-dozen others who oppose Trump, the political rationale is simple math. To win in 2024, Trump would likely have to win some combination of six battleground states he lost in 2020 — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump-backed candidates did poorly in most of those states this month. Republicans who want to regain the White House can count the numbers.
Republicans who have heard Rogers’s recent speeches in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina all say pretty much the same thing. The beefy ex-FBI agent is good at retail politics. When he talks about the problems of manufacturing workers, he has the advantage of actually having worked on an assembly line. When he warns about the competitive threat from China, he speaks as a former Intelligence Committee chairman and now as chairman of MITRE Corp., a government-backed defense think tank.
When Republicans talk about 2024, Rogers “should definitely be in the conversation, no question about it,” says Van Hipp, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party who invited Rogers to speak last month at Wofford College in Spartanburg. A New Hampshire Republican campaign consultant who heard Rogers speak at St. Anselm College in Manchester this month said the audience reacted warmly and it was a relief that “it wasn’t about party infighting.”
Rogers’s New Hampshire speech was two days after midterm elections, and he told a story about fighting organized crime back in his FBI days that concluded with the punch line: “There’s nothing like a good beating to keep the family together.” Rogers and the many other might-be candidates are hoping that after getting roughed up this month, the Republican family will turn to a candidate who can re-create some of the party unity that was shattered during the Trump years. | 2022-11-22T23:32:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Mike Rogers, a pre-Trump Republican, probes for an opening in the 2024 field - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/mike-rogers-2024-gop-presidential-field/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/mike-rogers-2024-gop-presidential-field/ |
So many rainbows
Flowers and a pride flag are on display after a vigil in Colorado Springs. (Rachel Woolf for The Washington Post)
In the midst of all the sadness and anger following the mass shooting in Colorado Springs, one of the most striking aspects of the makeshift memorials and the quickly organized vigils is the kaleidoscope of color. The five deaths inside Club Q, a magnet for the local LGBTQ community, have been marked with pride flags, transgender flags, pansexual ones, the progressive pride flag, multicolored hearts, clusters of bright balloons and mourners whose very hair, clothing, makeup and shoes are an urgent rush of color. Despite all the pain and the tears, there are rainbows.
In this country where citizens confront massive outbursts of gun violence with horrifying regularity, these public memorials have become all too familiar exercises in catharsis. They might be reflexive responses, but they remain deeply moving spectacles. People pile bouquets of flowers high near the site of the crime. They leave handwritten notes of condolence for victims most of them have never met, in which they nonetheless vow not to forget the lives lost and command the deceased to rest in peace and in power.
Each tragedy brings its own particularly searing visual heartbreak. The younger the victims, the more likely there are to be mementos of childhoods cut short: toys, stuffed animals, gap-toothed school portraits. After the killing at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., in 2017, the victims were honored with crosses. After the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg in 2018, the dead were counted with stars of David. And earlier this month, at the University of Virginia, because the three students killed also played football, memorials were personalized with game helmets, footballs and references to their jersey numbers.
In Colorado Springs, color is a potent symbol. It stands in for gender, sexuality, identity, expression. It’s a way of clarifying our understanding of who has been lost, not individually but collectively. It tells us which segment of our human community has been desecrated. It doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, but it’s something. The transgender flag, with its stripes of baby blue, pale pink and white, serves as a point of correction in how gender has been defined, understood and stereotyped. The addition of black and brown stripes to the familiar rainbow flag is a confession of a long-standing omission of people of color from the central conversation; it acknowledges diversity within the LGBTQ tribe.
The flags are tools of education for the uninitiated; they’re cudgels for progress and change; they’re signposts of welcome and reassurance. The panoply of color enlivens mass culture; it’s a pronouncement of political solidarity and political might. It’s a commentary on the complexity and nuance inherent in every individual. The flags are statements about who exists in this world and their right to do so loudly and vividly. The colors call out to marginalized people letting them know that just because they’re in the minority or live in the shadows, that doesn’t mean they’re alone.
Looking at the images of people hugging and crying and standing in the cold air at the site of so much trauma, it’s akin to standing alongside a river of emotion as it overflows its banks. Individuals show up as a statement of solidarity. Each time someone arrives, they add another layer of color, another detail to the mosaic. It’s a way of sharing the pain and the horror, as well as committing to stand supportively along the path toward healing.
In Colorado Springs, people have planted colorful hearts in the ground that declare, “Hate has no home here.” And that’s a wonderful sentiment, a candy-coated notion. But the truth is that hate has been planted in all corners of the country — elementary schools, big-box stores, movie theaters, houses of worship. The work is in dislodging the roots.
People raise flags and they turn themselves into walking rainbow flags with multihued dresses and bandannas and jackets as a way of claiming ownership over a place. Club Q was a place of familiarity and joy for many of those who count themselves part of the LGBTQ community. But those proud colors are also a declaration of ownership that extends beyond a nightclub in the American West. They reach beyond the state, beyond the country. These colors don’t run. They didn’t before the shooting and won’t after it.
A weekend of violence punctuates generations of hate
Despite the palpable pain, it’s hard to look at those bright shades of red, yellow and purple and not see some semblance of hope, a bit of rueful optimism. The colorful flags on display aren’t markers of battlefield wounds. They aren’t unabashedly grim even though they stand for a community that has had to fend off fears, lies and demagoguery aimed at preventing them from living full lives. The flags are an exuberant rebuke. A reminder that this community has fought back for generations with political will, economic might and stubborn optimism. There will be joy. There will be.
All those combinations of colors signify different segments of the LGBTQ community. They sort people under different banners, put them under various headings. That’s not such a terrible thing. Everyone needs to be seen, to be connected. Everyone wants to find their kin.
But the beauty of all those colors is that they can be combined in countless ways to tell a small piece of everyone’s story. In the aftermath of this tragedy, that’s the glimmer of hope amid the mounds of wilting flowers and melting candles and wrung out emotions. The whole of the human community is represented in those rainbows. They arch toward solidarity. But only if one looks closely. | 2022-11-22T23:32:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | So many rainbows - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/22/so-many-rainbows/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/22/so-many-rainbows/ |
A protester reacts after a water container was hit by a bullet during a protest in Javanrud, a Kurdish town in Iran, on Nov. 21. Five people were killed in the town during a protest following the funeral for two people killed Saturday, a human rights group said. (Hengaw Organization for Human Rights/AP)
Human rights activists are sounding the alarm about what they say is an intensifying crackdown by security forces in Iran’s Kurdish region, reporting that nearly four dozen people have been killed in recent days amid efforts to suppress weeks of protests against the country’s clerical leaders.
Despite a near-total communication blackout on information from the northwest region of the country, five human rights groups interviewed for this article have described widespread and indiscriminate use of heavy gunfire against civilians and the heavy deployment of security forces, including the Revolutionary Guard. The Kurdish human rights group Hengaw estimated that at least 42 people were killed in Kurdish areas over the last week.
Iranian authorities have especially targeted Iran’s largely-marginalized Kurdish communities since protests broke out in mid-September, sparked by the death of an Iranian Kurdish woman, Mahsa “Jina” Amini, while in police custody for a clothing violation. The rising death toll and deployment in Kurdish areas of the Revolutionary Guard, a parallel military force set up to protect Iran’s cleric-led state, has heightened fears that a further escalation in violence is underway.
“The suppression of protests in Iranian Kurdistan has entered a new phase,” said Rebin Rahmani, a member of the Board of Directors of the France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network.
The U.N. high commissioner for human rights on Tuesday condemned “the hardening of the response by security forces” and described Iran’s situation as “critical.” Two Kurdish Iranian 16-year-old boys were among those killed this weekend, U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk told a briefing in Geneva.
Iranian authorities have struggled to put down the protest movement, which early on challenged mandatory veiling for women and has since grown into a broad call to overthrow the government.
More than 300 people have been killed, among them more than 40 children, and deaths have been reported in nearly every one of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to Turk. Other groups have recorded higher death tolls. Iranian authorities have detained more than 15,000 people.
Among the dead, at least 98 Kurdish Iranians “have been killed by shootings, baton traumas and knives by the security forces,” Rahmani said.
On Monday, five people were killed in the western town of Javanrud during a protest following the funeral for two people killed Saturday, according to Hengaw. Witnesses told the group that the Revolutionary Guard fired machine-guns and semi-heavy machine guns at civilians. Videos shared online showed people running and taking cover from what appears to be heavy gunfire. Another video appeared to show bloodied bodies lying on the street.
The Washington Post could not independently verify these videos.
Other unverified videos circulating online showed large convoys of trucks with armed security forces heading into Kurdish-majority towns, including Mahabad and Boukan, in recent days.
Several rights groups said that the Revolutionary Guard has been leading the crackdown. “Revolutionary Guard forces have directly been responsible for all the repressions of the past week,” Rahmini said.
“When the Islamic government is faced with internal crises and nationwide protests, it represses ethnic minority areas to create an atmosphere of terror throughout Iran,” Rahmini said. “On the other hand, every time the nationwide protests have been receding, holding protests in Kurdistan, which is accompanied by more severe repression, has given a new wave of energy and hope to the protests in other parts of Iran.”
Skylar Thompson with the activist news agency HRANA said there’s been a “drastic decline” in recent days in the volume of reports coming out of Kurdish communities due to internet blackouts.
On Tuesday, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said President Biden was “gravely concerned” about the intensifying violence, and reiterated support for “the Iranian women and all the citizens of Iran who are inspiring the world with their bravery.”
Inside Iran, rights groups and activists said it has also become more difficult to document abuse and violence because of widespread fear of government retribution.
“We have many cases where friends contact us and ask us to work on an arrest, but then later the family contacts us and says we have to delete the post,” said Leila Kari with the rights group, Dadban, which provides Iranians with free legal consultation. “Their children are like hostages, and the regime threatens them that if they talk to media, they will kill their children.” | 2022-11-22T23:45:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iran is escalating crackdown on protests in Kurdish areas, rights groups say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/22/iran-protests-crackdown-kurdish-areas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/22/iran-protests-crackdown-kurdish-areas/ |
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I remember it like it was yesterday. My twin brother and I, all of 6 years old, stayed up late in our grandparents’ home in Kolkata, India, to watch Argentina’s opening match in the 1990 World Cup in Italy. The South American nation was then the reigning champions, powered by the inimitable Diego Maradona. Their first match of the tournament, against unheralded Cameroon, was supposed to be a formality.
Then Cameroon won, against all expectations and logic. My brother and I cried, stunned by our superhero’s fallibility. We were too young to recognize the seismic importance of Cameroon’s triumph. Until then, the soccer teams of African nations were often the target of scorn and mockery, subject to much latent racism.
“We hate it when European reporters ask us if we eat monkeys and have a witch doctor,” François Omam-Biyik, the winning goal scorer, told reporters after the game. “We are real football players and we proved this tonight.”
On Tuesday, Argentina found itself once more on the receiving end of a historic shock. Their much-fancied side, led by the global phenomenon Lionel Messi, slumped to a bewildering 2-1 defeat to Saudi Arabia. Yes, Saudi Arabia: The country that has repeatedly failed in the World Cup; the country whose most memorable participation in the tournament was losing 8-0 to Germany in 2002; the country everyone expected to still be the whipping boys two decades later in Qatar.
Instead, cheered on by tens of thousands of Saudi fans who made the short trip across the border, Saudi Arabia pulled off the unthinkable. Already, Wednesday has been declared a public holiday for the nation to extend its celebrations. The victory, as my colleagues reported, also marked an unusual moment of pan-Arab unity, with social media in the region abounding with joyous memes hailing the Saudi success.
“They are the South American champion,” said Saudi Arabia Coach Hervé Renard, a Frenchman with a significant track record of success coaching in Africa, in reference to 2021 Copa America-winning Argentina. “They have amazing players. But this is football and sometimes things are completely crazy.”
For Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the soccer team’s defeat of Argentina caps a triumphant moment on the world stage. The controversial royal was given pride of place at the World Cup’s opening ceremonies. He was spotted there wearing a maroon Qatari scarf during the host nation’s defeat to Ecuador — an act of fraternal support that would have stunned onlookers only a few years ago when Saudi Arabia led a regional boycott and blockade of Qatar. On Tuesday, the enthusiasm of the crown prince for Qatar’s World Cup was reciprocated by the Qatari emir, who waved a Saudi flag in the stadium as the Saudis scored their win.
The crown prince has been mending other fences, too. He was all smiles in Bali for the leaders summit of the Group of 20 major economies, glad-handing with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He also appeared at the U.N. Climate Conference in Egypt and the summit of APEC nations in Bangkok. The latter trip marked a restoration of Thai-Saudi relations after a deep freeze provoked by a cinematic 1989 jewelry heist carried out by a Thai worker in a Saudi palace that was followed mysteriously the next year by the murders of three Saudi diplomats in Thailand.
The crown prince has already withstood global opprobrium over his alleged masterminding of the 2018 abduction and grisly execution of Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. In the summer, he called on French President Emmanuel Macron and a number of other European leaders. He also received President Biden on his home soil with a fist-bump, a meeting that made absurd Biden’s campaign trail proclamation that Riyadh would be turned into a “pariah” under his watch. And last week, the Biden administration told a judge to confer sovereign immunity on the crown prince in a civil case over his role in Khashoggi’s killing.
Combined with Riyadh’s enduring influence over global energy markets, the state of play shows the youthful crown prince’s strong hand. It also underscores the ongoing difficulties faced by those in Washington who hope to pivot U.S. policy in the region away from the Saudis.
“The United States tried to limit the kingdom’s importance and role regionally and internationally, but it found first that this goal was unachievable and second that it harmed its own interests,” Abdulaziz al-Sager, chairman of the Gulf Research Center in Jeddah, told Reuters. “So there’s a process of American retreat from taking negative positions towards the kingdom.”
U.S. declares Saudi crown prince immune from Khashoggi killing lawsuit
Photos depicted the crown prince cheering the Saudi victory at home in Riyadh. The good vibes in the kingdom are bound to continue through the tournament, with huge throngs of Saudi fans turning up in Qatar. Earlier precedents suggest that even if Saudi Arabia loses their remaining games, its stunning upset over Argentina will be cast in stone. The history of the World Cup is replete with losing darlings, from the rampaging North Korean side that charmed the English public in 1966 to Senegal’s debutants in 2002 who defeated France, the former colonial ruler, in its first World Cup game.
The Saudis are on track to enjoy a tournament that’s right next door with none of the heightened scrutiny that Qatar has had to weather for hosting the World Cup. But it’s unclear how much soft power this Saudi team can muster for their crown prince.
No matter its unheralded players, Saudi Arabia already plays an outsize role in the global game. Saudi sovereign wealth pulls the strings at Newcastle United, a popular English Premier League club now effectively controlled by an oil-rich, human rights abusing regime. And the crown prince seems poised to bid for the 2030 World Cup, inviting the same scorn and criticism that Doha did when it won its bid in 2010. In this latest pulic relations offensive, Riyadh may have an unlikely ally: Argentina’s Messi, who reportedly inked a lucrative sponsorship deal to help tout the crown prince’s “Vision 2030” campaign for the kingdom. Like so much revealed at the World Cup, it’s a sign of the times. | 2022-11-22T23:45:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Saudi Arabia v Argentina: Historic upset caps triumph for crown prince - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/22/saudi-arabia-world-cup-mbs-bin-salman-global/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/22/saudi-arabia-world-cup-mbs-bin-salman-global/ |
For Dulles, Silver Line extension comes as airport begins makeover
Fueled by Thanksgiving travel, the airport’s new Metro station was the busiest of the six stations that made their debut a week ago
Passengers wait for the train on the opening day of the Silver Line extension at Dulles International Airport. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Throughout the years as Dulles International Airport grew, expanding its terminal, adding a runway and building a new control tower, a strip of grass in the Dulles Toll Road median that was set aside for a rail line sat mostly untouched.
As the airport celebrates its 60th anniversary this month and prepares for its most ambitious makeover in more than a decade, the last piece of that original vision fell into place in time for Thanksgiving travel.
The airport’s new Metro station is the busiest of the six that opened a week ago, according to the transit agency, fueled by a rush of travelers during the start of the bustling holiday season. After several tumultuous years of planning and construction, the project’s handover to Metro is allowing airport officials to focus on the next phase of Dulles’s future — one buoyed by the rail line and plans for a new concourse while shifting beyond the pandemic.
Officials at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversaw the Silver Line’s construction and manages Dulles and Reagan National airports, said in a statement they are “pleased at how quickly customers have embraced the new Silver Line and incorporated the train into their holiday airport travel plans.”
The Dulles station recorded about 7,700 passenger trips during its first six days of operation, accounting for about one-third of 23,300 trips at the new stations. Metro typically reports ridership based on where passengers enter the system, but it is monitoring entries and exits along the new stations to better understand travel habits.
By comparison, Metro’s National Airport station recorded 20,372 entries over the same time period. The number of trips that ended at the airport was just over 19,900, compared with about 8,400 at Dulles in those six days.
“We were happy to open the Silver Line for our customers before the Thanksgiving holiday travel period began, and early ridership numbers show that the Silver Line, and Dulles specifically, will be key ways for residents and visitors to travel in Northern Virginia and to and from our national capital region,” Metro General Manager Randy Clarke said Tuesday in a statement.
The rail line’s opening makes all three of the Washington region’s major airports accessible by rail.
Dulles’s Metro station is the latest shot of good news for an airport looking for a revival as international travel rebounds more slowly from the pandemic. Recovery has been swifter for National and Baltimore-Washington International Marshall airports, which rely more heavily on domestic travel.
Earlier this year, Dulles officials announced plans for a new 14-gate, 400,000-square-foot concourse. In July, the airport received $49.6 million from the infrastructure law to cover part of the project’s estimated $500 million to $800 million cost. Airport officials said earlier this month they intend to apply for an additional $180 million.
Dulles concourse gets a boost from Biden's infrastructure law
The proposed concourse would be built above an existing AeroTrain stop and eliminate the need for passengers to walk long distances or take a shuttle to their gates. The last major expansion at Dulles was a $3.4 billion package of projects completed in 2011 that expanded the main terminal and added the automated AeroTrain system, a fourth runway, a new control tower and other elements.
Airports authority officials also are eyeing the eventual replacement of the C/D concourse, built in 1985 as a temporary structure that serves United Airlines. As part of that process, the airport is soliciting feedback from the public as it updates Dulles’s master plan, a document that guides how the airport will grow for a future that could include the launch of air taxis, the return of supersonic travel and other innovations.
Dulles celebrated its 60th anniversary on Nov. 17 — two days after Silver Line service launched — marking the occasion with giveaways and promotions, including selling cups of coffee for 34 cents to match the price on the day the airport opened. The anniversary also coincided with the start of service from Dulles to Cape Town, South Africa.
But it was the inauguration of the Silver Line extension that drew the most attention.
With the $3 billion rail project four years behind schedule, Metro officials pledged on Halloween to open the line in time for the Thanksgiving travel period, giving air passengers another option to get to Dulles. Travelers using the rail link this week said the train beat paying for a pricey ride-share trip.
Dennis Wiggins took Metro on Monday from his home in Bethesda to an appointment in Tysons, then on to the airport for a flight to Detroit. He said despite delays and cost overruns that plagued the project, the rail extension was worth the investment.
“It’s fantastic,” the 69-year-old venture capitalist said. “Fifty years from now, no one is even going to remember all that.”
Fastest way to Dulles Airport from downtown D.C. -- driving or Metro?
Corina McCullough, 25, said she was happy service to Dulles launched in time for her trip home to Tampa for Thanksgiving. She said the ride from Dupont Circle took about an hour, but was worth the cost-savings compared with other modes of transportation.
“I moved here because of the public transportation,” McCullough said. “And when I heard it would be open in time for my flight today, I thought ‘Great!’”
Josh Fitt, 26, was eager to beat the holiday travel crush, making his trip to Dulles earlier in the week. He used to take Metro to the Wiehle-Reston East station, then catch the Silver Line Express bus to Dulles. He said he enjoyed the direct rail connection to the airport, adding, “after 60 years, it’s about time.”
Dulles for years has been derided, in large part, because of its distance from the District. The airport, about 25 miles west of Washington, is roughly a 40-minute drive from the nation’s capital when traffic cooperates, and more when it doesn’t.
“When it first opened, people mocked [Dulles] as a white elephant,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.). “They said ‘Why are you spending all this money?’”
But, he said, planners knew the airport would jump-start growth in the region. Six decades later, he said, “We’ve grown into it.”
The trip for passengers taking Metro rivals the longest train rides in the world between a major airport and city center. The ride from Metro Center in downtown Washington to Dulles takes 53 minutes, slightly less than the roughly hour-long ride from Narita International Airport to downtown Tokyo, while longer than the 45 minutes it takes to travel between O’Hare International and downtown Chicago. Denver’s airport is about a 37-minute rail trip from its downtown.
Dulles boosters say the Metro brings a stronger link between the airport and the rest of the capital region.
“It’s another connection to downtown,” said Keith W. Meurlin, president of the Washington Airports Task Force, a nonprofit group of business and community leaders that advocates for Dulles and National. “It will make it easier for people all around the region. And for foreign visitors, it’s a service they expect.”
As a Boy Scout growing up in the region, Meurlin, a former airport manager at Dulles, recalls planting trees at the newly minted airport. He said it’s fitting that the Silver Line is opening as Dulles again is contemplating its future. The Metro system didn’t exist when Dulles opened in 1962, but planners made accommodations for a future rail line — not knowing it would take nearly six decades to make that a reality.
“Think about the visionaries who set aside land to make this thing happen,” said John E. “Jack” Potter, president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. “Those folks over 60 years ago set that land aside, and were it not for them, this would have been a nightmare to try to accomplish”
With about 12,000 acres of land — one of the nation’s five largest airports and more than one-quarter the size of the District — it is the only major East Coast airport with room to expand. In addition to outlining plans for a new concourse, airport officials recently approved plans to build the largest U.S.-based solar farm at an airport.
Dulles solar farm would be the nation’s largest at an airport
Buddy Rizer, executive director of economic development for Loudoun County, said the launch of Silver Line service, coupled with growth at Dulles, will be a game changer for the region. The Silver Line, he said, will set the stage for Dulles’s next phase.
The Silver Line extension also added two other Metro stations to Loudoun, setting the stage for denser suburban development that previously occurred closer to Washington. While Dulles has shown to be the most popular of the six new stations, the next busiest was Ashburn — the Silver Line’s new terminus — which reported nearly 6,500 entries during its first six days.
But at the extension’s core is Dulles, which Phyllis J. Randall, chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, said has propelled the county into one of the nation’s wealthiest and fastest-growing places through the decades.
“They built an airport in a field with cows, and 60 years later, look what it’s done,” she said. “We’re very proud and protective of the airport.” | 2022-11-22T23:53:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For Dulles airport, Silver Line is key to first makeover in years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/22/dulles-silver-line-upgrades/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/11/22/dulles-silver-line-upgrades/ |
Family mourns 18-year-old high school student found slain in D.C. hotel
Akira Wilson hoped to attend Florida State University and study mortuary science, her mother said.
Toni Cole, left, with her daughter Akira Wilson, who was found fatally shot in a Northeast Washington hotel room this weekend. (Family Photo)
The last Toni Cole knew, her daughter was supposed to go to the movies Saturday — and she had asked permission about staying the night at a friend’s house. Cole said she last talked to 18-year-old Akira Wilson about 8:35 p.m., and the two were supposed to connect a bit later.
Cole said she dozed off, and had a bad feeling when she woke up about two and a half hours later and couldn’t reach her daughter. By that time, police had found the high school student fatally shot in a Hilton Garden Inn in Northeast Washington.
Police have described her death as a homicide and said they are seeking a person of interest. In recent months, several teens — including some under 18 — have been shot in the District, including a 15-year-old who was shot and wounded aboard a Metro train and another 15-year-old, who was shot and killed while sitting in a porch.
“I want my daughter so bad. It’s so hard because, being a mother, anything she needed help with, I could help,” Cole said. “I can’t fix this and I don’t know how to deal with not being able to fix this. I will never see my daughter again.”
Cole said her daughter was a senior at Jackson-Reed High School. She also took math and psychology classes at Trinity Washington University, in hopes of getting a jump-start on college work, according to relatives and the school.
Cole said her daughter hoped to attend Florida State University and study mortuary science. Wilson wanted to open her own funeral home, which her mother and grandmother said they were willing to put their retirement funds toward. Trinity Washington University President Pat McGuire said in a statement that Wilson was on the high school honor roll and engaged with the Tourism, Hotel and Hospitality Academy, and that her death was “a great loss to her family and her schools, as well as the entire DC community.”
“She had a big heart and she wanted to help whoever she could,” Cole said. “Somebody was selfish enough to take my daughter away from me. She didn’t deserve this.”
On Tuesday, around a hundred of Wilson’s friends, classmates and relatives gathered by Jackson-Reed High School to release balloons in her memory.
Simona Spicciani‑Gerhardt, who teaches Italian at Jackson-Reed and had Wilson as one of her students, recalled how she once volunteered to make and sell 2000 individually packaged desserts for a field day last year. Spicciani‑Gerhardt said students on Monday organized a bake sale to raise money to support Wilson’s family.
“She was a hard worker, and that’s the spirit that I remember and love about her,” Spicciani-Gerhardt said.
Police have not said what they believe sparked the shooting, and Cole said she is at a loss to understand how her daughter could have ended up a homicide victim.
She said after 12 calls to her daughter on Saturday, she texted Wilson, “I pray you are okay,” and said she was “on my way” to the friend’s house where she believed Wilson was staying. She said another relative soon told her to go to the hotel, in the 1200 block of First Street NE.
“I don’t even remember how I reacted because I was so angry,” Cole said. “I didn’t want Akira in that area.”
Wilson’s grandmother, Dawn Perry, called the news “devastating” and said that no parent should have to bury their own child.
“They just came back from Mexico on Monday, and by Saturday, she’s deceased,” Perry said. “She was special and a happy child.”
Cole said her daughter was her best friend and “came every morning to my room with her arms out to give me a hug.” She said she has only been able to go to Wilson’s room once since her death, and has held the 18-year-old’s nightgown close to her heart.
Cole said she and Wilson had just finished student federal aid applications and started early enrollment for colleges.
“I won’t be able to give her the party that I was giving her for graduation. I won’t be able to travel down to her college and decorate her room. She was going to be her greatest, and now she can’t,” Cole said. “I’m never going to be okay again.” | 2022-11-22T23:58:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Family mourns Jackson-Reed student found slain in D.C. hotel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/akira-wilson-homicide-jackson-reed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/22/akira-wilson-homicide-jackson-reed/ |
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