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New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones has come under fire for his low block on Cincinnati Bengals corner EIi Apple in Week 16.
Now, one surprising player is coming to Jones’ defense.
Carolina Panthers defensive end Brian Burns and Jones were involved in an incident in 2021, when the quarterback appeared to twist Burns’ ankle. Burns did not take kindly to the incident at the time, wishing ‘happy hunting’ on Jones to opposing defenders. The two reconciled and have put the incident behind them. Now, Burns is in Jones’ corner.
Reaction has been swift and strong in regards to Jones’ block, with the video of the play itself going viral on Twitter. However, Burns did not seem to think the block was malicious, as he told FOX Sports’ Sheena Quick.
“I don’t know. I think he was just trying to draw a penalty, like push him back or something. I don’t think it was nothing crazy,” said Burns.
Jones was fined $11,139 by the league for his play on Apple. Some think the fine was a good enough punishment, while others might believe more should have been done to the second-year quarterback.
In either case, the Patriots—and particularly coach Bill Belichick—are ready to put this entire incident in the rearview. | 2022-12-31T18:30:56Z | sports.yahoo.com | Former opponent that wished ‘happy hunting’ on Mac Jones now defending him | https://sports.yahoo.com/former-opponent-wished-happy-hunting-171221077.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/former-opponent-wished-happy-hunting-171221077.html?src=rss |
NFL-NFLPA conclude Tua Tagovailoa’s latest concussion was handled properly originally appeared on Pro Football Talk
A review by the NFL and its players association determined that Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa didn't need to go into concussion protocol during the team’s game against Green Bay because he wasn't showing signs of a head injury at the time. Tagovailoa has been ruled out for Miami's game at New England on Sunday after suffering the concussion against Green Bay. | 2022-12-31T18:31:15Z | sports.yahoo.com | NFL-NFLPA conclude Tua Tagovailoa’s latest concussion was handled properly | https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-nflpa-conclude-tua-tagovailoa-172455395.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-nflpa-conclude-tua-tagovailoa-172455395.html?src=rss |
Carlos Correa / Nick Wosika - USA TODAY Sports
Zaidi confirmed that both the Giants and Correa’s camp had a 'difference of opinion' regarding the shortstop’s physical. He did emphasize that this was not just an 'eleventh hour' change of heart.
“I was on the phone with Scott Boras on the Monday that we did Carlos' physical right when his plane landed in San Francisco at 5 p.m. and those conversations continued from that point,” Zaidi said. “As soon as we had information we shared it.”
Correa would be the icing on the cake to what's been a terrific offseason in New York. If the two sides are able to come to terms on a new deal, he could be that middle-of-the-order piece that helps put this team over the top. | 2022-12-31T19:17:27Z | sports.yahoo.com | Giants describe ‘frustrating’ Carlos Correa situation, say chances of deal with star now ‘unlikely’ | https://sports.yahoo.com/giants-describe-frustrating-carlos-correa-170351942.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/giants-describe-frustrating-carlos-correa-170351942.html?src=rss |
Alabama fell behind Kansas State by double digits on Saturday in the Sugar Bowl.
It didn’t take long for the Crimson Tide to regain the lead, though, as Bryce Young threw a pair of TD passes in less than six minutes.
The first covered six yards and went to Isaiah Bond after it was set up by a long pass to Jermaine Burton.
The Tide took the lead on a 1-yard toss to Cameron Latu.
Young was approaching 150 passing yards midway through the second quarter.
Is This the Final Straw for Carvana Stock?
Online car dealer Carvana (NYSE: CVNA) has suffered one of the sharpest drops of any stock in this bear market. Carvana's debt is trading at less than 50 cents on the dollar, a sign that bond investors aren't confident that the company will pay back its loans. Carvana stock traded north of $350 per share during the height of the pandemic. | 2022-12-31T19:44:28Z | sports.yahoo.com | Bryce Young throws 2 touchdown passes as Alabama answers in Sugar Bowl | https://sports.yahoo.com/bryce-young-throws-2-touchdown-180957392.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/bryce-young-throws-2-touchdown-180957392.html?src=rss |
Drew Brees is a household name in Louisiana sports. It’s hard to find many guys who are as beloved in a single state.
However, Brees will be opposite of LSU’s sideline on Monday as he helps coach Purdue in the bowl game.
Brees spoke at his Citrus Bowl press conference and was asked about any relationship he developed with LSU. He revealed he rehabbed his shoulder at LSU following surgery in Baton Rouge.
Drew Brees talking about his #LSU ties. Said he even had shoulder surgery in Baton Rouge in May and did rehab at LSU.
"It's like playing a backyard game with your family. You love 'em … but you want to beat 'em."
— Scott Rabalais (@RabalaisAdv) December 31, 2022
Brees had more high praise for LSU when talking about what a win would mean for Purdue.
Drew Brees on why the Citrus Bowl vs #LSU is a big game for Purdue: "This is a top-five, top-three program in college football. LSU fights for National Championships each year. That's their level of expectation."
— Emily Villere Dixon (@emilyvdixon) December 31, 2022
Brees was a three-year starter for the Boilermakers from 1998-00. He led the Big Ten in passing yards and touchdowns in all three seasons. He led the NCAA in total yards twice and finished fourth in Heisman voting in 1999 and third in 2000.
Brees arrived in New Orleans in 2006 after beginning his career with the Chargers. He led the Saints to a Super Bowl in 2009 and led the NFL in passing yards on seven occasions.
Brees’ presence likely comes as a lot of help to a Purdue team that will be without a few of its coaches and some of its best players on Monday.
Drew Brees' relationship with PointsBet has caused some issues for the 2023 Cheez-It Citrus Bowl. | 2022-12-31T19:44:36Z | sports.yahoo.com | Drew Brees, Purdue interim assistant, previously rehabbed his shoulder at LSU | https://sports.yahoo.com/drew-brees-purdue-interim-assistant-165752856.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/drew-brees-purdue-interim-assistant-165752856.html?src=rss |
Recruiting never stops for the Florida Gators and that includes holidays. UF received the good news that it made the most recent cut for four-star interior offensive lineman Donovan Harbour on New Year’s Eve along with Michigan, Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, Tennessee and Wisconsin.
The Catholic Memorial (Waukesha, Wisconsin) is considering all seven schools and has offers from several other Power Five programs. Florida offered him in August but has yet to get him on campus. Harbour made visits to Ohio State and Tennessee in 2022 while also attending an Alabama camp in June.
Right now, the On3 recruiting prediction machine give the Buckeyes the best odds to land him at 37.3%, and Wisconsin is second on the list with 17.1% odds. Michigan State and Michigan both have above 10% odds, but the Spartans didn’t make his most recent cut. Florida’s odds come in at a paltry 1.1%, but that could change with a visit.
Catholic Memorial is coming off a 13-1 season where its only loss came in the state championship game. Harbour helped anchor an offensive line that averaged nearly 200 yards per game (199.6) and over 7.0 yards a carry.
Harbour is ranked No. 60 overall on the 247Sports composite and is No. 4 among offensive linemen in the class of 2024. | 2022-12-31T19:44:50Z | sports.yahoo.com | Florida lands in top seven for this 2024 top-100 IOL | https://sports.yahoo.com/florida-lands-top-seven-2024-190111749.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/florida-lands-top-seven-2024-190111749.html?src=rss |
LeBron James wears a No. 23 Ohio State uniform while watching the Buckeyes play in the College Football Playoff championship game at AT&T Stadium on Jan. 12, 2015. (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
LeBron James paused near the loading dock inside State Farm Arena on Friday, smiling, thinking about the cheers. Later in the night, he’d make more history — 47 points on his 38th birthday during the Lakers' win — the friendly Atlanta crowd completely seduced by his excellence.
“Do I find myself envisioning that it was me? Yeah. Absolutely. All the time,” James told The Times about playing college football or basketball. “Every time I go to an Ohio State game, a football game or a basketball game or any of those games where it's just super-jam packed, super excitement. You've got the student sections. For sure. No question about it.”
“I love it,” Chris Jent, a Lakers assistant coach and former Buckeyes basketball star and coach said. “He’s adored. The fact that Ohio State fans are so passionate anyways, the fact that someone like that who didn't go to the school embraces the university. Not everyone in Ohio is an Ohio State fan. So having him, it means a great deal to the following.
“The fans. The alumni fan base, the kids that are there, the tenured bit — like how many people always come back to their respective schools. I just think it's super, duper cool,” James said. “… I feel like an honorary alum, for sure.”
LeBron James attends a game between Notre Dame and Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio, on Sept. 3. (Ben Jackson / Getty Images)
“It's going to be fun. Obviously, it's going to be a tough one,” he said. “Us playing the No. 1 team on their home turf, but if anybody can do it, Ohio State can do it.”
“How could you not want to go out and just run through a wall?” James said of what it feels like to hear it. “Do whatever it takes to represent scarlet and gray. Know what I'm saying?
“It's an unbelievable feeling to put on an Ohio State uniform and play in front of the faithful.” | 2022-12-31T19:45:16Z | sports.yahoo.com | LeBron James' Ohio State fandom runs deep before Peach Bowl | https://sports.yahoo.com/lebron-james-ohio-state-fandom-171309405.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/lebron-james-ohio-state-fandom-171309405.html?src=rss |
Gameday has arrived in New Orleans and Nick Saban and the No. 5 Alabama Crimson Tide are on the verge of taking on the No. 9 Kansas State Wildcats.
Despite the joy and excitement of the Allstate Sugar Bowl matchup and the new year, coach Saban and the Alabama equipment staff took time to honor a fallen legend of the game.
Today, when you see Alabama take the field, the back of the historic crimson helmets will look a little bit different. Alabama has decided to put a simple new decal on their helmets to honor the passing of Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach.
Leach passed away on Dec. 12 and left a lasting impact on the game of football and all of the fans that enjoyed watching his air-raid attack.
Coach Saban has always had the utmost respect for coach Leach and this small gesture exemplifies just that. | 2022-12-31T19:45:22Z | sports.yahoo.com | LOOK: Alabama honors the passing of Mike Leach with helmet decal | https://sports.yahoo.com/look-alabama-honors-passing-mike-145040381.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/look-alabama-honors-passing-mike-145040381.html?src=rss |
Veteran Auburn wide receiver Shedrick Jackson officially declared for the NFL draft Friday afternoon.
The fifth-year senior announced the news on social media with a heartfelt message.
“First, I want to thank God for providing me with the opportunity to play for the best university in the country. It has truly been a blessing. I thank my mother Laquesha Sanders and the rest of my family for giving me love and support throughout the process that pushed me to become the best version of myself every single day.
I thank the Auburn family for your support and dedication to the university and myself. I truly believe that there is no place like Auburn and playing in Jordan Hare Stadium was an experience that I was grateful for from start to finish. I thank all the coaches that I crossed paths with and who helped me grow into the man I am today. Through the ups and downs, I was able to learn a lot about myself, the game of football, and life. With that being said, I would like to announce that I am declaring for the 2023 NFL Draft. War Eagle.”
The Hoover, Alabama native played in 53 games from 2018-22. He finishes his career with 66 receptions for 874 yards and one touchdown.
Jackson used his extra season of eligibility from the covid season to return for the 2022 season so unless he wanted to be a graduate transfer at another school then he was out of eligibility. | 2022-12-31T19:45:36Z | sports.yahoo.com | Shedrick Jackson officially declares for the NFL draft | https://sports.yahoo.com/shedrick-jackson-officially-declares-nfl-173247156.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/shedrick-jackson-officially-declares-nfl-173247156.html?src=rss |
Hugh Freeze received the good news on Friday that several key defensive pieces are returning to the program for the 2023 season.
Defensive backs D.J. James and Nehemiah Pritchett both announced Friday that they plan to return to Auburn to play for Freeze instead of taking their first chance to enter their name into NFL Draft consideration.
Both players started at cornerback for the Tigers last season, with Pritchett returning with the most experience with the program. Pritchett signed with Auburn as a part of the 2019 class out of Jackson High School in Jackson, Alabama, and has played in 42 games over four seasons at Auburn.
Since 2019, Pritchett has recorded 93 tackles, with 4.5 being for a loss. He has also snagged two interceptions over his Auburn career. Pritchett returns to Auburn for his fifth season, which is possible due to the 2020 season where every athlete was granted an extra season of eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic that altered the season.
James joined Auburn’s program last season after transferring from Oregon and made an immediate impact.
The junior from Spanish Fort made 37 tackles last season, with one for a loss. He also picked off one pass, which he returned for a touchdown in Auburn’s 41-17 win over Western Kentucky on Nov. 19. He also ended the season with a Pro Football Focus grade of 82.4, which was the highest among Tiger defenders.
In other roster news, wide receiver Shedrick Jackson announced that he will be entering the NFL Draft on his Instagram account. Jackson recorded 66 catches for 874 yards during his Auburn career that spanned from 2018-22. | 2022-12-31T19:45:49Z | sports.yahoo.com | Two key defensive backs announce return for 2023 season | https://sports.yahoo.com/two-key-defensive-backs-announce-154447506.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/two-key-defensive-backs-announce-154447506.html?src=rss |
The arrival of the College Football Playoffs allows fans to watch not only four of the best teams clash but the top players as well.
In the first game at 1:00 p.m. PT, the Michigan Wolverines will take on the TCU Horned Frogs in the Fiesta Bowl.
Plenty of NFL evaluators, including the Los Angeles Chargers, will have these players that are going to be in the 2023 NFL draft under the microscope today.
With that, here are a few players that could be in the blue and gold when next April rolls around.
WR Quentin Johnston, TCU
The Chargers need to bring an explosive element to the offense next offseason, which Johnston can supply.
At 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds, Johnston possesses excellent size and long arms, which he uses to outmuscle cornerbacks. He has great speed to win vertically and to break away from defenders in the open field. Additionally, his athleticism allows him to gain separation on different kinds of routes.
Emerging as one of the top receivers in college football, Johnston finished with 53 receptions for 903 yards and five touchdowns this season en route to earning First-Team All Big-12.
CB Tre'vius Hodges-Tomlinson, TCU
As long as Brandon Staley is the head coach, he will always be looking to upgrade the secondary. Well, what better way to add someone whose relative is a Charger great? Hodges-Tomlinson is the nephew of LaDainian Tomlinson.
While undersized at 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds, Hodges-Tomlinson, makes up for it with speed, a scrappy temperament, explosiveness, and ball skills.
Hodges-Tomlinson was First-Team All-Big 12 and First-Team AP All-Big 12 in 2020 and 2021. Through 36 games, he racked up 116 tackles, four tackles for loss, five interceptions, 32 passes defended, and three forced fumbles.
LB Dee Winter, TCU
With Drue Tranquill set to be a free agent, the Chargers could look to address the linebacker position this offseason.
Winters is a tackling machine with outstanding range and speed. A 6-foot-1 and 230 pounds, Winters leads the team in tackles for loss (11.5), sacks (7.5), and quarterback hurries (seven). He also has 232 career tackles, the most among current Horned Frogs.
This season, he earned all-Big 12 first-team honors.
EDGE Mike Morris, Michigan
Joey Bosa and Khalil Mack’s time on the field in their first year together was short-lived. Since Bosa was out, the production from the edge defender group has been abysmal outside Mack until recently. With Bosa’s durability concerns and Mack aging, the Chargers must address the position.
At 6-foot-3 and 292 pounds, Morris has immense upper-body strength, which he uses to bully offensive tackles into the backfield and set firm edges. While he isn’t the most athletic player at the position, he shows good timing and angles to beat some offensive tackles off the edge.
TE Luke Schoonmaker, Michigan
The Chargers could be looking to upgrade the tight end position, with Donald Parham’s durability concerns and Tre’ McKitty’s underwhelming play.
Schoonmaker, the 6-foot-6 tight end, emerged as one of Michigan’s top pass-catchers this season, hauling 34 catches for 386 yards and three scores, despite missing two games.
A complete player at the position, Schoonmaker can play in line, he can play the slot, he can run past linebackers, and he can block edge defenders at a high level. | 2022-12-31T20:04:55Z | sports.yahoo.com | 2023 NFL draft: 5 potential Chargers targets to watch in Fiesta Bowl | https://sports.yahoo.com/2023-nfl-draft-5-potential-171756670.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/2023-nfl-draft-5-potential-171756670.html?src=rss |
With the No. 2 overall pick in the 2023 NFL draft within reach, the Chicago Bears (3-12) will take on the Detroit Lions (7-8), who are playoff hopefuls in coach Dan Campbell’s second year.
The Bears will have a chance to play spoiler, giving the Lions their second consecutive loss and hurting their chances of making the playoffs. But, for second-year quarterback Justin Fields, it’s also an opportunity to improve his record against NFC North opponents and continue building excitement for 2023.
As we enter the new year, here are five things to watch in Chicago’s Week 17 matchup – and a final prediction!
Justin Fields is closing in on the NFL rushing record
The Bears’ second-year quarterback has exploded onto the scene as an electric dual-threat quarterback this year. Justin Fields has rushed for 1,011 yards and eight touchdowns and is only 195 yards away from breaking Lamar Jackson’s NFL record for most rushing yards by a quarterback in a season.
Cole Kmet vs. Lions' secondary
This year the Lions have struggled to defend tight ends, allowing five receptions for 54 yards and nearly a touchdown per game. Back in the Week 10 matchup, Cole Kmet took advantage of Detroit’s weakness with four receptions for 74 yards and two touchdowns.
In their last three games, the Lions have allowed tight ends to catch for more than 70 yards receiving and average one touchdown per game. So for Kmet, his breakout season should continue on Sunday.
Re-establishing the run
Despite having the best rushing offense in the NFL with 179.7 yards per game, Chicago was held to only 80 yards rushing against Buffalo last week. The Lions are near the bottom in rushing defense (28th), so with the Bears running back group at full strength, look for the run game to get back on track. The last time Chicago played Detroit, they totaled 258 rushing yards.
Bears defense vs. Lions RBs
Last week the Panthers (21st-ranked run defense) held the Lions to their lowest rushing production of the year with 45 yards. It was an embarrassing loss for Detroit, who trailed 31-13 entering the fourth quarter.
With Detroit falling behind early, the game script didn’t support running the ball. As a result, running backs Jamaal Williams and D’Andre Swift only had 11 rushing attempts and are averaging 23 per game.
But can the Bears hold Detroit to 95 yards rushing as they did in Week 10? Or will they look like last week’s team allowing 254 yards rushing to Buffalo?
St. Brown brothers rematch
In the last matchup, the younger brother, Amon-Ra St. Brown, got the better of his big brother Equanimeous.
Not only did the Lions come away with the win, but Amon-Ra had 10 receptions for 119 yards. On the Bears’ sideline, Equanimeous had zero targets and two rushing attempts for nine yards.
This week gives Equanimeous a chance to get back at his little brother as the Bears look to win their second matchup against the Lions and spoil Detroit’s playoff hopes.
Final Prediction: Bears 28, Lions 26
Sunday is one of the final two games of the season. So, the current Bears roster is auditioning for next year.
While Justin Fields has said the right things, and his toughness is unmatched, he’s 1-7 against NFC North opponents. He has two weeks to let the division know that the Chicago Bears are for real – beating Detroit and Minnesota will do that. So throw out the stats, and win. | 2022-12-31T20:05:13Z | sports.yahoo.com | Bears vs. Lions: 5 things to watch (and a prediction) for Week 17 matchup | https://sports.yahoo.com/bears-vs-lions-5-things-194516592.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/bears-vs-lions-5-things-194516592.html?src=rss |
The New York Giants (8-6-1) will host the Indianapolis Colts (4-10-1) for a Week 17 matchup this Sunday in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Here are three reasons for optimism entering Sunday afternoon.
Win and advance
The Giants have something extra to play for on Sunday. If New York can defeat the Colts, they will secure a trip to the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
This was a Giants team that was predicted by many to finish last in the NFC East as this was a year that had a lot of off-season turnover with a new general manager and a whole new coaching staff.
This demonstrates how amazing a job Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll have done to turn this franchise around. Especially considering there have been a lot of injuries on this team and the Giants are also deprived of talent compared to other teams in the NFC.
This can be a great end to the amazing story that this team has had this season.
The Colts’ offense is a team of backups on Sunday as they are without their star running back Jonathan Taylor and will also be starting Nick Foles at quarterback.
Taylor’s backup, Deon Jackson, averages 3.4 yards per carry compared to the 4.5 yards per carry Taylor averaged.
Foles is also very debilitating for the Colts’ offense as they only scored three points with him starting last week. In the game, he only passed for 143 yards and threw three interceptions looking like a shell of his former self.
This is a game where the Giants’ defense can feast and demonstrate how it is one of the better groups in football. Turnovers will be a deciding factor in this match and having Indianolpolis with its backups will help New York win this battle.
The Colts offensive line has looked abysmal. They allowed nine quarterback hits and seven sacks cutting off any chance the offense had to continue drives last week.
Wink Martindale has taken notice of this as he has acknowledged that there is “blood in the water.”
In the past few weeks, the Giants’ pass rush has come alive. This was best demonstrated in their loss to the Minnesota Vikings where they hit Kirk Cousins 11 times and sacked him four times.
This will be a great game for Azeez Ojulari (if he plays) and Kayvon Thibodeaux to feast and get ready to perform in a possible playoff push. | 2022-12-31T20:05:32Z | sports.yahoo.com | Giants vs. Colts: 3 reasons for optimism in Week 17 | https://sports.yahoo.com/giants-vs-colts-3-reasons-185552890.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/giants-vs-colts-3-reasons-185552890.html?src=rss |
Opportunity knocks for Jenkins during 49ers' stretch run originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
SANTA CLARA -- Veteran cornerback Janoris “Jackrabbit” Jenkins hopped into action from the 49ers’ practice squad two weeks ago when called upon in the team’s division-clinching victory.
Coach Kyle Shanahan said Jenkins is not in the mix to move into the starting lineup heading into the postseason, but he can still get into uniform and make a contribution.
“There's an opportunity for him,” Shanahan said. “I think we're set with our starters out there, but there's an opportunity for him to get into that rotation and get in the group and be the next man up.”
Jenkins, 34, is an 11-year NFL player with 138 regular-season starts. The 49ers signed him to the practice squad on Nov. 28.
Charvarius Ward and Deommodore Lenoir remain entrenched as the 49ers’ starting cornerbacks, per Shanahan.
Jenkins was needed on Dec. 15, when the 49ers played the Seattle Seahawks. He was elevated from the practice squad to make his season debut with backup cornerback Sam Womack out with a concussion.
When Ward was sidelined during the game with a concussion, Jenkins sprung into action to finish the game. He was on the field for 14 defensive snaps and 14 plays on special teams in the 49ers’ 21-13 victory over the Seahawks.
Seattle quarterback Geno Smith targeted Jenkins twice in pass coverage. He gave up a 9-yard catch to D.K. Metcalf and a 13-yarder to tight end Will Dissly.
“We've been impressed with how he's been here since he's gotten in, and we're very glad to have him,” Shanahan said of Jenkins. “We have no idea how it's going to play out, but he definitely is an option here over the next few weeks.”
Jenkins has not suited up for a game since the night in Seattle. Womack and Ambry Thomas have filled the backup roles while Jenkins remains on standby.
RELATED: When NFL likely will reveal 49ers-Cardinals Week 18 date, time
“With Jackrabbit, he is a veteran who’s played a lot of ball and he’s learning in our system,” 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans said. “He’s doing a really good job of picking things up and he’s practicing really well these past couple of weeks.
“And if we need him to be up, he’s ready to roll.”
Jenkins could be elevated from the practice squad for Sunday’s game against the Las Vegas Raiders with Thomas listed as questionable due to an ankle injury and an illness. | 2022-12-31T20:05:39Z | sports.yahoo.com | Jackrabbit Jenkins has opportunity to contribute to 49ers' stretch run | https://sports.yahoo.com/jackrabbit-jenkins-opportunity-contribute-49ers-194021170.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/jackrabbit-jenkins-opportunity-contribute-49ers-194021170.html?src=rss |
Jersey swaps have become a commonplace ritual at the end of every NFL game, players trading souvenirs with opponents to build a collection of game-worn gear that showcases the talented athletes they’ve battled on the gridiron.
But when Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb left Nashville’s Nissan Stadium after Thursday night’s 27-13 win over the Titans, he did so with the grass-stained No. 19 of one of his own teammates, T.Y. Hilton.
“I told him I wanted this jersey. He’s not walking out with it, I am,” Lamb said via Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News. “Just him being a great teammate and a great mentor for me just in such a short span. It’s value, bro.”
That’s how much of an impact the 11th-year veteran’s leadership and presence on the field has made in just two games as a Cowboy.
“I think it’s obvious,” Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy said Thursday of the impact Hilton has had, even in a short time. “You can see that he’s connected, not only in the receiver room, but on the sideline. Obviously, he’s a veteran with a lot of pelts on the wall. I really like the addition.”
But more than just drawing coverage away from Lamb or sharing with the team’s WR1 what he could expect from the Titans secondary after all his own meetings with them in the AFC South, Hilton has become an immediate contributor to the Cowboys passing attack.
His first catch as a Cowboy converted an improbable third-and-30 on Christmas Eve versus Philadelphia. To kick off New Year’s weekend, he hauled in four receptions for 50 yards. Three of those grabs moved the chains on a third down; two extended drives that turned into Dallas touchdowns.
Lots of #DallasCowboys fans are saying thank you to T.Y. Hilton for his production. 😏#DALvsTEN on Prime Video
“That’s all a credit to him,” quarterback Dak Prescott told reporters, “just being able to come in a couple weeks ago and make the impact that he’s made, make big-time catches, show up on third down, and just- time and time again when his number is called- make those plays. But if you go back and you look at this guy’s resume and his history and his career, there’s no surprise in what he’s doing.”
Hilton currently ranks 56th on the league’s all-time receiving yardage list. With another 400 yards and change, he’ll break the Top 50 and surpass legends like Eric Moulds, Shannon Sharpe, Donald Driver, and Andre Rison.
And based on what Cowboys Nation has seen in just two game appearances wearing the star, the 33-year-old hasn’t lost a step.
“It’s very deceptive,” Lamb remarked earlier in the week. “His arms don’t move as fast, but his legs are sure still turning. It’s crazy.”
“He’s made big plays in big games, and he hasn’t lost anything,” owner Jerry Jones said Friday on K&C Masterpiece on Audacy’s 105.3 The Fan in Dallas.
“He’s certainly bringing something to the dance here in terms of making us a better football team,” Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones told GBag Nation on 105.3 The Fan later in the day. “We were fortunate enough to get him, and as you can see, he’s ready. He’s ready to play right away and help us right away. That chemistry is only going to get better, and that leadership in that wide receiver room, which was a young room to start with. For him to come in there and be able to lead these guys and really be a mentor has been a huge plus. But no mistake about it: as we all saw last night, he can really make plays for us.”
Lamb got the targets and the yards Thursday. Tight end Dalton Schultz got the touchdowns. But the Cowboys’ real unsung hero may have been the guy whose jersey went home with his own teammate.
Because with the playoffs looming, CeeDee Lamb has already seen the difference T.Y. Hilton makes.
“If he’s in this offense, this offense can go.”
It wasn't a greatest-hits kind of win, but these three Cowboys did enough to help the team escape Music City singing a victory song. | From @ToddBrock24f7
Recently, the Indiana native put up a career-high 23 points along with 3 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals in just over 28 minutes of game time. | 2022-12-31T20:06:04Z | sports.yahoo.com | T.Y. Hilton making big impact for Cowboys: ‘If he’s in this offense, this offense can go’ | https://sports.yahoo.com/t-y-hilton-making-big-182713523.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/t-y-hilton-making-big-182713523.html?src=rss |
Southern Miss RB Frank Gore Jr.: Frank Gore Jr. ran wild in Southern Miss’ win over Rice in the LendingTree Bowl. Gore set an all-time bowl record with 329 yards on just 21 carries in the 38-24 win. Gore rushed for two touchdowns and also had an 18-yard touchdown catch. The previous single-game bowl rushing record was 317 yards, but Gore surged past that with a 55-yard touchdown run in the final minutes. Southern Miss won a combined six games in 2020 and 2021, but the bowl win over Rice gave the Golden Eagles seven wins for the 2022 season. And with Gore and a significant chunk of this team’s core expected to return, Southern Miss could be a team on the rise in the Sun Belt next season.
Eastern Michigan: With a win over San Jose State in the Potato Bowl, EMU notched its first bowl victory since 1987. It’s been a long time coming. Before Chris Creighton arrived as head coach in 2014, the 1987 California Bowl was the program’s last bowl trip. Since then, Creighton brought the Eagles to five bowl games, but this year was the first time EMU pulled out the victory. With the win, EMU finished 9-4 for the season. That’s the second-most wins in a season in program history.
Kentucky: The Wildcats made sure that the Music City Bowl was going to hit the under in a 21-0 loss to Iowa. The total for the game was 31 and the lowest total for a bowl game in decades. It was also the lowest total of any game this season after Iowa and Minnesota had a pregame total of 31.5 in what turned out to be a 13-10 game.
And just like that Iowa win, this game went under too. The two teams combined for fewer than 400 total yards and punted the ball 18 times with just 21 first downs between them. It was as ugly as an offensive performance as we all expected, especially from Kentucky. Freshman QB Destin Wade started in place of Will Levis and threw two pick sixes in the second quarter. The loss drops the Wildcats to 7-6 in what ultimately is a disappointing season while Iowa finishes at 8-5 despite its remarkable offensive futility throughout the season. Iowa QBs combined to throw for seven TDs all season while the defense itself scored six touchdowns.
Ole Miss: The Rebels had 11 drives that didn’t end in points in a 42-25 loss to Texas Tech in the Texas Bowl. Ole Miss turned the ball over five times, gave up the ball five times on downs and punted once. While the Rebels were just 2-of-7 on fourth downs, Texas Tech was 5-of-6. The game was a punt hater’s dream. And it was a nightmare for Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart. He threw three interceptions and fumbled once. Texas Tech QB Tyler Shough rushed for two TDs and threw for another as the Red Raiders easily held on to a 19-point halftime lead throughout the second half. The loss also meant that Ole Miss ends the season at 8-5 after starting the season 7-0.
After Pitt's win in the Sun Bowl, Pat Narduzzi, Nick Patti, Ben Sauls and Rodney Hammond met the media.
The Kemsley Family Had the Sweetest Holiday: See Dorit’s “Favorite Hanukkah Moments”
Dorit Kemsley is known to go all out for holidays at home, and she took it to the next level for Hanukkah this year with her family. In her December 29 Instagram Story photos, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member shared a look at “some of [her] favorite Hanukkah moments this year.” In one snap, her kids, Phoenix and Jagger, stood in the kitchen with their cousins eating a sweet treat. “Munchkins enjoying my traditional Sufganiyot (donuts),” she captioned the photo, in which three of | 2022-12-31T20:31:01Z | sports.yahoo.com | College football bowl season winners and losers: Nick Patti leads Pitt to epic comeback win over UCLA in Sun Bowl | https://sports.yahoo.com/college-football-bowl-season-winners-and-losers-the-music-city-bowl-hits-a-historic-under-in-iowas-21-0-win-232408843.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/college-football-bowl-season-winners-and-losers-the-music-city-bowl-hits-a-historic-under-in-iowas-21-0-win-232408843.html?src=rss |
Klay Thompson and Jordan Poole both have been outstanding during the Warriors' season-long four-game winning streak.
Their chemistry has been on another level lately, prompting the two players to brainstorm a nickname for their sharpshooting partnership, one that combined for 12 3-pointers and 72 points in Golden State's 118-112 comeback win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday night.
"It’s been great," Thompson said Friday. "We call each other 311, like the band."
Poole, No. 3, and Thompson, No. 11. Those jersey numbers combine to read 311, the American rock band which gained popularity in the mid-1990s for dominating the rap rock genre with hit songs like "Down" and "All Mixed Up."
As Golden State operates without All-Star forward Andrew Wiggins and superstar Steph Curry, much of the scoring burden has fallen on the shoulders of the "311" duo. It's been working lately. Poole is averaging 30.8 points and Thompson is posting 28.0 points in 38.3 minutes over the Warriors' last four games.
"I think we kind of built that chemistry last year, so it’s paying dividends this year," Thompson said. "JP is such an amazing shot maker as well as playmaker. It’s easy to play off him when he puts so much pressure on the defense. I think we have a good synergy between us.
"I hope we can keep this going even when we get to full strength. We’ll be in that second unit a lot together."
RELATED: How Jerome secretly sparked Warriors' comeback win vs. Blazers
The Warriors have a chance to properly celebrate the new Poole-Thompson nickname when they play Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks on the band's annual "311 Day" on March 11. | 2022-12-31T20:31:06Z | sports.yahoo.com | Klay Thompson, Jordan Poole unveil flashy new nickname: '311, like the band' | https://sports.yahoo.com/klay-thompson-jordan-poole-unveil-172526418.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/klay-thompson-jordan-poole-unveil-172526418.html?src=rss |
Joey Logano 2022 season in review
Editor‘s note: This concludes the series of season reviews for select 2022 NASCAR Cup Series drivers.
See more: Bubba Wallace, Erik Jones, Martin Truex Jr., Alex Bowman, Kevin Harvick, Tyler Reddick, Kyle Busch, Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon, Daniel Suárez, Chris Buescher, Chase Briscoe, Ryan Blaney, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, Christopher Bell , Ross Chastain
Driver: Joey Logano
Crew chief: Paul Wolfe
Final 2022 ranking: 1st
Key stats: 4 wins, 11 top fives, 17 top 10s, 784 laps led
How 2022 ended: About as well as it could. Logano landed his second NASCAR Cup Series championship with a dominant performance in the finale at Phoenix. The 32-year-old driver won twice in the regular season to firm up his playoff stature, then methodically advanced through the postseason. A berth in the Championship 4 final was his after a clutch victory in the Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas. His fourth win of the year sealed the deal, making him only the second active driver with multiple Cup titles, joining Kyle Busch.
RELATED: Logano rolls to season-ending win, ices title
Best race: Cup Series Championship. With an honorable mention for his victory from the pole on NASCAR Throwback Weekend at Darlington (107 of 293 laps led), Logano saved one of his best performances for last at Phoenix Raceway. Logano brimmed with confidence all week leading up to the final event, not shying from pronouncing himself as the pre-race favorite. He and his No. 22 team backed up the chatter, claiming the pole in qualifying and executing all the way to the end, leading 187 of the 312 laps.
Joey Logano celebrates with the trophy and his family on the phone after winning the Busch Light Clash in Los Angeles
Other season highlights: Logano started the season off with a historic first, holding off Kyle Busch for victory in the first Busch Light Clash exhibition held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The triumph was not only the first of its kind at the prestigious venue, but also marked the competitive debut of NASCAR’s Next Gen car. He capped the weekend with his wife, Brittany, as they welcomed the family’s third child, announcing the birth of Emilia Love Logano on the following Tuesday.
MORE: Logano: The toast of LA
Stat to know: Logano’s title-clinching performance was part of his fifth Championship 4 appearance, and all have come in even-numbered years (2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022). The Phoenix weekend also kept a streak alive — in the nine seasons since the advent of the Cup Series elimination-style playoff format, the champion has also been the season-ending race winner each time.
WATCH: Joey Logano’s speech at the NASCAR Awards
Quotable: “When you get this far, I said it all week, we weren’t satisfied with being in the Championship 4. There was nothing to celebrate for us. We’ve been here before. We know what it feels like to lose. It’s the worst feeling in the world if I’m being honest, and winning is the best feeling in the world. It’s great to be able to accomplish it.”
Joey Logano leads Martin Truex Jr. and Cody Ware through the turns at Phoenix Raceway
RELATED: Joey Logano through the years
Looking ahead: Falling under the heading of “why mess with success,” the No. 22 Team Penske bunch has announced no major changes ahead of the 2023 season. The organization announced in August that it had signed Logano to a long-term contract extension. Veteran crew chief Paul Wolfe will return to the No. 22 pit box but said he is entering the final year of his contract with Team Penske. The immediate challenge ahead for the group is going back-to-back, a feat that hasn’t happened in the elimination playoff era and not since Jimmie Johnson completed his historic run of five consecutive Cup Series titles from 2006-2010. | 2022-12-31T21:27:14Z | sports.yahoo.com | Joey Logano 2022 season in review | https://sports.yahoo.com/joey-logano-2022-season-review-055038687.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/joey-logano-2022-season-review-055038687.html?src=rss |
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) Tyree Appleby scored 16 of his 24 points in the second half and Wake Forest held on to beat Virginia Tech 77-75 on Saturday.
The Hokies (11-3, 1-2) played without Hunter Cattoor, who is game-to-game after an arm injury suffered in a Dec. 21 overtime loss to Boston College that snapped a six-game winning streak. Cattoor, last season's ACC tournament MVP, had started 49 straight games. He was tied for the team lead with 27 3-pointers before Basile's lone 3 on Saturday.
Matthew Cleveland had a fourth straight double-double, and Darin Green added 16 points in FSU's loss. | 2022-12-31T21:31:35Z | sports.yahoo.com | Appleby leads Wake Forest to 77-75 win over Virginia Tech | https://sports.yahoo.com/appleby-leads-wake-forest-77-195058707.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/appleby-leads-wake-forest-77-195058707.html?src=rss |
TCU guard Mike Miles Jr. (1) calls a play to the offense during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Texas Tech, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022, in Fort Worth, Texas. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)
TCU head coach Jamie Dixon reacts after a foul call during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Texas Tech, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022, in Fort Worth, Texas. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)
Texas Tech guard De'Vion Harmon (23) drives to the basket against TCU guard Micah Peavy (0) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022, in Fort Worth, Texas. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) A couple of quick traps to start the second half, a couple of turnovers, and No. 18 TCU's rally was in the works.
''I told them we're going to get this thing turned in the second half, and they believed,'' TCU coach Jamie Dixon said. ''I didn't think we'd get it turned that quick.''
The Red Raiders (10-3, 0-1) led by 13 late in the first half and got the margin back to nine midway through the second half - after TCU had pulled within one before its decisive surge. But Texas Tech couldn't overcome 15 of its season-high 23 turnovers coming after the break.
''They've got some long, athletic players,'' coach Mark Adams said after his team's six-game winning streak ended. ''They turned it up a notch and were getting in the passing lanes. I thought they put a lot of pressure on the ball, and I thought that hurt us.''
''We definitely knew we'd come back in the game,'' said Miles, the Big 12 preseason player of the year and the conference's second-leading scorer. ''We've come back against a lot of teams. We knew this second half wasn't going to be any different.''
Each got to shoot the free throws on the other's technical, with Miles making one of two and Harmon missing both. Kevin Obanor missed two more after a TCU bench technical in the second half. Texas Tech finished just 9 of 18 from the line.
''We don't do it a lot ... trapping some ball screens,'' Dixon said. ''It wasn't that effective, but it may have gotten us going a little bit more defensively.'' | 2022-12-31T21:31:41Z | sports.yahoo.com | Miles, No. 18 TCU rally for 67-61 victory over Texas Tech | https://sports.yahoo.com/miles-no-18-tcu-rally-200734472.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/miles-no-18-tcu-rally-200734472.html?src=rss |
Xavier's Jerome Hunter (left) celebrates with Jack Nunge after drawing a foul during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Connecticut, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
CINCINNATI (AP) Zach Freemantle scored 16 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, and Colby Jones also scored 16, helping No. 22 Xavier hand No. 2 UConn its first loss of the season, 83-73, on Saturday.
Jack Nunge started for Xavier despite an illness that limited him during warmups. He didn't rejoin the team after halftime until a couple of minutes into the half but finished with 15 points in 24 minutes.
''Thirty minutes before tipoff, he was sleeping,'' Xavier coach Sean Miller said. ''He looked awful, but he didn't have a fever. He did the best that he could. We certainly wouldn't have won if he didn't play.''
''Jack came through in the biggest way,'' Freemantle said. ''He was in there getting fluids, then to see him be that impactful was motivating.''
''The group is real down,'' UConn coach Dan Hurley said. ''These guys wanted to make a statement on the road and have a chance to be No. 1 on Monday. Xavier's as good as anybody in the league. Not many teams in the country could have come in here and won this game.''
Jerome Hunter's 15 points for Xavier tied a career high. He had a career-high 10 rebounds in a win Wednesday at St. John's, all off the bench.
''Jerome was the difference in the game tonight,'' Miller said. ''His energy was contagious.''
''Put yourself in my shoes,'' Hurley said. ''You're aware of the free-throw discrepancy. You see that. It's factored into your mind. I wish I wouldn't have said `unbelievable.'''
''We beat one of the best teams in college basketball,'' Miller said. ''They are a very talented, well-oiled group. You have to beat them. They don't beat themselves.''
UConn went 13 of 37 from 3-point range. The 37 attempts were one shy of a school record. ''Maybe we could have been more selective,'' Hurley said. ''It's one of those days. Alex (Karaban) with those types of looks would normally go 4 of 8, not 2 of 8. We just couldn't make that big shot.''
Erik ten Hag insisted Marcus Rashford was back in favour after the Manchester United forward responded to his benching for missing a team meeting with the late strike that clinched a 1-0 win at Wolves on Saturday. | 2022-12-31T21:32:00Z | sports.yahoo.com | No. 22 Xavier hands No. 2 UConn its 1st loss, 83-73 | https://sports.yahoo.com/no-22-xavier-hands-no-193807583.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/no-22-xavier-hands-no-193807583.html?src=rss |
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) After losing their first three Big East Conference games, Shaheen Holloway put a must-win label on Seton Hall's matchup with St. John's. His players didn't let down.
''We came together,'' said Dawes, who transferred from Clemson. ''I was like: `Hey, man, we got to make our stretch. This is where good teams make their stretch.' So we just emphasize that. And that's what led us to work hard.''
''We've just got to understand, we got to play like that all the time,'' said Holloway, whose had his ups and downs since leaving Saint Peter's after a Cinderella NCAA run to return to his alma mater this year. ''We've got to play like that all the time, like our backs are against the wall, every game in this league.''
''Sky's the limit for this team,'' said Samuel, who matched his season high. ''We're just as good as any of the teams I've played on at Seton Hall. Once we lock in and find that real click, it's going to be a great story for us and Seton Hall.''
''We got to be tougher, that's the bottom line,'' Anderson said. ''I mean we can sit here and go through all that if you want with all of the questions. We've got to be a lot more tougher.'' | 2022-12-31T21:32:07Z | sports.yahoo.com | Samuel, Dawes lead Seton Hall's rally past St. John's 88-66 | https://sports.yahoo.com/samuel-dawes-lead-seton-halls-193642355.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/samuel-dawes-lead-seton-halls-193642355.html?src=rss |
On the final day of 2022, Florida men’s basketball sits at No. 62 on the NCAA NET rankings.
Sixty-eight teams will make the NCAA Tournament at the end of the year, and there’s a decent chance that Florida would make the Big Dance if the season ended today. Sure, the Gators don’t have a signature win like last year’s one-point victory over No. 2 Auburn at home, but there’s still plenty of time for Florida to earn that win and the Gators may have just played their best game of the season so far.
The calendar turning over can bring a fresh start for the program and no one on the team should be hanging their head just yet. Florida’s won every game that it’s supposed to; the Gators are 7-0 against Quadrant 3 and 4 opponents, and they appear to be improving against the Quadrant 1 and 2 teams of the world.
Todd Golden is slowly figuring out what works for this team, and he’s not doing a bad job on the recruiting trail either. A few key wins during the SEC schedule should help Florida lock in its spot for March Madness and break out of the 50-60 range in the NET rankings.
Perhaps that’s optimistic, but a three-point loss to Auburn has fans hopeful for a nice run to start off the new year.
Carson Cooper made his first huge highlight while wearing the green and white | 2022-12-31T21:32:19Z | sports.yahoo.com | Where does Florida stand at the end of 2022 in the NCAA NET rankings? | https://sports.yahoo.com/where-does-florida-stand-end-191130614.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/where-does-florida-stand-end-191130614.html?src=rss |
The Green Bay Packers will lose safety Micah Abernathy to the Atlanta Falcons entering the final two weeks of the 2022 season.
The Falcons signed Abernathy from the Packers practice squad to the team’s 53-man roster on Saturday.
Abernathy, who went undrafted out of Tennessee in 2019, revived his NFL career in Green Bay this summer. He intercepted a pass in his preseason debut and eventually made the Packers’ initial 53-man roster, although he was released a day later and has spent the rest of the regular season on the practice squad.
The Packers elevated Abernathy from the practice squad to the gameday roster in Week 1 and Week 13. He played six snaps on special teams against the Minnesota Vikings in the season opener and one snap on defense and seven snaps on special teams against the Bears in Chicago earlier this month.
Over two games, Abernathy produced one tackle.
Landing in Atlanta will provide Abernathy with a chance to play snaps over the final two games of the season. The Falcons play the Arizona Cardinals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers at home to end the season.
Abernathy’s departure will provide the Packers an opportunity to add a new player to the practice squad to end 2022.
The Packers elevated K Ramiz Ahmed and RB Tyler Goodson from the practice squad to the gameday roster for Week 17 against the Vikings. | 2022-12-31T21:36:15Z | sports.yahoo.com | Falcons sign S Micah Abernathy off Packers practice squad | https://sports.yahoo.com/falcons-sign-micah-abernathy-off-210759451.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/falcons-sign-micah-abernathy-off-210759451.html?src=rss |
Now, he’s officially, officially back!
On Friday, interim head coach Steve Wilks couldn’t give an exact amount of snaps the 35-year-old Norman will play, but put a soft cap on his availability.
Norman last played back on Jan. 30, 2022, when he played eight snaps (all on special teams) for the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship game against the Los Angeles Rams.
The Panthers have also activated wide receiver and return specialist Andre Roberts. Roberts, who has missed the past 15 games with a knee injury and an illness, was designated to return from injured reserve on Dec. 20. | 2022-12-31T21:36:47Z | sports.yahoo.com | Panthers activate CB Josh Norman, WR Andre Roberts for Week 17 | https://sports.yahoo.com/panthers-activate-cb-josh-norman-210615385.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/panthers-activate-cb-josh-norman-210615385.html?src=rss |
Shanahan: 49ers monitoring Bosa's health amid record chase originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
Programming Note: "49ers Game Plan" will be airing on NBC Bay Area at 7 p.m. PT Saturday, Dec. 31.
Coach Kyle Shanahan knows star defensive end Nick Bosa can make history in the 49ers' last two games of the 2022 NFL season. However, Shanahan also knows there is a bigger goal in mind.
In a conversation with 49ers broadcaster Greg Papa on this week's episode of "49ers Game Plan," Shanahan explained how San Francisco is balancing Bosa's journey to surpass the 49ers' single-season sack record -- 19.5 by Aldon Smith in 2012 -- while keeping him fresh for the postseason. Bosa needs just 2.5 sacks to claim the record for himself.
"I mean Nick's pretty smart," Shanahan said to Papa. "I mean, he wants the records very badly but he knows the bigger picture."
Shanahan shared that he "hated" pulling Bosa in the 49ers' 37-20 win over the Washington Commanders last weekend, and was thanked by Bosa for making sure he wasn't unnecessarily hurt.
"We got to make sure nothing bad happens so it's pretty easy for me going forward," Shanahan continued. "We got a lot to play for still -- we're going to keep it that way."
Bosa recorded two sacks against the Commanders en route to winning another NFC Defensive Player of the Week award. That said, the 49ers coach was pretty clear on what his plan is with only two regular-season games remaining.
"If he's ever banged up or anything like that, or if ever the game's out of hand and we know who the winner's going to be, then we'll shut him down right away," Shanahan asserted. "We won't have to say, 'Hey, you go in there and try to get that record.'
"So it is limited but I think he's still got a good chance to do it."
Entering the 49ers' matchup against the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday, the 25-year-old owns a league-high 17.5 sacks and believes he can surpass Smith over the final two weeks.
Expect the 49ers to remain steadfast in keeping their pass rusher out of harm's way, especially since the team has bigger aspirations in mind come February.
Elon Musk has distinguished himself this year from most other CEOs. He broke down the barriers that many bosses wouldn't even test. In doing so, the serial entrepreneur has built up a long list of enemies. | 2022-12-31T23:08:25Z | sports.yahoo.com | 49ers watching Nick Bosa's health amid sack record chase, Kyle Shanahan says | https://sports.yahoo.com/49ers-watching-nick-bosas-health-222548050.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/49ers-watching-nick-bosas-health-222548050.html?src=rss |
The Cleveland Browns lost on Christmas Eve to the New Orleans Saints, but are hoping their holiday luck turns around on New Year’s Day against the Washington Commanders. On paper, the Browns seem to have an advantage, but that has not gone in their favor much this season. Can the Browns find a way to stack two wins to end the season?
On the Eve of their matchup, however, the Browns have made three roster moves before they take the field in the nation’s capital. Here are the three moves the Browns have made as they prepare to take on the Commanders in D.C. on New Year’s Day.
LB Jordan Kunaszyk placed on IR
Browns Commanders
Browns linebacker Jordan Kunaszyk (51) celebrates with teammates after recovering a Bears fumble during the second half of a preseason game, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022, in Cleveland.
Brownsjl 11
The Browns have now had five linebackers placed on season-ending Injured Reserve as Jordan Kunaszyk has now been ruled out the rest of the way. Suffering from a hand injury, Kunaszyk has emerged as a core special teamer and depth piece for the Browns this season. Hopefully, he finds his way back to Cleveland this offseason as he is set to hit free agency.
LB Tae Davis signed to active roster
Nov 3, 2019; Denver, CO, USA; Cleveland Browns linebacker Tae Davis (55) during the National Anthem before the game against the Denver Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High. Mandatory Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
Replacing the roster spot of Kunaszyk, the Browns have signed linebacker Tae Davis off of their practice squad. Davis was a gameday elevation three times this season from the practice squad already. He has been a special teamer in his appearances, so expect that to continue over the last two games of the season.
Browns elevate two from the practice squad
Cleveland Browns running back John Kelly (49) runs the ball during the second half of a preseason NFL football game against the Atlanta Falcons, Sunday, Aug. 29, 2021, in Atlanta. The Cleveland Browns won 19-13. (AP Photo/Danny Karnik)
The Browns have also named their two practice squad elevations for this matchup against the Commanders as well. Defensive tackle Roderick Perry will make another gameday appearance while running back John Kelly is set for his season debut in Week 17. Elevating a running back, however, is an interesting move for a team that is not expected to shut Nick Chubb down.
The New York Giants have won a lot of close games this season, but the Indianapolis Colts have lost five games in a row.
Kurt Angle Wants To See Ricochet Get An Opportunity To Reach The Next Level, Thinks He Could Be The Future
Kurt Angle says he thinks Ricochet could be the future. […]
Another goal for Erling Haaland, but another disappointing result for the two-time defending champions. | 2022-12-31T23:08:37Z | sports.yahoo.com | Browns make handful of moves on the eve of their matchup with Commanders | https://sports.yahoo.com/browns-handful-moves-eve-matchup-213207503.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/browns-handful-moves-eve-matchup-213207503.html?src=rss |
The Chargers made a few roster moves ahead of their Week 17 matchup with the Rams.
Los Angeles activated edge defender Joey Bosa from injured reserve. Bosa has been out since Week 3 with a groin injury that he had to have surgery on.
In correspondence, L.A. waived running back Sony Michel to make room for Bosa on the roster.
Additionally, the Chargers promoted RB Larry Rountree and defensive lineman David Moa from the practice squad.
Rountree has appeared in two games this season. In 2021, he rushed for 87 yards and a touchdown on 36 carries.
Moa, a former undrafted free agent out of Boise State, spent time with the Vikings and Falcons before landing in New York, where he played in four games and had three tackles in 2021.
Giants Injury Tracker: Adoree' Jackson doubtful, Azeez Ojulari questionable for Week 17 vs. Colts
Here's what we'll be watching for as the Bears face the Lions in Week 17. Plus, a final prediction. | 2022-12-31T23:09:03Z | sports.yahoo.com | Chargers make roster moves ahead of Week 17 matchup with Rams | https://sports.yahoo.com/chargers-roster-moves-ahead-week-213506290.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/chargers-roster-moves-ahead-week-213506290.html?src=rss |
Having just gone up by two touchdowns with six minutes to play, the Cowboys defense needed someone to step up.
Nahshon Wright stepped WAY up.
The 6-foot-4-inch cornerback went much higher than that, looking like he got launched off a trampoline as he snared Tennessee quarterback Josh Dobbs’s pass out of the air on its way to wideout Robert Woods in Cowboys territory. Wright’s first interception as a pro helped to snuff out a possible Titans rally and eventually seal the Cowboys’ 12th win of the season.
But the 24-year-old, making his first start of the year, took the moment in stride as he spoke with reporters after the 27-13 win.
“I just made a play when it came my way,” Wright said at his locker Thursday night. “That was all, that was it. He just threw it; I went up and grabbed it.”
Wright became the eighth Cowboys defender to log an interception this year, giving the team 15 picks on the season, a mark that’s third-best in the league.
But the 2021 third-round pick out of Oregon State contributed more than just that well-timed takeaway. He also led the team in tackles on the night.
Not bad for a guy who had logged just 59 defensive snaps on the year entering the Week 17 contest.
“It was a zone coverage. I was able to get my eyes back to the quarterback; I originally thought he was going to scramble. But he just threw it up in my area, and I went up and grabbed it,” Wright explained.
“It was an outstanding play that you can make with his skillset, and that’s always been the thing for him,” owner Jerry Jones said Friday on 105.3 The Fan. “Once he gets his confidence, once he gets his technique that you get with more experience, then [we knew] his skillset, his height, his length would make him a unique corner for us. I think that’s coming, and I was proud to see him get it.”
The Oregon State product was pressed into extra service after season-ending injuries to cornerbacks Jourdan Lewis and Anthony Brown and less-than-impressive play from fellow second-year corner Kelvin Joseph.
It wasn’t perfect by any stretch. According to PFF, Wright allowed seven catches on 10 targets, giving up 105 yards (including the evening’s longest play, a 39-yard reception to little-used wide receiver Racey McMath) and the Titans’ lone touchdown.
But with an increasing number of snaps over each of the past four weeks and a bit of confidence under his belt, Wright now looks to keep trending upward in the Dallas defense.
“Nahshon just continues to battle with every opportunity he gets,” head coach Mike McCarthy told reporters after the game. “He’s clearly one of the guys you point to to take the second-year jump. I think we’re seeing that. But he needs to take another step. We’ve got another game, and we still want to be able to play and get some rhythm with our defensive personnel. I think we were more fluid this week than we were last week, and that’s definitely a big step in the right direction.”
Wright’s timely interception spurred Titans fans to take steps in the direction of the Nissan Stadium exits on Thursday. But the youngster had no idea his pick had caused a mass exodus until a reporter told him afterward.
“For real? I didn’t know. I was still locked in.”
Locked in. That’s a good place to be for a cornerback, and right where the Cowboys would like Wright to stay for the upcoming playoff run. | 2022-12-31T23:09:34Z | sports.yahoo.com | ‘I just made a play’: Cowboys CB Nahshon Wright sealed win, emptied Titans’ stadium with first INT | https://sports.yahoo.com/just-made-play-cowboys-cb-224105445.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/just-made-play-cowboys-cb-224105445.html?src=rss |
New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones has been handed another fine stemming from the Week 16 game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
On Saturday, it was revealed that the Patriots’ second-year quarterback had been fined $13,367 for the controversial low block hit on Bengals cornerback Eli Apple.
He was also fined another $10,609 for the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty he drew when attempting to recover the fourth-quarter fumble from running back Rhamondre Stevenson.
Both fines totaled $23,976 for one game.
Jones’ character has been spotlighted over the last week with multiple players, including Apple, coming out and labeling him as a dirty player. There have been questionable plays in the past that people are beginning to point to in order to validate that argument.
Fortunately for the Patriots, Jones was able to avoid a suspension and be made available in their must-win game against the Miami Dolphins on Sunday.
Mac Jones fined for two separate infractions in game against Bengals
Mac Jones’ wallet will be a little lighter heading into 2023.
The Patriots' defensive backfield just took a big hit. | 2022-12-31T23:09:40Z | sports.yahoo.com | Mac Jones gets handed a second fine for Bengals game | https://sports.yahoo.com/mac-jones-gets-handed-second-223407659.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/mac-jones-gets-handed-second-223407659.html?src=rss |
McGlinchey's recent strides to be tested vs. Raiders' Crosby originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
SANTA CLARA — Mike McGlinchey will be facing one of his biggest challenges on Sunday when the 49ers face off against the Raiders in Las Vegas.
The veteran right tackle will line up across from Raiders star pass rusher Maxx Crosby, who will be doing everything possible to bring 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy to the ground. Crosby, a two-time Pro Bowler, already has racked up 11.5 sacks, four pass breakups and three forced fumbles in 15 contests.
Offensive line coach Chris Foerster believes McGlinchey is up for the task and is playing the best football of his five-year NFL career. The Notre Dame product has not allowed a sack in his last seven starts.
“Mike’s continued to work really hard at getting better,” Foerster said on Thursday. “Mike can be Mike’s worst enemy. And that’s where I’d say the most improvements occurred. There have been some bad plays and usually one doesn’t stack upon another.
“Sometimes they do, but for the most part, Mike’s been able to reach a level of consistency that even though there are some plays he’s not happy with, I’m not happy with, he has improved greatly from his first year until now.”
McGlinchey’s PFF grades have shown a marked improvement since being selected in the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft. In 2022, the 27-year-old has allowed just 22 pressures in 15 starts -- an average of 1.46 per game, a new career low.
2021 — 13 pressures in 8 games, 1.62 per game
2020 — 37 pressures in 16 games, 2.31 per game
In 2021, the veteran tackle shared that seeing Derin McMains, a sports performance coach, helped his approach to the game. In the past, if McGlinchey struggled on a play it would tend to have a snowball effect, leading to another mistake, and then another.
These days, McGlinchey is letting go of negative plays mentally and moving on. At times a bad play will still catch up with the tackle, like his two false-start penalties in back-to-back drives in Week 16.
“No matter how good Mike is, they’re good rushers on the other side,” Foerster said. “They’re going to do good things and last week’s group was a really talented group, so it has you on edge throughout the game.
“You have to stay calm and understand each rep lives and dies by itself and you learn from it, you build and you go on to the next rep and see how you can improve and get better and not let the bad overwhelm you and that’s where Mike’s really improved, I would say more than anything.”
Pittsburgh is brining up an extra defensive lineman for this week. | 2022-12-31T23:09:47Z | sports.yahoo.com | Maxx Crosby will test Mike McGlinchey's improvements in 49ers-Raiders | https://sports.yahoo.com/maxx-crosby-test-mike-mcglincheys-213045020.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/maxx-crosby-test-mike-mcglincheys-213045020.html?src=rss |
McVay said the Chargers' game-day branding in the stadium would not be uncomfortable, and the prospect of being the visiting team was only a minor inconvenience.
In 2018, the Rams defeated the Chargers 35-23 at the Coliseum.
Herbert, 6 feet 6 and 236 pounds, has impressed the Rams with his accuracy.
In a deal that had been rumored for weeks, 37-year-old soccer great Cristiano Ronaldo has signed a massive two-year deal to play for Saudi Club Al Nassar FC. The news was reported by Saudi-owned television channel Al Arabiya and confirmed by a post on Al Nassar FC’s social media accounts by a showing Ronaldo holding […]
Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has officially been ruled out for Sunday's game at New England after suffering a concussion in Miami's Christmas Day loss to Green Bay. Miami coach Mike McDaniel said Friday that Tagovailoa is still in the NFL's concussion protocol and is day to day as he focuses on his health. “He's better than the day before,” McDaniel said.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) Joe Girard scored 24 points, Benny Williams had a double-double, and Syracuse overcame a slow start to defeat Boston College 79-65 on Saturday. Syracuse trailed by seven points with about 13 minutes remaining in the first half but Girardi, who had 13 first-half points, hit three 3-pointers to lead the Orange to a 36-27 halftime lead. The Orange fell behind halfway through the second half but outscored the Eagles by 15 points over the final 10 minutes.
Here's Why You Should Retain Norfolk Southern (NSC) Stock Now
Norfolk Southern's (NSC) efforts to reward its shareholders are praiseworthy. However, high fuel costs are denting bottom-line growth. | 2022-12-31T23:10:06Z | sports.yahoo.com | Rams limp into matchup against Chargers looking to build on big win last week | https://sports.yahoo.com/rams-limp-matchup-against-chargers-214006452.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/rams-limp-matchup-against-chargers-214006452.html?src=rss |
Local product Stevie Mitchell helps Marquette earn another tense victory at Villanova
Marquette guard Stevie Mitchell scores a college-high 19 points to lead Marquette to a victory at Villanova on Saturday.
VILLANOVA, Pa. – The camera phones were held aloft and throngs of people – many wearing Stevie Mitchell’s No. 4 Marquette basketball jersey - massed around the Finneran Pavilion bleachers for a few words with the returning hero.
Mitchell was all smiles and made time for everybody like a hometown politician. No matter that the sophomore guard's teammates were enjoying milkshakes and carrying pizza boxes, eager to celebrate the Golden Eagles’ 68-66 victory over Villanova on Saturday.
But how often does this happen? A kid from not far away in Reading, Pennsylvania, who came of age during a golden era for the Wildcats, coming home to have his best college performance in that No. 4 MU jersey?
Come on, that’s storybook stuff.
“It was awesome,” Mitchell said. “Being in Milwaukee, far from home, it’s always nice to see familiar faces.
“Especially when it’s my family and my close friends. That’s always nice and it was definitely an EGB (energy-giving behavior in MU’s parlance) for me.”
Stevie Mitchell has Marquette-high 19 points against Villanova
Maybe everyone should have seen his performance coming after Mitchell canned a three-pointer from the corner on MU’s first possession against the Wildcats (7-7, 1-2 Big East). But Mitchell came into the game averaging just 6.1 points and shooting 23.3% on three-pointers for the Golden Eagles (11-4, 3-1).
His role on this season’s MU team is as a defensive stopper, but he was known as a bucket-getter growing up and he owns all of the scoring records at Wilson High School in Reading.
“My teammates were finding me,” Mitchell said. “And I was being confident in my shot.
“Coaches, my teammates have just been telling me to be confident and always shoot with confidence. Just stick with it even though I haven’t been hitting shots.”
Mitchell scored eight of MU’s first 12 points. He had 12 at halftime, and after a flurry of five straight points early in the second half, surpassed his previous MU high of 14 points set in his first college game last season against Southern Illinois-Edwardsville.
Mitchell finished with 19 points on 8-for-13 shooting, and provided his usual cheek-by-jowl defense before fouling out with 15 seconds remaining.
“We needed it,” MU coach Shaka Smart said. “It was a struggle at times offensively. It was not, as a team, one of our best offensive games.
“But Stevie’s been such a leader for us. In terms of energy. In terms of deflections. In terms of taking the other team’s leading scorer and making him inefficient. It’s poetic justice that he was able to be our leading scorer today.”
Marquette’s defense on Villanova better in second half
Mitchell wasn’t the only player who contributed key performances for MU in the victory.
Kam Jones added 14 points, hitting key three-pointers when the Golden Eagles were struggling from long range. Freshman Chase Ross had a huge sequence in the second half, driving for a tough layup and then knocking down a three-pointer to tie the game at 53-53.
Marquette guard Steve Mitchell knocks the ball away from Villanova's Caleb Daniels in the first half on Saturday.
Golden Eagles center Oso Ighodaro played stellar defense on Villanova’s Eric Dixon to force a miss in the waning seconds. It was another clutch play for the lengthy Ighodaro, who blocked a shot at the end of MU’s victory at Kansas State last season.
“I have a ton of confidence because Oso can guard anybody in the country,” Mitchell said. “When you have Oso, our leader, a guy who wants to play offense and wants to play defense and can play offense and can play defense, in position to make the final stop, I like our chances.”
The versatile Ighodaro also found a cutting Olivier-Maxence Prosper with a nice assist for a dunk that gave the Golden Eagles the winning margin with 1:42 remaining.
After that, the Golden Eagles’ defense banded together for two straight stops before Ighodaro’s final stand.
MU’s defense was much sharper after allowing Villanova to score 44 points in the first half. The Golden Eagles did a better job of finding shooters, with the Wildcats going 4 for 16 on three-pointers after going 8 for 17 in the first 20 minutes.
“We had to,” Smart said. “Between (Caleb) Daniels, (Cam) Whitmore, Dixon and (Brandon) Slater, those guys are all ultra-aggressive.
“And the system here at Villanova has been as good as anyone in the country at exploiting one-on-one opportunities with movement off the ball. And that’s in the post and on the perimeter. Our guys did a good job at just holding their own, putting their chest on the offensive player. We doubled the post some, which was a big part at what we were trying to do. And then, I think, just a little more want-to.”
The Golden Eagles also slowed down Wildcats standout freshman Whitmore, allowing the likely first-round NBA draft pick to score just two points in the second half after he got loose for 12 in the first.
“We always tell our guys, they’ve got McDonald’s All-Americans and we have Burger King guys,” Smart said.
Marquette has won back-to-back close games at Finneran Pavilion
MU won last season for the first time in 10 games at Villanova’s intimate on-campus arena, getting a clutch three-pointer from Justin Lewis.
Now MU has won back-to-back games at what has been a house of horrors for Big East teams. Since the 2013-14 season, Butler is the only other conference foe to win at Finneran Pavilion.
Mitchell, who was recruited by Villanova, knows the history of the program that has won two national titles in the last seven seasons though the Wildcats are still finding their way under first-year coach Kyle Neptune.
“Only one (Big East) team in the last four years to beat them here,” Mitchell said. “It’s not an easy environment to play in.
“Luckily, we were that team. We knew what it took. That was our theme for this game: What it takes.”
The Golden Eagles also put to rest the narrative that they couldn’t win close games. Coming into Saturday, MU’s victories were all by double digits and its four losses were by a combined 16 points with the Golden Eagles holding late leads in each of them.
“We knew that was a question because we had that question for ourselves,” Mitchell said. “We knew we haven’t been able to pull out a game, we haven’t really been doing our best finishing it.
“So that’s been an emphasis. In every film session, in every practice we have, every weight room session that we have. Just keep getting better and that was the emphasis during the game. When we were in the last media (timeout) and the media before that, we were like ‘Yo, we got to finish. We haven’t won a close game so we got to finish.’ We stuck together. We’re better together.”
It’s a good thing Mitchell had so many teammates willing to give him tickets to meet the heavy demand.
“I had 31 people on my ticket list,” he said. “And then I had a bunch of family and friends that also bought tickets.
“My teammates, I’m really grateful for them. They gave me a lot of tickets. I just kept getting notifications: ‘Oso sent you two tickets.’ ‘Chase sent you two tickets.’ ‘TK (Tyler Kolek sent you two tickets.’ I'm grateful to them.”
And those lucky enough to get tickets are no doubt grateful to witness that performance from the homecoming king.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Stevie Mitchell helps Marquette earn tense victory at Villanova | 2022-12-31T23:49:54Z | sports.yahoo.com | Local product Stevie Mitchell helps Marquette earn another tense victory at Villanova | https://sports.yahoo.com/live-coverage-marquette-vs-villanova-173013337.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/live-coverage-marquette-vs-villanova-173013337.html?src=rss |
Although the season did not end in a national championship, Nick Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide finished the 2022 season off with a win of Kansas State in the Allstate Sugar Bowl.
The Tide got off to a bit of a sluggish start early on in the contest falling behind the Wildcats 10-0 before reeling off 21 unanswered points.
To the surprise of no one, the Alabama offense was led by star quarterback Bryce Young who finished with over 300 passing yards and five touchdown tosses.
Defensively, the Tide was led by Brian Branch who was all over the field against the Wildcat offense. Branch finished with double-digit tackles and a second-half interception.
As the season comes to an end let’s take a look at a few of the takeaways from Alabama’s impressive Sugar Bowl victory.
Defense wasn't great but was very opportunistic
The Alabama defense was not great by any stretch of the imagination but they were opportunistic forcing two Will Howard interceptions and having a goal-line stand in the final minutes of the first half.
Jermaine Burton comes alive
The Alabama offense has been searching for a playmaker out wide for the entire 2022 season and [autotag]Jermaine Burton[/autotag] came alive for the Tide in its final game of the season. The Wildcats struggled to cover Burton over the top throughout the entire contest. All indications are that Burton will return for the 2023 season which will be huge for whoever the signal caller happens to be.
Brian Branch is that dude
Perhaps the most under-appreciated player on Alabama’s team is defensive back Brian Branch. Branch came up big for the Tide defense over and over again in Saturday’s matchup against Kansas State. The junior is expected to be one of the top defensive backs taken in April’s NFL draft.
Bryce Young is Alabama's QB GOAT
Alabama has a long history of phenomenal quarterbacks but Bryce Young takes the cake in my humble opinion. Young’s uncanny ability to make a play when a play is not there to make is simply incredible. It will be a long time before Alabama fans get to witness another Bryce Young.
Dynasty un-dead
Much of the talk this season, especially following the conclusion of the regular season is that the Nick Saban dynasty at Alabama is dead. Well, you can officially squash that notion. Alabama has one of the greatest recruiting classes of all time coming in and the momentum of this dominating win over Kansas State should carry over into 2023. In other words, Saban isn’t going anywhere and neither is Alabama.
Bryce Young reminds us why he’s the easy No. 1 pick in the 2023 NFL draft
Alabama quarterback Bryce Young is delivering another gem in the Sugar Bowl, which should lock him in as this year's No. 1 pick | 2022-12-31T23:58:49Z | sports.yahoo.com | 5 takeaways from Alabama’s dominating 45-20 win over Kansas State in the Sugar Bowl | https://sports.yahoo.com/5-takeaways-alabama-dominating-45-213240746.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/5-takeaways-alabama-dominating-45-213240746.html?src=rss |
Some found it to be a rather odd decision for Bryce Young to play in Alabama’s “meaningless” Sugar Bowl. Others applauded the dedication to his teammates and the head coach, Nick Saban, who had helped to elevate him to his current status.
Whatever pundits wanted to call the decision for Young, it was another opportunity for the young quarterback. Despite his near consensus projection as the NFL’s No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming 2023 NFL draft, the Sugar Bowl gave him an opportunity to remind the entire country what he had to offer at the next level.
Young more than delivered in his final college contest.
Bryce Young doesn’t have elite arm strength but there’s nothing to suggest he can’t make every throw NFL offenses will ask at the next level.
His accuracy and pocket composure are absolutely elite #WeAreTexans pic.twitter.com/Y1ptGqG4o2
He finished 15 of 21 for 321 yards and five touchdowns in a 45-20 stomping over the Big 12 champion Kansas State Wildcats. The game featured a host of NFL throws from the 2021 Heisman Trophy winner and highlighted his anticipation, touch, accuracy, and overall play making skills that have made him college football’s best over the past two seasons.
All five touchdowns went to five different receivers as Young made the most of what’s been a lackluster receiving core during the season. It was the kind of performance that will leave many wondering if the Crimson Tide should have faced Georgia in the College Football Playoff semifinals.
However, for Houston, it left no question. The Texans have a clear choice to make should they find themselves with the first overall pick in the upcoming draft.
Young’s electric playing energy on the field and demonstrable leadership off the field look perfectly primed to elevate the Texans franchise. After officially losing their franchise quarterback via a trade with the Cleveland Browns, Houston finds themselves in the rare position to quickly move on.
The cornerback probably felt pretty good about his play here with both the back and sideline boundaries serving to help.
Bryce Young just drops it in perfectly.
4th touchdown today for the potential Houston quarterback #WeAreTexans pic.twitter.com/lPcY0H4b1p
Armed with Young, on a rookie contract no less, and all the capital gained from the trade with the Browns, general manager Nick Caserio may be poised to build a playoff team faster than anyone expected in Houston.
Make no mistake: Young is far from a perfect prospect. The next few months will feature a litany of conversation regarding the quarterback’s size and if his frame is built to last at the professional level. Saturday was still an important reminder of just how impressive the actual football player has been on the field.
With the sophomore slump of Davis Mills and the disappointing first campaign of Lovie Smith’s tenure, seeking an upgrade at the game’s most important position seems like an obvious solution.
bryce-young-3-flaws-doomed-first-round-qbs
Bryce Young's decision to opt in to the Sugar Bowl only enhanced his chances of cashing in as a pro. Young passed for 321 yards and five touchdowns in a game that other top NFL prospects might have skipped, and No. 5 Alabama responded to an early two-score deficit with 35 straight points to defeat 11th-ranked Kansas State 45-20 on Saturday. “For me it was just about doing everything I can to help the team,” Young said. | 2022-12-31T23:58:55Z | sports.yahoo.com | Alabama QB Bryce Young puts Texans on notice with 5 touchdowns in Sugar Bowl | https://sports.yahoo.com/alabama-qb-bryce-young-puts-221849335.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/alabama-qb-bryce-young-puts-221849335.html?src=rss |
GLENDALE, Ariz. − Not much went well for Michigan football in the first half of the Fiesta Bowl against TCU, but one thing that did was the leg of Jake Moody.
The Wolverines trailed 21-6 at the break, with all six points coming off the foot of the Northville native. That included a 59-yard field goal as time expired in the second quarter. The kick was the longest field goal in program history, passing Quinn Nordin's record 57-yard kick against Alabama as time expired in the first half of the Citrus Bowl on Jan. 1, 2020.
Moody, who was a Lou Groza Award finalist this season after winning the award given annually to the nation's best kicker a season ago, also made a 42-yarder with 13:46 to play in the first half to get Michigan on the board. The senior is now 28-for-34 on the season and has 10 field goals of at least 40 yards this season.
Jake Moody (13) of the Michigan Wolverines celebrates his game winning field goal with J.J. McCarthy (9) to beat the Illinois Fighting Illini 19-17 at Michigan Stadium on November 19, 2022 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
LOSING POINTS:Michigan has TD taken off board, fumbles it away on next play
FOLLOW ALONG:Fiesta Bowl live scoring updates vs. TCU
CARLOS MONARREZ:Jim Harbaugh's legacy with Michigan is already cemented, win or lose
The field goal also was the longest in Fiesta Bowl history, and the second-longest in any bowl game ever, behind only Tony Franklin's 60-yarder for Texas A&M in the 1977 Sun Bowl against Florida.
Moody, who went a perfect 5-for-5 against Illinois on Nov. 19, including a game-winning kick with nine seconds remaining, now has extended his program record for most field goals in a season (28) and career (58).
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jake Moody sets Michigan football record with 59-yard field goal
This woman lives debt-free in a tiny home village – and found a new type of family
EJ Runyon, a retired software developer, moved to the community near Knoxville, Tennessee where many residents are single women over 45.
Rickea Jackson led Tennessee Lady Vols basketball to a win to open SEC play. Here's why her performance, and how she did it, is significant. | 2023-01-01T00:00:11Z | sports.yahoo.com | Jake Moody sets Michigan football record with 59-yard field goal | https://sports.yahoo.com/jake-moody-sets-michigan-football-230935373.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/jake-moody-sets-michigan-football-230935373.html?src=rss |
Gaming regulators in New Jersey ordered sportsbooks to stop taking bets on the Citrus Bowl between Purdue and LSU due to “an individual associated with the Purdue Football team” who was in violation of state regulations.
Who is that individual? Well, it is none other than former Purdue and New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who signed on to be an interim coach at Purdue on December 15th. At the time, he had an ambassador partnership with PointsBet.
Needless to say, PointsBet had to end the partnership due to legal reasons.
“PointsBet would like to congratulate Drew Brees on his appointment as Interim Assistant Coach for the Purdue Boilermakers,” PointsBet said in a statement released on Dec. 22. “While this is an exciting next step in his career, after careful review, we have decided to end our ambassador partnership agreement with Drew. Regulatory and legal compliance, responsible gaming practices, and the integrity of legal sports betting are top priorities for our organization and this decision will allow us to uphold that commitment. We wish Drew all the best as he returns home to his alma mater.”
LSU will take on the Purdue Boilermakers on Monday with a chance to finish Brian Kelly’s first season on the bayou with 10 wins.
Major Burns will give LSU's secondary a much-needed veteran presence.
Just hours before the elimination of cash bail and other pretrial provisions were supposed to go into effect across Illinois, the state Supreme Court on Saturday halted the statewide implementation following days of confusion after a Kankakee judge ruled the provisions unconstitutional. In an order issued late in the afternoon, the high court said the stay was needed to “maintain consistent ... | 2023-01-01T00:00:17Z | sports.yahoo.com | New Jersey pauses Citrus Bowl betting due to Drew Brees’ violation of state regulations | https://sports.yahoo.com/jersey-pauses-citrus-bowl-betting-213749210.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/jersey-pauses-citrus-bowl-betting-213749210.html?src=rss |
As I postulated earlier today in my day after thoughts, Irish wide receiver Braden Lenzy has decided to move on from Notre Dame. Not only will Lenzy not play in South Bend next year, he announced that he is hanging up his cleats and will no longer play football.
It’s an interesting decision to say the least, as he had the chance to get drafted and play in the NFL. Instead he will start his professional career with Medasourse, a healthcare consulting leader according to their website. You have to believe it was a bittersweet moment yesterday for Lenzy, who went out catching four passes for 89 yards and a touchdown.
During his four year career, Lenzy caught 74 balls for 976 yards and 9 touchdowns. We wish him the best as he continues his life away from football. | 2023-01-01T00:00:55Z | sports.yahoo.com | Notre Dame wide receiver Braden Lenzy has made a decision on his football future | https://sports.yahoo.com/notre-dame-wide-receiver-braden-231638518.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/notre-dame-wide-receiver-braden-231638518.html?src=rss |
The Buckeyes are always looking to secure top offensive line talent and have had some very good luck recently finding that in the state of Wisconsin. Typically a very, pro-Badger area, last year Ryan Day went into the state and signed Carson Hinzman, who has a bright future for Ohio State.
Day is looking to steal another offensive lineman from under the Badgers nose, Donovan Harbour. Today the six-foot-five-inch and 310-pound offensive tackle announced his top 7 schools, which included the Badgers, Penn State, Michigan, Oregon, Tennessee, Florida and the Buckeyes. He is viewed as one of the top offensive line prospects in the country and it’s good news that the Buckeyes have made the cut.
There are just three commits for the Buckeyes in the 2024 cycle, Jeremiah Smith, Ian Moore and Garrett Stover. Harbour would be a great addition to this group as adding elite tackles is always a good idea.
Ohio State lands in top 5 of 2024 Tennessee athlete | Buckeyes Wire
National Signing Day: Ohio State football early signing period tracker | 2023-01-01T00:01:02Z | sports.yahoo.com | Ohio State makes top 7 for Wisconsin offensive lineman | https://sports.yahoo.com/ohio-state-makes-top-7-201156639.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/ohio-state-makes-top-7-201156639.html?src=rss |
The replay booth took an apparent TD from Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl on Saturday.
Later in the second quarter, the officials threw a flag for roughing the passer on the Horned Frogs’ Johnny Hodges, a 6-foot-2, 240-pound transfer from Navy.
The hit wasn’t late and appeared to be clean.
The ESPN broadcast booth was surprised by the call and said in the NFL maybe, not in college football.
Roughing the passer call on TCU… That's a soft call imo. C'mon man. pic.twitter.com/I7FDYfRoXT
The Horned Frogs’ defense stiffened, so the questionable call led to no points for the Wolverines, who were being handled, 21-3.
Ryan Young came off the bench for a season-high 20 points, going 7 for 7 from the field, and No. 17 Duke beat Florida State 86-67 on Saturday.
The last time Kansas needed to overcome a 15-point halftime deficit was on the biggest stage in college basketball. The Jayhawks certainly weren't going to be intimidated by one in Allen Fieldhouse. With another raucous home crowd behind it, the nation's No. 4 team quickly wiped out the big lead Oklahoma State had painstakingly built.
Both Zach Wilson and Christ Streveler handled the quarterback snaps for the Jets in Week 16. In Week 17, one of them will have a chance to play at Seattle. Wilson will be inactive for the game; the team already has made that announcement. Streveler has been elevated to the active roster from the practice [more] | 2023-01-01T00:01:27Z | sports.yahoo.com | Phantom roughing the passer calls aren’t limited to the NFL | https://sports.yahoo.com/phantom-roughing-passer-calls-aren-223821617.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/phantom-roughing-passer-calls-aren-223821617.html?src=rss |
The Alabama Crimson Tide took care of business against the Kansas State Wildcats on Saturday in the Sugar Bowl. After falling behind 10-0 early, it was all Bryce Young and Alabama the rest of the way en route to a 45-20 victory.
The Crimson Tide’s defense was outstanding and the receivers played their best game of the season as a unit. However, Bryce Young was simply brilliant and that’s why he is RollTideWire’s player of the game. Young was 15/21 for 321 yards and five touchdowns, further solidifying himself as the best player in the 2023 NFL draft.
Young left the game late in the fourth quarter to a standing ovation to conclude his unbelievable career. He was also named the MVP of the game by the Sugar Bowl
Brian Branch was also outstanding on the day, every play felt like he was involved. Branch had 12 tackles with four coming as losses, one sack and one interception.
The Tide finish their 2022 campaign at 11-2, making it 12 straight years the Tide has won 11 games.
BAMA ROLLS PAST KANSAS STATE IN THE SUGAR BOWL 🏆
Bryce Young: 15-21, 321 YD, 5 TD pic.twitter.com/BI35I5Ry8m
Bryce Young becomes second All-Time in Alabama passing TDs | 2023-01-01T00:02:11Z | sports.yahoo.com | Sugar Bowl Roll Tide Wire Player of the Game: Bryce Young | https://sports.yahoo.com/sugar-bowl-roll-tide-wire-204437231.html?src=rss | https://sports.yahoo.com/sugar-bowl-roll-tide-wire-204437231.html?src=rss |
How Jumbo the elephant paved the way for jumbo mortgages
The 11-foot-tall elephant reshaped our language, which has proved surprisingly apt
Perspective by Luke Fannin
Luke Fannin is a PhD student in the ecology, evolution, environment and society graduate program at Dartmouth College, where his research focuses on the evolution, ecology and life history of mammals through the prism of their teeth.
Jumbo, a famous elephant that belonged to showman P.T. Barnum, at the London Zoo. (London Stereoscopic Company/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Americans have long been fascinated with “jumbo” things: jumbo shrimp, jumbo jets, jumbotrons. Perhaps few know, however, that the word and the imagery it invokes of larger-than-life objects is rooted in the legacy of Jumbo, a celebrity elephant of the 1880s made famous by the London Zoo, P.T. Barnum and the Barnum & Bailey Circus.
While Jumbo is remembered for his ability to entertain circusgoers, the elephant also left a nuanced legacy in our language. For example, jumbo mortgages are loans exceeding the limits set by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Unlike ordinary mortgages, jumbo-size loans are also not fully securitized or guaranteed, elevating risks to the lender. In other words, jumbo mortgages are both excessively large and excessively risky. This apparent double meaning for “jumbo” better captures the legacy of Jumbo the elephant in American pop culture than simply his size alone.
The public has long been captivated by elephants because of their immense size, remarkable strength and ferocious temper. None of these adjectives were appropriate to describe Jumbo when he first arrived at the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris, in late 1862. Captured in Sudan, Jumbo was the first African elephant in Europe in nearly two millennia, but he lived in relative obscurity. He was a scrawny calf at just four feet tall, with a disposition described as “filthy and miserable,” and was overshadowed in Paris by two larger Asian elephants and two new African elephants — Castor and Pollux — brought to the Jardin des Plantes in 1863. It was an inauspicious start for the world’s most famous elephant.
Abraham Bartlett, then the superintendent of the London Zoo, arranged Jumbo’s purchase from the Jardin des Plantes in 1865 for 450 pounds, accomplished by trading Jumbo for a rhinoceros and several other rare animals. Acquired sight-unseen, Jumbo’s poor initial health came as a startling surprise to Matthew Scott, who was destined to become the elephant’s longtime keeper. When he first saw Jumbo in June 1865, Scott described him as “full of disease, which had worked its way through the animal’s hide, and had almost eaten out his eyes.” Undeterred, Scott slowly nursed Jumbo back to health, and the gamble by the zoo paid off. By the time Jumbo reached adulthood, he was 11 feet tall and close to seven tons, the largest of his kind in captivity.
At first, Bartlett’s desire to house an African elephant was scientific, given the notable morphological and behavioral differences between the species and its Asian counterpart. At the time, African elephants were thought to be more aggressive than Asian elephants. It was also believed that only Asian elephants could be tamed enough to give rides to zoo visitors, which was popular at the time.
But Bartlett remained determined that, with the proper training, Jumbo could be tamed to become the only ridable African elephant in Europe. By the late 1860s, Jumbo was tame enough to be fitted with a small riding saddle, which was later upgraded to a larger, boxlike howdah for up to eight children as he grew. By the end of his zoo tenure in 1882, Jumbo was estimated to have given 1.25 million rides, including to the children of Queen Victoria as well as a young Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt. “The sight of so enormous an animal taking orders from a human being was a wonder all its own to an audience which, as a nation, suffered and puzzled over questions of scale and dominance,” according to scholar Jennifer Mosier. It is hardly surprising, then, that Jumbo was also a favorite of Queen Victoria, who herself was overseeing a British Empire that had grown during her reign to encompass a quarter of the world’s population.
Yet as Jumbo grew older, he became increasingly aggressive and unpredictable with his human keepers. He took to head-butting his surroundings and driving holes in his enclosure with his tusks, breaking them in the process. It is likely that his hot temper was fueled both by musth, a periodic upsurge in testosterone that occurs in male elephants, and from severe dental pain caused by malformed molars.
Fearful of public incident or injury, the London Zoo sold Jumbo to American circus showman P.T. Barnum in 1882. Barnum knew the perils that accompanied the purchase. Along with Jumbo’s temperament being well known, the British public’s adulation regarding the elephant was so great that large protests erupted at word of the sale, including protests from Queen Victoria herself. Undeterred, Barnum predicted that Jumbo would produce lucrative returns for his circus, where people would clamber to see, in Barnum’s words, the “towering monarch of his mighty race.”
Barnum’s risky investment paid off. As calculated by Jumbo historian Les Harding, Barnum & Bailey spent nearly $30,000 to buy and ship Jumbo across the Atlantic, a sum they made up within 10 days of his inaugural display to American audiences. By the end of his first circus season, Jumbo had brought in close to $2 million in revenue.
But fame cost Jumbo his health. Touring in the United States did little to improve Jumbo’s physical well-being, and he declined in weight and energy as his circus schedule became more rigorous. This decline culminated in his death in 1885 from an accidental nighttime collision with an unscheduled locomotive, a mysterious death for a beloved star attraction. Some accounts claimed that Jumbo’s death may have been planned by Barnum himself, to cover up Jumbo’s ailing health and to deflect long-standing accusations of animal cruelty. Barnum disputed these accusations, instead claiming that the Grand Trunk railroad — the owner of the unscheduled train — was primarily at fault. Barnum even filed a $100,000 suit against the railway company for negligence. His suit eventually was dropped, and the circumstances surrounding Jumbo’s death remain a mystery.
The legacy of Jumbo lived on, however, through both his hide and skeleton — which were quickly preserved and put back on tour with the circus until 1890. Touring Jumbo’s skin and skeleton brought new publicity to Barnum, who estimated that the body would provide $100,000 per year on exhibit. It also brought new risks, as circusgoers could now see if Barnum was truly honest when he called Jumbo “the only mastodon on Earth.” To try to prevent scrutiny of Jumbo’s actual size, Barnum had the height of Jumbo increased postmortem while the elephant’s skin was being stuffed. Yet it was a fire in 1975 that proved the greatest risk of all to Jumbo, as the skin was destroyed in a fire at Tufts University, where the elephant was on display at the Barnum Museum of Natural History.
While Jumbo’s name lives on today in descriptions of large objects, this history also suggests we should equate “jumbo” with ideas of financial risk. Jumbo’s life was shaped by human risk-taking and mitigation, from his captive origins at Jardin des Plantes, to the London Zoo, and finally to the train yard where he died. Jumbo’s story is ultimately a tale of human hubris.
As it stands today, no jumbo-size mortgage carries the same risks to investors as did an 11-foot-tall circus elephant suffering from a toothache. Like Jumbo, these large and risky mortgages may prove unpredictable and dangerous, especially when prodded by outside and competing forces that do not have people’s — or elephants’ — best interests at heart. | 2022-12-12T11:22:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The roots of Americans’ love of “jumbo” things might surprise you - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/12/jumbo-fed-elephant/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/12/jumbo-fed-elephant/ |
Mexico to fine Ticketmaster after Bad Bunny fans were denied entry to show
Hundreds of fans were denied entry after an ‘unprecedented number’ of concertgoers were sold fake tickets, Ticketmaster said
Bad Bunny performs in concert at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City on Friday. (Eduardo Verdugo/AP)
On Friday night, Bad Bunny soared over a sea of screaming fans, sparkling wristbands and flashing cellphones as he rode atop a flying palm tree inside a stadium in Mexico City — the final stop in the reggaeton artist’s “World’s Hottest Tour.”
It was fans’ last chance to catch the award-winning Puerto Rican singer before his announced break next year. And while thousands were able to see Bad Bunny wave the Mexican flag onstage, sing his chart-topping hits with special guests, and perform below a kaleidoscopic explosion of colorful lights, hundreds of fans were denied entry after an “unprecedented number” of concertgoers were sold fake tickets, Ticketmaster said in a statement Saturday.
“This caused an unusual overcrowding and the intermittent operation of our system, which generated confusion and complicated entrance to the stadium, with the unfortunate consequence that some legitimate tickets were denied entry,” the company said on Twitter, adding that fans who had acquired “legitimate tickets through official channels” would be fully refunded.
The ticketing fiasco in Mexico is the latest debacle to roil Ticketmaster. Last month, the company’s chaotic rollout of presale tickets for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour led to a lawsuit from fans and investigations by attorneys general in multiple states. Now, another legal battle and government probe could be heading its way.
Shortly before midnight on Friday, Ricardo Sheffield, head of Mexico’s consumer protection agency, posted on Twitter that he had requested a report from Ticketmaster about the Bad Bunny concert situation. In an interview with Radio Fórmula the next day, Sheffield said the Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the Consumer (PROFECO) had already received approximately 1,600 complaints from fans who had been denied entry into the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.
Sheffield said PROFECO will require Ticketmaster to reimburse fans and also pay them extra compensation worth 20 percent of the ticket’s price. Additionally, the company will be forced to pay a fine that could total up to 10 percent of its earnings in 2021, he said.
PROFECO has received previous complaints about the company, Sheffield said, and has been gearing up to file a class-action suit against the entertainment giant since earlier this month — partly because of allegations that Ticketmaster has oversold tickets for its events, as it is accused of doing for Friday’s concert.
Ticketmaster declined to respond to Sheffield’s allegations, instead referring The Washington Post to the company’s statement on Twitter.
While Ticketmaster has mostly used digital tickets in the United States since 2018, the company still uses a paper system in Mexico. Although its digital tickets are safeguarded from “being screenshotted or photocopied and sold multiple times by unscrupulous resellers,” the paper tickets are easier to duplicate and falsify.
Aitana Hernández, a longtime and die-hard Bad Bunny fan, told The Post she was one of the hundreds of people whose tickets were falsely deemed fake.
Hernández, who said she bought her ticket from Ticketmaster in February, had camped outside Azteca Stadium since Thursday morning, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a giant costume shaped like the heart logo in “Un Verano Sin Ti,” Bad Bunny’s latest album. After waiting outside for 30 hours, she said she was the 12th person in line when the doors opened. And that’s when the heartbreak began.
Although the stadium’s security didn’t initially let her through, Hernández saw “a total miracle” happen Friday night. The sobbing pleas she’d made on Instagram went viral — “People all over social media started demanding: Let the crying heart in!” she said. Westwood Entertainment, a music producing company in Mexico that was raffling a ticket, took notice and offered her a way in.
When she walked in to the front row, Bad Bunny was playing “Moscow Mule,” a synth-infused song inspired by the artist’s drink of choice.
“I cried, even during the songs that you’re not supposed to cry over,” Hernández said. “A couple of girls there started asking me if I was okay, and when I told them what had happened, they kept hugging me.”
“That moment was mine, and I’ll never forget it,” she added. “But I was one of the lucky ones. My heart breaks for all of the other ones. The people responsible for the ticket madness have to be held accountable.” | 2022-12-12T11:23:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mexico investigating Ticketmaster after Bad Bunny concert ticket fiasco - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/12/bad-bunny-ticketmaster-mexico/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/12/bad-bunny-ticketmaster-mexico/ |
ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, engages in more than just economic activities. How will it implement the new initiative?
Guinea Bissau’s president, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, right, is welcomed by Omar Alieu Touray, president of the ECOWAS Commission, during the ground-breaking ceremony of the Ecowas Secretariat in Abuja, Nigeria, on Dec. 4. (Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)
Emmanuel Balogun is an assistant professor of political science at Skidmore College. His new book, Region-Building in West Africa (Routledge, 2022), examines the important role of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in regional governance, particularly with respect to security.
I spoke with Balogun after the Dec. 4 announcement by ECOWAS leaders that they would create a regional peacekeeping force to restore security and constitutional order.
Kim Yi Dionne: The ECOWAS announcement strikes me as an important move given your analysis for TMC on why the ECOWAS responses to recent coups in West Africa raise questions about the credibility of their commitment to constitutional order. But what does your book tell us about how policy decisions like this are actually implemented?
EB: These kinds of decisions are typically made at the Authority of Heads of States level — i.e., the leaders of the 15 ECOWAS member nations. These decisions are flashy, and they get the headlines. But it’s important to know how ECOWAS leaders got to this moment. My book talks about the incremental processes of how practitioners helped formulate and eventually implement these decisions made by the heads of states.
Don’t expect regional organizations to rein in coups
Practitioners are the workers that are close to the ground. They identify and incorporate key stakeholders. But critically, they articulate ECOWAS’s normative standards, and they determine how ECOWAS will respond to issues. And so practitioners can discern the feasibility of these kinds of decisions and how capable ECOWAS is in implementing interventions, and then match the feasibility and capability with the institution’s norms and values.
KYD: Who are these ECOWAS practitioners — and are they from all of the ECOWAS countries?
EB: They are subject matter experts who are part of the civil service, and they come from many different backgrounds. They are not just political appointees from the member countries. ECOWAS has a procurement process through which they hire and staff the headquarters in Abuja and throughout West Africa. Most of the time, staff come from ECOWAS countries, sometimes on loan from national governments. They are former lawyers, former government bureaucrats in ECOWAS members, perhaps former military personnel — and people who have worked for other international organizations like the United Nations, and not just in Africa.
KYD: Can you talk about loyalty? ECOWAS bureaucrats represent their respective home countries, no? To what extent do they serve the interests of their home country governments, especially if those interests aren’t aligned with broader West African goals?
EB: Actually, this is one of the biggest misconceptions about the role of practitioners. Practitioners see themselves as implementers and agents of ECOWAS policies — not as agents of their home governments. And so while practitioners come from particular member nations, they’re often driven to the broader work of the organization, thinking, “How do we solve this problem that faces ECOWAS? How do we help our region develop economically? How do we stop coups from happening?”
Can ECOWAS convince Burkina Faso to return to civilian rule?
And so the realpolitik that may exist among different West African leaders is not often present at the practitioner level. If it was, it would constrain the ability for practitioners to actually move any ideas forward. What I found in my research — listening to the practitioners — is that the work is too hard and too consequential to engage in parochial bidding.
Now, this is not to say that national elements don't exist in terms of work culture. For example, there are perceptions about distinct work cultures based on whether people are from Anglophone or Francophone countries. But practitioners are focused on the work. They see themselves as implementers of policies first and foremost, not as people representing the interests of say, Nigeria or Senegal.
KYD: Given what you’ve learned in your research on ECOWAS peace and security initiatives, how do you imagine this proposed new force might be different from the existing ECOWAS peacekeeping force? And how long might it take to get this new peacekeeping force up and running?
EB: ECOWAS already has a standby force that’s hosted in Abuja, Nigeria. There's also several ECOWAS peace support operations, notably right now in Gambia and Guinea Bissau. Historically ECOWAS has supported a number of peacebuilding and peacekeeping missions. So this is not new territory.
I wonder how this latest effort will differ from what already exists, and why at this juncture there's a need to create a new force, rather than using the standby force or other existing mechanisms.
Instituting this new force will take some time — it will likely involve a lot of other peace and security stakeholders, potentially including civil society groups who are also invested in the peace and security process.
And my research suggests this approach would align with ECOWAS practices aimed at developing mechanisms that are inclusive of multiple stakeholders in the region to solve peace and security problems.
KYD: You’ve served as a fellow for Bridging the Gap, which helps researchers produce policy-relevant work. What do you think is the big policy takeaway from Region-Building in West Africa?
EB: Any policymaker thinking about ECOWAS, or regional organizations in Africa more generally, should think about them as conduits and agents of change in Africa. The unique thing about African regional organizations, and ECOWAS in particular, is that they operate in one of the only regions in the world to set up mechanisms to facilitate democracy and good governance — and facilitate a regional response to things like coups.
And I think policymakers have to understand that even though “economic” is in the name, ECOWAS engages in a wide range of work. Governments can also view these bureaucracies as entities that they can engage with, again, beyond the economic mandate. Other countries might start to think of ECOWAS as a bilateral partner the same way they think about individual countries like Nigeria or Senegal in foreign relations. If other countries and international organizations can engage with African regional organizations this way, they might be able to think more creatively about how to engage in shared partnerships with Africans. | 2022-12-12T11:23:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ECOWAS practitioners will now implement the new policy decision. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/ecowas-west-africa-peacekeeping-security/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/ecowas-west-africa-peacekeeping-security/ |
Interviews, internal documents and audio show how the former TV news anchor squandered a chance to become Arizona’s governor — a defeat that carries warnings for the GOP in 2024
Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake talks to news media on Nov. 1 in Chandler, Ariz. (Caitlin O’Hara for The Washington Post)
PHOENIX — After Kari Lake rode former president Donald Trump’s endorsement to the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona, some of her aides and allies urged her to moderate her campaign to compete in the November election.
“She would never break frame,” said a fellow Republican who spoke with Lake about her refusal to acknowledge Trump’s defeat. “She’d sort of look at you with a puzzled face and be like, 'But the election was stolen in 2020.’”
The person was among 32 outside allies, senior advisers and business leaders interviewed for this report. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations or avoid professional reprisal.
Lake burst onto the national political stage this year as perhaps the purest embodiment of Trump’s grievance-fueled brand of politics. Her slash-and-burn campaign operation courted controversy, stoked distrust in the democratic process and earned her mentions as Trump’s possible 2024 vice-presidential pick — or perhaps even a presidential candidate herself.
Then she lost.
Now, her failed campaign offers a case study in how Trump has warped the GOP’s electoral prospects. The positions adopted by candidates to win his endorsement — often necessary to get through the gauntlet of GOP primaries — appear untenable in the battleground states that Republicans would need to win to reclaim the White House.
Foremost among those positions is refusal to accept the outcome of elections, which Lake made a rallying cry. As she transformed herself from a local television news anchor into a standard-bearer for Trump’s political movement, her campaign became a test of the power, and limits, of his politics.
Lake declined to be interviewed for this story.
Interviews, internal documents and voting data point to the reasons behind her defeat: The candidate, so focused on parroting Trump and settling personal scores, failed to execute on a plan to court the independents and centrist Republicans who decide elections in Arizona, once a red state that now gleams purple.
As advisers urged her to consolidate GOP support after the primary, Lake remained fixated on a grudge match against people loyal to the legacy of the late Sen. John McCain. In the race’s closing days, she appeared in the suburbs alongside Stephen K. Bannon, the far-right radio host and former Trump strategist who was sentenced in October to four months in prison for contempt of Congress.
A meaningful share of Republican voters showed up to the polls but spurned Lake. Statewide, she received nearly 120,000 fewer votes than did the victorious Republican candidate for state treasurer, Kimberly Yee, who stressed financial literacy and fiscal discipline on the campaign trail instead of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Nine percent of self-described Republicans went so far as to vote for Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs, according to exit polling. Independents broke for Hobbs by seven percentage points.
While early signs of Lake’s undoing now blink brightly, the race was close. She lost to Hobbs by just 17,000 votes — less than a percentage point. And she ran ahead of Blake Masters, the GOP nominee for Senate.
“There’s all this hand-wringing, but with a margin that close, there were a bunch of ways to close the gap,” said Sam Stone, Lake’s policy director. The biggest barrier, Stone said, is that the “majority of Arizonans don’t want to vote for Trump or Trump-affiliated candidates.”
A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
The circumstances of Lake’s loss share some features with disappointing GOP results elsewhere. Other aspects are unique to her unconventional first-time candidacy, which gained her celebrity status nationally but failed to win enough votes back home in Arizona.
Her loss is unique in another way. She has refused to accept it.
Rather than concede, as other major election deniers who lost in 2022 have done, she has pointed to problems with printers in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, that caused many voters to wait in line, travel to another polling place or deposit their ballots in secure drawers for tabulation at the county’s main site downtown. An Arizona judge found that the mechanical problems did not prevent anyone from voting.
Lake last week filed a lawsuit seeking an order allowing her to inspect 1.5 million ballots in Maricopa County and declaring her the winner of the election, among other demands. She issued a statement attacking the county, vowing, “I will continue to fight for the appropriate remedy to the mass voter disenfranchisement that clearly affected the outcome of this election.”
Trump’s antipathy for losers is widely known. But he has welcomed Lake twice to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida since her defeat in Arizona. On social media, he has spread falsehoods about Arizona’s elections and called for her to be “installed” as governor. The effect has been to nationalize her loss — an emblem of the hard fall that could await all candidates running proxy Trump campaigns in states he lost.
“It was both a collapse and, now in hindsight, it was a failed campaign from the beginning,” said a high-ranking Arizona Republican. “I don’t really know what to say beyond outrageous arrogance and never getting out of primary mode. This election wasn’t stolen. It was given away.”
‘Sensationalize everything’
Lake left her job as a local Fox anchor in March 2021, saying in a direct-to-camera video that she had grown disillusioned with the media. “I began to feel that I was contributing to the fear and division in this country by continuing on in this profession,” she said.
Two months later, she came across a young operative, Colton Duncan, who would become critical to her nascent political career. The pair met at a dinner in D.C. hosted by the head of the Log Cabin Republicans, the conservative gay and lesbian political organization, according to two people with knowledge of the event. Duncan was working at a firm called Arsenal, which made its name in viral video productions, and had previously worked at the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA.
In June, Arsenal signed her as a client. Its leaders took on prominent roles advising her fledgling campaign.
Lake spent the summer seeking to win the favor of Trump and his associates.
In August she headed for South Dakota, where Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO, was holding a “Cyber Symposium” to air debunked claims about fraud in the 2020 election. She appeared on Bannon’s “War Room” show from the symposium — part of a strategy to win over the party’s right flank, as an adviser recalled, and bolster her pro-Trump bona fides.
It worked. Trump endorsed her the following month, rewarding her for her unrelenting focus on his false claims of voter fraud and saying she would “fight to restore Election Integrity (both past and future!).”
That fall, Lake had her first fundraiser at Trump’s Florida retreat. Her campaign would ultimately spend more than $100,000 at Mar-a-Lago, state filings show.
Lake and Trump spoke regularly in the ensuing months, according to advisers. The pair discussed speculation that he could be her vice-presidential pick when he praised how she responded to a question about the topic, telling reporters she would be their “worst freaking nightmare for eight years” in the governor’s office, according to a person familiar with the conversation. During the campaign, she kept Trump informed about polling and upcoming rallies, a former adviser said.
She built her national profile by sparring with a growing group of media outlets that flocked to those rallies. A former adviser estimated she had notched more than $300 million worth of free media coverage over the course of the primary, compared to about $50 million for her main opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson, a conservative who rejected the false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Against the advice of at least one adviser, Lake took aim at Robson’s husband, a developer and business leader with a vast financial and political network.
She also ignored at least two aides who urged her during a meeting in May not to oppose mail-in ballots. Stone, her campaign’s policy director, said Republicans paid the price for neglecting the mail-ballot operation once integral to the political machine managed by McCain.
“This has been missing for several cycles now,” Stone said. “And we’re getting our butts handed to us.”
Another adviser said Lake’s approach was guided not by data but by her instincts and her past as a newscaster. “She wanted to be a television person at heart,” the adviser said. “She wanted to sensationalize everything.”
That approach landed her in the middle of the country’s most volatile culture wars. In June, a tweet from her account vilified drag queens — part of a sustained GOP effort to paint gender nonconformity as menacing to children. But the post ran counter to Lake’s own history of attending drag shows and hosting one at her home, as a performer and former friend of hers publicly recounted.
Lake convened staff on a call, according to a person who participated, and helped craft a plan “to dig in,” as the person said, contesting the performer’s claims and threatening to sue him. No suit was ever filed.
Lake’s bare-knuckled approach to political controversy drew comparisons to Trump while also eliciting speculation among Arizona Republicans that she could be his running mate in 2024.
Democratic operatives also took notice, with David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, telling Axios that Lake looked like a “plausible presidential candidate.”
‘Scorched earth’
The day after the Aug. 2 primary, Lake’s sleep-deprived staff gathered in a campaign conference room.
Advisers told her that voters already knew she was endorsed by Trump and urged her to begin tailoring her message to the general election, which was three months away. To win in November, they said, she would have to broaden her appeal.
“The idea we tried to get across was, ‘We don’t need to spend another penny calling you the Trump candidate,’” one person who participated in the discussions recalled.
Business leaders who met with Lake periodically also urged her to “reduce the intensity of the so-called MAGA message,” one participant described. “She took it for a while.”
But Lake tired of that strategy, which aides said she felt wasn’t “genuine” or “scorched earth enough.” She sidelined her general consultant and elevated Caroline Wren, a veteran GOP fundraiser with close ties to Trump who was listed as a “VIP Advisor” on the permit for the rally at the White House Ellipse that preceded the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.
Wren brought extensive fundraising networks to the campaign and helped channel the energy of young staffers and volunteers who flocked to Lake because of her charisma and national profile. But some on the campaign said Wren indulged the candidate’s combative impulses while irking other staffers, on at least one occasion prompting a complaint about disrespectful workplace conduct.
Wren declined to address a question about the episode.
One adviser said the influx of former Trump aides in the campaign’s final weeks sent the wrong message. “They saw the race as their ticket to a vice-presidential candidate,” the adviser said.
Lake was her own decision-maker, aides said, and her decision was to never put distance between herself and Trump. One campaign ally proposed that Lake tell Trump to travel to Arizona no later than early September, allowing her to differentiate herself from the divisive former president before early voting began in October.
On Oct. 9, however, Trump came to town. Lake vacuumed a red carpet for him in an image blasted out by her allies as an example of “servant leadership.” Critics saw it as flagrant bootlicking.
Rather than honing her message to Arizona voters, Lake lent her name to gubernatorial candidates out of state, endorsing Tudor Dixon in Michigan and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania — both of whom also ended up losing their races. Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, meanwhile, both traveled to Arizona to stump for her. But she was never endorsed by her primary opponents and she never appeared with Doug Ducey, the sitting Republican governor.
So confident was Lake that her operation was on the right track that she redirected donors to Masters in the campaign’s final weeks.
Behind the scenes in the early fall, a small group of campaign staff, supporters and business allies gathered to begin preparing for a transition to governing the state. Participants met every Friday and wrote regular reports for the campaign.
The plans envisioned a “Victory Tour” across Arizona. Transition documents show that aides and supporters already had names for key roles, from chief lobbyist to border czar. The team used a color-coded scoring system to evaluate state agencies they anticipated would soon fall under their control.
After scorning McCain’s memory in virtually every other respect, Arizona’s GOP slate held to an election-eve tradition he followed. They gathered at the steps of a courthouse north of Phoenix where Barry Goldwater launched his presidential bid in 1964 — and where McCain took to rallying supporters before asking for their votes.
This year, Bannon closed down the rally.
“This is not a campaign, it’s a movement,” Bannon said, one that would “end here tomorrow, with the election of Kari Lake as governor!”
‘It just all went wrong’
When printer problems emerged in Maricopa County on Election Day, Wren and Lake piled into a car, driven by Lake’s husband, to visit polling places affected by the errant printers.
They called Masters, who was also touring sites. Together, they stood behind a 75-foot line at a voting location, using a bullhorn to urge people not to leave.
That night, the first release of preliminary results looked grim for Republicans. But another drop, shortly after midnight, looked more favorable, and cheers erupted in the GOP’s “war room” in a Scottsdale resort, according to someone who was there.
In the ensuing days, as it became clear the results were not breaking for Lake, views varied about how to respond. Some people in the war room remained confident. Ric Grenell, Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and acting intelligence director, “thought it was done and won,” one person said.
But the campaign’s own data showed that defeat was possible, even likely, despite favorable polls.
“I think we were aware of everything that could go wrong — it just all went wrong,” said someone who viewed internal modeling, which showed Lake underperforming Trump’s 2020 results in key areas, such as Pima County, home to Tucson, which was outside her reach as a Phoenix-based news anchor.
“You can’t fix things when you don’t have the resources to do it or the interest to move to the middle on key issues,” this person said.
Lake’s advisers told her four days after the election, on Saturday, Nov. 12, that she had lost, according to Don Huffines, a businessman and former Texas state senator who had helped raise money for her and had been tapped to be chief of staff in a Lake administration.
“It was very memorable,” Huffines said, describing a scene in which aides and allies huddled in the war room as votes were still being tabulated and released. Lake joined from her home. “She kind of started crying on the phone a little bit. It was a very emotional time right then. And she wasn’t emotional for herself. It wasn’t for show. She was upset for the people of Arizona.”
Those participating in the discussion, Huffines said, included Bannon and Floyd Brown, the longtime conservative operative and founder of the Western Journal website, whose recent headlines label Biden a “fool” and decry “woke pandering.”
Huffines said Bannon was measured, in contrast to his public declarations. He advised her to use the campaign’s resources to pursue litigation that would uncover any potential fraud. Lake at one point expressed concern that she would have to cover those costs personally, Huffines said.
Some of Lake’s allies wanted Masters to wait to concede, but he bowed out several days following his projected loss. Mark Finchem, the failed Republican candidate for secretary of state, has not conceded and has joined Lake in circulating unproven claims that the election was stolen. The race for attorney general is going to a recount, with Republican Abe Hamadeh trailing by 511 votes.
People familiar with the post-election discussions say it has mostly fallen to Wren to reconcile Lake to her loss, even as the former candidate promotes her lawsuit and shares posts calling for a revote.
One person said the decision not to go “full ‘Stop the Steal’” — a reference to the rallying cry that brought protesters to D.C. on Jan. 6 — is shaped by the experience of the Capitol attack, which led to a swirl of investigations, some of them involving people on the Lake campaign. Lake has not called for protests, even as she promises to keep “fighting.”
In the meantime, she has been weighing what to do next, according to those in touch with her. She has been approached about media jobs, these people said, but is inclined to go in a different direction, possibly acting as a surrogate for Trump’s 2024 campaign.
“Listen, I don’t know what the future holds,” she said in remarks at Mar-a-Lago this month, according to an audio recording obtained by The Washington Post, “but I know I got a lot of fight left in me.”
Lenny Bronner, Ruby Cramer and Emily Guskin contributed to this report. | 2022-12-12T11:23:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Kari Lake’s campaign to be Arizona's governor, and the Trump of 2022, unraveled - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/kari-lake-trump-loss/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/kari-lake-trump-loss/ |
America First Legal was founded last year by Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigrant family separation policy
By Beth Reinhard
Stephen Miller, senior policy adviser to President Donald Trump, at the White House in July 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The deal in early 2021 was hailed by advocates for Black farmers as the most significant piece of legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — about $4 billion in President Biden’s massive pandemic stimulus package to rectify decades of discrimination. Minority farmers began investing in new machinery and other improvements, anticipating tens of thousands of dollars in government aid.
But today, the landmark deal on behalf of historically disadvantaged farmers is dead — successfully challenged in court by a fledgling conservative organization that argued the program racially discriminated against White farmers.
America First Legal is headed by Stephen Miller, the architect of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants. While AFL lacks the name recognition and financial heft of many conservative counterparts, it has racked up notable court victories over the Biden administration. Casting itself as “the long-awaited answer to the ACLU,” AFL has weaponized the grievance politics embodied by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement through dozens of federal lawsuits, challenging efforts to remedy racial disparities, support LGBTQ students and expand the pool of early voters.
AFL-backed suits helped doom a $29 billion program that prioritized struggling female and minority-owned restaurants last year, and last week, a council created by the Department of Education that conservative parents groups viewed as partisan. AFL has won in part by consistently filing lawsuits in a conservative-friendly judicial district in Texas and taking advantage of a larger federal court system revamped by Trump’s predominantly conservative nominees.
The group’s success is alarming civil rights advocates, who fear Miller has figured out how to harness the courts to protect America’s declining White majority and unravel government policies intended to right historical wrongs against marginalized communities.
In an interview, Miller said AFL is filling a void in the conservative legal movement by challenging what he termed “a hyperracialization of American political and corporate life.” Programs seeking to remedy past injustices and boost historically disadvantaged groups are punishing people based on their skin color, he said.
“I believe that the equity agenda represents one of the single greatest threats to the survival of our constitutional system,” he said.
The group’s mission was fueled by more than $6.3 million in donations last year, recent tax filings show, including about $1.3 million from the Conservative Partnership Institute, whose leadership includes key figures in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Steve Wynn, the casino magnate who resigned as finance chair of the Republican National Committee in 2018 amid allegations of sexual misconduct, is an AFL donor, according to two people familiar with the group’s work who were not authorized to speak publicly about its fundraising. Wynn, who has denied the allegations, declined to comment.
AFL is part of a constellation of groups led by Trump allies that represent an administration-in-waiting upon his potential return to the White House. AFL’s all-White, all-male board includes loyalists who recently trekked to Mar-a-Lago for Trump’s 2024 campaign announcement, including Miller, who helped write the speech, former Office of Management and Budget head Russell Vought and former acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker. Miller, who is expected to work for the 2024 campaign, received $110,762 from AFL last year, about $134,000 from his Save America political committee since Trump left office, and is slated to be paid about $80,000 by the General Services Administration as part of Trump’s post-presidency funds, government documents show.
In the lead-up to the midterm election, AFL also bankrolled a multimillion dollar ad campaign that included inflammatory radio and TV spots demanding an end to “anti-white bigotry” and accusing the White House, businesses and universities of discriminating against White people.
“The Trump administration didn’t care about people like me, it was for White men, and that’s what this group represents and is fighting for,” said John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association, which intervened in the AFL-backed lawsuit challenging the aid to minority farmers. “It’s continuing the legacy of divisiveness.”
Miller, though, argues that AFL is fighting against “bigotry and insanity.”
“I think that it is inescapably true that there is insidious and explicit discrimination against White Americans, Asian Americans, Indian Americans and Jewish Americans based on their skin color and their ancestry,” he said.
According to Trump advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, Miller stays in close touch with Trump, contributes to his speeches and gave significant input on his endorsements in the midterm election, where many Trump-backed candidates who rejected Biden’s 2020 victory and took other far-right positions were defeated. Miller repeatedly complained during the campaign that Republican candidates were not talking enough about culture war issues and immigration and focusing too heavily on an economic message, people who spoke to him said. America “is the apex of achievement of Western civilization,” Miller said, with “a heritage to be jealously guarded.”
Miller founded AFL in early 2021, as a newly elected President Biden issued a flurry of executive orders dismantling the former president’s nativist agenda. Miller was involved in policies fervidly challenged by civil rights groups that banned immigration from several Muslim-majority countries and separated immigrant children from their parents.
“During the four years of the Trump administration — especially in the arena of immigration — every single executive action, no matter how rigorously lawful, was subjected to a never-ending stream of activist litigation,” Miller said. “One of my goals when I left the administration was to try to help and inspire and coordinate a larger legal movement on the conservative side of the spectrum to do the same.”
AFL was among several groups incubated in the first year of the Biden administration by the Conservative Partnership Institute, a central hub of the GOP’s pro-Trump wing. CPI describes AFL as a “partner” on its website, and three AFL board members, including Mark Meadows, who served as a chief of staff to the former president, also have top CPI posts.
Neither of these tax-exempt groups are required to disclose their donors to the public, though federal campaign records show Trump’s political committee, Save America, donated $1 million to CPI last year. In its 2021 annual report, CPI called AFL “the sling that hardworking, patriotic Americans can use to fight back against the abusive Goliath of the Biden Administration’s Deep State.”
CPI’s revenue exploded last year to $45 million, up from about $7 million in 2020, according to its latest tax filing, obtained by Accountable.US and the Center for Media and Democracy. Its $1.3 million donation to AFL was the largest of eight grants that it made last year. Tax records also show AFL last year received $25,000 from DonorsTrust, a nonprofit that contributes to a number of right-wing causes, and $10,000 from Citizens for Self-Governance, which favors a convention of states to limit the power of the federal government.
Miller declined to answer questions about the group’s donors. “It’s best for your adversaries to have less rather than more information when they meet you in court,” he said.
To attack Biden’s aid to disadvantaged, minority farmers, Miller’s group made a brash choice for lead plaintiff: Sid Miller, the Trump-endorsed agriculture commissioner of Texas, who has questioned Biden’s dire warnings about white supremacy and compared Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes in social media posts.
The suit argued that the debt relief approved by Congress was unconstitutional because it excluded “white ethnic groups that have unquestionably suffered ethnic prejudice,” referring to Irish, Italian, German and other European immigrants and Jews. Sid Miller is White, with primarily Scotch and Irish roots, but said in the lawsuit that he has 2 percent African American ancestry.
“Any person with a traceable amount of minority ancestry must be regarded as a member of a ‘socially disadvantaged group,’” the suit said.
“Here is this very powerful person in a huge state who instead of wanting to assist Black farmers filed a lawsuit to block aid?” asked Boyd, who farms soybeans and other crops in southern Virginia. “It’s really disheartening.”
Judge Reed O’Connor, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, ruled in July 2021 in favor of the White plaintiffs, the third of four federal court orders that summer against the program. Congress repealed the program in August.
“I know the pandemic didn’t care what your race was, but it definitely affected certain people harder than others. This country was built on the backs of immigrants,” he said. “I find it quite shocking that people like Stephen Miller don’t see that ... The message is that if you’re not White you’re not welcome in this country and you do not deserve opportunity.”
Liberal organizations are also known for “forum shopping,” and frequently challenged Trump policies in the Northern District of California, where most judges were nominated by Democrats. But the small size of some divisions in the Northern District of Texas allows conservative plaintiffs to essentially handpick a particular judge by filing in certain courthouses.
That strategy was apparent in an AFL-lawsuit filed in August 2021, which argued that the Affordable Care Act does not outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The case was filed in the Amarillo division, where Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee whose anti-LGBTQ views set off alarms, is assigned all civil cases. In response to questions from U.S. senators in 2017 about those views, Kacsmaryk promised to impartially apply the law.
“This is obviously a case that raises concerns about the most extreme form of judge shopping,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, counsel at Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ rights group. “This is also a case that ignores the reality and prevalence of health discrimination against the LGBTQ community in the health care context and the serious harm that causes.”
Miller called the ruling “epochal” and an “inflection point for what I believe is going to be the biggest legal battle for the next generation.”
Another ongoing AFL-backed lawsuit assigned to a judge nominated by Trump argues that the Texas A&M University’s hiring practices are unconstitutional “by giving discriminatory preferences to female or non-Asian minorities at the expense of white and Asian men,” leading to promotions for “inferior faculty.”
A Texas A&M spokesperson, Laylan Copelin, said the university is planning to recruit faculty whose research is focused on “underrepresented communities” but does not making hiring decisions based on gender or racial preferences that would hold back White or Asian men.
“It appears they were more interested in using Texas A&M to support their fundraising and publicity efforts, as opposed to addressing any actual misconduct,” Copelin said.
AFL partnered in this case and several others filed in Texas with the state’s former solicitor general, Jonathan Mitchell, who is credited with the novel legal strategy behind the state’s 2021 ban on most abortions after six weeks.
Most of the AFL-backed lawsuits are still pending and allege that federal agencies are withholding public records about a range of right-wing targets, including the prosecution of Jan. 6, 2021, rioters, censorship by Big Tech, the origin of the coronavirus pandemic and a laptop used by President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. Many of the records requests echo allegations made by the far right and are treated as news stories by conservative media outlets. AFL has also demanded nearly every federal agency to produce documents related to Biden’s executive order promoting racial equity, which Miller has called “government sponsored and directed racism.”
In some of the requests, AFL claims “widely recognized status as a representative of the news media” to expedite its requests.
Federal court judges have ruled against AFL in lawsuits opposing admissions criteria to ensure racial diversity at Philadelphia magnet schools, a New York program that considered race in determining eligibility for covid-19 treatment, a vaccine mandate for civilian federal employees, and Biden’s removal of Sean Spicer, a White House press secretary under Trump, and Vought, an AFL board member, from the U.S. Naval Academy Board of Visitors. AFL is appealing most of those cases.
“They step forward,” Spicer said. “No one else on the right is doing what they are doing in terms of holding the administration accountable.”
The ads, which included misleading and false claims about Biden’s policies on racial and LGBTQ issues, were condemned by left-leaning civil rights groups. “They’re trying to create mass hysteria and fear,” said Joni Madison of the Human Rights Campaign.
AFL Vice President Gene Hamilton, who worked in Trump’s justice and homeland security departments, defended the ads in a previous statement that speaks to the group’s broader mission.
“The Biden administration and left-wing officials in education, business, and governments across the country are imposing policies that systemically and routinely discriminate against American citizens based solely on the color of their skin. That is illegal,” he said. “Our advertisements make the point that racism is always wrong — regardless of who it is targeted against.” | 2022-12-12T11:23:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stephen Miller's American First Legal beats Biden in court while pledging to battle 'anti-white bigotry' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/stephen-miller-america-first-legal-biden-race-policies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/stephen-miller-america-first-legal-biden-race-policies/ |
Ken Niumatalolo won't coach a 16th season at Navy. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
On June 29, 2009, I had open-heart surgery — seven blockages. I made a full recovery and was able to go to Ohio State with Navy’s football team during the first week of September. While walking from the field to the press box, I ran into Ken Niumatalolo.
The Navy coach was with an ESPN producer and heading to the field for a pregame interview. Niumatalolo broke away and came over to check on me — and then lectured me.
“You have too many people in the world counting on you,” he said, “starting with your family and friends — like me. We all need you. You have to start taking better care of yourself.”
Before I could answer, the ESPN guy came up behind Niumatalolo and said, “Coach, we need you on the field right now.”
Niumatalolo is one of the most mild-mannered people I have met in sports. He whirled around on the ESPN guy and said: “Listen, I’m willing to do this, but I’m going to talk to my friend first. If you’re not okay with that, that’s fine.” The look in his eye told the producer that he better not mess with him.
That story should make it clear that this will be anything but an unbiased column. I couldn’t be more biased when it comes to Ken Niumatalolo.
That’s why, when I heard Sunday that Navy had fired Niumatalolo after 15 years as its coach and 25 years at the school, I was stunned. I know how college sports work; a bunch of people, even at Navy, will pressure college presidents and the athletic director to win more and more.
Navy went to 10 bowl games in Niumatalolo’s first 12 years as coach. The past three years were not as good. After Saturday’s 20-17 double-overtime loss to Army on Saturday in Philadelphia, Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk walked into Niumatalolo’s office at Lincoln Financial Field and told him Navy was making a change, the coach said after meeting with his team Sunday.
Gladchuk’s visit came after a heartbreaking loss that had everyone on Navy’s side in shock. When Gladchuk walked in, Niumatalolo said he thought he was going to make changes on the offensive side. But then Gladchuk said, “We’re going to make a change.” Niumatalolo was stunned. He has been the face of Navy athletics for the past 15 years. He graduated his players, he had 10 winning seasons, and he won the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy six times.
This is my question whenever anyone says a change should be made: “Who are you going to get that is better?” Brian Newberry, the defensive coordinator, was named the interim coach. Whether he will be the next full-time coach or someone else will take over, no one knows at this point. Here’s what I do know: Navy is not going to do better than Niumatalolo.
Putting the numbers aside, Niumatalolo is the perfect representative for Navy. Although this season ended with a 4-8 record, the next is in line to be better. Cincinnati, Central Florida and Houston are leaving the American Athletic Conference, and the teams replacing them aren’t going to be nearly as good. Additionally, 18 of 22 Navy starters are in line to return.
Niumatalolo, at the least, should have gotten a chance to coach that team. In fact, he said he told Gladchuk: “Calm down. If we don’t have a winning season next year, you won’t have to fire me. I’ll resign.”
The higher-ups at Navy have been spoiled by the football team’s success, and there has been a lot of complaining over the past two years about the team’s losing records. Plus, Niumatalolo has been pressuring the higher-ups to give him a level playing field with service academy rivals Army and Air Force. That would include letting seniors who have eligibility left play a fifth fall. Army and Air Force allow their seniors to do that. Navy does not.
When you’re playing your archrivals in games that almost always are decided by one possession, little advantages make a big difference. Navy could not have come closer to beating Army on Saturday without winning. The most heartbreaking thing about fullback Anton Hall Jr.’s fumble at the goal line in the second overtime is what the kid will have to deal with going forward. One play didn’t decide that game, but many will believe that one player decided it. Had Hall scored, Army probably would have struggled to match. Instead, all the Black Knights needed was a 39-yard Quinn Maretzki field goal to win.
If Navy had prevailed, Niumatalolo would still be its coach. At Navy, you don’t fire the coach after he wins the Army-Navy game. And you shouldn’t fire a class act such as Niumatalolo after a loss like that — especially when the team had shown marked improvement in the season’s final weeks, even after it lost its starting quarterback.
With a much easier schedule, the Mids will win more games next year. But the man who was the heart and soul of the program for the past 15 years will be gone.
Niumatalolo will coach again. He’s only 57, and the desire that always has burned inside him is still there. He’s an excellent football coach but a much better person. Navy will not be the same without him. | 2022-12-12T11:23:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ken Niumatalolo deserved better than what he got from Navy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/navy-coach-fired-army-navy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/navy-coach-fired-army-navy/ |
Rising costs leave some families at risk of being left behind
By Roman Stubbs
Kamiya Vasquez, 12, looks back at a teammate during a recent basketball game. Kamiya loves the sport, but her family is struggling to handle the rising costs of competitive programs. (Evan Cobb for The Washington Post)
Wyoming, Mich.
Kamiya Vasquez gathered with her seventh-grade basketball team before they tipped off a youth league game in a dimly lit gym. She nervously ran her hands through her red hair. Some of her teammates had never played the sport, and they tugged on their black jerseys. Kamiya looked over to the opposing huddle, an eighth-grade team stocked with some of the best players in Grand Rapids. Some had walked in with customized, matching backpacks and sporting uniforms that featured the logo of one of the area’s top travel teams.
“Don’t be scared — just go play,” Kamiya’s father and coach, Juoquin Vasquez, said before she took the floor.
Kamiya drove the lane once the game started, determined to prove she belonged. But she was quickly swarmed by two taller defenders and lost her footing and the ball. The other team cruised down the court for an easy score. Kamiya shrugged in frustration and glared at her father. He immediately turned to his bench and asked for a substitute. She ran to the sideline and sank into her seat. Juoquin knelt in front of her and lowered his voice. “Change your body language,” he told her.
The other team was a well-funded, well-oiled machine, setting defensive traps, launching three-pointers and finishing backdoor cuts with left-handed layups. For some of the girls on Kamiya’s team, the frustration boiled over. “I don’t f---ing get it!” one of them yelled, and Juoquin sat her down. They eventually lost by 52 points.
To Kamiya and her teammates, the differences between the teams could not have been clearer. It provided yet another reminder of the gulf between the haves and have-nots in youth sports, in which parents are spending between $30 billion and $40 billion annually on their children’s sports activities, according to a recent report from the Aspen Institute, and rising participation costs have created an economic divide that has diminished opportunities for kids from impoverished and marginalized families.
Costly travel leagues and club programs have surged in popularity in recent years as families pursue high-level competition and college scholarships. While 58 percent of children who participate in sports played in community-based programs this fall, three of 10 parents said their child’s community program had closed, merged with another organization or operated with less capacity than last year, according to the Aspen Institute. The number of kids competing in travel clubs, meanwhile, doubled to 29 percent over the past year, a reflection of some parents not only believing that their children would receive better coaching, training, competition and ultimately more exposure to college recruiters but also an overall better experience for their children than community-based programs.
Travel leagues can run thousands of dollars just in registration fees but also often require costs for travel, equipment, camps and private coaching. Household income is a primary driver in early participation of sports, and only 24 percent of kids from low-income families, like many of those on Kamiya’s team, have an opportunity to play, according to the Aspen Institute. The country’s wealthiest households spend about four times as much as impoverished families on their child’s sport.
“It definitely mirrors trends nationally in our society in which families in the highest income category have experiences and access to a sustained experience that peers in the lower end of the income category do not. And that only seems to be growing,” said Tom Farrey, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program. “When you look at the industry of youth sports, it is an industry. It is business interests first. . . . It’s not interest of the child first, and so money chases money.”
Young athletes such as Kamiya sit at a crossroads: Costly travel basketball is not an option and recreational opportunities are sparse in many communities, so they are in danger of being left behind by those who can afford specialized training in hopes of earning college scholarships. Girls’ basketball has been particularly affected by the explosion of travel programs — the sport dropped to the fourth-most-popular high school sport last year as many athletes quit or simply aren’t exposed enough to the sport before that level.
Billions flow through youth sports. And some of it keeps disappearing.
Kamiya often asks her father if she can try out for local travel teams, some of which charge more than $1,200 just for registration. He explains that the family can’t afford it right now but that he and his wife, Summer, are saving as much as they can, putting away $20 or $30 each month from their paychecks.
“We could pay, but we would be hurting,” Juoquin said. “It’s like, ‘We’ll pay the fee, but can we attach the car payment to it?’ ”
After a full day of basketball, the Vasquez family returned to their home, which they bought last year with the help of their pandemic stimulus checks. Their 14-year-old daughter, Kiyana, blared her trumpet through the hallways. Their youngest daughter, 8-year-old Kendyll, danced to TikTok videos on Summer’s phone. Kamiya and her friend used markers to decorate a purple wall in her bedroom, next to her athletic trophies and Michigan State basketball posters.
“I want to go to college and play there,” she said.
They ate together as a family because sometimes that is difficult during the week. Juoquin cooked arroz con gandules in homage to his Puerto Rican roots. Sometimes he and his mother cook food on the weekends and advertise plates for sale on Facebook, with some of the proceeds going toward family expenses.
That night Juoquin, 34, called his friend to see if he could open an elementary school gym to hold a free clinic the next day. Despite limited coaching experience, this is how he helps develop Kamiya, a raw and gifted athlete with long limbs who excels in multiple sports. “Basketball is my favorite,” she said, and her parents’ conversations increasingly revolve around her future in the sport.
“If we don’t get her into traveling ball, she’s not going to get the visibility to do what she wants to do,” said Summer, sitting in her living room. “We know we need to get her into it at some point, but, like, how do we figure that out?”
She looked at Juoquin.
“We also have the baby coming up,” he said of Kendyll, also an aspiring athlete, and he began calculating the numbers in his head for both girls to play travel sports. It might cost several thousand dollars just for registration fees, he thought, and with inflation driving up gas prices and groceries, he didn’t know how they would pay for equipment, camps or coaching — not to mention travel, which saw an industry-wide 19 percent spike last year, according to the Aspen Institute.
Massive sports complexes are latest front in war for visitors, dollars
Even if they could afford for one kid to play, the family probably wouldn’t have enough for the other. Those are the decisions that often divide American families when it comes to youth sports. Last year, parents making at least $150,000 spent 83 percent more on travel for their child’s sports activities than families earning under $50,000 and 65 percent more than middle income households. Natalie Hummel, executive director of Every Kid Sports, a nonprofit that helps low-income families play youth sports, estimates that as many as 6.8 million kids are effectively barred from youth sports by financial constraints.
“Even if you just take 50 percent of that, that’s still 3 million kids that still aren’t getting a chance to play,” she said. “Unfortunately, in our country now, the model now is these highly competitive training programs, and we really believe that doesn’t serve the kids.”
One in three parents say their youth sports expenses increased last year because of inflation, according to the Aspen Institute’s annual State of Play report, and the prospect of another recession could mean less money is invested in parks and recreation departments — and the gap between kids who can afford travel sports and those who can’t widens as a result.
According to industry insiders, team sports participation declined following the Great Recession, when about 47,000 jobs were lost in the Grand Rapids area alone. Wyoming is an industrial town of 77,000, located just five miles south of Grand Rapids. It was hit especially hard by the recession and sits below the national household income average, with a poverty rate of 12 percent. Many middle-class kids here can’t afford to pay the thousands of dollars per year it typically costs to play travel sports.
Between Juoquin’s warehouse job and Summer’s job as a branch manager at an employment service, budgeting has always been a challenge. After they bought their home, costs continued to pile up; Juoquin’s truck was stolen last year, and he has been forced to drive a Chevrolet Express van he bought for $300 from his employer until the family can save enough for another car.
“You always think you’re getting ahead,” Summer said, “but then something happens.”
Creative fundraising
The next morning, Summer, 37, sat on her couch and scrolled through her phone, searching for new softball cleats. She swiped past countless pairs that cost $60 or more. The family had just bought new cleats this spring, but because Kamiya is growing, her toes were already forming a hole in those cleats. Summer found a sale — $30 for a pair of Nikes — and seized the deal. But soon Kamiya also will need a new aluminum bat, which can cost several hundred dollars. “Those little things just add up,” Summer said.
When Kamiya asked for new LeBron James basketball shoes this summer, her mother wondered how she would pay for the $125 sneakers, eventually doing so in four installments. “It’s an expression for her,” Summer said. “It makes her feel good.”
On average, families spend $883 annually per child to play sports, according to the Aspen Institute, but in many activities that number often soars into the five figures. Basketball was the second-most-expensive sport for families in the fall of 2022, costing on average just over $1,000 per child, according to the organization’s newly released report. (Soccer was the costliest sport; parents shell out an average of $1,188 annually per child.)
In August, with bills stacking up and another school year dawning, Juoquin and Summer asked for help to fund Kamiya’s athletic expenses on GoFundMe, the site that relies on donation-based crowdfunding.
“We are a low-income family of 5 and want our daughter to have every opportunity to do what she loves and with that comes league fees, tournament fees, new equipment, camp fees and travel costs,” Summer wrote.
The family has yet to receive any contributions. Summer has tried other avenues. She posted on Facebook last year that she would film Kamiya throwing 20 strikes in the backyard for any donations, and a couple of supporters chipped in. Kamiya has shoveled snow in their neighborhood for basketball money, and sometimes the family will buy a box of candy bars at Costco so Kamiya can sell them door-to-door in their neighborhood.
Sponsorship opportunities have already changed college athletics. Is youth sports next?
“It’s become a business. There are kids that are better than her because they have parents who can put them in all of these trainings and travel teams,” Summer said. “She also knows we’re trying to work on it.”
Kamiya has been invited to join that high-priced world of top-tier youth sports over the past year: AAU basketball teams have recognized her potential and asked her to sign up, with registration costs ranging from $500 to $1,500; a trainer has offered to work with her for $75 per session; a softball program that cost $550 to join asked her to try out. Summer opted not to send Kamiya, knowing the family couldn’t afford the costs.
“I was like, ‘That’s pretty awesome they want Kamiya,’ ” Summer said, “but, man, that’s not even an option.”
Summer has found affordable alternatives to keep Kamiya active: She plays with a school team in a grass-roots youth basketball league for $90, which sometimes means playing older travel teams with handpicked rosters. The family was able to place her on a local softball team that travels to a few tournaments in the area because the coach allowed them to pay the $250 registration fee in installments.
That softball coach, Kaitlin Failing, started her own affordable middle school program last summer because many of the kids she coaches come from families that are barely making it. She offers hitting lessons on the side for $10 per session.
“That’s why we’re doing this. … [AAU] is big for more affluent communities. If you’ve got money, you’re starting at 7, which is like just one step above T-ball,” Failing said. “It’s thousands of dollars that some of these girls spend to get recruited.”
The family first got a taste of how cutthroat youth sports could be with their oldest daughter. Kiyana, whom the family nicknamed Kiki, was born three months premature and was on supplemental oxygen for the first months of her life. The family lived out of the Ronald McDonald House in Lansing, Mich., for months at the height of the Great Recession; Juoquin lost his job working for a poultry farm; and the family relied on Medicaid and Summer’s disability benefits.
When Kiyana was 2, they found out she had mild cerebral palsy, which has affected her walking and balance. She still was adamant about playing sports and played on a school-based basketball team in fifth grade.
Even though the Vasquezes were thrilled Kiyana was part of a team, they didn’t know how much she might play. During the final game of the season, Summer said, some players couldn’t make it and replacements were brought in from another team. Kiyana played about 30 seconds at the end of the game. Summer cried on her way out of the gym.
“Other parents saw it and were like, ‘This is ridiculous.’ Their kids were playing. They saw [Kiyana], and they knew that this was not okay,” Summer said.
“Especially when it’s a youth program,” Juoquin added. “If you’re AAU playing, I get that. We’re out here to win. But with a youth program, we’re trying to develop kids that don’t have the access to pay that money.”
Juoquin was so angry that he opted not to talk to the coach. Instead, he decided to get into coaching himself.
“I’m going to make sure I do things the right way and let these kids play,” he told himself, and even though Kiyana decided to stop playing, he took over Kamiya’s team and began to hold free clinics on weekends for anyone who wants to participate. It has shaped Kamiya’s experience in basketball. Even though she’s not on a travel team, Kamiya will often tell them she is playing for something more.
“I’m going to play for Kiki,” Kamiya tells her mother before games.
Family sacrifices
Kamiya laced up her purple LeBron sneakers in an empty elementary school gym on the west side of town. Only one other player showed up for her father’s free clinic, but it didn’t matter. Juoquin set up chairs and a trash can in the middle of the court as obstacles for a dribbling drill. When he put them through shooting tests, forcing the players to hit five three-pointers from five different spots, Summer and the rest of the family served as rebounders.
“Don’t kill her arms. She has to pitch later,” Summer told her husband.
“She’s got to hit five from each spot,” he responded, and after she did, Kamiya raced back to the house and eventually gathered her softball gear for her first practice of the season. Summer grabbed her own glove and was ready to help as a volunteer coach.
Juoquin stayed behind and cooked fried chicken for his other children. He was thinking of his practice schedule for the week, staring at the family’s dry-erase calendar on the kitchen wall as the food sizzled on the stove. After his team lost the day before to the well-heeled team from Grand Rapids, he had been thinking about how he could get Kamiya into that higher level of competition.
An AAU director had approached him recently about Kamiya joining for several hundred dollars, which would be reduced if Juoquin served as a coach in the program. They decided to hold off.
He has been thinking about starting his own traveling program, maybe kick-starting it with a fundraiser such as a carwash. They could afford to play in only a few tournaments per year, he figured, but it would give his daughter a chance to be seen by college coaches. He started doing the math again.
“I just wish it wasn’t so expensive. Say it’s only $1,000 per session for three sessions a summer — that’s three grand. And that doesn’t include travel, hotel, food,” Juoquin said.
Plates were piled up in the sink. He had to be at work in the morning. Bills were coming due again. The deck feels increasingly stacked against him. He shook his head.
“I’m going to have to sacrifice something,” Juoquin said as he poked at chicken on the stove. “But I’m going to do it.” | 2022-12-12T11:23:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rising youth sports costs leave some families at risk of being left behind - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/youth-sports-rising-costs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/youth-sports-rising-costs/ |
In this handout photo released by Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service, smoke rises from the mall in Balashikha, just outside Moscow, Russia, Monday, Dec. 12, 2022. A massive fire has gutted a shopping mall on Moscow’s eastern outskirts, the second such blaze in four days. Monday’s blaze at the mall in Balashikha that trades in construction items and decorative materials first erupted at a storage area and later spread to part of the building. The fire teams managed to localize it at the area of about 3,000 square meters (about 32,300 square feet) and prevent it from engulfing the entire mall. (Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service via AP) (Uncredited/Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service) | 2022-12-12T11:24:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fire engulfs another Moscow mall, 2nd such fire in 4 days - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/fire-engulfs-another-moscow-mall-2nd-such-fire-in-4-days/2022/12/12/97a1cc7a-7a02-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/fire-engulfs-another-moscow-mall-2nd-such-fire-in-4-days/2022/12/12/97a1cc7a-7a02-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
49ers quarterback Brock Purdy celebrates after running for a touchdown against the Buccaneers on Sunday. (Jed Jacobsohn/AP)
Week 14 reaffirmed that nothing can be taken for granted. It would seem safe to assume the general manager of a team that annually wins its division would have job security. Or that a first-place team coming off a 33-point fourth quarter would throttle the team with the worst record in the league. Or that a rookie taken with the last pick in the draft would shrink against Tom Brady. In the NFL, though, nothing is safe to assume.
The 49ers can win it all with Brock Purdy. But they’ll have to do it without Deebo Samuel for a while. No team in the NFL has been more snake-bitten with injuries than the 49ers. As Purdy excelled in his first start in relief of the injured Jimmy Garoppolo, Samuel exited the 35-7 win with an injury that was not as bad as it first seemed.
At the end of a run up the middle, Samuel’s left ankle got trapped beneath a tackler and twisted at a horrible angle. Samuel left the field on a cart, head in his hands. 49ers Coach Kyle Shanahan said afterward that Samuel’s ankle was not broken and that the injury was “most likely” a high-ankle sprain. Typically, a high-ankle sprain would sideline a player for several weeks, but it’s realistic to assume Samuel, perhaps the best offensive skill player during last year’s playoffs, will return for the postseason.
Samuel’s injury placed a cloud over Purdy’s debut as a starter, which could be summarized in one word: Wow. The rookie out of Iowa State, who was taken with the final pick in the draft, ran for a touchdown and completed 14 of 18 passes for 185 yards and two touchdowns by halftime, at which point the 49ers led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 28-0.
Purdy was far more than a placeholder. On one play, he rolled out on a play-action fake, danced around a free rusher and fired a strike for 19 yards. He lofted a beautiful pass down the sideline to Christian McCaffrey for a touchdown. With 15 seconds left in the first half, he rifled a bomb to Brandon Aiyuk, then shot a finger gun. He looked, acted and played like a veteran.
Purdy’s competence is all the 49ers need for a Super Bowl run. McCaffrey has been incredible; he rushed Sunday for 119 yards on 14 carries, including a 38-yard touchdown burst that made it 35-0. The 49ers’ defense, led by a menacing pass rush and their viciously fast linebackers, has been the best in the NFL for two months.
The Eagles have two No. 1 receivers. The megadeal Philadelphia made for A.J. Brown — plus his ensuing excellence — has overshadowed DeVonta Smith. But Brown is not the only Eagles wideout with the talent, pedigree and — more and more — production of a superstar.
The Eagles rushed for 253 yards Sunday, but their 48-22 demolition of the scuffling New York Giants started with Smith. It was a 7-0 game early in the second quarter when the Eagles faced fourth and seven at the Giants’ 41. Jalen Hurts lofted a throw down the right sideline to Smith, who skipped as he caught it between a cornerback and a safety and glided into the end zone.
Smith caught five passes for 64 yards and provided another reminder that even Philadelphia’s complementary players are stars. The Eagles chose Smith with the 10th pick in 2021 after he won the Heisman Trophy, and he has the versatility and route-running ability to line up anywhere. The Eagles came out with an empty backfield on their first series — a message to blitz-happy Giants defensive coordinator Don Martindale that he could send extra pass rushers at his own risk.
The QB class of 2020 is thriving — and about to get paid
The 12-1 Eagles became the first team to clinch a playoff spot. In their past three games, they have averaged 41 points. In the past two weeks, they beat opponents with winning records by a combined score of 83-32. They are not invulnerable, but they have been a juggernaut.
Are we sure the Lions need a quarterback? Detroit owns the Rams’ first-round pick from the trade that sent Matthew Stafford to Los Angeles, which probably will put the Lions in position to select a prized passer as their long-term franchise quarterback. But what if they already have their long-term franchise quarterback?
The Lions have become one of the NFL’s hottest teams and most prolific offenses, rolling along Sunday with a 34-23 thumping of the 10-3 Minnesota Vikings. Jared Goff completed 27 of 39 attempts for 330 yards and three touchdowns, the kind of near-perfect day that has become commonplace for him in Detroit.
Perceived as a throw-in as part of the Stafford trade, Goff has been one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL in his first season playing under fast-ascending, 36-year-old offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. Goff entered Sunday ranked sixth in passing yards and seventh in passer rating. He does not turn 29 until October. He has been to the Super Bowl. He’s sufficiently talented that he was an uncontroversial first pick in the 2016 draft. Goff played his way out of Los Angeles because of how poorly he performed against pressure, but he no longer seems to be that quarterback.
Jim Caldwell helped make Peyton Manning. Why doesn't he have a job?
The Lions have averaged 32.1 points in eight home games, scoring at least 34 in five of them. At 6-7, they remain on the fringe of the NFC playoff picture, surely asking plenty of what-ifs. They gave up 48 points in a three-point loss to Seattle, blew a 24-14 fourth-quarter lead to the Vikings in September and surrendered a game-winning touchdown with 12 seconds left against Miami.
The Lions would have to go 3-1 or run the table against the New York Jets, Carolina, Chicago and Green Bay to make the postseason, but that’s not out of the question. FiveThirtyEight’s playoff predictor gives the Lions a 23 percent shot to make it.
They closed their latest victory with the kind of creativity that has made Johnson a head coach candidate ahead of schedule. Lined up as a tackle eligible, lineman Penei Sewell went in motion and, at the snap, kept trotting into the flat rather than blocking as Goff faked a handoff. Goff hit him with an easy pass, and Sewell rumbled and dived for a game-clinching first down.
The AFC East could be just about wrapped up by next week. Sunday was a pivotal day in the division, and the Bills could all but lock up first place this Saturday night in Buffalo. The Bills outlasted the Jets, 20-12, in a snowy, physical game, and the Dolphins suffered an alarming, 23-17 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in which Justin Herbert, the No. 6 pick in the 2020 draft, thoroughly outplayed Tua Tagovailoa, the fifth pick.
Without Von Miller, the Bills’ pass rush still throttled the Jets’ offensive line. Gregory Rousseau, a towering second-year defensive end who will be most responsible for replacing Miller’s impact, could be one of the most important players in the NFL. Against the Jets, Rousseau had two sacks, forced a fumble and knocked down a pass.
On Sunday night, the Dolphins’ offense fell flat for the second straight week in a way that suggested the league has figured out how to stymie an attack that took the league by storm: Clog the middle of the field and stay in front of the receivers, and Tagovailoa does not have the arm strength to win consistently. The Dolphins and Bills were tied two weeks ago. If Buffalo wins at home Saturday night, they will be three games up with three to play.
The Jets fell out of playoff position because of the Chargers’ victory, which nudged them to 7-6 — tied with the Jets but holding the tiebreaker. Given Miami’s sudden struggles, the Jets will face the Dolphins in a season finale that could decide the final AFC wild-card spot.
It’s spiraling in Tennessee. The Titans remain in control of the AFC South, but they are neither playing like a team nor behaving like a franchise that will be a factor in the postseason, presuming they even make it there. Days after they rattled the NFL by firing general manager Jon Robinson out of nowhere, they no-showed at home in a 36-22 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in which they yielded 29 consecutive points and career days to quarterback Trevor Lawrence (368 passing yards, three touchdowns) and tight end Evan Engram (11 catches, 162 yards, two touchdowns).
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With three straight losses, the Titans have watched their AFC South lead shrink to two games over the Jaguars, whom they will close the season against in Jacksonville. Their point differential sits at minus-35. The Titans’ defense has been shredded for 35 and 36 points in the past two weeks. Despite getting 121 rushing yards from Derrick Henry on Sunday, they have scored 16, 10 and 22 points during the losing streak.
It got ugly Sunday. Down 19, the Titans botched a direct snap to Henry on their first play of the fourth quarter. The ball bounced off his knee and went to the ground, where Jaguars defensive end Arden Key smothered it. It may not have been the most pathetic play of the season, but it will make the lowlight tape.
The Ravens are not going away. Rarely have the Ravens played pretty or overwhelming football, but they have stacked up wins and remain atop the AFC North at 9-4. (They hold a head-to-head tiebreaker over the Cincinnati Bengals.) Even with third-string quarterback Anthony Brown replacing backup Tyler Huntley after a midgame injury, the Ravens snapped a four-game skid against their bitter rivals with a 16-14 victory over the Steelers in Pittsburgh.
Linebacker Roquan Smith, acquired at the trade deadline from the Chicago Bears, has injected more speed and better tackling into the middle of the defense. Smith secured one of the three interceptions thrown by Mitch Trubisky, who replaced rookie starter Kenny Pickett after he left with a concussion. The Ravens are 4-1 since Smith arrived and have yielded more than 13 points only once in that span.
J.K. Dobbins appeared for the first time since Week 6. Still not 100 percent, he powered Baltimore’s offense with 120 yards on 15 carries and a touchdown. If Baltimore can keep grinding out victories as Lamar Jackson recovers from a sprained knee ligament, the AFC North is likely to come down to the Ravens-Bengals showdown in the final week of the season in Cincinnati.
Dobbins: “I got to get back in shape. That’s what it is.” Otherwise, he says he would’ve never gotten caught from behind.
Seattle’s loss will leave a mark. Coming into Sunday, according to FiveThirtyEight, the Seahawks had an 80 percent chance to make the playoffs. They took the field as a favorite to beat the Panthers, who were 4-8.
The Panthers shredded the Seahawks’ run defense, which became a major problem weeks ago and has not been solved. Carolina took a 17-0 lead and ultimately won, 30-24. Seattle’s playoff probability, per FiveThirtyEight, fell to 59 percent, and that might be kind: The Seahawks’ next three games come against San Francisco, Kansas City and the Jets.
The Seahawks fell out of playoff position, and at 7-6 their once-magical season is hanging by a thread.
The NFC South remains a tire fire. If the New Orleans Saints had not blown a 16-3 lead to the Buccaneers in the blink of an eye last week, there would be a four-way tie in the division at 5-8. As it stands, the 6-7 Bucs are the best of a bad lot.
Despite firing their coach, trading a franchise icon and benching two quarterbacks, the Panthers are in the playoff race after their victory over the Seahawks. They are just a game back and have beaten Tampa Bay once — and they close with the Steelers, Lions, Bucs and Saints. The Panthers have won three of four and are 4-4 under interim coach Steve Wilks, who is building a persuasive case to keep the job on a permanent basis.
Patrick Mahomes is just ridiculous. It was a nutty game between the Chiefs and Denver Broncos. The Chiefs held on, 34-28, after they initially took a 27-0 lead. Russell Wilson was playing the best game of his season before he took a hit to the head and remained down with a concussion and a dazed look on his face. The 10-3 Chiefs have beaten the 3-10 Broncos in 14 consecutive games.
Pretty much nothing else mattered, though, after Mahomes did this:
What are you gonna do with this guy? | 2022-12-12T11:39:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 49ers didn't miss a beat with Brock Purdy, and the Eagles are a juggernaut - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/brock-purdy-nfl-49ers-eagles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/brock-purdy-nfl-49ers-eagles/ |
Contractors build the framing of a roof on a house under construction at the Norton Commons subdivision in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. The U.S. Census Bureau is scheduled to release housing starts figures on Feb. 17. (Bloomberg)
The housing market has fallen off a cliff, but for now, homebuilders are biding their time. As bad as things look, odds are they will want to ramp up their production at least somewhat in a few more months.
The key to the outlook in 2023 is the huge order backlogs that builders accumulated when mortgage rates were still at rock bottom and sales surged during the pandemic. When the housing market slowed earlier this year, that backlog bought homebuilders time to wait out the slump. Though sales have been weak for months, a large chunk of the new homes and earnings builders will deliver in 2023 are based on orders banked in the first half of 2022.
As we get into the new year, those order backlogs will shrink and it will be time to think about building a new book of orders for 2024. So while housing starts have slowed for awhile, it won’t take much for them to pick up before midyear, even if it means homebuilders need to get more aggressive on price cuts and incentives than they have had to be so far.
Luxury homebuilder Toll Brothers Inc., in its earnings report and call with analysts last week, perfectly encapsulated the current moment in the housing market. Its new orders have plunged, but earnings per share came in at a record high, and guidance for both earnings and profit margins remain strong — at least for the next few quarters.
The builder noted that it’s got a little more than 8,000 homes in its backlog. It’s planning to deliver 8,000 to 9,000 homes in 2023, so that backlog represents about a year’s worth of production cemented by customer deposits. At the same point in 2019, its backlog was 6,200 homes, so in effect it has an extra quarter’s worth of units under contract compared with prior to the pandemic — a useful cushion at a time of uncertainty. Industry-wide, 52% more single-family homes are under construction than at this point three years ago, so Toll isn’t the only builder in this situation.
On the cost side, builders now believe time is their friend. The impact of the decline in lumber prices has begun flowing through as supply contracts reset. Toll noted that in the current quarter lower lumber prices resulted in savings of $12,000 to $14,000 per house, with more relief coming in 2023. And as the level of housing starts has declined, “front-end trades” — the materials and labor that go into the early stages of building a home — are loosening up. Builders will take advantage of that slack to negotiate better deals with their suppliers. In this evolving cost environment, every month that builders wait to start a home saves them money.
On the demand side, sales have been soft since interest rates surged. We have now entered the slowest month of the year for homebuying. While mortgage rates have fallen sharply over the past few weeks, potential buyers might not be responding to week-by-week shifts in mortgage rates as they would at other times of the year. The Fed is now expected to step down the pace of its interest rate increases, so mortgage rates could look much more favorable when the 2023 homebuying season gets underway in the second quarter. Toll believes mortgage rates under 6% would be enough to kickstart demand.
That’s the situation homebuilders find themselves in as they think about what they’re going to do in 2023. They’re holding back for now, which is what is keeping housing starts weak. Backlogs will give them cover for a few more months, but that will create a gaping hole for sales and deliveries in 2024 that they are going to have to start filling with new orders. Once builders have clarity on costs and buyer demand, they will need to crank up activity, at least somewhat, even if it means profit margins aren’t quite what that the industry has enjoyed over the past two years.
So the current slump in housing starts is partly due to weak market conditions, but it’s also a relic of pandemic and supply chain-related factors that are still working their way through the industry. Builders are hoping that the gamble they’re taking — focusing on completing existing orders rather than accepting new ones at unattractive profit margins — works out for them. But either way, you can expect housing starts to pick up by the middle of next year.
• For the Market’s Winners, the Hard Work Starts Now: John Authers
• It Will Pay to Wait to Refinance Your Mortgage: Marcus Ashworth | 2022-12-12T12:53:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Homebuilders Buy Time With Huge Pandemic Backlogs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/homebuilders-buy-time-with-huge-pandemic-backlogs/2022/12/12/50aba47c-7a15-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/homebuilders-buy-time-with-huge-pandemic-backlogs/2022/12/12/50aba47c-7a15-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
Are right-wing justices really sure they want to revisit defamation law?
The logo for Fox News is seen outside News Corporation headquarters in Manhattan on Feb. 26, 2021. (Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post)
In its war against mainstream media, the MAGA crowd has for years made noises about undoing the First Amendment protections established by the Supreme Court nearly 60 years ago for defendants in defamation lawsuits. Former president Donald Trump spoke about the need for “rewriting” defamation laws. His partisan allies on the Supreme Court, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, agreed.
They should be careful what they wish for. As the increasingly bitter litigation between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News indicates, the right-wing media misinformation machine is a prime beneficiary of this legal protection.
In 1964, the Supreme Court held in New York Times v. Sullivan that a public figure who claims to have been libeled or defamed must prove the defendant acted with “actual malice” — that is, they made the defaming statement with reckless disregard for the truth. That high bar, right-wing critics claim, makes it too easy for “elite” and “left-wing” media to say mean things about Republican officials.
It is certainly true that this legal standard makes it more difficult for public figures to sue individuals and media outlets for defamation. But it’s not impossible. And in any case, it is right-wing outlets that have most benefited from these protections in recent years.
Dominion Voting Systems, for example, has alleged that Fox News knowingly made false claims that the company participated in voter fraud. (Disclosure: I am an MSNBC contributor.) The case goes to the heart of the media empire of Rupert Murdoch, who is set to be deposed this week in the case. And as the New York Times recently reported, things aren’t going well for Fox News: “The judge, Eric M. Davis, has ruled in most instances in Dominion’s favor, allowing the voting company to expand the pool of potential evidence it can present to a jury to include text messages from the personal phones of Fox employees and the employment contracts of star hosts such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, along with those of Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, and her top corporate managers.”
But Fox News has one thing going for it: New York Times v. Sullivan — at least for now. As the Times explains, Fox News takes solace in “the high burden of proof Dominion must reach to convince a jury that the network’s coverage of the 2020 election defamed it. Under the law, a jury has to conclude that Fox acted with ‘actual malice,’ meaning that people inside the network knew that what they were reporting was false but did so anyway, or that they recklessly disregarded information showing what they were reporting was wrong.”
It’s not just Fox News. Defamation suits have become a regular feature in fighting back against outrageous conspiracy theories, disinformation and plain-old lies from right-wing media. NPR reported in October that in addition to Dominion Voting Systems, Smartmatic, another election tech company, sued “media outlets and prominent Trump-world figures that spread allegedly defamatory claims about them in the 2020 election.” Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss have filed similar suits against a media outlet that falsely claimed they were involved in fraud in their state. And Michigan software company Konnech sued “True the Vote,” the group behind the conspiratorial documentary “2,000 Mules,” for wrongly accusing the company of orchestrating “a red Chinese communist op run against the United States.”
If such cases reach the high court, how would the right-wing partisan justices react? Would they still want to trash decades of precedent when it’s their “side” facing potentially costly litigation?
Indeed, right-wing critics of New York Times v. Sullivan should keep in mind that the supposedly “elite” media outfits actually care about getting facts right and avoiding lawsuits. They employ lawyers to vet controversial stories and warn reporters and editors when they’ve gone over the line. They understand the need to issue corrections when they make errors. By contrast, many right-wing websites, talk-news loudmouths and billionaire owners of social media platforms seem to operate with the misunderstanding that they can say whatever they want no matter how false, outrageous and damaging. Frankly, Dominion’s lawsuit and others show that under existing case law, it’s not mainstream media that are most at risk.
New York Times v. Sullivan is an important protection for a robust, independent media. There’s little reason to reverse the decades of legal precedent behind it. If Thomas, Gorsuch and others realized the legal recourse that right-wing media would face without it in place, they might agree. | 2022-12-12T12:54:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Are right-wing justices sure they want to revisit defamation law? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/defamation-supreme-court-fox-news-dominion-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/defamation-supreme-court-fox-news-dominion-lawsuit/ |
Serious about bridging our divide? Here’s some language to avoid.
Abortion rights advocates and antiabortion advocates demonstrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court on May 3 in D.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
When discussing hot-button issues, it’s easy to score points with the respective bases on the left and right by vilifying the other side. What’s more challenging is standing up for your beliefs while still respecting, and even empathizing with, those who disagree.
Anyone sincerely interested in bridging our great political divide should consider modifying how they discuss the most contentious topics. A good first step would be avoiding some of the most accusatory and divisive language — the conversation-stoppers. Every individual’s beliefs are unique, of course, and each of us can only do our best to appreciate differing opinions, but here’s where I, at least, would begin:
People who oppose abortion generally share an honest belief that human life begins at conception and is entitled to legal protections. Language that opponents should avoid: calling them patriarchal Bible-thumpers trying to control someone else’s body or claiming that they care more about lumps of tissue than the lives of women.
People who support the right to abortion sincerely believe that the decision on whether to have a child is up to the pregnant woman herself, sometimes in consultation with a doctor. They generally believe that a fetus does not meet the scientific or legal definition of a human being, and that no one should be forced to give birth. Language that opponents should avoid: referring to them as murderers or baby-killers.
People who oppose gun control believe the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, that gun violence should be blamed on the people who pull the trigger and that limiting assault weapons is a slippery slope leading to a ban on all firearms. Language that opponents should avoid: calling them pawns of the National Rifle Association, or accessories to murder with blood on their hands.
People who support gun control believe that the Second Amendment grants the right to possess muskets in an era when the government needed citizen militias, and the primary reason behind rising gun violence is too-easy access to weapons capable of causing mass casualties in a few seconds. Language that opponents should avoid: claiming that they want to trample on the Constitution and prevent people from defending their homes or participate in hunting or shooting sports.
People who believe in traditional gender definitions and resist any notion that others can choose their pronouns or identify as something other than their sex at birth often do so because of customs grounded in religion. Others might simply think that changing gender identity is unnatural. These people don’t think they or their children should be forced to accommodate progressives’ ideas about gender. Language that opponents should avoid: calling them bigoted, ignorant or hateful.
People who support changing attitudes toward gender believe that human beings know who they are and how they want to live, and forcing people to suppress their true selves is discriminatory, harmful to their mental health and a denial of basic civil rights. Language that opponents should avoid: claiming they support genital mutilation, or accusing them of being “groomers” and trying to lead children into subversive lifestyles.
People who continue to support former president Donald Trump generally do so not only because they believe in the policies he espouses — as do many who are disillusioned with Trump himself — but because he represents a traditional America First mind-set in which freedom of expression is not bound by political correctness. They have sincere concerns about our voting system and do not think Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which they see as the act of a small fringe group. Language opponents should avoid: accusing them of being racists or members of a Trump-worshiping cult, or claiming that they represent a clear and present danger to democracy.
People who adamantly oppose Trump believe he is not fit to be president based in part on what they consider his overall lack of character. Many consider him a racist, and fear that he poses a threat to democracy based on his repeated insistence that the 2020 election was fraudulent, leading to the Jan. 6 riot — which they believe met the definition of an insurrection as an attack on the peaceful transfer of political power. Language that opponents should avoid: accusing them of being elitists or part of a “deep state” conspiracy.
To be sure, some of the claims in the above examples may well apply to segments of extremists on either side. But the vast majority of Americans holding different views on contentious issues do not deserve the accusations and insults routinely hurled their way. By resisting the tired, divisive rhetoric found in partisan playbooks or vitriolic social media, maybe we can start talking with each other instead of at each other — a worthy objective as we embark on a new year together. | 2022-12-12T12:54:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Serious about bridging our divide? Here’s some language to avoid. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/language-bridge-partisan-divide/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/language-bridge-partisan-divide/ |
From Trump Country, an argument for welcoming immigrants
Workers harvest celery in Oxnard, Calif., in March 2020. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
Some members of the lame-duck Congress are seeking a last-minute bipartisan deal on immigration reform before Republicans, including a contingent of immigration hardliners, take control of the House.
As usual, Republicans are concerned with making sure any deal includes enhanced border security, while Democrats are more focused on a pathway to citizenship for “dreamers” and other undocumented migrants.
But among those Americans advocating for legalizing some migrants’ status is a constituency often associated with Trump Country’s “build that wall” crowd: Midwestern farmers. In October, the Ohio Capital Journal reported that Ohio farmers consider a deal for migrant farm laborers “a matter of national security.”
Why? Because the United States, historically the largest agricultural exporter in the world, is beginning to buy more food products than it sells. According to the Agriculture Department, U.S. agricultural imports are expected to exceed exports next year and every year until 2031. A major reason is the labor force: “Americans just simply are not interested in working in the field, in the greenhouse, or the packing house,” Bob Jones, a vegetable grower in northern Ohio, told the Capital Journal. “We are either going to import workers or we’re going to import food. The choice is really that simple.”
Jones and others are urging Congress to pass the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would create “certified agricultural worker” status for migrant farmworkers, allowing them to stay in the United States for 5½ years and apply for permanent resident status after certain requirements are met. The House has passed the bill, and The Post reported last week that Sens. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) were working to advance the bill in the Senate.
When I was growing up on a southern Ohio farm in the 1960s and early ’70s, farmers had little trouble finding help. When it was time to bale hay, for instance, those with modest operations could easily collect kids from neighboring farms, pay us $2 or $3 an hour (equivalent to $17 or $18 today) and count on our help for a few days. Farmers planting thousands of acres of corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops — along with raising cattle, sheep or hogs — usually employed year-round help, which was easy to find from a pool of willing workers.
But, as Jones indicated, Americans increasingly aren’t — for a variety of reasons — as willing to work in jobs requiring strenuous manual labor, often outdoors in the heat or cold. Sons or daughters who at one time could be expected to take over the family farm are pursuing other career paths. These trends are leading many farmers to take the drastic measure of selling their land to wind and solar companies — and as good as that may be for sustainable energy, the world still needs to be fed.
Although a bill expanding legal agricultural migrant labor would help farmers in Ohio and other states, a broader bipartisan immigration fix being developed by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) would be more meaningful. The still-evolving bill is reported to include a path to citizenship for the dreamers in exchange for $25 billion in funding for border security.
For far too long, the immigration issue has been a political bludgeon for both sides — the right decrying dangerous “open borders,” the left lamenting honest immigrants forced to live in the shadows. Both sides are right and wrong.
The United States has a responsibility to vet people seeking to enter the country. Any deal should provide effective new tools to secure the border — including finishing walls already under construction and providing more border agents — but also recognize that even if people here illegally should, by all rights, be rounded up and shipped out, that’s unfeasible.
A more reasonable solution would be to agree to a pathway to legality for those already here — not those coming illegally in the future — including eventual permanent residency or citizenship, so millions of workers could thrive as taxpaying citizens moving from the shadows to the daylight. And that should be coupled with making legal immigration easier and faster, to make that path more attractive.
Finally, there’s this: Solving the immigration dilemma is the right thing to do. Despite a focus by the right on bad actors who enter the United States for nefarious reasons — and those concerns are sometimes valid — the overwhelming majority of migrants come here for a better life for themselves and their families. They risk their lives to escape hopeless futures and travel through perilous terrain. When people want to come here that badly — and are willing to work for us in jobs we desperately need to fill — can’t we find a way to let them? | 2022-12-12T12:54:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Trump Country farmers know migrant labor is a national security issue - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/migrant-farm-labor-national-security/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/migrant-farm-labor-national-security/ |
Brittney Griner is free. Here are 5 takeaways.
Hostage-taking used to be a terrorist tactic, but authoritarian governments are doing it. What do Americans think about negotiating?
Analysis by Danielle Gilbert
Brittney Griner is flown to the United Arab Emirates. (Federal Security Service/AP)
Brittney Griner is finally home. On Thursday, the WNBA star landed in the United Arab Emirates, ending her 294 days in Russian captivity. There, on the tarmac in Abu Dhabi, the United States and Russia carried out a high-profile prisoner exchange, trading Griner for a Russian arms dealer imprisoned in the United States. Viktor Bout, nicknamed “the merchant of death,” was released after serving 12 years of a 25-year sentence for supporting terrorism and conspiring to kill Americans.
Griner’s painful, 10-month ordeal highlights the growing trend of state-led hostage-taking. Here are five things we’ve learned from Griner’s detention.
Griner was a hostage
Griner was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced through the Russian criminal justice system. But she was never a normal prisoner, nor was her trial fair. In May, the State Department designated Griner as “wrongfully detained,” indicating that the U.S. government considered her treatment illegitimate. The designation also marked the official government efforts to bring her home.
This is an example of hostage diplomacy: when a government, like Russia’s, uses its criminal justice system to take foreigners hostage. Two elements clue us in to Griner’s “hostage” status.
First, the charges were exaggerated, perhaps even by Russia’s own standards. Griner was convicted of international drug smuggling, though she was found with 0.7 grams of cannabis oil — the weight of a raisin — in her luggage. While Russia has notoriously strict drug laws, Griner’s sentence of 9½ years of hard labor in a penal colony fell outside the norm of recent cases.
Second and crucially, Griner was held for leverage. In this way, she met the definition of a hostage in international law. The 1979 International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages defines hostage taking as “detain[ing] and threaten[ing] to … continue to detain another person” to “compel a third party, namely, a State,” to do something “as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage.” The Russian government made clear in both official and unofficial channels that Griner would be held until Bout was released; her detention was conditional on concessions.
Thus, although officially a “wrongful detainee,” Griner was held hostage. My own thinking on this subject has evolved, as hostage-taking has shifted from a tactic used by terrorist groups to one used by authoritarian states. While most Americans arrested abroad should not be considered hostages, any held for leverage would meet that definition.
Negotiations are difficult but possible
Griner was arrested one week before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and her detention has coincided with a nadir in U.S.-Russia relations. The Biden administration has firmly opposed Putin’s war and has rallied international support for Ukraine. Nevertheless, Washington and Moscow retained the ability to negotiate throughout.
Hostage diplomacy is a tool of adversaries, not friends. When Americans (or Canadian or British citizens, other frequent targets of hostage diplomacy) are arrested for leverage, it’s always amid international tensions.
Russian propaganda isn't as effective as you may think
Prisoner swaps work to bring hostages home …
In many ways, Thursday’s events represent a prisoner exchange typical of these cases. Since Griner’s arrest, for instance, the Biden administration has negotiated prisoner swaps to bring home Trevor Reed from Russia, Mark Frerichs from Afghanistan and a half-dozen wrongful detainees from Venezuela. These exchanges work to secure hostages’ freedom.
But that does not mean that the United States — or any other target country — always has the power to make a deal. For instance, the White House has emphasized that it did not have concessions that Russia would accept in exchange for Paul Whelan, a former Marine imprisoned in Russia since 2018. Siamak Namazi has been imprisoned in Iran since 2015; Austin Tice has been missing in Syria for a decade. To date, the U.S. government has seemed willing but unable to bring them home.
Ultimately, the hostage-taking states have the upper hand. They can choose to make a swap or not. Barring credible punishments, target governments search for creative options and appropriate sacrifices to bring their citizens home.
… but we don’t know the consequences
Making concessions, like high-profile prisoner swaps, may increase future risk. Would-be hostage takers may view the Griner-Bout trade and see an opportunity to coerce concessions from the United States.
Such is the logic behind a “no concessions” policy: Deny hostage-takers the benefits of their violence, and they will stop taking hostages. However, as I have argued elsewhere, neither the United States nor its allies have consistently followed the putative “no concessions” approach.
Existing research suggests that making concessions can incentivize hostage-taking: Countries that paid ransoms were more likely to experience a subsequent increase in terrorist kidnappings. While this logic may travel to hostage diplomacy, existing research cannot tell us for sure.
Can Putin survive Russia's losses in Ukraine?
There will be blowback
Since Griner’s release, there has been a torrent of criticism, largely from Republicans, over several elements of this deal. Some have criticized Biden’s judgment in releasing Bout, a convicted criminal responsible for fueling conflict all over the world. Others have faulted the president for not securing Whelan’s release. Still others have focused on identity politics to accuse the administration of favoring a Black LGBTQ celebrity over a White male veteran.
As Lauren Prather and I show in our work, Americans have strong feelings about U.S. hostage recovery, and those feelings vary dramatically across hostages. In particular, people think some hostages are to blame for putting themselves in danger. Americans are less supportive of government assistance to bring such hostages home.
U.S. presidents face substantial criticism for bringing home hostages that the public thinks are not “deserving” of assistance, or failing to recover those who are. While official U.S. policy does not discriminate based on hostages’ identity or circumstances of capture, presidents should be ready to weather the public storm.
Danielle Gilbert (@_danigilbert) is the Edelson Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and International Security at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. | 2022-12-12T12:55:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Should the U.S. have swapped an arms dealer for Brittney Griner? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/griner-russia-hostages-merchant-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/griner-russia-hostages-merchant-death/ |
Monday briefing: U.S. fentanyl crisis; fusion energy breakthrough; Lockerbie bombing; World Cup; Golden Globe nominations; and more
Mexican cartels are fueling the deadly U.S. fentanyl crisis.
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49, more than car accidents or suicides.
How we got here: Mistakes by successive U.S. administrations have allowed the situation to get worse.
How we know: The Post traced the synthetic-drug pipeline from Mexican warehouses to U.S. towns and cities.
The U.S. is expected to announce a fusion energy breakthrough.
What we know: Scientists have for the first time been able to produce a fusion reaction that creates a net energy gain, the Biden administration is set to reveal tomorrow.
Why it matters: It would be a big step forward in the decades-long quest to develop a technology that provides unlimited, cheap and clean power.
The timeline: It’s still at least a decade away from commercial use.
A man accused of making the Lockerbie bomb is in U.S. custody.
The background: The bomb destroyed a U.S. passenger plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. All 259 people on board were killed, along with 11 on the ground.
The latest: A former Libyan intelligence officer will face prosecution in Washington for the terrorist act, authorities said. The U.S. announced charges against him in 2020.
Renewables are set to overtake coal as the world’s top energy source.
When? By early 2025, according to a new forecast. That would help keep alive the global goal of limiting the planet’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).
What’s behind this? A global energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine is accelerating growth in renewables. One example: Solar capacity is set to almost triple over the next five years.
NASA completed a key step toward returning to the moon.
The uncrewed spacecraft, part of the Artemis program that will eventually put astronauts back on the moon, splashed down near Baja California on Dec 11. (Video: The Washington Post)
What happened? The Orion spacecraft splashed down safely yesterday, capping a 26-day, 1.4 million-mile mission. It successfully orbited the moon with no astronauts on board.
What’s next? NASA hopes to send a crewed mission to orbit the moon as early as 2024, followed by a lunar landing as early as 2025 or 2026.
The World Cup semifinals are set.
Over the weekend: Morocco became the first African team to reach the soccer tournament’s final four by eliminating Portugal. Croatia, Argentina and France also advanced.
The schedule: Argentina plays Croatia tomorrow, then France plays Morocco on Wednesday. Both matches kick off at 2 p.m. Eastern time.
The Golden Globe nominations will be announced this morning.
What to know: The annual awards show will be back on NBC after making some changes. The network dropped the show last year after controversy over racial inequity and questionable ethics.
How to watch: The ceremony will air Jan. 10 on NBC and Peacock, with Emmy-winning comedian Jerrod Carmichael as the host.
And now … what to watch today: Catch up on “The White Lotus” season finale (spoilers here). Plus, if you loved its setting: Start planning the ultimate trip to Sicily. | 2022-12-12T12:55:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Monday, December 12 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/12/12/what-to-know-for-december-12/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/12/12/what-to-know-for-december-12/ |
Golden Globe nominations 2023: ‘Abbott Elementary’ leads for TV nods
The Golden Globe Awards are back in broadcaster NBC’s good favor. After controversy over racial inequity and questionable journalistic ethics within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association prompted the network to opt out of airing last year’s iteration of the annual awards show, the ceremony will return this January to its longtime home on the network. There’s even a buzzy host this time around: Emmy-winning comedian Jerrod Carmichael.
Nearly two years ago, exactly a week before the 2021 ceremony, the Los Angeles Times published a landmark investigation into the HFPA’s practices. Perhaps the most startling revelation was that there was not a single Black journalist among the voting body’s 87 members (a number that pales in comparison to the thousands of professionals who vote for the Oscars and Emmys).
In addition to expanding its charitable and philanthropic efforts, the HFPA announced in a news release earlier this year that its voting body is now 52 percent women and “51.5% racially and ethnically diverse,” which it translated to mean 19.5 percent Latino, 12 percent Asian, 10 percent Black and 10 percent Middle Eastern. An NBCUniversal executive stated that the network “recognize[d] the HFPA’s commitment to ongoing change” and would air the next show.
An updating list of the nominations is below.
Quinta Brunson, "Abbott Elementary”
Martin Short, “Only Murders in the Building"
Seth Rogen, “Pam and Tommy" | 2022-12-12T14:25:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Golden Globe nominations 2023: ‘Abbott Elementary’ leads for TV nods - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/12/12/golden-globe-nominations-2023-nods-announced-amid-return-nbc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/12/12/golden-globe-nominations-2023-nods-announced-amid-return-nbc/ |
The American Dream Needs an Extensive Renovation
A home is more than just a place to live. It determines whom people interact with, where their children go to school, how they can apply their talents and how healthy they are. Ensuring abundant, affordable housing is essential to a nation’s prosperity.
By any measure, America is failing at that task. For the sake of the economy, society and even the environment, it must do better.
As of 2021, rent consumed more than half the income of more than 11 million families. The median new house price has risen beyond what an estimated 69% of households can afford, and has been a major driver behind a surge in inflation that the Federal Reserve is struggling to contain. Workers endure epic commutes that clog roads and pollute the air, or reject attractive jobs because they can’t afford to live nearby. Census surveys suggest that as of early November, more than 4 million households were on the verge of eviction or foreclosure. In major cities from San Francisco to Washington, DC, homeless encampments have proliferated.
How did the American dream go so wrong? Part of the problem is the way the federal government has promoted homeownership. During the mid-20th century, taxpayer-backed mortgages helped create the middle class — but also went disproportionately to white families, helping them build wealth while relegating others to disadvantaged neighborhoods. The mortgage-interest deduction, an accident in the tax code that costs the government about $26 billion a year, also flows mainly to the affluent, doing much more to boost the price and size of houses than to expand ownership.
Privileged communities have also at times moved to preserve their advantages. Local councils have instituted restrictions such as minimum plot sizes and maximum heights, along with resource-consuming approval procedures for new development. In many major cities, more than three-quarters of residential land is now zoned exclusively for detached, single-family homes. This benefits the incumbents by boosting the value of existing homes. It also prevents the construction of relatively affordable housing, entrenches segregation and — by pressing newcomers to either settle far away from job centers or gentrify other neighborhoods — promotes urban sprawl and displaces the poor.
The longer-term economic effects are dire. Constrained supply has left the US with an estimated housing deficit of 3.8 million units (as of the end of 2020). The shortage tends to be most severe precisely in opportunity-rich places with good schools and access to jobs, preventing millions of people from living where they can realize their full potential. This misallocation makes the whole country poorer: Estimates of the negative impact on gross domestic product range from about $500 billion to more than $1.8 trillion a year.
The solution is conceptually simple but politically fraught: Stop limiting supply and stimulating the wrong kind of demand. Policymakers must persuade localities to remove unreasonable obstacles, so the market can provide housing where it’s most needed — a goal that President Joe Biden has included in his own action plan. They must arrange tax and other incentives so construction can proceed as quickly as possible. They must improve mass transit to link more residential neighborhoods to jobs. And they must redirect federal subsidies toward ensuring that the most vulnerable have stable homes, where their children can thrive.
None of this will be easy. It will require reconciling the interests of established communities with those of the diverse and growing group of people — including, crucially, the young — who can’t afford to live where the opportunities are. Ultimately, though, the gains will benefit everyone. Future editorials in this series will explore how to proceed.
I May Buy Because the Rent Is Just Too Damn High: Erin Lowry
Apartment Builders Didn’t Get the Housing Slump Memo: Justin Fox | 2022-12-12T14:25:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The American Dream Needs an Extensive Renovation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-american-dream-needs-an-extensive-renovation/2022/12/12/1706c3a8-7a26-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-american-dream-needs-an-extensive-renovation/2022/12/12/1706c3a8-7a26-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
Richmond’s last major city-owned Confederate memorial is coming down
The statue of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill in stood in Richmond on Dec. 6, 2022, days before it was scheduled to be taken down. (Parker Michels-Boyce/For The Washington Post)
RICHMOND — Work crews moved into place Monday morning to begin taking down this city’s last major icon to the Lost Cause, a statue of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill in the middle of a busy intersection.
Traffic control barriers were ready early, but workers waited for the morning rush to clear and for classes to get underway at a nearby elementary school before closing off the crossroads of Hermitage Road and West Laburnum Avenue on Richmond’s Northside.
More than a dozen other Confederate monuments around this historic city have been removed since 2020, when social justice protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis finally forced Richmond to confront its memorial landscape.
Two years after protests. some of Richmond's Confederate statues remain
While the titanic, state-owned statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue became an international symbol of that year of protests, it is the Hill statue that has proved to have the most staying power. That’s because of one unique feature: Hill’s remains are buried beneath it.
A law passed by the General Assembly in 2020 allowed localities to take down Confederate statues, which up until then had been protected. But the Hill monument’s status as a grave caused the city to go through a lengthy process to get legal permission to clear the site and then arrange for the remains to be relocated.
Once the stone base is opened up by workers for Team Henry, the Black-owned contractor that has overseen demolition of almost all the city’s monuments, a crew will extract Hill’s coffin. A funeral home will transport the remains to a burial plot in Hill’s hometown of Culpeper that the city of Richmond purchased for $1,000.
Where's Kitty Cary? The answer unlocked Black history Richmond tried to hide.
The delicate work could stretch the removal across two days, officials said. But when it’s done, the former capital of the Confederacy will be almost free of Lost Cause iconography in public spaces — an outcome that seemed unthinkable only a few years ago.
“This is the last stand for the Lost Cause in our city,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said last week after a judge swept aside an effort to claim the statue by a group of people who said they were Hill’s indirect descendants.
What Richmond loses in divisive symbolism it gains in traffic safety, as the need to navigate around the Hill monument has made the intersection one of the city’s most dangerous.
A few prominent Confederate symbols remain in Richmond — most notably a trio of statues on Capitol Square outside the State Capitol. The administration of former governor Ralph Northam (D) has said it was too focused on getting the Lee statue down to take on the Capitol Square statues, which would probably require action by the General Assembly. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has shown no interest in picking up the baton, with a spokeswoman saying via text that the governor believes “we must resist the movement to cleanse our history. The decision to remove the statues were decisions made by previous administrations/politicians.”
Richmond's statues fell. Now these sisters aim to lift up Black history.
The Hill site is in a different area than most of the Confederate memorials that once stood around Richmond’s downtown and older inner neighborhoods. It was a rural part of Henrico County when developer Lewis Ginter created the memorial in 1891 to promote his new suburban neighborhood, later annexed by the city.
Hill, who was killed by Union troops outside Petersburg in the waning days of the war in 1865, had been buried in two other spots before being dug up and reinterred here. He had once said he did not wish to live to see the Confederacy fall, and he didn’t. But his statue saw its symbols disappear.
It has long been rumored that Hill was buried standing up inside the base of the monument. But news accounts from the time suggest that while he might have been vertical in one of the earlier burials, by the time he got to this spot the remains were little more than bones and tattered cloth. | 2022-12-12T14:26:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Richmond's last major city-owned Confederate statue is coming down - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/richmond-confederate-statue-hill-removal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/richmond-confederate-statue-hill-removal/ |
My OB-GYN said breastfeeding my toddler was unsafe to my unborn baby. But that advice is controversial.
Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that more than 83 percent of babies are breastfed for at least some time, and about 15 percent are still nursing at 18 months. This means some parents will experience the same breastfeeding-pregnancy quandary that I did.
Susan Crowe, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University, explains that the advice to stop breastfeeding when you are pregnant was common about 20 years ago, although the practice was not well studied. But “there was a theoretic concern that because there’s a release of oxytocin during breastfeeding,” Crowe says.
Oxytocin, in addition to helping the flow of milk when nursing, also stimulates the uterus to contract during childbirth. The worry was that oxytocin released during nursing “could cause uterine cramping that could lead to miscarriage or preterm delivery,” Crowe says. “It became advice that we were all taught as obstetricians to give without evidence to support it.”
But Crowe says that naturally released oxytocin during lactation has not been shown to increase the risk of preterm birth, although it can cause cramping and even some contractions. This is in part, she says, because oxytocin receptor sites, the uterine cells that detect oxytocin and cause contractions, are low in number during early pregnancy and increase approximately twelvefold by 37 to 41 weeks.
“Oxytocin receptors are not well-developed in the uterus throughout pregnancy, so that perhaps that is the reason that people can have mild contractions and not go into preterm labor,” she says.
One study, however, in the Journal of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health found that exclusive (rather than supplemental) breastfeeding was associated with a higher risk of miscarriage. The study found that miscarriage risk for parents who were exclusively breastfeeding was comparable to the risk to people who conceived when they were 40 or older. Jourdan Triebwasser, maternal fetal medicine physician and a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan Health, says other factors may be at play in this research, such as pregnancy spacing.
“Short pregnancy intervals can have risks of miscarriage and preterm birth,” she says. “And those with shorter pregnancy intervals are probably more likely to still be exclusively breastfeeding. So that may play into it.”
“Breastfeeding while pregnant is perfectly fine,” says Tessa B. Scripps, pediatrician and certified lactation counselor at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital, although she’s wary of nursing during high-risk pregnancies. She references cases of intense uterine cramping before recommending a cautious approach. “I advise pregnant moms who may be at high risk for preterm delivery to speak with their obstetricians.”
Pregnancy and nursing, more research needed
“At the end of the third trimester, some people do use nipple stimulation as a way to try to naturally get into labor. So certainly there’s some reason to believe it may affect the uterus late in the pregnancy,” Triebwasser says.
Some of the surprising benefits to babies of breast milk
Despite the safety of breastfeeding while pregnant, some parents may decide they would prefer to stop. “The first trimester of pregnancy can be exhausting and hormonal effects can lead people to experience nipple soreness,” Crowe says. “Some people, after experiencing these things, decide that they are ready to wean.”
While colostrum is still good for an older child to drink, Scripps says the changes in milk may inspire a child to wean.
“Often, children who are breastfeeding while moms are pregnant will actually self-wean themselves because they don’t like the taste or because the volume goes down,” Scripps says. “The child may also start to get frustrated or refuse the breast or not gain weight as well.”
“I think that people do need reassurance regarding nursing. They should know they don’t have to stop if they become pregnant,” Crowe says. “But really, this is about supporting people to make the choices that they want to make. Many people are more comfortable continuing with lactation and we want to have that option available to them.” | 2022-12-12T14:26:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is breastfeeding while pregnant ok? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/12/pregnant-nursing-toddler/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/12/pregnant-nursing-toddler/ |
A.P. Hill monument, Richmond
Robert E. Lee monument, Richmond
Jefferson Davis monument, Richmond
J.E.B. Stuart monument, Richmond
Stonewall Jackson monument, Richmond
Matthew Fontaine Maury monument, Richmond
Robert E. Lee monument, Charlottesville
‘Talbot Boys’ statue, Easton, Md.
Confederate statue, Mathews County, Va.
‘Appomattox,’ Alexandria, Va.
State Capitol statues, Richmond
Virginia Capitol Lee statue and Confederate busts
Virginia has been known for having more Confederate memorials than any other state. After all, Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy, and the most major Civil War battles were fought in Virginia. The monuments were protected by state law until 2020, when a General Assembly controlled by Democrats passed a measure allowing localities to consider removing Confederate statues.
Then-Gov. Ralph Northam (D) signed the bill into law just before racial justice protests were triggered nationwide by the murder of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. Since 2020, localities throughout the South have eliminated Confederate statues as symbols of enslavement and oppression, with many dramatic examples in Virginia.
While not an exhaustive list, here are some of the Confederate monuments that have been taken down in Virginia — and Maryland — and some that remain standing.
Description: The statue of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill is the last of Richmond’s major Confederate statues to be taken down. The statue, at the intersection of Laburnum Avenue and Hermitage Road, has the distinction of being the city’s only monument under which its honoree is buried, complicating efforts to remove it.
Status: Undergoing removal on Dec. 12
Future location: Once it is removed, the statue will become the property of Richmond’s Black History Museum, which is overseeing the disposition of several other Confederate monuments. The body of Hill will go to Fairview Cemetery in Culpeper, Hill’s hometown, where the city of Richmond has paid $1,000 for a burial plot.
Description: Virginia’s biggest statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee stood as the centerpiece of the parade of Confederate statues along Richmond’s Monument Avenue. The towering statue had been the focus of protests night after night during the summer of 2020 following Floyd’s murder. The statue’s 50-foot-tall plinth was festooned with colorful graffiti calling for racial justice and with numerous expletives aimed at police. The 14-foot statue, which was owned by the state, was first unveiled in 1890 as an icon of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Northam announced his intention to bring down the statue in June 2020, but court challenges delayed the state from acting for more than a year. The stone base contained two time capsules — one made of lead was placed by the men who designed parts of the monument and included books and a British coin, the other a copper box with dozens of items, including Confederate memorabilia.
Status: Removed Sept. 8, 2021
Current location: In storage at the city’s ultra-secure wastewater treatment plant.
Richmond’s statues fell. Now these sisters aim to lift up Black history.
Description: The statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, had stood on Richmond’s iconic Monument Avenue since 1907. During racial-justice protests in the spring and summer of 2020, protesters pulled the statue down from its base.
Status: Toppled by protesters June 10, 2020
Current location: The paint-splattered figure is on display at the Valentine museum in Richmond.
Richmond sculptor Edward Valentine created many of the statues that defined Lost Cause mythology. Now his family’s museum is confronting the legacy.
Description: The statue of the Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart stood on Monument Avenue in Richmond since 1907, but it was taken down amid racial-justice protests in the summer of 2020. The Stuart statue was one of the city-owned statues ordered removed by Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney.
Status: Removed July 7, 2020
Current location: In secure storage at the wastewater treatment plant.
The Confederacy’s final resting place
Description: The equestrian statue of the Confederate Gen. Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson that stood on Richmond’s iconic Monument Avenue was removed after Stoney used emergency powers to order a series of statues cleared from city property.
In the former capital of the Confederacy, the debate over statues is personal and painful
Description: The statue of Matthew Fontaine Maury, a Confederate navy leader, was one of the more obscure memorials to the Lost Cause. Maury acquired ships for the Confederacy, and after the war ended, he attempted to establish a Confederate colony in Mexico. He later returned to Virginia and taught meteorology at Virginia Military Institute. The statue was erected in 1929 and featured Maury in front of a globe surrounded by waves, people, cattle and other animals.
Along historic Richmond street, residents grapple with Confederate legacy
Description: The bronze statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee was the focal point of the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017 and the subject of a lengthy legal battle over whether it could be taken down. Since then, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center won a bid to take over the statue and has said it intends to melt down the piece and turn it into new artwork. Those plans were the subject of a lawsuit by the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation and the Ratcliffe Foundation, which want to force the city to pay to repair and restore the statue, or, if the statue cannot be repaired, use the bronze ingots from the statue to be repurposed into a Civil War cannon that will be displayed on a Civil War battlefield. That case is ongoing.
Status: Removed July 10, 2021
Current location: The statue is being held in an undisclosed location. According to court documents, it has been disassembled.
Description: The “Talbot Boys” statue, which stood in front of the Talbot County Courthouse in Easton, Md., was dedicated in 1916 to honor the Eastern Shore county’s Confederate veterans. The 13-foot copper statue featured a young anonymous soldier carrying a Confederate battle flag. While the statue has had detractors for years, the movement to take it down gained momentum with the racial-justice protests in the summer of 2020. The Talbot County Council voted that year to keep the statue in place, but reversed course in September 2021.
Status: Removed March 14
Current location: The statue has been relocated to Cross Keys Battlefield in Harrisonburg, Va.
Description: The Confederate statue sitting in front of the historic Mathews County Courthouse is of a generic Civil War soldier atop a column, the base reading “Our Confederate soldiers” on one side and “In memory of the soldiers and sailors of Mathews County Va.” on another. The statue has not been the subject of protests or vandalism, but the prospect of either occurring has led the county board of supervisors to consider deeding the land under the statue to a private group to ensure the statue would remain standing in front of the courthouse in perpetuity. The board already has drafted a deed and voted to waive county subdivision rules to allow it to carve out a 21-by-22-foot plot of land under the statue. But after a raucous public meeting in early December, at which many in the crowd were against the proposal, the board took no action, saying it wanted to give the idea more thought.
Status: Standing.
Description: “Appomattox,” which stood in an Alexandria, Va., intersection for 131 years, depicted a southern-facing Civil War soldier. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, which owned the statue, opted to remove it for fear of it being damaged during protests. The city had tried to remove the statue for years but was prohibited by state law.
Status: Removed June 2, 2020
Current location: Unknown.
Description: While many Confederate statues have been taken down in Richmond, a trio of Confederate statues still stand on Capitol Square outside the state Capitol: a bronze statue of Stonewall Jackson; a statue of Hunter Holmes McGuire, the Confederate doctor who amputated Jackson’s arm and defended slavery; and former governor William “Extra Billy” Smith, who was also a Confederate general. Jurisdiction over the statues is unclear; it is believed that it would take the action of both the governor and the state legislature to remove the trio.
Two years after protests, some of Richmond’s Confederate statues remain
Description: The Virginia Capitol’s Old House Chamber featured seven busts of Confederate leaders, including Confederate navy leader Matthew Fontaine Maury, Gen. Stonewall Jackson, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Vice President Alexander Stephens. The biggest of the Confederate relics was a 900-pound bronze statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, which stood on the spot where Lee accepted command of Virginia’s armed forces in 1861. That sculpture was erected in 1931. They were ordered removed by then-House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax), who said her role as speaker gave her authority over decorations and furnishings in the House-controlled parts of the Capitol.
Status: Removed July 23-24, 2020
Current location: A bipartisan advisory board was created to recommend what to do with the items, which were taken to an undisclosed location for storage. | 2022-12-12T15:39:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Which Confederate statues are gone in the DMV — and which remain? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/confederate-statues-virginia-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/confederate-statues-virginia-maryland/ |
Is this consistent enough Joe?
President Joe Biden’s administration outlined a new rule in October whereby the Department of Energy could buy oil for future delivery — most likely 2024 — at fixed prices to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The mooted price range is $67 to $72 per barrel. Then, earlier this month, Biden’s energy security adviser Amos Hochstein appeared to set a new condition by saying the DoE would solicit for those barrels when oil prices were trading “consistently” around $70.
Attention tends to focus on the front-month oil futures contract; that’s what people generally mean when they say “the oil price.” But in this case, the more relevant benchmarks are contracts in 2024 and 2025, where prices are now firmly in the refill range. Indeed, as of Monday morning, the entire futures curve has sunk below $72. The time to make good on Biden’s plan is now.
There is skepticism about it in the oil industry, in part because of the adversarial relationship firms have with this White House. Chevron Corp. Chief Executive Mike Wirth recently dismissed the plan as not offering a “meaningful” incentive for oil companies to drill more. Hochstein’s comments unhelpfully added further uncertainty.
Making good on the proposal now would at least put the onus on oil producers to either accept or reject it. They have justifiable reasons to be cautious, such as the risk of cost inflation eating into their return on oil delivered two years out. On the other hand, oil’s slide over the past week, bucking the Keystone pipeline leak and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to cut supply, suggests bearish economic forces are overwhelming the bullish narrative that held for much of this year. While oil majors like Chevron set multi-year budgets and tend not to hedge anyway, smaller producers may take the opportunity of a refill solicitation to defray risks and lock in prices on some production, especially as liquidity in the futures curve thins sharply beyond the first 12 months.
It would also be a clear win for Biden. At a recent hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Doug McIntyre, the deputy director for the Office of Petroleum Reserves, suggested replacing the 180 million barrels so far drained from the SPR by emergency sales with 60 million purchased from the market, and then by holding off selling roughly 140 million barrels, which were mandated for sale by Congress. (By way of background, a series of legislation passed in recent years — including the tax cuts of 2018 and last year’s bipartisan infrastructure act — have contained provisions for selling off bits of the SPR to raise cash (remember that the next time you hear representatives rail against the risks of draining our national oil tank).) In this way, 200 million barrels would be effectively bought back to replenish the SPR: 60 million from the market and 140 million from Congress.
There is more than enough to pay for this at the mooted price band. This year’s SPR sales were done at an average price of $96.25 per barrel, raising $17.3 billion. Even at the top end of the refill range, $72, that’s enough to buy back 240 million barrels, a third more than were sold. In theory, DoE could solicit for $4.3 billion worth of oil in the market, hand over $10.1 billion to the Treasury Department to negate the Congressionally-mandated sales — provided Congress played ball, of course — and still have $2.9 billion left over. In pure trading terms, that would be a home run.
In political terms, it would also show Biden’s willingness to help set a price floor, encouraging domestic oil production. Opponents of this on environmental grounds should bear in mind that US onshore oil has less “lock in” than say, deepwater fields or petro-states, because shale wells are relatively quick to develop, require little in the way of new infrastructure and produce most of their output within a few years. Plus, this year’s geopolitical mayhem has unavoidably raised the security premium in energy markets; in political terms, western democracies won’t reach net-zero if its proponents are voted out by citizens fearful or angry about high living costs. As I wrote here, a Biden put at $70 offers the possibility of stability that could benefit both oil producers and the transition.
Looking at oil’s slide last week, there will be a temptation within the DoE to say, as ClearView Energy Partners put it in a recent report, “if $70 [per barrel] is good, wouldn’t $60 [per barrel] or $50 [per barrel] be even better?” This would be an egregious mistake, not least because it would expose the October announcement as the shallowest of politicking over a strategic sector. Moreover, the lesson to take from 2022 isn’t that we managed to dodge a bullet on energy costs but that we remain subject to volatile forces that mock the notion of “consistency.” In oil trading, you take your wins when they present themselves and move on.
• Russia Is Feeling the Pain of Europe’s Oil Embargo: Julian Lee
• Manchin Energy-Permit Plan Can Still Be Salvaged: Karl W. Smith
• Oil Prices Are Breaking an Old Recession Tradition: Conor Sen | 2022-12-12T15:57:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | It’s Time for Biden to Unleash His Mega Oil Trade - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/its-time-for-biden-to-unleash-his-mega-oil-trade/2022/12/12/2be19132-7a2f-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/its-time-for-biden-to-unleash-his-mega-oil-trade/2022/12/12/2be19132-7a2f-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
One of climate change’s great mysteries is finally being solved
Scientists are beginning to understand whether clouds are a friend -- or enemy -- of climate change.
Scientists have long known that clouds have two primary influences on the global climate. First, clouds are reflective — their white surfaces reflect the sun’s rays away from Earth, creating a cooling effect. (If the planet were suddenly devoid of these fluffy parasols, the planet would be roughly five times hotter than even the most disastrous global warming projections.) But clouds also create a warming effect — certain types of clouds insulate the Earth’s radiation, keeping the planet warm much like carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels.
How exactly those two factors will balance out as the world warms has been uncertain. That’s mostly because, even though clouds can look gigantic — when you are flying through them in a plane or looking up at them from the ground — they form at microscopic levels, when water vapor condenses around a particle of dust or a droplet. As a result, they are essentially impossible to model in the standard big climate models. (Clouds form at the micrometer level, while the models that most climate scientists use separate the world into blocks hundreds of kilometers in width.)
First, the high, wispy cirrus clouds that trap the Earth’s radiation are expected to shift upward in the atmosphere, to lower temperature zones. Thanks to a complicated relationship between clouds and the radiation of the Earth, that will increase the amount of radiation that the cirrus clouds trap in the atmosphere. “When they rise, their greenhouse effect, or warming effect, on the Earth tends to increase,” Myers said.
That result has been known for about a decade, and indicates that clouds are likely to amplify global warming. But just in the past few years, researchers have also discovered that the number of low-level stratus or stratocumulus clouds are expected to decrease as the planet continues to warm. One study, in the journal Nature Climate Change, used satellite observations to discover how cloud formation is affected by ocean temperatures, wind speed, humidity and other factors — and then analyzed how those factors will change as the world warms.
Researchers have also begun to understand how clouds will be affected by certain changes beyond warming — such as the reduction of artificial aerosols in the atmosphere. Clouds form around particles floating in the atmosphere, such as aerosols; it is possible, therefore, that low-level clouds would have decreased even more if not for human-induced air pollution. According to another study released last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sulfate aerosols have spurred cloud formation, thus masking some of the global warming that has already occurred. “There’s potential that as we clean up air pollution, we unmask global warming,” said Casey Wall, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo.
Combined, these new findings have helped scientists zero in on how much the planet will warm if carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere were to double from preindustrial times. (Before the industrial revolution, CO2 concentration was around 280 parts per million, or ppm; now it has reached 412 ppm, and is still rising.) Scientists once estimated that if CO2 reached 560 ppm, the temperature would increase between 1.5 and 4 degrees Celsius — a range that spans a “still very livable planet” to “near-apocalypse levels of warming.” | 2022-12-12T15:57:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | One of climate change’s great mysteries is finally being solved - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/12/climate-change-clouds-equilibrium-sensitivity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/12/climate-change-clouds-equilibrium-sensitivity/ |
Donald Trump Jr. leaves the New York Young Republican Club Gala in New York City on Dec. 10. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters)
It wasn’t just Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) who decided to thrill the crowd at a Young Republicans event in New York City this weekend by riffing on the prospect of taking up arms against the government.
Given that Greene is a sitting member of Congress, it’s understandable that her line — that had she and former Donald Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon planned the riot at the Capitol, it would have involved more guns and “we would have won” — would be the focus of most of the headlines. But that she felt comfortable offering that would-be witticism was clearly in part a function of the event and the moment itself. Such language was pervasive and the underlying sentiment, of the fringe-right rising up against its opponents, embodied by attendees.
It was a reminder that the mob mentality that drove the Capitol riot is, in fact, omnipresent in a segment of America’s and the world’s political right, stoked and elevated as a means of demonstrating toughness but with occasional collapses into actual violence.
The venue for Greene’s comments was the annual fundraising gala for the New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC). In attendance, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), were a who’s who of well-known right-wing voices: Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. But there were also less-familiar members of the fringe in the room, like Jack Posobiec, whose embrace of misinformation and aggressive online persona have elevated his status on the right, and the publishers of the white nationalist website VDare. Far-right European politicians also made appearances.
In a speech, the Young Republican organization’s president, Gavin Wax, declared that, “we want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets.”
It’s likely that many in the room were familiar with the moment four years ago when war in the streets followed a similar Young Republican event in Manhattan. In 2018, the Metropolitan Republican Club invited Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes to speak, triggering counterprotests and, eventually, Proud-Boy-initiated brawling outside the venue. As the New York Times wrote last month, this was a tipping point for both that organization and the NYYRC.
“Soon after the incident, a candidate named Ian Reilly, who, former club members say, had a lead role in planning the speech, won the next club presidency. He did so in part by recruiting followers of far-right figures, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, to pack the club’s ranks at the last minute,” the paper wrote. Yiannopoulos recently interned with Greene and was working with Ye, the musician born Kanye West.
“A similar group of men repeated the strategy at the New York Young Republican Club, filling it with far-right members, too,” the Times continued.
Being a Republican in New York City is inherently countercultural, which is probably part of the appeal in general. But — as with Greene’s comments about Jan. 6 — the line between ironic and sincere is blurry. The rise of a semi-ironic, fascism-sympathetic community in Lower Manhattan is in part about the frisson that accompanies articulating such views in a liberal community. But the boundary between pretending to hold a view and holding it is notoriously blurry. Do people free of racism tell racist jokes?
By now, there is an enormous library of polling showing more sympathy for the use of violence as a political response by the right. Here, for example, is polling from PRRI making that point.
There is also evidence that a willingness to embrace nondemocratic forms of government is more common among the group that was being feted at this weekend’s event. 2017 polling from the World Values Survey found that an alarming percentage of the country thought that an autocratic form of government would be fairly or very good. Among Republican-voting Americans under the age of 30, nearly two-thirds held that view.
It is frustrating that polling is structurally incapable of determining the size of small groups. If even only a small portion of either the right or left is sincerely willing to engage in acts of violence, the actual scale gets blurred by the margins of uncertainty that accompany public opinion surveys. It’s also the case that, as NPR reported earlier this year, that polling can overstate a willingness to engage in acts of violence. Among other things, there is a big jump from telling someone you would act violently and actually doing so.
At the Capitol, of course, we saw hundreds of people make that leap — people who perhaps might have indicated a willingness to engage in violence to a pollster and people who perhaps wouldn’t have. The mob mentality at play on that day was a powerful force.
CNN’s Elle Reeve spoke to me shortly after the riot, which she attended.
“I don’t have the vocabulary to describe the way the emotion moves through the crowd,” she said. “It’s like a current. It’s contagious. They’re so happy, but it’s also really menacing. There’s this forward momentum, like the crowd gets a goal and they are all going to do it. And individual responsibility just gets stripped away.”
A certain combination of factors need to be in place for violence to occur. Group engagement and enthusiasm is one. And that enthusiasm is now so pervasive as to undergird an off-the-cuff comment from a sitting member of Congress about how Jan. 6 was winnable. That — ha ha! — an insurrection that they helped foment would be better armed.
At that, the SPLC reported, those in the room “erupted in cheers and applause.”
The latest: White House condemns Greene over claim she would have ‘won’ Jan. 6 insurrection | 2022-12-12T15:57:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The GOP has created a safe space for musing about violent rebellion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/republicans-greene-jan-6-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/republicans-greene-jan-6-violence/ |
Texas men's basketball coach Chris Beard was arrested early Monday morning in Austin, Texas. (Eric Gay/Associated Press)
Chris Beard, coach of the No. 2-ranked University of Texas men’s basketball team, was arrested and charged with assaulting a family member early Monday, Austin police confirmed.
Officers responded to a 911 “disturbance-urgent” call at 2:07 a.m. Monday and took Beard, 49, into custody. He is accused of choking a person at a home in the Tarrytown neighborhood in West Austin, police spokesman Brandon Jones said (via the Austin Statesman) and was booked into jail at 4:18 a.m. Monday, according to Travis County sheriff’s office jail records. He faces a third-degree felony charge of assault on a family/household member-impede breath circulation.
Austin police told ESPN they received a “disturbance hotshot” call, which the Austin police website defines as “incidents which are in progress are an immediate threat to life and/or public safety (i.e. shootings, stabbings, rapes, riots). These calls are dispatched immediately.”
The university issued a statement Monday morning, saying it “is aware of the situation” and adding it is “continuing to gather information and monitoring the legal situation.”
Beard, a Texas alum who replaced Shaka Smart at the school in 2021, previously spent five years at Texas Tech, leading the team to the NCAA championship game in 2019. Beard has also coached at Fort Scott Community College in Kansas, Seminole State College, McMurry University, Angelo State and Arkansas-Little Rock.
The 7-1 Longhorns, off to their best start in years, play Rice in a 7 p.m. home game Monday. | 2022-12-12T15:58:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chris Beard, Texas basketball coach, charged with domestic assault - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/chris-beard-arrested/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/chris-beard-arrested/ |
The Commanders and Giants meet for the second time in three weeks on Sunday night. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
If it seems odd for Washington to be playing the same opponent in consecutive games, well, that’s because it’s exceedingly rare. It’s only the third instance since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 that an NFL team has faced the same opponent in consecutive regular season games within a season. The last time Washington did so was in 1966, when a home-and-home series with the Pittsburgh Steelers featured a bit of uniform-related drama.
The 'next-best thing' for Ryan Kerrigan has been a boon for the Commanders
Pittsburgh had also planned to wear white tops, and while Steelers owner Art Rooney had no qualms with the monochromatic matchup proceeding as scheduled, referee Tommy Bell refused. Kickoff was delayed 20 minutes while Steelers equipment manager Tony Parisi retrieved Pittsburgh’s black jerseys from the team’s headquarters in South Park, Pa., and returned to the stadium via police escort.
Washington went on to defeat the Steelers, 33-27. Kicker Charlie Gogolak, Washington’s first-round pick in 1966, made four field goals from 21, 27, 29 and 14 yards. He might’ve added a fifth, but Washington first-year coach Otto Graham opted to punt from the Steelers’ 37-yard line in the final minute while protecting a six-point lead.
“It does not help to sit in that dressing room for 15 to 20 minutes when the team is ready to go,” Austin told reporters after Pittsburgh fell to 1-1-1. “We had no zip and no fire. I am sure the Redskins will see that in the films. We made many mental errors, but not because of the Redskins’ players. We will be better next week, believe me.”
“We’ll be on time for the kickoff,” Austin told reporters. “We assume they’ll wear their burgundy uniforms, as they elected to do three months ago, but we’ll be ready this time for whatever colors they decide to wear.”
“To shake up his players, who have scant excuse to be cocky with only one triumph this season, Graham began warning the Redskins on Monday that the Steelers would be ‘mad’ today because of the delay in last Sunday’s start caused by a mix-up in the jerseys,” The Post reported. “ … Even the Redskins’ publicity department was playing it scared. It noted that the back-to-back games were the first for the Redskins since 1948, when they opposed the Boston Yanks in successive games. But the results were not mentioned. The Redskins won both, 59-21 and 23-7.”
The two most recent instances of an NFL team facing the same opponent in consecutive games within the same regular season came 30 years apart. In 1991, then-AFC West rivals Seattle and San Diego played consecutive games around a bye for both teams. The Seahawks won the first meeting in Seattle, and the Chargers won the rematch in San Diego. Last year, the Cleveland Browns played the Baltimore Ravens in consecutive games. While Cleveland had a bye between the two matchups, Baltimore had a road game against the Steelers, which it lost. The Ravens won their first game against Cleveland. The rested Browns prevailed in the rematch. | 2022-12-12T16:58:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commanders prepare to play Giants in back-to-back games - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/commanders-giants-back-to-back-games/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/commanders-giants-back-to-back-games/ |
Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) in 2021. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has set the date for a special election to fill the late congressman's seat. (Steve Helber/AP)
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has announced a special election to fill the 4th Congressional District seat of Rep. A. Donald McEachin, who died Nov. 28 after a long battle with the secondary effects of colorectal cancer treatment.
The special election will be held Feb. 21, giving potential contenders over two months to campaign. The filing deadline for candidates is Dec. 23.
Del. Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico) and state Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan (D-Richmond), who ran for governor last year, have both filed paperwork to run for the seat; Bagby is expected to formally announce his campaign later Monday.
Given that each are the top two leaders of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus — Bagby the chair and McClellan vice chair — their likely candidacies could set up a heated rivalry in the deep-blue, majority-minority 4th District, which stretches from Richmond to the North Carolina border.
Joseph Preston, a lawyer, also announced his campaign for the seat on Monday. Preston served one year in the House of Delegates in 2015 after winning a special election to fill the seat of Rosalyn Dance, who was elected to the state Senate. Just months into his House term, Preston then decided to challenge Dance in a primary election for her Senate seat, which he lost.
The 4th District seat is expected to remain safely Democratic; three weeks before he died, McEachin won a fourth term by 30 points against his Republican challenger, Leon Benjamin.
McEachin, who had served in both the Virginia House of Delegates and state Senate during his political career, was first elected to Congress in 2016. Throughout his tenure, the lawyer and ordained minister developed a reputation for fierce advocacy for civil rights and environmental justice, paying keen attention to how climate change and pollutants disproportionately affect disadvantaged or minority communities.
He was diagnosed with cancer in 2013 and developed further complications from treatment in 2018.
Bagby has described him as a mentor.
“Donald McEachin spent his entire career building a incredible legacy for this community that we will never forget. I would not be here without him. Tomorrow I will tell you how I plan to help build on the McEachin legacy for the next generation,” Bagby wrote Sunday on Twitter, teasing his campaign announcement.
McClellan filled McEachin’s seat in the state Senate when he was elected to Congress and noted in a statement after he died that they had been friends for over 20 years. | 2022-12-12T17:24:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Youngkin announces special election to fill late Rep. McEachin’s seat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/youngkin-donald-mceachin-seat-special-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/youngkin-donald-mceachin-seat-special-election/ |
Zion Williamson’s dunk made the Suns mad and should put NBA on notice
Zion Williamson's 360-dunk in the closing seconds of a Pelicans' win over the Suns caused a bit of a commotion. (Matthew Hinton/AP)
Zion Williamson has thrown down every type of dunk imaginable, but none quite as layered as the spinning windmill that drew raucous cheers from New Orleans Pelicans fans and accusations of unsportsmanlike conduct from the Phoenix Suns.
The highflying all-star forward broke the internet and triggered a bench-clearing confrontation on Friday with a last-second, 360-degree detonation to close out a 128-117 home win over the Suns. As Williamson rattled the rim, he exacted a measure of revenge for Phoenix’s first-round series victory over New Orleans last April. As he flexed toward his teammates, he soaked in some group therapy from the Smoothie King Center crowd after a months-long foot injury left him in “dark places” last season. And while he didn’t apologize afterward, Williamson expressed remorse for his egregious violation of the NBA’s unwritten rules, which stipulate that the winning team should run out the clock rather than run up the score in the closing seconds if the result is in hand.
“In the moment, obviously, it felt amazing getting carried away,” Williamson said. “Looking back on it, I’ve got to be better than that. My step dad and my mom taught me better than that.”
With New Orleans leading by nine points in the game’s final 10 seconds, Larry Nance Jr. collected a defensive rebound and passed the ball ahead to Williamson, who was unguarded in the frontcourt. Despite the Suns waving the white flag by not fouling or even giving chase, Williamson didn’t dribble out the clock. Instead, he paced out his steps as former NBA player Antonio Daniels, now the Pelicans’ color commentator, moaned, “No, no, no, no” in anticipation of the protocol-breaching highlight dunk.
By the time Williamson made it back to the bench, Suns guard Chris Paul and Pelicans guard Jose Alvarado were exchanging words, and both teams swarmed the court as their coaches stepped in to prevent further escalation. In the chaos, referee Ed Malloy beseeched the players to head to their respective locker rooms, while Pierre the Pelican, New Orleans’ mascot, restrained Alvarado from further confrontation. Suns guard Cameron Payne said later, according to ESPN, that “there was just no sportsmanship” from Williamson because the “game was over [with] no shot clock.”
Of course, Williamson’s dunk didn’t happen in a vacuum. Last year’s playoff matchup was marked by chippy play between the top-seeded Suns and the underdog Pelicans. Paul and the pesky Alvarado had multiple exchanges, including a Game 6 elbow by Paul that left Alvarado with a chipped tooth.
Replays from Friday’s game appeared to show Paul deliver another high elbow to Alvarado after the buzzer. Daniels also pointed out that Suns forward Mikal Bridges had thrown down an uncontested dunk with a 13-point lead late in Phoenix’s Game 5 win at home. Bridges’s dunk, however, fell into a slightly grayer area because there were 30 seconds left in the game and some of the Pelicans were still playing defense.
Regardless, that series ended with hard feelings, as Pelicans star Brandon Ingram left the court without shaking hands with Paul. Perhaps because of those strained relations, Suns center Deandre Ayton was willing to give Williamson a pass.
“It’s his home court,” Ayton said. “He’s doing it for his fans. I ain’t taking none of that stuff personal.”
Rather than casting Williamson’s dunk as a declaration of war against the Suns, perhaps it’s better to view it as a blaring announcement of the Pelicans’ arrival as a serious threat in the Western Conference. By beating Phoenix 129-124 in overtime in a rematch Sunday, the Pelicans scored their seventh straight victory to improve their West-leading record to 18-8. Remarkably, New Orleans is on pace for 56 wins, which would tie the franchise record set in 2008 when Paul was at the helm.
With the 22-year-old Williamson averaging 25 points, 7.2 rebounds and 4.2 assists, numbers that have him on track for his second all-star nod, New Orleans is the only team that ranks in the top-five in both offensive and defensive efficiency. The Pelicans surround Williamson, Ingram and veteran scoring guard CJ McCollum with a rotating cast of long and athletic wings, and they can alter between big lineups featuring center Jonas Valanciunas and smaller looks with Nance.
Depth, lineup versatility and high-energy play have been key drivers of New Orleans’ early success, but Williamson’s battering ram approach on offense has taken center stage during emphatic December wins. Phoenix struggled to match his physicality and quickness off the dribble, as he poured in 35 points on Friday and another 35 on Sunday.
The more distance Williamson puts between himself and his past health concerns, the more the focus shifts to how few teams have the right personnel to keep him from scoring in the paint. The 2019 No. 1 overall pick has taken the road less traveled by logging just 85 appearances in his first three seasons, but this season he’s lived up to the considerable pre-draft hype that built during his one-and-done season at Duke.
That’s why, in the final analysis, Williamson’s controversial dunk wasn’t really about rubbing it in. He was mostly trying to make up for lost time.
“That [dunk] was a little out of character for me, but you’ve got to understand … [the Suns] sent my teammates home last year,” Williamson said. “I missed all of last year. I got carried away a little bit. I’ll admit that. I was in that locker room when my brothers were down because the Suns sent us home last year. That’s a tough moment to be a part of. That was out of character for me. If they were to do the same thing, I wouldn’t have no problem with it.” | 2022-12-12T17:25:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Zion Williamson’s dunk made the Suns mad and should put NBA on notice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/zion-williamson-dunk-suns-pelicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/zion-williamson-dunk-suns-pelicans/ |
‘Eo’: A donkey’s tragic tale, rapturously told
Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski’s latest film captures the beauty of the world and the cruelty of humankind
Through a donkey’s large and expressive eyes, “Eo” shows us the beauty of the world and the cruelty of humanity. If the wordless title character can’t understand the latter, neither can director and co-writer Jerzy Skolimowski. Yet the esteemed 84-year-old Polish director has made the animal’s story as visually ravishing as it is emotionally devastating.
The model for “Eo” (whose title is derived from the donkey bray often rendered in English as “heehaw”) is severe French Catholic director Robert Bresson’s 1966 “Au Hasard Balthazar,” about a teenage girl whose donkey is tormented by a series of owners. That austere black-and-white film focused more on the people around the donkey Balthazar during his transit from birth to death, although it does suggest that the donkey is a Christ figure. Skolimowski largely (though not entirely) avoids religion, replacing it with a timely concern: environmental destruction.
Thus begins an odyssey that leads the beast (played by six gray donkeys) through multiple owners and circumstances, including several episodes in which he (or she) meanders freely. Among these are a few comic moments and many lovely passages, captured splendidly by Michal Dymek’s expressionistic camerawork. But the mood can shift suddenly and violently, as when a nighttime idyll in a forest full of unthreatening creatures is disrupted by the lights and sounds of hunters’ laser-guided rifles.
These sequences, often shown in wide shots, depict objective reality. But much of the movie is rendered in close-up or dreamlike subjectivity in an apparent attempt to visualize Eo’s experience of the universe. (In one curious reverie, the donkey seems to turn into a robot.) Pawel Mykietyn’s score shifts from whispery to epic and is sometimes interrupted by the EDM, opera or heavy metal played by the mostly coarse human characters.
The film’s speedy edits and choppy continuity function as parallel means of simulating the animal’s limited understanding of his travels and travails. “Eo” is gorgeous and mysterious, more attuned to sensation than to narrative. If viewers sometimes feel lost, that just brings them closer to the donkey’s consciousness.
Skolimowski and producer/co-scripter Ewa Piaskowska (the director’s wife) make one wrong move toward the film’s end, after Eo has been transported to an estate in Italy by a sympathetic traveler (Lorenzo Zurzolo). The donkey grazes in the distance while Isabelle Huppert makes a cameo in a brief scene that is perhaps designed to link “Eo” to the French cinematic tradition from which it sprang. But the episode merely distracts from the tale. No wonder the animal takes his leave as soon as he notices an open gate.
Nearly everything else in “Eo” is flawlessly conceived and executed. The director, who’s made such first-rate if not widely seen films as 1970’s “Deep End” and 1982’s “Moonlighting,” is still an assured and audacious filmmaker. Eo’s fate is both shocking and unsurprising, but the sadness of the donkey’s saga is at least partly assuaged by the rapturous empathy with which it’s told.
Unrated. At the AFI Silver Theatre. Contains violence against animals, including humans. In Polish, Italian, English and French with subtitles. 88 minutes. | 2022-12-12T17:29:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Eo’: A donkey’s tragic tale, rapturously told - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/12/12/eo-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/12/12/eo-movie-review/ |
Prominent Catholic priest cleared of abuse, reinstated to Chicago church
The Rev. Michael Pfleger, shown here in 2021, is known for his activism against gun violence and for social justice. (Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Chicago Sun-Times/AP)
A prominent Roman Catholic priest has been reinstated to his south Chicago parish after an investigation found that abuse charges against him were not credible.
The Rev. Michael Pfleger, longtime pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church, was suspended in October after the Archdiocese of Chicago received an allegation of abuse against him.
The archdiocesan Independent Review Board and Office of Child Abuse Investigation and Review, with help from outside investigators, reviewed the allegations against Pfleger, Cardinal Blase Cupich told St. Sabina parishioners in a letter Saturday.
“The Review Board has concluded that there is no reason to suspect Father Pfleger is guilty of these allegations,” he wrote.
Chicago’s St. Sabina stands by popular priest after latest abuse claims
Pfleger had been accused of abuse once before and was suspended as the charges were investigated, then reinstated. His most recent suspension was based on alleged events from three decades ago.
The 73-year-old priest, known for his activism against gun violence and for social justice, appeared at 5 p.m. Mass at St. Sabina, a prominent Black Catholic congregation, on Saturday, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
“This has been very painful,” Pfleger told the congregation. “Thank you for your love, for your support and your prayers.”
Members of St. Sabina and Pfleger had vehemently denied the allegations against him. Church members labeled the allegations a spiritual attack.
Eugene Hollander, the lawyer for the alleged abuse survivor, told the Sun-Times that the review board’s finding was hurtful to his client.
“We think that the review board’s finding that the allegations were unfounded will discourage other victims,” Hollander said.
Cardinal Cupich acknowledged that Pfleger’s suspension had been hard on St. Sabina.
“I want to recognize that these months have taken a great toll on Fr. Mike and all of you, and I am committed to do everything possible to see that his good name is restored,” he wrote.
Cupich reminded the congregation about the joy of Christmas and commended Pfleger as he returned to ministry.
“As I assure you of my prayers,” Cupich concluded, “I ask that you do all you can to welcome back Father Pfleger so that he can once again take up the ministry that has distinguished St. Sabina in the archdiocese and beyond.” | 2022-12-12T17:30:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chicago priest Michael Pfleger cleared of abuse, reinstated to St. Sabina - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/12/12/michael-pfleger-chicago-st-sabina/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/12/12/michael-pfleger-chicago-st-sabina/ |
By Boubacar Diallo | AP
CONAKRY, Guinea — Guinea’s former junta leader Moussa “Dadis” Camara, took the stand for the first time Monday to testify about his role in a stadium massacre by the military 13 years ago in which at least 157 people were killed and dozens of women raped. | 2022-12-12T17:31:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Guinea's ex-junta leader testifies about stadium massacre - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/guineas-ex-junta-leader-testifies-about-stadium-massacre/2022/12/12/94f4651c-7a3b-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/guineas-ex-junta-leader-testifies-about-stadium-massacre/2022/12/12/94f4651c-7a3b-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s largest religious pilgrimage for the Dec. 12 day of the Virgin of Guadalupe returned Monday without restrictions for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic. For two years, the multi-day pilgrimage had been cancelled or curtailed because the massive numbers of faithful presented a risk of contagion. | 2022-12-12T17:31:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mexico's Virgin of Guadalupe pilgrimage returns unrestricted - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexicos-virgin-of-guadalupe-pilgrimage-returns-unrestricted/2022/12/12/eec039a4-7a3b-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexicos-virgin-of-guadalupe-pilgrimage-returns-unrestricted/2022/12/12/eec039a4-7a3b-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Jan. 6 ‘joke’ has been building for a long time
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) walks out of a meeting with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Nov. 9. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
An early high water mark in the GOP’s efforts to minimize the events of Jan. 6, 2021, came in early February 2022: The Republican National Committee not only voted to censure two members who had joined the committee investigating the insurrection, it decided to insert a phrase into the censure resolution practically dripping with provocation: “legitimate political discourse.”
Supporters of the measure quickly sought to assure that the phrase didn’t refer to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and got violent, but the resolution itself made no such distinction. And it was little mystery why: Republicans had spent the past year downplaying the events of that day and trying to rewrite a story that didn’t reflect particularly well on the party. The resolution invited those who believed this attack on the seat of government wasn’t that bad, or even that it was justified — that is, a significant portion of the GOP — to go right on believing that.
This weekend saw another such event: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) making a “joke” about how Jan. 6 could have turned out differently had she been in charge, while mocking those who have cast blame on her and Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon.
“I want to tell you something: If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won,” Greene said. “Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Jan 6th comments at Gala:
“I got to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”
Reckon there would be a lot more people doing a lot more prison time if ya were 🤦🏽♂️ pic.twitter.com/Xf6Ykv5MKw
— Terrence Daniels (Captain 🍀 Planet) (@Terrence_STR) December 12, 2022
The statement carries with it all the plausible deniability that the RNC resolution did, since Greene was telling jokes onstage at an event for young Republicans in New York. The provocateur congresswoman is inviting journalists to write this up as if it were an entirely serious comment, at which point she can claim persecution — a valued commodity.
But consider the game Greene is playing. She’s making Jan. 6 a punchline and inviting extremists in her party to believe that there’s more than a hint of truth in her quip — even that she’s expressing common cause with the insurrectionists (“we would have won”). And given her priors, it’s no secret what the intent is, no matter how much she’ll claim otherwise.
It’s a remarkable moment, but also one that’s been a long time coming.
The night of Jan. 6 and in the days and weeks afterward, GOP leaders lamented and almost universally condemned it as a particularly dark day in our nation’s history. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) took the House floor a week later to say President Donald Trump bore “responsibility” — and even that he should be censured.
“Of all the days here, last Wednesday was the worst day I’ve ever seen in Congress,” McCarthy said. “Our country is deeply hurt. So where do we go from here? After all the violence and chaos of the last week, it is important to remember that we’re still here to deliver a better future for all Americans. It does not matter if you are liberal, moderate or conservative. All of us must resist the temptation of further polarization.”
Within months, though, GOP members not only cast doubt on the “insurrection” label — which is, in fact, apt — but they lodged conspiracy theories seeking to absolve their supporters of blame. Along the way, their media allies like Fox’s Tucker Carlson offered baseless and later-debunked suggestions that this was the product of FBI instigation.
When Republicans declined to sign off on a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission, they effectively admitted that they were doing so because they didn’t want to keep talking about that day. But to make the case that it wasn’t worth probing, of course, they had to imply that it wasn’t that big a deal.
By early 2022 came the RNC censure resolution, which was condemned by some members of the party for its reference to “legitimate political discourse.” But the die was cast. As Trump has pushed the idea of pardons for those accused of wrongdoing on Jan. 6, the party has drifted more and more into believing that the L-word applied.
A Monmouth University poll in July showed not only that many more Republicans labeled Jan. 6 a “legitimate protest” than an “insurrection,” but that more Republicans also labeled it a “legitimate protest” even than a “riot.”
Against that backdrop, a particularly extreme congresswoman from Georgia has decided that a quip like this might land with a certain crowd of young Republicans in New York.
But also consider the substance of the quip. While Greene hasn’t been linked to organizing the insurrection, she did tell people on the eve of Jan. 6, “You can’t allow it to just transfer power ‘peacefully’ like Joe Biden wants and allow him to become our president, because he did not win this election.”
Bannon was even more forthright in predicting chaos that day, after whipping his listeners into a frenzy over false allegations of a stolen election. “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” he said on Jan. 5. “Just understand this: All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It’s going to be moving. It’s going to be quick.”
And despite the narrative that is often spun by Republicans, there is plenty of evidence that insurrectionists were armed. To what extent? We’ll never fully know because the vast majority of them weren’t apprehended at the time.
But comments downplaying the events of that day are key to the effort to retcon it. And Greene arguably has more power than ever to do so, thanks to how important she is to McCarthy’s chances of becoming speaker next month. So despite GOP leaders, including McCarthy, having initially made such stark statements about just how dark that day was, you can bet they’ll have relatively little to say about someone turning it into a punchline and inviting listeners to imagine a more successful insurrection.
The effect, though, is that the next provocation will be even more dramatic, and the events of that day will continue to be legitimized in the minds of a significant number of Americans.
The latest: In Indiana, Banks eyes Braun’s Senate seat after he announces for governor | 2022-12-12T18:51:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Jan. 6 ‘joke’ has been a long time coming - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/greene-january-6-punchline/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/greene-january-6-punchline/ |
Special counsel sends Trump subpoena to Ga. secretary of state Raffensperger
State or local officials in five of the six contested battlegrounds where former president Donald Trump tried to reverse his defeat have received similar subpoenas
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia secretary of state, testifies before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on June 21. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Special counsel Jack Smith has sent a grand jury subpoena to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, bringing to five the number of 2020 battleground states where state or local election officials are known to have received such requests for any and all communications with Trump, his campaign and a long list of aides and allies.
State and local officials in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have received similar subpoenas — all of them, like Georgia, central to President Donald Trump’s failed plan to stay in power after the 2020 election. State and local officials in Nevada, the other contested battleground from 2020, did not respond or declined to say whether they had heard from the Department of Justice.
Raffensperger shot to prominence following a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Trump in which the president urged him to “find” enough votes to reverse his defeat in Georgia.
Together, they are among the first known subpoenas issued since Smith was named last month by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee Trump-related aspects of the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as the criminal probe of Trump’s possible mishandling of classified documents at his Florida home and private club.
“I can confirm that my office was served a subpoena in connection with the special counsel’s investigation this morning,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson last week. “The Department of Justice has asked that we not disclose the contents of the subpoena to prevent harming the investigation, and we will honor that request.”
The Department of Justice’s long-running Jan. 6 investigation has moved beyond the large pool of people who directly took part in the bloody riot at the U.S. Capitol to focus on other aspects of the attempts to overturn the election results. Prosecutors are examining the fundraising, organizing and rhetoric that preceded the riot, and looking at failed efforts to authorize alternate slates of electors. They secured subpoenas this spring and summer for communications between Trump’s inner circle and scores of campaign officials, potential electors and others.
After Trump declared last month that he would again seek the White House in 2024, Garland appointed Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor who once headed the Justice Department’s public corruption section, to oversee the elements of the Jan. 6 investigation potentially related to the former president.
The requested communications include those with Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and other advisers, such as Boris Epshteyn. Attorneys identified include Trump campaign lawyers Justin Clark and Matthew Morgan, as well as those serving in other capacities, such as John Eastman, Rudolph Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Cleta Mitchell. | 2022-12-12T18:52:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Special counsel sends Trump subpoena to Ga. secretary of state Raffensperger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/special-counsel-sends-trump-subpoena-ga-secretary-state-raffensperger/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/12/special-counsel-sends-trump-subpoena-ga-secretary-state-raffensperger/ |
The appointment of the editor of London’s Sunday Times, who will be the Journal’s first woman as top editor, marks a reassertion of control by controlling shareholder Rupert Murdoch over the newspaper
The headquarters of News Corp., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, in New York. (Richard Drew/AP)
The Wall Street Journal on Monday named Emma Tucker — a British journalist from the Sunday Times of London who is close with controlling shareholder Rupert Murdoch’s inner circle — as its new editor in chief, replacing Matt Murray, a Journal veteran who has led the paper for the past 4½ years.
Tucker, 56, will be the first woman to serve as top editor of the Journal in its 133-year history. News Corp, which oversees Murdoch’s publishing empire, said Murray will take on a new executive role at the company, reporting to chief executive Robert Thomson after assisting Tucker through a one-month transition beginning Feb. 1.
The move signals a reassertion of control by Murdoch, who bought the Journal in 2007 and quickly took editorial command of the publication. Since then, Murray has been the only top editor to rise through the ranks of the Journal; the others have been British editors brought over from other Murdoch titles.
During Murray’s tenure, the Journal won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2019 and produced significant series such as the “Facebook Files” and an investigation into the financial conflicts of interest among federal judges. Digital-only subscriptions to the Journal doubled, growing from approximately 1.6 million as of June 2018 to nearly 3.2 million as of the quarter ending in September.
His appointment to the top job in 2018, after nearly a quarter-century at the paper, quelled significant staff dissatisfaction with his predecessor Gerald Baker, a British journalist who among his various roles had previously written conservative commentary — describing himself as a “right-wing curmudgeon” — and who was perceived by many staffers as overly friendly toward President Donald Trump.
But Murray clashed occasionally with the paper’s publisher, Almar Latour, on the Journal’s long-term editorial strategy and efforts to increase subscribers, the New York Times reported last year.
Rupert Murdoch considers merger of two halves of his business empire
On Monday, Thomson praised Murray as a “superb journalist and leader who has overseen a peerless editorial team that fashioned success for the Journal during an era of extreme vulnerability for media companies and journalism.”
Since January 2020, Tucker has served as editor of the Sunday Times, which she joined in 2007. She had previously worked alongside Thomson at the Financial Times, where he was an editor. Her candidacy for the Journal post also got a boost from Rebekah Brooks, who oversees News Corp.’s British arm, which includes the Times of London and the Sunday Times, as well as the Sun tabloid.
Under Tucker’s editorship, the Sunday Times was named Sunday Newspaper of the Year at the U.K. Press Awards and saw a more than 40 percent increase in digital subscriptions, to 450,000 by September 2022, up from 320,000 at the end of 2019.
Thomson praised Tucker as someone whose “global vision and experience will be particularly important at a time of immense international opportunity” for the Journal.
News Corp said that the five-member Dow Jones Special Committee, created in 2007 to monitor editorial standards and ethics issues at The Wall Street Journal, had “unanimously approved” the appointments.
The move comes as the two companies under the Murdoch family’s control — Dow Jones and Fox Corp — are exploring a recombination. The entities split in 2012 after the phone-hacking scandal at Murdoch’s British tabloids.
Murdoch sold the vast majority of his empire to Disney in 2019 and named his oldest son, Lachlan, as CEO of Fox Corp. | 2022-12-12T19:00:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Emma Tucker to replace Matt Murray as editor of the Wall Street Journal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/12/emma-tucker-replace-matt-murray-editor-wall-street-journal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/12/emma-tucker-replace-matt-murray-editor-wall-street-journal/ |
Meade begins year with vital ‘circle talk’; Madison thinks four-peat
Meade boys' basketball sits for their “circle talk” ahead of the 2022-2023 season. (Mike Glick)
Coach Mike Glick gathered his team four days before the Meade boys’ season opener for what he calls a “circle talk,” a ritual he has done throughout his long coaching career.
It’s simple: All fifteen players sit in a circle, ordered by their standing on the depth chart. The best player goes first — except he doesn’t do anything other than listen. It’s the rest of the team that talks, going around the room to tell the player on the spot what they like or dislike about him both on and off the court.
Then it’s the coaches’ turn. They offer their thoughts before closing by clearly telling the player his role on this year’s team. Glick and the coaching staff are intentional and specific with those roles.
They told point guard Xavion Roberson, the first player in the circle, he was going to have the ball to close out every game this season. Other players are told their role is to defend the opponent’s best player or to focus on rebounding. The process is repeated for every player and usually takes roughly three hours to finish. This year’s took so long they saved the last five players for the next day.
“It’s really powerful for the kids to hear from the other kids their perception,” Glick said. “It was just really uplifting to listen to how they talk to each other and about each other and how the kids were able to take the criticism.”
When the Mustangs practiced after wrapping up the circle talk on Dec. 6, they put together their best session of the season to date. Sophomore Lucaya Baldridge was told by teammates he had been too timid shooting the ball. He came to practice and began taking those open shots, Glick said, earning pats on the back and high fives for doing so.
The Mustangs won their season opener against North County by 45 points, but their goals extend further, focused around improving on last year’s 4A state semifinal appearance.
They’ll sit down for another circle talk before the playoffs start, but likely with a different seating arrangement — one that reflects the team’s fluid depth chart and roles the Mustangs take on as they try to meet their ultimate challenge.
Madison thinking of four-peat
Teams in positions such as Madison’s — a powerhouse girls’ program fresh off three straight Virginia Class 6 state titles — often think along the same lines as these Warhawks in the season that follows a trophy.
“We’re ready to go after another state championship,” junior Stella Gougoufkas. “We know people doubt that we’re going to get there. But we’re ready to go.”
And yet, most championship teams don’t graduate eight seniors, as Madison did. Nor, it seems, does that championship-or-bust mentality usually hold up against stiff competition.
Two weeks into the season, the Warhawks (5-1) are defying outside noise with marquee wins over fellow public schools and with their lone defeat coming against private school Bishop O’Connell. Even in the 53-46 loss, senior Kayla Dixon said, the Warhawks appeared in crisis for only one quarter. The skill, whether returning last year’s varsity bench or junior varsity starters, remains at the requisite level of a champion.
“I mean, normally our JV team wins all of its games. … It really isn’t about a loss of talent or anything,” Dixon said. “I think it’s just knowing where everyone is going to be on every second of the court.”
Though most players are far from fully-adjusted to their new roles, Gougoufkas said, many have looked comfortable making the leap from auxiliary pieces to offensive engines. And ultimately, she and Dixon agreed, offense was secondary in their three state title runs. Those Warhawks won on defensive principles — philosophies that translate, regardless of their talent level (still high) or the size of the target on their back (still massive).
“Coach [Kirsten] Stone has emphasized defense since the day she got to Madison,” Gougoufkas said. “I mean the game is to score, right? If our opponent doesn’t score, it’s pretty hard [for them] to win.”
Darren Harris, Paul VI: The junior finished 9 for 9 from the field, finishing with 22 points in the Panthers’ 87-52 rout of Mount St. Joseph.
Kenny DeGuzman, Potomac: The junior guard has been a consistent engine for the undefeated Panthers; he saved his best showing — 30 points on 14-of-19 shooting — for a come-from-behind win over Edison at the Kyle Honore Tip-Off.
Allie Museles, Wootton: The senior didn’t play in her first three basketball seasons, missing her freshman year due to a torn ACL, her sophomore year to the pandemic and her junior year to another knee injury. She’s now a captain for the Patriots and scored 20 points in her second career game, knocking down six three-pointers in a 62-60 win over Walter Johnson on Dec. 9.
Miyazia Harris, Suitland: The sophomore averaged 16 points, eight rebounds, seven assists and 5.5 steals in wins over High Point and SEED DC.
Alexandria City boys at South County, Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.
Bullis Holiday Classic boys’ championship, Friday, 5 p.m.
Archbishop Carroll girls at Jackson-Reed, Friday, 5:30 p.m.
Clarksburg girls at Seneca Valley, Friday, 7:15 p.m.
Gonzaga starts 7-0
Coming off a tough season in which Gonzaga lost five of its final games, the Eagles entered this season looking to prove that was an anomaly. So far, they’ve done just that.
On Sunday, Gonzaga continued its early season success with a 64-58 win over D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association powerhouse Jackson-Reed to win the Gonzaga Classic for the second year in a row.
“To win any event and any game is a great feat,” Coach Steve Turner said. “But for this young team to win a second straight [Gonzaga] Classic against an unbelievably tough and talented field like they did, man, that really says a lot about these guys and what they are capable of.”
Led by a 25-point performance from tournament MVP Ryan Sabol, who returns to the Eagles after one season at Bullis, Gonzaga (7-0) overcame a three-point deficit at the half to avenge last season’s loss to the Tigers in the D.C. State Athletic Association semifinals.
“Everyone looks at us as a young team, but we are also a really good team,” Sabol said. “Everyone understands their role, and our chemistry is really good. We really trust in each other, and I think that shows itself on the court.”
Jackson-Reed (5-1) became the first non-private D.C. school since 2013 to win its first game of the Gonzaga Classic, when it beat Whitney Young (Ill.), 66-65, on Friday. The Tigers followed that up with a win over Roman Catholic (Pa.), before falling to Gonzaga in the final.
Robert Dockery led Jackson-Reed with 20 points and nine rebounds.
“It don’t get any better than this,” Coach David Johnson said. “Obviously you want to win every game that you play, but to come out here and beat two elite Nike schools and be right there with a chance to win versus a third says a lot about where we are as a program and shines a positive light on the DCIAA.”
St. John’s hungry to defend title
Most high school basketball teams enter the offseason with a clear and obvious memory to serve as the motor for all of the work ahead. Whatever that final loss happened to be, the one that put an end to a season — it can be a powerful thing.
But for the few teams lucky enough to win championships, there is no clear and obvious game to serve as motivator. For the St. John’s girls, who stunned the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference by pounding undefeated Bishop McNamara in the conference title game, the end of last season was a dream. As the young Cadets worked through the offseason, they were fueled by a different type of motivation: the desire to live that dream again.
“We want to get it back,” said senior forward Delaney Thomas, a Duke commit. “We want to defend it and we know there’s some pressure that comes with that. We’re ready for it and hungry for it.”
Last week the Cadets suffered their first loss of the season at the second annual Capital Invitational, falling to South Grand Prairie High (Tex.). Afterward, Thomas said the game would be a learning opportunity for a team that was still working a few players into the mix. But the program is grateful for some roster stability; last season, St. John’s was not at full strength until late January.
“Things are always going to happen — injuries, personal matters, whatever,” junior guard Kyndal Walker said. “But I think we have a team with a next-man-up mentality and we have a deep enough team that any person is capable of helping.”
WCAC contenders Paul VI, McNamara and Good Counsel also faced off against national competition at the showcase event. Asked if they were keeping an eye on conference competition this early in the season, the defending champions demurred.
“We’ll see them later,” Walker said. “Everybody is always watching everyone else. And you’re always going to go on Instagram and see this or that. But the only thing you can control is you.” | 2022-12-12T19:00:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Meade begins year with vital ‘circle talk’; Madison thinks four-peat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/meade-begins-year-with-vital-circle-talk-madison-thinks-four-peat/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/meade-begins-year-with-vital-circle-talk-madison-thinks-four-peat/ |
The storm dumped at least five feet of snow in California’s Sierra Nevada.
Snowfall forecast for the north-central United States from the Weather Service. (weatherbell.com)
After dumping five feet of snow in California’s Sierra Nevada, a major storm sweeping through the Rockies is set to intensify as it barrels into the central United States, unleashing multiple types of hazardous weather.
In the northern Rockies and northern Plains, the storm will bring blizzard conditions through midweek, while severe thunderstorms are set to charge through the Southern Plains and parts of the South, possibly spawning tornadoes.
The National Weather Service has hoisted blizzard warnings for portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. Winter storm warnings and winter weather advisories cover a much larger surrounding area — running from the high terrain of Arizona to the Great Lakes. Around two feet of snow are possible in the hardest-hit spots, along with gusts topping 60 mph.
Welcome snow and rain wallop West
The storm which barged into the West Coast over the weekend, and which is poised to cause trouble in the central states, brought welcome rain and snow to California. It was the latest in a parade of storms which has boosted the water supply in the drought-plagued state.
Much of California has picked up the equivalent of at least one inch of rainfall since the weekend. Across central parts of the state, coastal regions generally saw two or more inches of rain. Mountainous locations near the coast, where it wasn’t cold enough to snow, saw more than 3 inches. Localized totals as high as 8 inches were noted south of Monterey. The torrents triggered rockslides and landslides in some areas.
It’s still snowing in the Sierra Nevada, where peak snowfall totals have reached at least five feet. A report of 60 inches in 48 hours was posted in Soda Springs, which is about 15 miles northwest of Lake Tahoe. Through Sunday afternoon, a dozen locations in the Sierras had reported three feet or more.
Interstate 80 — passing through the famed Donner Pass — was shut for several hours Sunday, according to Caltrans. The shutdown was due to whiteout conditions causing limited visibility and very snowy roadways; snowfall rates climbed as high as 4 to 6 inches per hour. The popular U.S. 50 that runs from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe was also closed at times for avalanche control. Both thoroughfares have since reopened with chain requirements.
Avalanche warnings remain active in the area in and around Lake Tahoe through Monday night. “Avalanche activity could be widespread, and some avalanches could be large and destructive,” wrote the Sierra Avalanche Center.
Plains blizzard
The weather disturbance responsible for the heavy precipitation in California is riding a dip in the jet stream through the Rockies. As it ejects from east-central Colorado into the Plains on Monday night, it will spawn a new zone of low pressure that will rapidly strengthen. The central pressure of the storm will drop to around 990 millibars as it spins into central Nebraska on Tuesday, with blizzard conditions expanding from the northern Rockies and western Plains into the Dakotas.
“Due to heavy snow and strong winds, travel will be nearly impossible on Tuesday and Wednesday, and possibly into Thursday,” tweeted the Weather Service in Rapid City, S.D. near the heart of the blizzard warnings. “Make other plans.”
Snowfall totals in the northern Plains exceeding two feet are possible. The heaviest totals are projected for northern Nebraska, western South Dakota and adjacent portions of Wyoming. Much of the Dakotas can plan on at least six to twelve inches. Heavy snow bands are also likely to spread across Minnesota and toward Lake Superior.
Mountainous locations in the northern and central Rockies can expect one to two feet by the time the storm ends.
In addition to the snow, howling winds will develop as an area of cold high pressure nosing southward from Canada creates a sharp difference in pressure over a small distance. Gusts of 50 to 60 mph are possible in southeast Wyoming, northeast Colorado and western Nebraska. Gusts around 40 to 50 mph are possible in a larger surrounding area.
The combination of snow and wind will lead to widespread whiteout conditions. Much of the area where snow and wind overlap can also expect dangerous wind chills near or even below zero.
Thunderstorm, tornado potential
As warm, humid air is drawn north ahead of storm, severe thunderstorms are anticipated as soon as Monday afternoon and evening in the southern and central Plains. The Storm Prediction Center has declared a Level 2 of 5 risk for severe storms from portions of northern Texas to western Kansas. Storms are expected to develop in western Kansas in afternoon, before unzipping southward into the night. Damaging winds and hail are probable in some storms, with a small chance of a few tornadoes.
A bigger risk for destructive storms is expected Tuesday. The Storm Prediction Center has placed a large portion of northern Louisiana in Level 3 out of 5 risk zone for dangerous storms.
“A couple of strong tornadoes will be possible,” the Storm Prediction Center wrote Monday morning. Storms could produce damaging winds in a broader zone that spans from Dallas and Houston into southern Mississippi.
Severe weather potential will continue to slink eastward Wednesday and Thursday, along the Gulf Coast into Florida, before the cold front triggering the storms sweeps out to sea by Friday.
A new area of storminess is expected to form along this cold front in the Carolinas on Thursday, which could bring some snow and ice to interior portions of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Thursday and Friday. | 2022-12-12T19:02:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Western storm to trigger blizzard, tornadoes as it rolls into Central U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/12/winter-storm-blizzard-tornadoes-us/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/12/winter-storm-blizzard-tornadoes-us/ |
Md. man charged in deaths of pregnant girlfriend and viable fetus
His girlfriend’s decomposing body was found in Torrey Moore’s apartment. She had been shot multiple times, police say.
The Montgomery County District Courthouse, in Rockville, Md. (Dan Morse/The Washington Post)
A Maryland man accused of keeping the decomposing body of his pregnant girlfriend inside his Silver Spring apartment was charged with murder in the deaths of the woman and her viable fetus, authorities said Monday.
Police say the woman was eight months pregnant when she was shot several times at least a month ago. The suspect, Torrey Damien Moore, 31, was ordered held Monday to undergo a psychiatric evaluation on charges of first-degree murder and first-degree murder of a viable fetus.
Moore also is charged with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a convenience store clerk Thursday, an incident that led a SWAT team on Friday to swarm his apartment, where they discovered the woman’s body. There is no indication the deaths of the two adults are related.
Police and prosecutors are employing Maryland’s law against the “murder or manslaughter of viable fetus” in charging Moore. Under the statute, a person can be prosecuted for murder if he or she “intended to cause the death of the viable fetus.”
The law is specifically written to not apply to how Maryland addresses abortion. “Nothing in this section applies to or infringes on a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy,” the law states.
Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy (D) did not name the woman killed because final DNA testing is pending, but he said she was 26.
The eight-month old boy “was in fact viable” and the woman “was shot many, many times,” McCarthy said Monday.
Moore is being represented by the Maryland public defender’s office. Attorneys there could not be reached Monday for comment. The Post has been unable to reach any of his family members.
The case against Moore began Thursday afternoon, when officers were called the Dash In convenience store in the White Oak area of Silver Spring. They found a sales clerk, Ayalew Wondimu, on the floor behind the counter with several gunshot wounds to his chest, according to police officials.
Surveillance video inside and outside the store, police said, revealed a suspect walking toward the nearby Enclave Silver Spring apartment buildings. More investigation, including video at the apartments, led to identify the shooter as Moore, detectives wrote in court papers.
A SWAT team was summoned, and early Friday morning burst inside Moore’s apartment. They found a handgun, police said, and the decomposing body of a woman on the apartment floor.
Police initially charged Moore with first-degree murder in the death of Wondimu. That charge got him locked in the county jail on no-bond status Friday. The terms of his bond were scheduled to be reviewed at a hearing in District Court Monday.
Investigators obtained the additional charges against Moore over the weekend. | 2022-12-12T19:44:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Md. man charged in deaths of pregnant girlfriend and viable fetus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/man-charged-pregnant-woman-killed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/man-charged-pregnant-woman-killed/ |
Dave Chappelle invited Elon Musk to his comedy show in San Francisco on Dec. 11. (AP)
It’s hard to tell what the goal was for Elon Musk’s doomed cameo alongside Dave Chappelle at the comedian’s San Francisco tour stop on Sunday. Was it supposed to be subversive? Social commentary? Actually funny?
“Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” Chappelle said from the stage according to several surreptitiously taken videos posted to Twitter. (The comedian famously does not allow phones at his shows.)
Elon Musk was booed by audience members during comedian Dave Chappelle's show in San Francisco on Dec. 11. (Video: AP, Photo: AP/AP)
“Cheers and boos, I see,” Chappelle acknowledged. The pair then engaged in awkward banter from the stage but were immediately drowned out by more booing as the crowd of approximately 18,000 grew louder.
Elon Musk uses a QAnon tactic to criticize Twitter's former safety chief
“Weren’t expecting this, were you?” Musk asked over the din of disapproval. Chappelle, ever the showman, tried to turn the tide by doing what he does best: make jokes. “It sounds like some of those people you fired are in the audience,” he said, referring to Musk’s controversial tenure at Twitter thus far.
Since taking over the San Francisco-based company in late October, Musk has caused significant upheaval online and off. He laid off thousands of employees and issued an ultimatum to those remaining, requiring that they commit to a “hardcore” Twitter or quit. Hundreds refused to sign the pledge, leaving Twitter a fraction of the size it was two months ago.
Some of the social media platform’s most prominent users followed suit, abandoning the site for other alternatives or pledging not to tweet because they were concerned about Musk’s leadership. Producer Shonda Rhimes, actress Tea Leoni and musician Sara Bareilles are among those who said they would stop posting.
Though there is a Twitter handle with Chappelle’s name and a “blue check verification,” the comedian said he does not actually have an account. On Sunday, Chappelle said the “verified” account, which hasn’t been updated since 2012 and has more than 1 million followers, was fake. But that was clearly no bother to Chappelle as he hosted the embattled site owner.
As the heckling continued, Chappelle doubled down in his jokey defense of Musk, pointing out that the people booing had “terrible seats.” But the sneers would not stop, and if anything they only grew louder as Musk’s mere presence seemed to offend.
“Whatever,” said Chappelle, who argued that Musk “is not even trying to die on Earth. His whole business model is ‘F--- Earth, I’m leaving anyway.’” That joke got a few laughs and seemed to slightly turn the tide from Musk’s random presence to Chappelle’s punchlines. “Boo all you want,” continued Chappelle, who added that he wanted to go to Mars with Musk.
More than five minutes in, the gag had seemed to run its course but Musk still hadn’t gracefully bowed out.
“Thanks for, uh, thanks for having me onstage,” he told Chappelle who, with his signature cigarette and drink in hand, appeared more than comfortable with the controversy he’d stirred up.
Chappelle, of course, is no stranger to drama. The comedian’s transphobic statements in his Netflix specials set off companywide protests. Following student criticism, he announced in June that the theater set to be named after him at his alma mater, Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., would instead be dubbed the Theatre for Artistic Freedom & Expression. In a speech on Netflix that was filmed at the school, Chappelle staunchly defended his “freedom of artistic expression.”
He leaned into the budding chaos Sunday. “I wouldn’t miss this opportunity,” said Chappelle, who joked about the first comedy club on Mars, adding that the billionaire bought him a jetpack for Christmas. That did not help the boos.
Yet Musk, dressed in dark pants and a Twitter t-shirt, remained onstage. “Dave, what should I say?” Musk asked. “Don’t say nothing. It’ll only spoil the moment,” Chappelle replied. “Do you hear that sound, Elon? That’s the sound of pending civil unrest.”
“Booing is not the best thing you can do,” Chappelle said. “I am your ally. I wish everyone in this auditorium peace and the joy of feeling free. And may your pursuit of happiness make you happy. Amen.” He then thanked the city of San Francisco and wished the crowd good night.
But that wasn’t all. According to another video, Chappelle and Elon were joined onstage before the final curtain call by other A-listers including rapper Talib Kewli, who was suspended from Twitter in July for repeatedly violating the company’s rules. “Twitter customer service right here,” Musk said. “We’ll get right on that.”
In perhaps a bit of irony, fans in the audience that night took to Twitter to express their disappointment over Musk’s cameo. Writer James Yu, who attended the show, tweeted that Musk’s appearance added “no value at all” to the evening. Yu wrote that about 80 percent of the crowd booed, a number that Musk did not appear to agree with in separate tweets Monday morning.
Responding to a user who said Musk faced a crowd full of boos, Musk wrote: “Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter). It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.”
It was one of a few reactions the billionaire tweeted Monday morning, despite largely remaining quiet on the stage. But he provided at least one solid viral moment Sunday night. With Chappelle’s encouragement, Musk shouted into the mic one of the most famous lines from the cult classic “The Chappelle Show.”
“I’m rich, b-----,” Musk yelled as the comedian cheered and some in the crowd cringed. | 2022-12-12T20:32:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elon Musk booed at Dave Chappelle's comedy show in San Francisco - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/12/12/dave-chappelle-elon-musk-booed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/12/12/dave-chappelle-elon-musk-booed/ |
Researchers are poised to announce a key breakthrough in nuclear fusion, an elusive technology that advocates have long said holds the promise of cheap, abundant carbon-free power. Fusion has the potential to transform the global energy landscape, but there’s still a huge gap between this milestone and developing an actual power plant.
Triggering a fusion reaction is an extremely complicated process requiring enormous amounts of energy. Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco are expected to announce that their fusion test had a net energy gain — that is, it produced more power than it consumed. Scientists have been trying to achieve this for decades. The breakthrough creates the possibility of a system that would have enough energy to sustain a fusion reaction plus produce excess power that could be tapped and sold. It demonstrates that fusion technology could eventually be used to generate electricity on a commercial scale.
There are numerous companies pursuing fusion, and there are several different approaches. They’re going to need significant capital as they seek to commercialize the technology, and this achievement may generate excitement among potential investors. Startups including Commonwealth Fusion Systems LLC and Helion Energy Inc. attracted $2.3 billion in support in 2021, and backers will likely direct more than $1 billion to the field this year, according to BloombergNEF. Other notable companies include Marvel Fusion, TAE Technologies, General Fusion, Tokamak Energy and Zap Energy. | 2022-12-12T20:32:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Understanding the Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion Energy and the Challenges Ahead - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/understanding-the-breakthrough-in-nuclear-fusion-energyand-the-challenges-ahead/2022/12/12/b9ce0ee2-7a59-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/understanding-the-breakthrough-in-nuclear-fusion-energyand-the-challenges-ahead/2022/12/12/b9ce0ee2-7a59-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
Madeline Johnson, a survivor of the Oxford High School shooting, holds a candle during the 10th Annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill on Dec. 7 in Washington, D.C. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Hunting a suspected cocaine dealer known as “Lil’ Toot,” a Memphis police officer — and mother of four — was fatally shot serving a warrant.
On the other side of the nation, a man burst into the whimsical, colorful lobby of a hotel in Las Vegas and opened fire on an ex who was working at the hotel, then shot himself.
And in a working-class Baltimore County suburb once ranked among the 50 best places to live in America, a man was shot outside his home by two gunmen in dark clothing who fled the neighborhood.
These shootings — among scores of other gun crimes — all happened on Dec. 14, 2012.
We remember that day a decade ago because of a shooting that shook the nation and the world — the slaughter of 20 children in a classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary.
“We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years,” President Barack Obama said then, in a tearful address to the nation. “I know there’s not a parent in America who doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do.”
It was without a doubt one of the most gruesome and soul-sucking tragedies our nation has witnessed over the past decade.
We vowed to do better, for the kids. We didn’t. Nor did we do better for the teachers, the domestic violence victims, the store clerks, the movie patrons, the people at the club or at church. Perhaps most spectacularly, we failed those who were shot to death in quotidian violence we’ve accepted as the cost of living in America.
How can we protect our kids in a culture that accepts guns?
But the day our nation saw a mass shooter of the worst kind, we also suffered quieter atrocities: a double-homicide in Asheville, N.C., where a husband killed his wife and mother-in-law; untold suicides and neighborhood gunfire; the end result of pain and opportunity in a heavily-armed country whose response to uncertainty often is to buy more guns.
Khiry Jefferson, who had been shot once in the thigh and once in the biceps years before, was shot again on Dec. 14, hours after the Sandy Hook massacre.
He was 22 at the time, sitting at a bus stop in San Rafael, a suburb of San Francisco, when recently paroled Ladrakeous Sonny Dean hopped out of a gold-colored car, shot him, than hopped back in and sped away. Jefferson, who had allegedly crossed Dean before he was shot, survived to become the driver in a freeway shooting that involved stolen bars of silver and gold. He eventually joined Dean in prison.
Similar retaliatory violence also went down that day in Roanoke, where a man said he stepped outside his door after hearing loud noises on his street that evening and was shot in the leg. Over the next decade, police continued to return to that neighborhood, a housing development at Lincoln Terrace, for multiple shootings. A Peacemakers group visited the neighborhood just last week, offering outreach to connect struggling residents with social services.
The story wasn’t too different in Catonsville, Md., that day, where a man was shot on Winters Lane around 11 p.m. by two men he couldn’t identify. The man survived, but for months after, the neighborhood — a working-class enclave terrorized by a few suspected drug dealers — reported escalating gun violence. Police stepped up their enforcement in the neighborhood; a Baltimore County police officer was killed in a shootout while serving a warrant.
In the hours after Obama mourned the children of Newtown in his public address, Officer Martoiya Lang, 32, a mother of four, was killed and a second officer, William Vrooman, 32, was shot in the leg when they were serving the last round of warrants in a drug case they were working in Memphis.
Last year saw the biggest increase in officers killed in the line of duty since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And 61 of the 73 killed in attacks were shot, according to FBI statistics. It’s a death toll often overlooked in the conversation about America’s skyrocketing rates of gun ownership.
Police officers are killed dealing with the social problems we try to ignore
The other truth about gun ownership is the likelihood that domestic violence will end in death if a gun is present. Each month, about 70 women are fatally shot by their partners, according to research by Everytown for Gun Safety.
Edward Brandt and Jessica Corinne Kenny moved together from their hometown in the Chicago suburbs to Las Vegas after dating for six months. They broke up and he moved back to Chicago, but police said he obsessed over the split. He traveled to Vegas to a medieval-themed hotel and booked a room for two nights, waiting to confront Kenny with a .38 caliber revolver, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. He shot her multiple times in the crowded lobby, then shot himself.
In the hours before Sandy Hook, police thwarted a planned attack in Bartlesville, Okla. Sammie Eaglebear Chavez, then 18 and inspired by the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, was plotting to shoot up his school, and even tried to recruit accomplices among his peers, according to police.
Millions of kids fear being gunned down at school. It's time for our nation to say 'enough'.
We pulled together for a time after Dec. 14, focusing on school security, active-shooter drills and bulletproof backpacks — measures that scarred a generation of kids forced to imagine their deaths in the classroom every day with a different type of trauma. But American gun violence is complicated, and our half-measures haven’t come close to making us whole.
Gun purchases and gun deaths have climbed together over the past decade — an 81.9 percent spike in sales since 2010 has been paralleled with a 44.1 increase in homicides by gunfire, according to our analysis of statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI’s Background Check System.
Red flag laws, tighter restrictions on gun purchases, mental health accessibility, common-sense carrying laws that don’t turn our public places into shooting galleries and social programs to uplift neighborhoods are the incremental changes we need to curb both the bloodshed and the mental terror creeping into our daily existence.
The parents of those kids — who have been a powerful force for reform — should have been talking graduation and college this year. The least we could do is join them in talking about change. | 2022-12-12T20:32:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sandy Hook was just one of the tragic shootings in America that day - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/sandy-hook-anniversary-gun-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/sandy-hook-anniversary-gun-violence/ |
Mexican navy Adm. Marco Antonio Ortega Siu, center, worked with the United States to fight drug cartels. The Americans called him “El Águila,” or “The Eagle.” (Annie Rice/AP)
MEXICO CITY — The small American surveillance plane took off from a Mexican navy base in Baja California and flew high across the Sea of Cortez. Charting a course for the Sierra Madre mountains — cartel territory — the aircraft did not appear on any flight trackers or public logs. An orb-shaped device about the size of a beach ball was mounted on the fuselage, bristling with sensors and antennas.
U.S. agents called it “the sniffer.”
The device was an experimental version of a mass spectrometer, used to identify chemicals. As the U.S. aircraft banked over the forested hills of Sinaloa state, it dipped lower, sampling the air for wafting fumes.
The sniffer, whose secret use in the skies over Mexico has never been reported, had been deployed by the Pentagon and the CIA to target heroin production sites in Afghanistan. By 2018, faced with deadly synthetic narcotics pouring across the U.S. border, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs and Border Protection and other U.S. agencies adapted it to go after Mexico’s clandestine drug labs, according to current and former American officials.
Waiting on the ground were the forces of the Americans’ most trusted ally in Mexico, a man more valuable to the DEA than any novel gadget. Adm. Marco Antonio Ortega Siu, the head of the navy special operations unit, had worked with the United States for nearly a decade.
Ortega Siu was known for his fearlessness — he and his men had taken down dozens of major traffickers, including Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. But the admiral, a short, taciturn man with a shock of white hair, kept such a low profile that he was practically a ghost to the Mexican public. The Americans knew him by his code name, “El Águila.” The Eagle.
As the plane reached the target that day in August 2018, it confirmed a tip from DEA informants about the location of a lab. Once the surveillance was complete, Águila’s men swooped in.
Beneath dense foliage and plastic tarps, they found vats of solvents and barrels of precursor chemicals. Burlap sacks stuffed with methamphetamine filled 12-foot-deep pits. In all, they discovered an estimated 50 metric tons of crystal meth, one of the biggest seizures in Mexican history.
Technicians from the Mexican navy in August 2018 investigate a lab on the outskirts of Culiacán where an estimated 50 metric tons of meth were discovered. (Mexican Secretariat of the Navy)
LEFT: Technicians from the Mexican navy in August 2018 investigate a lab on the outskirts of Culiacán where an estimated 50 metric tons of meth were discovered. (Mexican Secretariat of the Navy) RIGHT: (Excélsior)
“It was incredible,” said Matt Donahue, who ran the DEA office in Mexico at the time. “We never thought meth could be produced in those amounts.”
The bust was a triumph for the tactical alliance between the United States and the Mexican navy’s special forces that for a decade had defined the nations’ anti-drug fight. It rested on a delicate division of labor. The United States provided technology and intelligence; Mexico furnished muscle and resolve.
Yet just months after the giant meth haul, that partnership began to unravel. A new Mexican leader rejected the $3 billion anti-narcotics agreement that had spanned three U.S. presidencies, known as the Mérida Initiative. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a veteran leftist who took office in December 2018, argued that the drug war strategy had sent homicides spiraling in Mexico while failing to curb U.S. demand.
The sniffer flights stopped. Águila was sidelined and his battle-hardened commandos were reassigned. López Obrador rebuffed U.S. offers for new drug-detection technology. Mexico shut down a pivotal base where the special forces had worked with U.S. agents. It even took away the parking spot for the DEA’s plane at an airport outside Mexico City.
The fissure opened just as Mexico was poised to become the No. 1 supplier of fentanyl to the United States, overtaking China, according to the DEA.
This account, based on interviews with more than 30 current and former U.S. and Mexican officials, is the untold story of America’s most dependable drug war ally, and how the relationship with Mexico fell apart just as a river of synthetic drugs flooded the United States.
The Mexican admiral’s work was so sensitive that his full résumé remains a state secret. After months of negotiations with The Washington Post, Águila agreed to provide written answers to some questions.
He declined to comment on Mexico’s current security policies or the circumstances of his departure, saying he took an unpaid leave of absence in July 2019, and has been “helping my children with their daily lives.”
In the years since Águila left, traffickers have ruthlessly exploited the breakdown in bilateral cooperation, as they transitioned from plant-based drugs such as marijuana and heroin to deadlier synthetic narcotics.
U.S. fatalities from drug overdoses surpassed 107,000 in 2021, the highest ever. Two-thirds of the deaths involved fentanyl.
Biden administration officials aren’t concealing their frustration. “Mexico needs to do more. We believe that they can do more,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in an interview. “We think it’s vitally important that Mexico work on these issues as tirelessly as we do.”
The amount of fentanyl seized in Mexico is just 15 percent of what U.S. authorities confiscate, Milgram said.
“Extraditions from Mexico are down,” she added. “What is up is fentanyl. And what is up is fentanyl coming into the United States.”
Roberto Velasco, a senior Mexican Foreign Ministry official, countered that the previous strategy had “failed in the two main objectives” — to reduce violence in Mexico and curtail drug trafficking in both countries.
“We had an increase in deaths from fentanyl use, we had an increase in violence in Mexico, so this approach was evidently not successful, and obviously we weren’t successful in dismantling the criminal organizations that existed in the two countries,” Velasco said.
The governments hammered out a new agreement, putting more emphasis on fighting addiction and the illegal sale of U.S. guns to cartels. But it wasn’t announced until October 2021 — nearly three years after López Obrador became president.
Combating fentanyl would have been daunting under the best of circumstances, because it is so cheap to make and so easy to smuggle. But the U.S.-Mexico rupture made a difficult situation worse. The two governments have been unable to agree on even basic facts, such as whether Mexico is a major manufacturer of the opioid or mostly a transshipment point. The chill in relations has left DEA agents scrutinizing press releases to figure out the types of narcotics and precursor chemicals the Mexican military has seized.
Many drug war veterans blame López Obrador’s policies for the rift. Yet interviews in both countries reveal a more complicated picture.
The U.S.-Mexico security partnership was in trouble well before López Obrador took over. For a decade, the countries had promised to tackle two crucial sources of the drug crisis: Mexico’s weak justice system and Americans’ demand for powerful narcotics. Neither side met its mandate.
The result: The American effort to combat the flow of drugs had become more and more reliant on one man.
“Águila became the white knight. The favorite son,” said John Feeley, a former U.S. ambassador who was second-in-command at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico from 2009 to 2012. “Why? He delivered.”
Unlike many police and army officers, Águila didn’t appear to be in league with the very cartels he was supposed to be fighting. To the Americans, he seemed to be made of pure guts. He would sometimes accompany his men on raids, wielding his UMP45 submachine gun.
“He was the first guy through the door,” said Joe Evans, a former DEA director in Mexico. “He wasn’t like other forces, where the ‘jefe’ is sitting back in the office.”
Yet Águila worked in a country with a broken legal system, where less than 2 percent of crimes were ever solved. And by the time López Obrador took office, it was a country where 20 percent of national territory was under cartel control, according to CIA estimates obtained by The Post.
A country where relying on the military brought its own set of problems.
Mexican marines escort El Chapo to a helicopter outside Mexico City in February 2014. Elite navy forces had captured the drug kingpin in the beach resort town of Mazatlán. (Eduardo Verdugo/AP)
A Mexican marine inspects a manhole in January 2016 after El Chapo was recaptured in Los Mochis. (Kiko Guerrero/El Debate/AP)
‘Never a leak’
The alliance with Águila got off to a bad start. In December 2009, he went to the DEA office in Mexico City to explain how one of the country’s most notorious drug traffickers had escaped.
“We screwed up,” Águila told the DEA, according to Evans, the agency’s regional chief at the time. “Give us another shot.”
For years, the DEA had been trying to bring down Arturo Beltrán Leyva, a wily kingpin who gunned down cops and bought off politicians. Evans had worked with Mexico’s powerful army as well as the federal police. But this time he’d taken a chance on the much-smaller Mexican navy — in particular, on a promising senior officer known as El Águila.
The DEA had gotten word that Beltrán Leyva was at a barbecue in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City, Evans told the Mexican officer. The navy dispatched a heavily armed team, but the “Boss of the Bosses” slipped away.
“So we’re like: ‘Here we go again,’” recalled Evans, who assumed there’d been a leak. Águila persuaded Evans to give his men another chance.
Five days later, on Dec. 16, 2009, commandos rappelling from helicopters surrounded a luxury condo complex in Cuernavaca.
Bullets whizzed through the trafficker’s second-floor apartment, tearing holes the size of golf balls in the walls. A 30-year-old marine, Melquisedet Angulo, was hit by a grenade blast in a stairwell and slumped to the ground, fatally wounded. The gun battle lasted four hours, and when the fight was over, Beltrán Leyva and four of his bodyguards lay dead.
It was the biggest takedown since President Felipe Calderón had gone to war against the cartels in 2006, deploying tens of thousands of troops. Angulo was honored with a widely publicized hero’s funeral.
Melquisedet Angulo's mother, Josefa Angulo Flores, and aunt Irma Cordova link arms at the Mexican marine's funeral. The women were killed by gangsters hours later. (America Rocio/AP)
Mexican marines accompany the vehicle carrying Angulo's body during his funeral in Paraíso. (Carlos Sobrino/AP)
LEFT: Melquisedet Angulo's mother, Josefa Angulo Flores, and aunt Irma Cordova link arms at the Mexican marine's funeral. The women were killed by gangsters hours later. (America Rocio/AP) RIGHT: Mexican marines accompany the vehicle carrying Angulo's body during his funeral in Paraíso. (Carlos Sobrino/AP)
Hours later, gangsters hunted down and killed Angulo’s mother, two siblings and aunt. U.S. agents were horrified. For the Mexican forces, the incident laid bare that it would be a war without military parades and public honors. They would have to fight the cartels from the shadows. “We had to adapt and adjust,” Águila said.
Organized-crime groups were carrying out acts of spectacular violence and growing savagery, ambushing military and police convoys on rural highways and filling mass graves with travelers hauled off buses. U.S. officials grew alarmed as violence exploded in Monterrey and other northern Mexico cities where Fortune 500 companies had invested heavily in plants and factories after passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
With the threat to the stability of the Mexican government worsening, both countries were hungry for a crime fighter who could stand up to the cartels.
Using informants, wiretaps and surveillance, U.S. agents tracked drug bosses and relayed their locations to Águila’s commandos for the kind of “high-value target” operations the Americans used successfully in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Águila’s forces didn’t hold back. Mexican commandos in helicopters took out Gulf cartel boss Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, a.k.a. “Tony Tormenta,” in a wild urban gun battle in 2010 that left bodies scattered in the border city of Matamoros. Two years later, special forces killed the leader of the Zetas, Heriberto “The Executioner” Lazcano, after a firefight against cartel gunmen wielding a grenade launcher.
“Tactically, they were just awesome,” Evans said. But the special forces were trained to kill, not to make arrests and gather evidence for criminal prosecution. Their targets were extremely dangerous, but Evans would offer a “friendly reminder” that from time to time “it might be good to bring the guy back alive.”
In his response to The Post, Águila wrote that drug bosses were killed because they resisted arrest. “We never planned an operation to eliminate anyone,” he wrote.
To the Americans, the navy commandos seemed to be the rare entity capable of quickly launching complex, dangerous operations. Águila was indefatigable, working 16-hour days. He didn’t drink or smoke. And when U.S. agents shared sensitive information, Águila and his commandos acted fast — unlike the army. “There was never a leak,” Evans said.
One DEA agent recalled following Águila, then in his 50s, as he bounded off a helicopter during a hunt for a drug kingpin in northern Mexico. “I’m trying to catch up to him,” recalled the agent, who was not authorized to comment on the record. “I was embarrassed. Here I am, this younger buck, fumbling with my stuff.”
Even more startling: The Mexican officer wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest. He rarely did; it was too bulky. “He had no fear,” the American agent said.
The DEA agents knew little about Águila’s personal life or why he didn’t seem tainted by some of the worst aspects of Mexican officialdom — the corruption, the timidity, the wariness of foreigners. Maybe, they figured, he was a kindred spirit.
“He’s blue-collar,” said Donahue, the former Mexico DEA chief. “Just like us.”
Indeed, the admiral was the son of a small-town salesman in Mexico’s southern Veracruz state, and the grandson of Chinese immigrants. “My family fought to get ahead every day,” Águila said in his written responses.
He entered the Heroic Naval Military School in 1975, a shy, diminutive 15-year-old in a world of “juniors” — sons of high-ranking officers. The academy was so rigorous that half his class of 150 dropped out before graduation, recalled a former classmate, retired Rear Adm. Jesús Canchola Camarena. Águila joined the marines, like other young men “drawn to adventure,” Canchola recalled. But what stood out was the young cadet’s leadership; he often served as coach in the students’ informal wrestling matches. He eventually became a decorated helicopter pilot.
Later, under Calderón, when the navy sought senior officers to build a top-flight special forces corps, many were reluctant, recalled another of Águila’s former classmates.
“It was very, very risky,” he recalled, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be frank. “The navy had to protect itself from everyone” — both drug traffickers and their allies in government.
Águila was undaunted.
“He felt that if they called on him, and he had the ability, he should do it,” the friend said.
Águila’s forces racked up an astonishing record. They dismantled the upper ranks of the Zetas, a vicious group dominated by former army special forces soldiers. In February 2014, they captured El Chapo, working with U.S. agents who had cracked the drug lord’s encrypted phone network.
The Sinaloa cartel leader tunneled his way out of prison the following year, and was hunted down by Águila’s commandos and caught again in 2016.
Águila declined to comment on which operations he led personally, citing security reasons. His special operations force grew to several thousand commandos, whom he hand-picked. “The level of training of our teams became the best in the world,” he said.
In 2017, guided by a U.S. Predator drone, Águila’s special forces parachuted into a mountain redoubt to capture a suspect wanted in the killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The late-night operation, executed with skilled precision, wowed U.S. officials and cemented Águila’s reputation as a heroic ally.
Despite the tactical wins, lasting victory in the drug war was elusive. U.S. demand for narcotics was growing. A DEA crackdown on U.S. opioid manufacturers and distributors left a vacuum that was filled with Mexican heroin, and then fentanyl. Plans to reform the Mexican justice system had stalled because of a lack of funding, as well as pushback from politicians and judges.
“The hard part is that, after you catch a bad guy, you have to pass him to the legal system,” said a retired naval officer who had worked with Águila, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of political sensitivities. “And it’s rotten.”
For all the commandos’ bravado, they were painfully vulnerable. When they left their bases, they’d sometimes hear a whirring sound above: drones, sent by the narcos to track their movements. They got used to attending funerals for comrades.
“The pain never goes away,” Águila said. “We carry their families on our shoulders.”
At one point, cartel assailants fatally shot a U.S.-trained navy commando nicknamed “Máquina” (Machine). Máquina was a favorite of the DEA agents, a rising star who spoke excellent English. The American agents were desolate.
“We lose people all the time,” a former agent recalled Águila saying. He told everyone to get back to work.
Troops surround the condo complex in Cuernavaca where cartel boss Arturo Beltrán Leyva was killed in a shootout. (AP)
A bed covered with photos and other items sits next to a wall that was riddled with bullets during the shootout. (Antonio Sierra/AP)
‘A vicious circle’
President Donald Trump didn’t mince words when he got on the phone with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Jan. 27, 2017.
Mexico wasn’t doing enough about its “tough hombres,” Trump told him, according to a transcript of the call. “Maybe your military is afraid of them,” he said, “but our military is not afraid of them.” Mexican media buzzed with reports that Trump was threatening to send U.S. troops.
Two weeks later, a Mexican navy helicopter clattered through the humid night air of Tepic, capital of the western state of Nayarit. It paused over a three-story house, casting a spotlight below. Then, as startled neighbors watched, the helicopter’s .50-caliber machine gun opened up with a roar of bullets.
Juan Patrón Sánchez — a protege of the Beltrán Leyva trafficking family — became the latest kingpin to die at the hands of Águila’s men.
Cellphone videos of the attack pinged around social media, along with questions about why the military was using so much force. The navy said it was necessary: Patrón Sánchez’s bodyguards had been using the third floor as a sniper’s nest, to pick off the special forces troops in the street. That explanation didn’t satisfy Mexico’s future president.
“Why did they annihilate them [the bodyguards]? Why, if they investigate, and supposedly have foreign intelligence assistance, do they massacre them?” López Obrador asked in a speech in Nayarit the next day. He demanded to know whether the operation was carried out to appease Trump.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appears with President Donald Trump in the White House Rose Garden in July 2020. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The Mexican politician wasn’t the only one asking questions. The U.S. Justice Department investigated an allegation that Águila had set out to kill Patrón Sánchez because the cartel leader had information on army corruption, according to four U.S. officials who had direct knowledge of the probe.
The accusation came from Edgar Veytia, a former Nayarit state attorney general arrested at the U.S. border in March 2017 on drug-trafficking charges. The investigation into Águila was ultimately closed because of questions about Veytia’s credibility, said the officials, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Veytia’s allegations were reported last week in a ProPublica-New York Times investigation.
“We never saw any direct information or evidence” that Águila had committed abuses in the operation, said Paul Craine, who led the DEA office in Mexico until 2017.
Veytia is serving a 20-year sentence in U.S. federal prison.
The Nayarit episode added to the concerns of politicians, human rights activists and academics about the U.S.-backed security strategy. More than 100,000 people had been killed in drug-related violence since the start of Calderón’s term in 2006. Human rights complaints had soared. Most focused on the army. But the navy had its scandals, too.
Then, in early 2018, people started disappearing in Nuevo Laredo, a gritty trade hub across from Laredo, Tex.
A father of two was hauled out of a mechanic’s shop on Feb. 3. His body was found in a field the next day. A few weeks later, two young men went out for a nighttime drive, then vanished after being detained. In late May, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein went public with his alarm. His investigators had documented 23 disappearances in just four months. The culprits, he said, appeared to belong to a “federal security force.”
He didn’t elaborate, but everyone knew who had been deployed to Nuevo Laredo: Águila’s commandos.
The navy responded by reassigning some of its forces while multiple investigations were launched. The case would haunt Águila for years.
The DEA had other worries. Methamphetamine seizures at the U.S. border were soaring. U.S. agents had identified a second, more ominous trend: Traffickers were pressing fentanyl into pills resembling popular oxycodone tablets, rather than simply selling the powder as a booster for heroin. And the potential market of people misusing prescription medications was “almost 10 times that of the heroin user population,” the DEA warned.
As the flow of synthetic drugs intensified, DEA agents in Mexico got a lucky break. Informants turned up at a DEA office in the United States, offering the locations of numerous meth labs in Mexico.
U.S. agents working with Águila got a green light from the Mexican military to run the sniffer flights and drone surveillance, according to two former U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operations.
The navy special forces blitzed a string of superlabs, uncovering the 50-ton cache on Aug. 16 and an additional 36 tons within days, according to navy press releases. Figures maintained by the DEA were even higher: 128 metric tons — more than what U.S. authorities typically confiscate along the Mexico border in a whole year.
U.S. and Mexican officials celebrated as they viewed videos and photos of the seizure.
Yet, on closer inspection, the raids underscored the limits of the partnership. The operations didn’t lead to a single arrest. The mega-busts never appeared in the Mexican government’s drug seizure statistics, according to data obtained through Mexico’s freedom-of-information system.
The reason? No one from the Mexican attorney general’s office was ever summoned to weigh and analyze the drugs and open an investigation, two navy officials confirmed. In the end, Águila’s men simply destroyed the methamphetamines.
The lack of follow-up from the justice system was a common problem. “What are the repercussions of this?” asked Josué Ángel González Torres, a former Mexican security official. “What we have every day: More than 90 percent of crimes are never punished.”
With little fear of arrest, he said, drug traffickers simply build new labs and shrug off their losses. “It’s a vicious circle.”
Mexican marines in 2017 patrol an area in Tepic where Águila’s forces had just killed Patrón Sánchez in a shootout. (Chris Arias/AP)
State police guard the area in Tepic after the gun battle. Mexican commandos faced questions, including from López Obrador, about why so much force was used in the attack. (Chris Arias/AP)
‘Hugs, not bullets’
By late 2018, Águila was one of the navy’s most decorated admirals, honored with numerous awards from both the United States and Mexico. Yet his position was increasingly tenuous.
López Obrador had won the presidency that July. As his aides considered candidates for navy secretary, they heard concerns about Águila and his force’s aggressive tactics.
“Ortega Siu was relentless. But he made mistakes,” said Raúl Benítez, a national security expert with deep ties to the navy who teaches at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. That was especially true in Nuevo Laredo, where egregious human rights violations occurred, he said.
There was a second strike against Águila. The incoming president didn’t want the armed forces “subordinated” to foreign countries, he told the leftist daily La Jornada.
“This is an error that the navy committed in recent years,” López Obrador said. “We’re going to fix that.”
The era of spectacular kingpin busts was over, he pledged. Instead, Mexico would focus on fighting the government corruption that enabled organized crime to thrive. People would be lured from crime by jobs and educational opportunities. He dubbed his policy “hugs, not bullets.”
López Obrador waves in September as he appears with Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval, left, and Navy Secretary José Rafael Ojeda Durán in a military parade marking Mexico's Independence Day. (Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images)
Navy special forces troops were reassigned to the coasts. Águila was replaced as special operations chief.
Mexico’s presidential spokesman, Jesús Ramírez, said the move was part of the “normal changes” of a new administration.
In Sinaloa, Águila’s men dismantled the makeshift base they had used for key operations like the Chapo arrest and the meth busts.
“They were instructed to stop working with us,” said Donahue, the former regional DEA chief. “And then that unit was disbanded.”
The DEA losses began piling up. The Mexican government dissolved the federal police. They were replaced by a new national guard, whose leader had no interest in U.S. training or a DEA liaison unit. The sniffer flights ended.
The U.S. agents thought López Obrador “would take out a room here, a room there — not demolish the whole house,” said another retired DEA official who had worked in Mexico. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because his current employer still does business with the agency.
The pullback went beyond the DEA. Amid a broad austerity drive, the Mexican government slashed the staff in the U.S.-based liaison offices of Mexico’s police, attorney general’s office, and tax and customs agencies. Mexico removed its team from the National Targeting Center in Sterling, Va., where U.S. officials tracked planes and ships suspected of transporting drugs as well as suspicious travelers. Extraditions of Mexican suspects to the United States slowed.
Some U.S. diplomats thought López Obrador had an instinctive mistrust of American technology. He rejected a U.S. offer to provide six giant X-ray scanners to look for drugs in trucks crossing the U.S. border. Also nixed were handheld detectors for port authorities to identify narcotics or chemicals used in the production of synthetic drugs. Millions of dollars in anti-drug aid for Mexico was returned to the U.S. Treasury.
For the new Mexican president, sovereignty was the bigger concern. His team was astonished to discover how much the U.S. government quietly pulled levers in the country. For example, U.S. officials were training police, prosecutors and prison officials in Mexican states — many led by López Obrador’s opponents.
The Mexican government didn’t have a clear picture of what the United States was up to, according to Martha Bárcena, who was López Obrador’s ambassador to Washington at the time. And there was no process to jointly evaluate how effective the programs were.
A U.S. official involved in the program denied that the federal government was kept out of the loop, or that there was any “political map” for distributing the aid. Velasco, the Foreign Ministry official, said the incoming government had realized that some equipment donated by the United States was barely used because of maintenance and training problems. “We wanted to analyze more closely what we were doing” before accepting more, he said.
The DEA and U.S. congressional investigators would later conclude that 2019 — López Obrador’s first year in office — was when Mexico became the top source of fentanyl reaching the United States, as its cartels took advantage of a crackdown in China.
Yet the Mexicans weren’t the only ones who missed signs of the looming crisis. Trump’s priority was to slow migration and build a border wall, not fight narcotics trafficking. To the frustration of Mexican officials, he named three interim DEA directors during his tenure.
“What we should have been doing was continuing to focus on drugs, and in practice, it shifted to other aspects of border management, even before López Obrador came in,” said Earl Anthony Wayne, U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2011 to 2015.
Less than a year into López Obrador’s term, his strategy suddenly seemed to take a tougher turn. On Oct. 17, 2019, soldiers and police surrounded a posh townhouse in the Sinaloan capital, Culiacán, and detained Ovidio Guzmán, one of El Chapo’s sons. He was one of the top traffickers of fentanyl and meth to the United States, according to Mexican officials. The U.S. government was requesting his extradition.
It was the kind of operation that Águila would have led before 2019. But this time, the Mexican army was in charge. Its soldiers had no search warrant. As they waited for the paperwork, hundreds of cartel gunmen streamed into the city, some wielding .50-caliber rifles that fired armor-piercing bullets the size of carrots.
Gunmen blocked roads to the airport, preventing the army from flying in reinforcements. The operations base built by Águila had been dismantled. Fearing an all-out battle that could leave hundreds dead, López Obrador told army commanders to let Guzmán go. He remains a fugitive.
The mother of Alfredo González Muñoz cries at his wake in Veracruz in October 2019. The soldier died in a shootout that erupted as the Mexican army tried to detain Ovidio Guzmán. (Felix Marquez/AP)
LEFT: Soldiers and police detain Ovidio Guzmán, one of El Chapo's sons, outside a townhouse in Culiacán on Oct. 17, 2019. (El País) RIGHT: The mother of Alfredo González Muñoz cries at his wake in Veracruz in October 2019. The soldier died in a shootout that erupted as the Mexican army tried to detain Ovidio Guzmán. (Felix Marquez/AP)
“Ovidio’s escape was the first indication of [López Obrador’s] level of commitment and what costs they were willing to endure to get high-level criminals,” said one high-ranking U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about tensions with Mexico. “If they had gone with the marines, it might have been different.”
Mexican officials have denied they’re less committed to the security partnership. “We’ve continued to work very closely with the United States,” Velasco said, including on the detention of important traffickers.
By that December, U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr was getting worried. “I felt the Mexicans were dragging their feet,” he said in an interview. He flew to Mexico City to press for more cooperation, including a greater effort to target fentanyl labs. Within weeks, the navy special forces had returned to the forefront of the anti-drug effort.
U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr meets with López Obrador in Mexico City in December 2019. (Mexico Presidency/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The coronavirus pandemic hampered the U.S. effort to restart cooperation, but it was an arrest in a DEA case in October 2020 that nearly severed the relationship.
Salvador Cienfuegos, a former defense minister, was detained as he arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on vacation. U.S.-based DEA agents had been investigating the 72-year-old on allegations he worked with drug traffickers during his term from 2012 to 2018.
Mexico’s army leadership was livid. López Obrador had become more dependent on the military for everything from fighting crime groups to building airports. He accused the DEA of relying on flimsy evidence and questioned whether the agency was trying to weaken the Mexican government or its armed forces.
Barr, alarmed that cooperation with Mexico could tank again, agreed to let Cienfuegos return to Mexico in November 2020.
But the damage was done. Mexico’s National Congress passed a law limiting U.S. law enforcement agencies’ access to Mexican officials at all levels. As seizures of fentanyl on the U.S. border rose, the Mexican government held up visas for more than 20 DEA agents.
Family members march in 2014 after the disappearance of 43 students from a teachers college in Guerrero state. This year, a government Truth Commission ruled the case a “crime of state” involving the army, police and politicians. (Jonathan Levinson for The Washington Post)
Students at the teaching school run as they wait for buses to take them to a protest demanding justice for their 43 missing classmates. (Marco Ugarte/AP)
People protesting the students' disappearance make a stop in Jalisco state during their journey to the Mexican capital. (Hector Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images)
‘Out of gas’
While on leave from the navy, Águila opened his own private security company in an upscale neighborhood of Mexico City. Only a select clientele knew of it; the firm’s name wasn’t even listed on the directory in the lobby.
But the past wouldn’t go away.
In 2020, the Mexican government’s human rights commission issued a blistering 331-page report examining 26 disappearances in Nuevo Laredo during a six-month stint by the navy special forces. The report didn’t mention names, referring to officials by letters and numbers. It urged federal prosecutors to investigate special forces personnel in the kidnappings — including their commander, “AR-1.”
El Águila.
The number of disappearances would eventually grow to 47. The cases crawled through Mexico’s justice system. By 2022, only four of the kidnappings had led to indictments, and even those ran into trouble. A judge tossed out charges against 23 navy personnel, citing a lack of evidence, and left just seven suspects in jail.
Águila was not charged. The human rights report said he had accompanied special forces troops on a patrol on May 21, 2018, during which they allegedly detained a young man who subsequently disappeared. The navy said its forces had engaged in a firefight with gunmen, who then fled.
Asked about the disappearances, Águila said he was “confident the judicial processes will clarify these incidents properly.”
While no one was convicted in the disappearances, the navy last year issued a rare formal apology to the victims’ families.
It was not the end of Águila’s legal troubles.
In August 2022, a government Truth Commission concluded that a second scandal, the 2014 disappearance of 43 students attending the Ayotzinapa teachers college, had been a “crime of state” involving the army, police and politicians. A vast array of security officials were involved in a subsequent coverup organized by Peña Nieto’s administration, it said, and one of them was Águila. It provided no details of his alleged role and he has not been charged. The navy has denied any illegal actions.
The legacy of the U.S.-Mexican “kingpin strategy” was mixed. Águila’s commandos had smashed several powerful cartels, but the captures did not significantly reduce the supply of drugs or the death toll in Mexico. Old mafia groups fragmented and reemerged under different names, adapting their tactics to stay a step ahead.
U.S. officials say there was little more they could have done to weaken the traffickers, especially given Mexico’s unwillingness to invest more in its justice and security sectors, and to break the links between politicians and crime groups.
“We were too dependent on Águila, but we didn’t have good alternatives,” said Roberta Jacobson, who worked with the admiral when she was U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2016 to 2018.
Yet both sides have acknowledged that the two countries failed to live up to their promises under the Mérida Initiative. While Mexico and the United States built a robust economic partnership, there was no equivalent of NAFTA for security.
The Mexican government had been heartened when President Barack Obama framed his drug strategy as “co-responsibility” — recognizing the role of U.S. narcotics demand. “This was seen as a significant achievement in Mexico,” said Alfonso Motta-Allen, a security analyst and former Mexican diplomat. But, he said, “it was just talk. The lack of trust remained.”
While Trump squarely blamed Mexican cartels for the flood of narcotics reaching the United States, his ambassador to Mexico City, Christopher Landau, came to believe that reducing U.S. consumption of drugs was fundamental. U.S. authorities have seen a boom in the supply of fentanyl and a corresponding surge in overdose deaths, but federal health agencies do not know how many Americans are using the deadly opioid. Major federal programs that monitored drug use were eliminated in the years before the crisis hit U.S. streets.
“If the success of our counternarcotics strategy depends on Mexican law enforcement, we are in trouble,” he said. “They do not have a functional criminal justice system.”
Mexican officials say López Obrador’s strategy has succeeded in turning around steep annual increases in homicides. They note that Mexico is confiscating more fentanyl than ever. In early July, the army and national guard seized a half-ton of the opioid from a warehouse, the largest such bust in history. The president has put the navy in charge of ports to crack down on illegal shipments of precursor chemicals for drugs.
Yet even with the new agreement, known as the Bicentennial Framework, the two sides don’t share a basic understanding of the fentanyl trade.
“Fentanyl consumed in the United States doesn’t come only — or mostly — from Mexican territory,” Ricardo Mejía, Mexico’s undersecretary for public security, said in an interview.
U.S. agents say otherwise, pointing to significant busts in Mexico of precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl and the soaring quantities of powder and pills seized along the U.S. southern border.
“If there are more chemicals coming from China and more fentanyl is being produced, the Mexican government and Mexican authorities will have to do more to stop that from happening,” said the DEA’s Milgram. “The vast, vast majority of fentanyl is coming from Mexico and is attributable to the Sinaloa and [Jalisco] cartels.”
After four years, López Obrador’s promise to refocus Mexico’s security strategy on social programs hasn’t weakened the grip of armed groups. He has increasingly turned to Mexico’s military to fight organized crime.
In an echo of the past, the navy special forces have returned to targeting cartel leaders. In July, after a nine-year manhunt, they captured one of the most storied kingpins — Rafael Caro Quintero, wanted in the 1985 killing of a DEA agent.
American drug-war veterans texted one another the stunning news: The raid was led by Águila’s old team.
But the enthusiasm was short-lived. A navy Black Hawk helicopter crashed during the operation, killing 14 commandos.
The López Obrador government said the aircraft ran out of gas.
Emergency responders work at the scene of a Black Hawk helicopter crash that killed 14 commandos during an operation to capture drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero. (Guillermo Juarez/AP)
Mary Beth Sheridan reported from Mexico City and Nick Miroff reported from Washington. Steven Rich, Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul and Gabriela Martinez also contributed to this report.
Design and development by Tyler Remmel. Additional design and development by Allison Mann, Laura Padilla Castellanos and Rekha Tenjarla. Data analysis by Steven Rich. Photo research by Robert Miller. Video editing by Jorge Ribas.
Trish Wilson, Jeff Leen and Courtney Kan were the lead editors. Additional editing by Christian Font, Meghan Hoyer, Jai-Leen James, Jessica Koscielniak, Frances Moody and Martha Murdock.
Additional support from Steven Bohner, Matthew Callahan, Sarah Childress, Sarah Dunton, Jenna Lief, Monika Mathur, Jordan Melendrez, Angel Mendoza, Sarah Murray, Ben Pillow, Sarah Pineda, Andrea Platten, Kyley Schultz, Casey Silvestri, John Taylor and Mael Vallejo.
The data was collected from more than three dozen federal, state and local sources across the United States and Mexico. For example, for the count of overdose deaths in the Unites States, The Post used mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To measure data seizures along Route 15 in Mexico, reporters standardized multiple datasets from agencies including the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional, Fiscalía General de la República, Secretaría de Marina and the Guardia Nacional. | 2022-12-12T20:33:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How a crucial U.S.-Mexico alliance fell apart as fentanyl took off - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/the-eagle-mexico-drug-cartels/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/the-eagle-mexico-drug-cartels/ |
Federal appeals judges weigh fate of hundreds of Jan. 6 cases
The crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Hundreds of prosecutions in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot were hanging in the balance as a panel of federal judges on Monday debated the constitutionality of the Justice Department’s lead felony charge.
D.C. Circuit judges will decide the scope of a felony obstruction charge members of Congress and a federal judge have suggested could be used to prosecute former president Donald Trump. Two of the three judges on the panel were appointed by Trump. The other was appointed by President Biden.
The law punishes “whoever corruptly alters, destroys, mutilates or conceals a record, document or other object … or otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding.” Prosecutors have used the charge against nearly 300 people they say intentionally tried to delay, prevent or block Congress from formally counting electoral votes as required on Jan. 6, such as by entering sensitive areas like the Senate chamber.
At a high-profile trial this fall, three members of the far-right Oath Keepers group were acquitted of engaging in a seditious conspiracy, which requires a plan to use force against the government, but convicted of obstructing an official proceeding. Four more Oath Keepers are starting trial this week; leaders in the Proud Boys face trial on similar charges in January.
The obstruction law was written in the wake of the Enron scandal, when the company’s accountants shredded potentially incriminating documents, an action not covered by the federal witness tampering statute. Defendants argue that the law is limited to interfering with the evidence in an investigation.
All but one District Court judge in D.C. to rule on the question has agreed with the government that the law can be read to include what happened on Jan. 6. That one, Judge Carl J. Nichols, however went further, ruling in March that the crime must involve “some action with respect to a document, record, or other object.”
The Justice Department appealed that ruling to the D.C. Circuit.
Judges Gregory Katsas and Justin Walker, both Trump appointees, suggested on Monday that the use of the word “corruptly” might be unconstitutionally broad, a question Nichols did not address.
“Why wouldn’t that pick up the person that’s just sitting in the gallery and starts shouting?” Katsas asked.
James Peace, representing the government, said that corrupt purpose isn’t being “watered down” to mean any disagreement, and a shouting protester is not trying to bring about an unlawful result.
But both judges were also skeptical of the arguments from defense attorney Nicholas Smith.
Smith represents Ethan Nordean, one of the Proud Boys defendants, and repeatedly argued that the government was engaging in an “injustice” that would turn political protest into a felony.
Walker pushed back, noting the violent rhetoric and actions around Jan. 6 — including one of the Proud Boys leaders saying, “This is war.”
“We’re not talking about a protest,” Walker said. “This was unprecedented. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s no precedent for a prosecution.”
Katsas questioned how Smith could say Nichols reached the right result from the language and context while simultaneously arguing that the law applies to evidence beyond documents. Smith acknowledged that multiple appellate courts have read the law more broadly than Nichols did.
“It seems like you’re taking … a less obvious textual gloss in order to avoid a lot of bad precedent for you,” Katsas said.
Smith said that what matters is that this law “has never been used” for “actions unrelated to evidence.”
Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee, repeatedly said there was nothing in the text or other court rulings that limit the law as Nichols and Smith see it.
“I’m still not seeing where in the text it says evidence impairment,” she said. “If you’re just relying on the words — impeding, influencing, et cetera — why wouldn’t it be everything?”
The government has argued that even under Nichols’s interpretation their obstruction cases could survive, because the ballots that were being confirmed on Jan. 6 were documents proving Biden’s victory.
Smith disputed that, saying “ballots do not constitute evidence.”
While federal advisory guidelines for first offenders are far lower, the obstruction of a congressional proceeding charge is punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years, the same as seditious conspiracy or assaulting a police officer. That has allowed prosecutors to levy a severe charge against defendants whose offenses involves conduct they allege was criminally egregious but not explicitly violent.
Defense lawyers and legal analysts say the charge has been significant in the prosecution of members of extremist groups such as the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers alleged to have planned and prepared for violence, but who otherwise might face only rioting charges punishable by a maximum of five years if they did not actually attack anyone or damage anything.
The defendant for whom Nichols threw out the obstruction charge, Garrett Miller, has pleaded guilty to five other felony counts and six misdemeanors in the past week. The felony offenses include three charges of impeding police in a riot, assaulting a police officer inside the Capitol and threatening Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) after she called for Trump’s impeachment that evening by tweeting “assassinate AOC.”
“I intended the comment to be perceived as a serious intent to commit violence against the congresswoman,” Miller said in plea papers and confirmed in a court hearing cutting short a bench trial. He has already spent two years behind bars on pretrial detention. | 2022-12-12T20:33:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Key Jan. 6 obstruction charge under scrutiny by federal appeals court - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/12/jan6-obstruction-charge-appeal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/12/jan6-obstruction-charge-appeal/ |
The number of local police agencies that reported crime data to the federal government under a new system fell significantly, skewing 2021 hate-crime statistics
Demonstrators in March 2021 at the Stop Asian Hate rally in Koreatown in Los Angeles. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
In a news release, the FBI acknowledged the drop in reporting. “As more agencies transition to the NIBRS data collection with continued support from the Department of Justice, hate crime statistics in coming years will provide a richer and more complete picture of hate crimes nationwide,” the agency said.
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement that the Justice Department “continues to work with the nation’s law enforcement agencies to increase the reporting of hate crime statistics to the FBI to ensure we have the data to help accurately identify and prevent hate crimes. ... The department will continue to use all of the tools and resources at our disposal to stand up to bias-motivated violence in our communities.”
Analysts said the less-than-desirable level of participation makes comparing the 2021 hate-crime statistics to previous years a mostly pointless endeavor at a time when some lawmakers have expressed growing alarm over a spike in hate crimes and what national intelligence officials have said is a rise in extremism.
Ohio submits updated hate-crime figures to FBI that would make 2020 U.S. tally highest since 2001
“Especially at a time when our communities are feeling particularly vulnerable to hate crimes and extremist-fueled attacks, it is egregious that major cities and states across the country have failed to report comprehensive data for 2021,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. “We urge Congress to make it mandatory for state and local law enforcement agencies that receive federal funding to participate in the FBI’s hate crime data collection efforts.”
Since 1991, Congress has required that the FBI collect statistics on hate crimes. The nation’s more than 18,000 state, county, municipal and tribal law enforcement agencies, however, are not required to participate.
Civil rights groups have said the hate-crime data has long been plagued by underreporting caused by a lack of funding, fear in vulnerable communities of contacting police, and differing standards of how hate crimes are defined.
New Jersey officials said hate was spiking. The FBI said numbers had fallen. It depends on what you count.
The incomplete data from 2021 is glaring in several of the nation’s biggest and most-diverse states. In Florida, where there were 109 hate crimes in 2020, two of the state’s 757 law enforcement agencies uploaded information into NIBRS for 2021, and a single hate crime was reported. The number of hate crimes in California fell from 1,339 in 2020 to 73 in 2021, as 15 of 740 police agencies submitted data.
Levin said his look at 52 cities — including 35 of the 50 most populous — showed a 29 percent increase in hate crimes in 2021 compared with the previous year. The nation’s 10 biggest cities showed a 39 percent increase, he said, and tallied the highest number of hate crimes since 1995. | 2022-12-12T20:33:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Latest FBI data on hate crimes plagued by lack of reporting nationwide - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/12/us-hate-crimes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/12/us-hate-crimes/ |
A huge plume rises over the Hunga Tonga volcano Jan. 14, 2022, in this screenshot obtained from a social media video. (Tonga Geological Services/Via Reuters)
The eruption of the Hunga Tonga undersea volcano in the Pacific Ocean early this year was so powerful that it sent a massive plume of water vapor into space, according to new research released Monday. A volcano launching water beyond the atmosphere had never before been observed by scientists. The research underscores the unusually violent nature of the eruption — and highlights the broader risks from undersea volcanoes.
The eruption sent as much as 4 million metric tons of water vapor into space, according to Larry Paxton, a scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.
The event grabbed the attention of scientists who use satellites to monitor “space weather.” Scientists track space weather because of the risk of a catastrophic solar storm that would send a plume of charged particles at the Earth, interacting with the planet’s magnetic field in a way that could damage satellites in orbit or even affect the power grid on the surface.
“This was a moderate [solar] storm versus a very strong volcano. So that’s not to say a volcano would always win,” Gasque said in an interview. | 2022-12-12T20:35:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tonga volcano eruption blasted millions of tons of water into space - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/12/12/tonga-volcano-water-space/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/12/12/tonga-volcano-water-space/ |
Why special flu shots are recommended for those 65 and older
Sylvester Fisher gets a flu shot from pharmacist Patricia Pernal at Chicago's Southwest Senior Center in September. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with any advertisers on this site.
For many years, people 65 or older have had the option to get a flu shot specially formulated for them.
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declined to recommend that older adults get these shots instead of the standard flu shot options. This flu season, that changed.
The CDC is now recommending that people 65 or older try to find one of these specially formulated vaccines.
The change reflects an extensive review of the evidence on how well the different kinds of flu vaccines work for older people, says Alicia Fry, chief of the CDC’s Epidemiology and Prevention Branch. The picture that emerged from this review made clear what scientists had long suspected: Some vaccines provide better protection against the flu than others for older adults — and for the best protection during the flu season, they should seek them out.
Adult vaccines are important due to a slowing of the immune system with age.
The season has already begun, so if you haven’t gotten your flu vaccine yet, the time is now. And if you’re 65 or older, you should try to find one of these three shots: Fluzone High-Dose, Fluad or Flublok. Here’s why.
What’s different about these flu vaccines?
Vaccines with “quadrivalent” in their names provide protection against four different strains of influenza.
Fluzone High-Dose quadrivalent: This vaccine has been available in the United States since 2010 and contains four times the amount of flu antigen — or the molecule that provokes the immune system to create antibodies against the flu — as the standard flu shot.
According to the CDC, of the three vaccines recommended for older adults, Fluzone has the most evidence supporting its superior efficacy over the regular shot. For example, a 2014 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that this high-dose flu shot was 24 percent more effective at preventing the flu in people 65 and older than the standard vaccine.
Fluad quadrivalent: This vaccine contains the same amount of flu antigen as the standard shot but also contains something called an adjuvant. That’s an added substance that provokes a stronger response from the immune system.
A 2020 study in the journal Vaccines found that during the 2017-2018 flu season in the United States, Fluad provided better protection than the standard shot against flu-related visits to a doctor and against flu- and pneumonia-related hospitalizations.
Flublok quadrivalent: Flublok was first licensed for use in the United States in 2013. Unlike Fluzone and Fluad, it’s also approved for use in younger adults and is recommended for older people. This shot is what’s known as a recombinant vaccine, which means it’s made using a different technological process than most other flu shots.
Flublok is similar to Fluzone High-Dose in that it contains more flu antigen, but it contains three (rather than four) times the amount of flu antigen as the standard vaccine.
Which flu shot is the best?
There isn’t enough evidence yet to indicate whether one of these three vaccines provides superior protection over the other two for older people.
As for side effects, they are generally mild and include symptoms such as arm pain, head or muscle aches, and malaise, and tend to occur more frequently among people who receive the Fluzone High-Dose and Fluad shots than in people who get standard flu vaccines. (With Flublok, side effects seem to appear about as often as they do with standard vaccines.)
Black and Hispanic seniors are left with a less powerful flu vaccine
Why you need a special vaccine later in life
As with covid-19, those who are most at risk for getting seriously sick with the flu are older people.
One factor: Your immune system weakens with age. To mount an immune response to a vaccine, many different types of cells in your body work in an orchestrated way to create protection against a disease. “As you get older, that communication between cells doesn’t work as well,” says Jenna Bartley, an assistant professor of immunology who is with the Center on Aging at UConn Health. The high-dose and adjuvanted shots are meant to compensate for that less robust immune response and provoke a higher level of protection in older people.
Fluzone High Dose and Fluad are available only for people 65 and older. If you’re younger than 65, you generally don’t need the extra boost to your immune system. For people who aren’t immunocompromised, your system will probably produce a good immune response from the standard shot, and getting one of the others might only invite additional side effects for little extra benefit, Bartley says.
A few preliminary studies have suggested that the Fluzone High-Dose vaccine may also provide a better immune response in certain groups of immunocompromised people, including those who have received or donated organs or stem cells, and people with HIV. Those studies looked at only the immune response as measured in participants’ blood, however, rather than at how effective Fluzone was at preventing actual cases of the flu, and more research is needed on the high-dose vaccine’s effectiveness in these people. If you’re immunocompromised, you may want to ask your doctor about the best flu vaccine strategy for you.
Flublok, also a higher-dose vaccine, is approved for all adults 18 and up. So while it’s an option for younger adults, it’s only preferentially recommended for people 65 and older.
Where can you find these flu shots?
Check to see if the doctor’s office or pharmacy where you usually get your annual flu vaccine carries them. If they don’t, search for one at vaccines.gov/find-vaccines (enter your Zip code and check the box for “Flu Shot (65+, high-dose or adjuvanted).”
If you can’t find one of these three shots, don’t go without a flu shot altogether. The standard vaccine is much better than nothing.
And how far you go to get a special shot may depend on how high your risk is of complications from the flu. Bartley says the extra boost to the immune system from one of these high-dose or adjuvanted vaccines is more important the more vulnerable you are to the flu.
Copyright 2022, Consumer Reports Inc.
Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Read more at ConsumerReports.org. | 2022-12-12T20:36:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why special flu shots are recommended for those 65 and older - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/12/flu-vaccines-seniors-immunity-boost/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/12/flu-vaccines-seniors-immunity-boost/ |
IOC president Thomas Bach is leading a push to find a way to allow athletes from Russia and Belarus to take part in the 2024 Olympics. (Denis Balibouse/Keystone via AP, Pool)
The International Olympic Committee is exploring ways to loosen its bans on athletes from Russia and Belarus, which would allow them to participate in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, most likely as independent competitors.
The IOC sanctioned the two countries not long after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, barring Russia and Belarus from hosting international sports competitions, prohibiting their flags or colors to be displayed at events and urging all Olympic sports organizations to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes. But as the war has dragged on, IOC President Thomas Bach increasingly has expressed concern that the bans are unfairly punishing athletes who have nothing to do with the war.
“This question of the participation of athletes is very different from the questions of sanctions for their government,” Bach said after last week’s IOC executive board meeting. “The question of athletes’ participation was never part and could not be part of the sanctions because the condition of the Olympic Movement was, always is and remains that athletes [should] not be tarnished for acts of their government as long as they do not contribute to it or support it.”
The idea of allowing Russian and Belarusian athletes in Paris was discussed extensively at both the executive board meeting and last weekend’s 32-person Olympic Summit in Switzerland that included top IOC executives, sports federation heads and Russian Olympic Committee President Stanislav Pozdnyakov. And while no conclusions were reached, the board and summit attendees insisted the IOC begin talks with the leaders of all countries’ Olympic leaders and individual sports organizations to find what Bach called “a pathway back to inclusion.”
A decision will have to be made soon because many qualifying events for Paris will begin in spring 2023.
With doping ban set to end, Russia finds itself even more of an outcast
Susanne Lyons, chair of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee board, who also attended the summit, said on a Monday media call that she supports studying ways for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete at the Paris Olympics but only if they are clearly “neutral” and not affiliated in any way with their countries. During the Tokyo and Beijing Games, USOPC officials complained that Russia’s current two-year Olympic ban for a state-run doping program hardly felt like a punishment, with Russian athletes wearing their country’s colors and participating as a Russian team.
“It was a little loosey-goosey the last time,” she said.
But finding the right solution will be challenging. Bach and Lyons both said athletes who have not expressed support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should be allowed to compete, though neither seemed to have an easy answer for how that could be determined. At some events, Russian athletes have displayed the letter “Z,” which is recognized in Russia as a symbol of support for the war.
It “is going to be impossible to figure out how they would monitor it,” Lyons said.
In recent months, Bach has expressed discomfort with the bans on athletes from Russia and Belarus, saying they were put in place — not for Russia’s invasion — but because some countries immediately barred Russian athletes from competitions and the IOC does not want governments to make political decisions about sports eligibility.
“The qualification for sports events must be on sporting merits, not on political interference,” he said last week.
He said he worries that the current bans on athletes from Russia and Belarus are damaging the Olympics’ larger intent of peacefully unifying the world through sports and fretted that keeping those athletes from the Games will set a precedent that could tear the Olympics apart.
“Today it’s Russia and Belarus; tomorrow it’s the next country and then there are other countries coming back with counter sanctions,” he said. “Look at what is happening right now in the world of economy or in other areas. Then there would be no global sports anymore.” | 2022-12-12T21:28:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | IOC seeks ‘a pathway back to inclusion’ for athletes from Russia and Belarus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/12/12/ioc-russia-ban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/12/12/ioc-russia-ban/ |
New Nationals right-hander Trevor Williams was a swing man for the Mets last season. (Chris Szagola/AP)
Heading into the winter, knowing he wasn’t at or even near the top of the free agent market, Trevor Williams could only be certain about wanting to start baseball games. So late last week, when talks with the Washington Nationals picked up, Williams chose a team that would accommodate his wish, landing a two-year, $13 million deal, promise included.
On a video call with reporters Monday, Williams confirmed he is in line to be in the Nationals’ rotation. If that’s the case — barring injury or extreme underperformance in spring training — it appears he will join MacKenzie Gore, Josiah Gray, Patrick Corbin and Cade Cavalli. Stephen Strasburg remains a wild card, especially because the club is not throwing a timeline or any expectations into the ether. Williams, then, should get a significant bump on the 89⅔ innings he pitched for the New York Mets last season, 51 of which came in relief.
“I have the ability to do both, but [they want me] to add some stability to the rotation and be able to post up 30-plus times this season,” the 30-year-old right-hander said. “... That’s why this is a tremendous opportunity for me.”
How Thad Ward could fit in the Nationals’ bullpen
Williams wanted a spot to prove himself, and Washington needs a starter who can work deep into games. Erick Fedde’s inability to was a factor in him getting non-tendered in November. And much like in 2022, the Nationals will have multiple young starters — Gore, Cavalli, Gray to a lesser extent — who have to be monitored closely, possibly leading to short leashes throughout the year.
Gore, acquired in the Juan Soto blockbuster with the San Diego Padres, missed most of last season with elbow inflammation. Cavalli, still one of the team’s top prospects, debuted in August before hitting the injured list with shoulder trouble. With more than three months until Opening Day, it feels as though Washington’s bullpen is already tired. Williams will be leaned on to eat innings for a club coming off a third consecutive last-place finish (and doing little aside from hoping that will change).
“There are a lot of things that you value in free agency, and I think for every player it’s different,” Williams said of joining the Nationals, a 107-loss team in 2022, instead of a contender. “I’m not a trophy fish. I’m not someone where you may have 15 or 20 teams who want your services. I was really thankful for this opportunity, for them to tell me that, ‘We want you to post up.’ That’s something I really valued.
“Pitching against the Nationals for the last two years, you can tell there are a lot of young, hungry guys. It’s a good young squad. So to be able to come in and be a guy that has had success and failures at the big league level, and [has] the ability to help as much as I can to get these guys to where they want to be, and to where we want to be, I think it’s a tremendous opportunity for me.”
“Opportunity” and “post” were Williams’s favorite words Monday. They are connected in that, yes, Williams is just excited for the opportunity to post and post and post for the Nationals, who used to hear Max Scherzer refer to pitching that way. To post — according to Scherzer, Williams’s teammate with the Mets last year — is to take the ball every fifth day and give your team a chance to win. Williams made nine starts in 2022 and posted — sorry — a 4.19 ERA. As a reliever, he posted — okay, that’s really the last one — a 2.47 ERA.
Both samples are on the smaller side. But Williams’s success as a reliever helped attract teams over the past month, even though he was always set on starting. He made a career-high 31 starts for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2018, 26 in 2019 and 11 in the shortened 2020 season before the Mets shifted him into a hybrid role after acquiring him from the Chicago Cubs. And now he has a good shot to reach those marks again.
“It was a decision for my career: Do I want to follow down that path? Do I want to be a swing guy for the rest of my career?” Williams explained. “Or do I want to prove again that I can be a serviceable starter? And because I’ve shown both in the past, I preferred starting. ... If the Nationals ask me to be a swing man, I know that I can do it. If the Nationals are telling me to be in the rotation, I know that I can do it. So I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out.” | 2022-12-12T21:55:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trevor Williams is eager to prove himself in Nationals' rotation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/trevor-williams-nationals-rotation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/trevor-williams-nationals-rotation/ |
What questions do you have about the NFL playoff chase? Ask The Post.
So the Washington Commanders had the week off — and moved up two spots in the NFC playoff race. The New York Giants — both Washington’s most recent opponent and its next opponent — haven’t won a game in a month. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers lead their division — with a losing record. Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson, who provided two of the biggest offseason storylines, will miss the playoffs. On and on.
There are four weeks remaining in the NFL’s regular season, and there’s so much to still be determined. With that in mind, I’ve asked Adam Kilgore — who writes our Monday morning NFL wrap-up column and has a great handle on the league — to join me for a Q&A with readers on this topic.
We’ll start answering at 1 p.m. Tuesday, but please feel free to submit questions early below. Looking forward to it!
NFL Sunday takeaways: Cowboys avoid embarrassment, Deebo Samuel injured | 2022-12-12T21:55:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Q&A: Ask Barry Svrluga, Adam Kilgore about the NFL playoff chase - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/13/commanders-nfl-playoff-race/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/13/commanders-nfl-playoff-race/ |
WASHINGTON — America’s employers are posting more job openings than they did before the pandemic struck 2½ years ago. Problem is, there aren’t enough applicants. The labor force is smaller than when the pandemic struck. The reasons vary — an unexpected wave of retirements, a drop in legal immigration, the loss of workers to COVID-19 deaths and illnesses. The result, though, is that employers are having to compete for a smaller pool of workers and to offer steadily higher pay to attract them. It’s a trend that economists say could fuel wage growth and high inflation well into 2023. As a result, the Fed is expected Wednesday to raise its benchmark short-term rate for a seventh time this year.
NEW YORK — More than two and a half years into the pandemic, many businesses have had to curb their hours of operations or services as they continue to grapple with labor shortages. The National Restaurant Association’s most recent monthly survey of 4,200 restaurant operators found that 60% of restaurants reduced hours of operation on the days they were open, while 38% closed on the days they would normally be open compared to right before the pandemic. The changes are creating a disconnect between customers who want to shop and dine like they used to during pre-pandemic times and exhausted employees who no longer want to work those long hours. That push-pull is only being heightened during the busy holiday shopping season.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The former CEO of the failed cryptocurrency firm FTX will testify before a congressional committee Tuesday, his first appearance under oath since FTX filed for bankruptcy roughly a month ago. Sam Bankman-Fried is scheduled to testify in front of the House Financial Services Committee, along with the company’s current CEO, John Ray III. Bankman-Fried has done several media interviews since his firm collapsed but has not publicly testified about what happened. He is expected to appear remotely from the Bahamas. FTX filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11, when the firm ran out of money after the cryptocurrency equivalent of a bank run.
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Amgen is spending more than $26 billion to dive deeper into rare disease treatments with a deal for drugmaker Horizon Therapeutics. The biotech drug developer said Monday that it will pay $116.50 in cash for each share of Horizon, which makes a treatment for thyroid eye disease that generated more than $1 billion in its first full year on the market. Shares of Horizon jumped in early trading Monday. U.S.-traded shares of the Irish company had already soared about 30% since it confirmed late last month that it had begun “highly preliminary discussions” about an acquisition.
DETROIT — A government report says fuel economy for 2021 model year vehicles in the U.S. stayed flat with 2020 as people continued to buy less-efficient trucks and SUVs. The fleet of new vehicles got 25.4 miles per gallon (10.8 kilometers per liter) for the model year, while greenhouse gas emissions dropped slightly to a record low of 347 grams per mile. That’s according to the Environmental Protection Agency in its annual Automotive Trends Report published Monday. The 2021 fuel economy figure ties a record set in model year 2020.
NEW YORK — Twitter is once again attempting to launch its premium service, a month after a previous attempt failed. The social media company said it would let users buy subscriptions to Twitter Blue to get a blue check mark and access special features starting Monday. Businesses are also now getting a separate gold check mark. The blue mark was originally given to companies, celebrities, government entities and journalists verified by the platform. After Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October he launched a service granting blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month. But it was inundated by imposter accounts, so Twitter suspended the service.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has refused a request from tobacco companies to stop California from enforcing a ban on flavored tobacco products that was overwhelmingly approved by voters in November. R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco companies sought the high court’s intervention to keep the ban from taking effect by Dec. 21. There was no additional comment from the justices Monday and no noted dissents. The ban was first passed by the state legislature two years ago but it never took effect after tobacco companies gathered enough signatures to put it on the ballot. But nearly two-thirds of voters approved of banning the sale of everything from cotton-candy vaping juice to menthol cigarettes.
LONDON — Britain’s economy shrank in the three months through October, confirming the toll rampant inflation and rising interest rates are having on business and industry. The Office for National Statistics said Monday that gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, fell by 0.3% in the period when compared with the three months through July. The decline came even as monthly estimates showed GDP increased by 0.5% in October after a 0.6% drop in September, when economic activity was artificially reduced by an extra public holiday to mark the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
NEW YORK — USA Today’s weekly chart of top-selling books is on indefinite hiatus after the newspaper’s parent company Gannett laid off the editor in charge of compiling it. Gannett laid off hundreds of staffers earlier this month, including Mary Cadden. A newspaper spokesperson said further updates would be shared in 2023. Like ones from The New York Times and Amazon.com, USA Today’s list is closely followed in the publishing industry. The newspaper drew upon a wide range of outlets to compile the 150 bestselling books from a given week. The USA Today list combines hardcover, paperback and e-book sales. | 2022-12-12T22:04:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Diminished US workforce, Amgen's buy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-diminished-us-workforce-amgens-buy/2022/12/12/1499050e-7a67-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-diminished-us-workforce-amgens-buy/2022/12/12/1499050e-7a67-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
The Epic Games Inc. Fortnite: Battle Royale video game is displayed for a photograph on an Apple Inc. iPhone in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, May 10, 2018. Fortnite, the hit game that’s denting the stock prices of video-game makers after signing up 45 million players, didn’t really take off until it became free and a free-for-all. (Bloomberg) | 2022-12-12T22:04:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Musk Versus Apple Is a Fight Worth Having - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/musk-versus-apple-is-a-fight-worth-having/2022/12/12/0d8a42e8-7a60-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/musk-versus-apple-is-a-fight-worth-having/2022/12/12/0d8a42e8-7a60-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
Subject of a suit. (Photographer: Allison Dinner/Getty Images North America)
What if corporations could opt out of being sued by their shareholders? That’s the issue facing the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which on Dec. 12 gathered en banc to consider whether an earlier decision made by a subset of its judges was correct.
The case, Lee v. Fisher, started with a shareholder derivative suit against The Gap, Inc. A shareholder derivative suit is conventionally defined as one brought by a shareholder against senior management and directors on behalf of the company, with damages to be paid to the company. Brought under federal law — specifically, section 14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act — the suit alleges that the Gap lied in its proxy statements about its level of workplace diversity.
As I wrote recently, lawsuits around workplace diversity are going to become a lot more common if and when the Supreme Court eliminates racial diversity as a permissible objective in college admissions. But the lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit is important for a totally different reason, one that came up before the courts could even consider whether the Gap misled the markets about its diversity efforts.
The suit against the Gap is important because a federal district court threw it out of court, a decision affirmed by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit. The basic logic was that the Gap’s bylaws in Delaware, where it’s incorporated, contain a clause that says that any shareholder derivative clause must be brought in the Delaware courts. The Ninth Circuit panel held that this provision barred bringing a shareholder derivative suit under federal law in federal court.
On the surface that might not seem like a big deal; the plaintiff could, you’d think, bring the same suit in Delaware. Not so fast. The Securities Exchange Act is a federal law and says that the federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over claims made under it. That means the state courts, including Delaware’s courts, can’t hear a derivative lawsuit under federal law that alleges a false proxy statement.
The result of the Ninth Circuit’s earlier decision was that there is nowhere for the plaintiff to bring her suit.
If that decision stands, it offers a potential pathway to other companies who want to insulate themselves from derivative lawsuits: Protect yourself in your bylaws from a whole range of suits that otherwise could only be brought under federal law.
Notably, the Seventh Circuit reached the opposite conclusion last January in a somewhat parallel case. The Seventh Circuit said that Delaware’s law doesn’t take the suit out of the federal courts. Its reasoning was that “applying the [Delaware] bylaw to this case would mean that plaintiff’s derivative Section 14(a) action may not be heard in any forum” — a conclusion the court considered unacceptable.
Who’s right? That issue will first be decided by the larger group of Ninth Circuit judges, which can overturn the decision made earlier by the three-judge panel. If the court agrees with the Seventh Circuit, the issue may fade. If not, there will be a split between the circuits, and the Supreme Court will have to weigh in to resolve it.
Which outcome you should root for depends on how excited you’d be at the prospect of a world without shareholder derivative suits. Dissenting in the Seventh Circuit case, Judge Frank Easterbrook, an old-school, conservative law and economics expert, pointed out that in a world without shareholder derivative suits, individuals could still sue companies for lying in proxy materials — just not in the derivative form. “Suppose Delaware were to abolish derivative suits,” he wrote. “Investors still could sue managers for violating the state-law duties of care or loyalty. Investors still could sue companies under statutes such as § 14(a). Would abolishing derivative actions violate federal law? I can’t see how.”
It’s certainly true that, if one were designing corporate law from scratch, it would be plausible to imagine the whole structure without derivative suits. Easterbrook was suggesting we could evolve back to that world without any great loss.
Yet shareholder derivative suits play a distinctive role in corporate oversight. Instead of being a suit against a company for damages that would be paid by the company to the plaintiff, a derivative suit is for damages that are paid back to the company. Crucially, damages are paid by the directors and management (or their insurance), not by the company itself. A derivative suit is therefore conceptually and practically distinct from an ordinary damages suit against a company.
To be sure, even if the Ninth Circuit leaves the panel decision in place, and the Supreme Court chooses that view over the Seventh Circuit’s, it doesn’t automatically follow that shareholder derivative suits would eventually be by-lawed out of existence. For one thing, Delaware courts would have to agree to uphold the by-laws, which hasn’t yet happened.
For another, the market might decide that companies that adopt by-laws barring derivative suits are worth less than those that do not. If so, the decision to adopt such by-laws would be a kind of signal by management and the board that they want to be insulated from lawsuits — not a signal every company would necessarily want to send.
Nevertheless, the possibility of ending shareholder derivative suits seems more likely to appeal to conservatives than liberals. That might make the current Supreme Court majority sit up and take notice.
• You Can’t Tell Analysts Too Much: Matt Levine | 2022-12-12T22:05:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Will Courts Prevent Investors From Holding Managers Accountable? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/will-courts-prevent-investors-from-holding-managers-accountable/2022/12/12/f1de35ae-7a64-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/will-courts-prevent-investors-from-holding-managers-accountable/2022/12/12/f1de35ae-7a64-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
What you need to know about the U.S. fusion energy breakthrough
All the questions you may have about the fusion breakthrough, answered
The preamplifiers of the National Ignition Facility are the first step in increasing the energy of laser beams as they make their way toward the target chamber. NIF recently achieved a 500 terawatt shot - 1,000 times more power than the United States uses at any instant in time. (Damien Jemison/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory )
On Tuesday, the Department of Energy is expected to announce a long-awaited milestone in the development of nuclear fusion energy: net energy gain. The news, first reported by the Financial Times and confirmed by the Washington Post, could galvanize the fusion community, which has long hyped the technology as a possible clean energy tool to combat climate change.
But how big of a deal is the “net energy gain” anyway — and what does it mean for the fusion power plants of the future? Here’s what you need to know.
Existing nuclear power plants work through fission — splitting apart heavy atoms to create energy. In fission, a neutron collides with a heavy uranium atom, splitting it into lighter atoms and releasing a lot of heat and energy at the same time.
Fusion, on the other hand, works in the opposite way — it involves smushing two atoms (often two hydrogen atoms) together to create a new element (often helium), in the same way that stars creates energy. In that process, the two hydrogen atoms lose a small amount of mass, which is converted to energy according to Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc^2. Because the speed of light is very, very fast — 300,000,000 meters per second — even a tiny amount of mass lost can result in a ton of energy.
What is “net energy gain” and how did the researchers achieve it?
Up to this point, researchers have been able to fuse two hydrogen atoms together successfully, but it’s always taken them more energy to do the reaction than they get back. Net energy gain — where they get more energy back than they put in to create the reaction — has been the elusive holy grail of fusion research.
Now, researchers at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California are expected to announced that they have attained net energy gain by shooting lasers at hydrogen atoms. The 192 laser beams compress the hydrogen atoms down to about 100 times the density of lead and heat them to approximately 100 million degrees Celsius. The high density and temperature causes the atoms to merge into helium.
Other methods being researched, meanwhile, involve using magnets to confine super-hot plasma.
“If it’s what we’re expecting, it’s like the Kitty Hawk moment for the Wright brothers," said Melanie Windridge, a plasma physicist and the CEO of Fusion Energy Insights. “It’s like the plane taking off.”
Does this mean fusion energy is ready for primetime?
No. Scientists refer to the current breakthrough as “scientific net energy gain" — meaning that more energy has come out of the reaction than was inputted by the laser. That’s a huge milestone that has never before been achieved.
But, it’s only a net energy gain at the micro level. The lasers used at the Livermore lab are only about 1 percent efficient, according to Troy Carter, a plasma physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles. That means that it takes about 100x more energy to run the lasers than they are ultimately able to deliver to the hydrogen atoms.
So researchers will still have to reach “engineering net energy gain," or the point at which the entire process takes less energy than is outputted by the reaction. They will also have to figure out how to turn the outputted energy — currently in the form of kinetic energy from the helium nucleus and the neutron -- into a form that is usable for electricity. They could do that by converting it to heat, then heating steam to turn a turbine and run a generator. That process also has efficiency limitations.
All that means that the energy gain will probably need to be pushed much much higher for fusion to actually be commercially viable.
At the moment, researchers can also only do the fusion reaction about once a day. In between, they have to allow the lasers to cool down and replace the fusion fuel target. A commercially viable plant would need to be able to do it several times per second, says Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT. “Once you’ve got scientific viability, you’ve got to figure out engineering viability,” he said.
What are the benefits of fusion?
But fusion’s possibilities are huge. The technology is much, much safer than nuclear fission, since fusion can’t create runaway reactions. It also doesn’t produce radioactive byproducts that need to be stored, or harmful carbon emissions; it simply produces inert helium and a neutron. And we’re not likely to run out of fuel: The fuel for fusion is just heavy hydrogen atoms, which can be found in seawater.
When could fusion actually power our homes?
That’s the trillion-dollar question. For decades, scientists have joked that fusion is always 30 or 40 years away; over the years, researchers have variously predicted that fusion plants will be operational in the 90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s. Current fusion experts argue that it’s not a matter of time but a matter of will — if governments and private donors finance fusion aggressively, they say, a prototype fusion power plant could be available in the 2030s.
“The timeline is not really a question of time,” Carter said. “It’s a question of innovating and putting the effort in.” | 2022-12-12T22:05:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What you need to know about the U.S. fusion energy breakthrough - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/12/12/nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-benefits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/12/12/nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-benefits/ |
It’s good that Griner is home. But the hostage bazaar has to close.
This combination of images shows Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout and American Brittney Griner. (Apichart Weerawong and Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)
We need a serious discussion about whether this is the right policy for Washington to follow. Should we be winning the release of those currently detained at the risk of creating more hostage crises in the future?
There is legitimate cause for concern that such deals make us more vulnerable, as Republican critics now charge, but they didn’t start with Biden. President Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages with Iran. President Barack Obama set free five senior Taliban leaders from Guantánamo Bay to return U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from Afghanistan. (Obama, however, refused to pay a ransom to the Islamic State to win the release of four U.S. hostages, ordering instead a rescue mission that failed. The hostages were subsequently killed, while many European hostages were ransomed out.)
Now, Biden has chosen to pay a disturbingly high price for Griner’s freedom. It’s not entirely clear why Russian dictator Vladimir Putin wanted Bout back so badly, but he is closely linked to Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU. Although it’s been 12 years since Bout was arrested in Thailand and extradited to the United States, he might still have smuggling networks that could be of use to Putin in waging the war in Ukraine.
Besides setting free a dangerous international criminal known as the “merchant of death,” the deal sent a message to the entire world that the United States remains in the business of paying off hostage-takers. That can only encourage more unlawful detentions of Americans.
We need a serious reconsideration of the right policy on hostages. But that’s exactly what we’re not getting. Instead of engaging on the merits of Biden’s difficult decision, MAGA Republicans are displaying breathtaking (if entirely unsurprising) bigotry, cynicism and political opportunism in their desperate desire to deny a Democratic president credit for any achievement.
Fox “News” host Tucker Carlson suggested that Griner was set free, and former Marine Paul Whelan was not, because she “is not white and she’s a lesbian.” This is nonsense. It’s a tragedy that Whelan remains in a Russian prison, but if it was so easy to release him, why didn’t Donald Trump get it done while he was in the Oval Office? Whelan has been in prison since 2018.
Now, right-wing commentators who never mentioned Whelan’s ordeal before are suddenly bringing him up to score partisan points. Likewise, Republicans who regularly applauded Trump’s hostage-release deals are expressing concern that, as House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) said, the Griner-for-Bout deal “made us weaker.”
As president, Trump took hostage deals to a whole new level — making them, for the first time, a pillar of U.S. foreign policy rather than a disreputable necessity. He boasted that he was “the greatest hostage negotiator … in the history of the United States,” crassly featured six freed prisoners at the 2020 Republican National Convention, and elevated his chief hostage negotiator (Robert C. O’Brien) to the role of national security adviser.
Trump now has the gall to attack the Griner deal as “one-sided” and a “‘stupid’ and unpatriotic embarrassment,” but he paid a substantial price for many of his own prisoner releases, which involved deals with such unsavory partners as the Taliban, the Iranians and the Houthis in Yemen.
The wheeling and dealing continues under Biden. In addition to Bout, he released a Russian cocaine smuggler in exchange for Trevor Reed, another former Marine held in Russia; an Afghan drug lord in return for Navy veteran Mark Frerichs, who was held by the Taliban; and two relatives of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro who were convicted of drug trafficking for seven Americans held in Venezuela.
All of these deals, however well-intentioned, are, unfortunately, creating inducements to seize more Americans in the future. It’s a vicious cycle that is nearly impossible to break. But we need to try. Biden, while continuing to negotiate for the release of Whelan and others who are currently imprisoned, could announce that in the future all Americans who go to Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan and other countries on the State Department’s “do not travel” list are on their own. If they are seized, we aren’t going to give up anything to get them back.
That might sound harsh and hardhearted — and may be politically impossible — but it could actually protect Americans abroad. Perhaps that’s not the right approach. But some course correction is needed if the U.S. government is to stop inadvertently offering aid and encouragement to hostage-takers. | 2022-12-12T22:05:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Griner-Bout swap shows the U.S. needs to reconsider hostage policy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/griner-us-hostage-policy-debate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/griner-us-hostage-policy-debate/ |
Richmond’s removal of a final Confederate statue is a joyous milestone
The statue of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill rests on a trailer after it was removed from its pedestal in Richmond on Monday. (Parker Michels-Boyce for The Washington Post)
Richmond removed the last major city-owned Confederate statue on Monday morning. The joyous moment unfolded with little fanfare in a majority-Black city that was once the capital of the Confederacy. Even though a trio of Confederate statues remain on the grounds of the state Capitol, Virginia has come a long way in the five years since violence broke out in Charlottesville over an effort to take down another Confederate monument. Gone are the days when these statues had to be removed in the dead of night to elude mobs and vandals.
History is not being erased. The statue of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill, which was erected in 1891, will go to Richmond’s Black History Museum where it will join other icons to the myth of the Lost Cause. Hill’s remains, which were buried under the memorial, will be reinterred at a cemetery in his hometown of Culpeper. A judge last week rejected a legal bid to retain the statue by plaintiffs who claimed to be indirect descendants of the general.
The careful approach of Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney offers a model for other jurisdictions struggling to balance racial justice with historical preservation. Not every statue of someone who committed an abhorrent act should be taken down. Sometimes extra signage can add enough context. Intent matters, too. Statues honoring Founding Fathers such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, for example, were not erected to celebrate their ownership of enslaved people.
More than a dozen monuments have come down in Richmond since the murder of George Floyd supercharged a reckoning with the way the United States remembers the darkest chapters of its past. That year, Virginia repealed a state law restricted localities from removing Confederate statues. Now gone from Monument Avenue are all five grandiose monuments to White defenders of slavocracy, including the state-owned statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee. The statue to Hill stood in a notoriously accident-prone intersection several blocks north. The community is better off without them.
The Editorial Board on Virginia
Opinion|Youngkin is right to focus on building more housing in Virginia | 2022-12-12T22:16:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Richmond removing its last Confederate statue is a joyous milestone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/richmond-virginia-confederate-statue-removal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/richmond-virginia-confederate-statue-removal/ |
Many of his most famous works were high-wire acts of artistry using tools he made himself
Daniel Brush in his studio surrounded by his art and his collection of antique machinery. (Fred R. Conrad/New York Times)
For more than four decades, this bewildering 5,000-square-foot space in the Flatiron district was where Mr. Brush, who died Nov. 26 at age 75, worked as a painter, sculptor and jeweler. He spent months or years on a single project, which he sometimes shelved for even longer, only selling to collectors who displayed a thoughtful connection to the object — and the ability to pay upward of six figures per piece.
In a city of characters, Mr. Brush was certainly one. Wearing a brown leather apron and steel armored gloves, he frequently went months without leaving his studio, starting every day with a bowl of Cheerios, followed by hours and hours of sweeping. He broke only for lunch — pea soup, always. Most days he worked for 18 hours.
Daniel David Brush was born in Cleveland on Jan. 22, 1947. His parents owned a children’s clothing store. His mother was also an artist and writer, and when he was 13 she took him to London to visit museums and galleries. At the Victoria and Albert Museum, he stood in awe of Etruscan goldwork. “My heart pounded the way it has not since then,” Mr. Brush told Departures magazine. “I was insane to learn how it was made.”
Mr. Brush, then an abstract painter, landed a teaching job at Georgetown University. While in Washington, Mr. Brush had solo exhibitions at the Phillips and Corcoran galleries. He sold several pieces but quickly regretted it. “I was so unnerved,” he told the Times, “that I bought every single thing back from every person and I destroyed all the work.”
In 1978, Mr. Brush and his wife moved to New York, purchased a loft in the Flatiron district, and converted it into a combined living and studio space. There, Mr. Brush turned his focus to metals and jewels, crossing artistic boundaries with a steadily growing collection of antique lathes and tools. He read hundreds of books about them.
“I didn’t know how to run them,” Mr. Brush told “CBS Sunday Morning.” “I met an older man, 85 years old. He said: ‘Put the books away. Put the pictures away. Let the machine tell you what it has to say.’ So the machines, with a little bit of my help, made the pieces they wanted to make.”
Mr. Brush never hired a dealer. He and his wife, and then their son Silla, born in 1982, subsisted on a tight circle of wealthy collectors who purchased his work “from warm hand to warm hand,” as Mr. Brush called the transactions. Though Mr. Brush never identified his buyers, some names emerged in articles about him. One patron was reportedly Marsha Garces Williams, a collector once married to actor Robin Williams. Another was jeweler Ralph Esmerian. “CBS Sunday Morning” said the Aga Khan owned a Brush.
In the late 1990s, Mr. Brush’s wife and others in his artistic orbit began gently suggesting that he exhibit his work more broadly. He agreed. In 1998, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum put on an exhibition of his work.
“Brush’s mastery is almost incomprehensible,” Washington Post journalist Hank Burchard wrote about the exhibit. “His golden domes are gorgeous and his jewelry is sensuous. His whatnots (which include a yo-yo and a confection he calls Jelly Bean Suite) are wonderful. His butterflies, bottles and boxes are needful extravagances, exercises in what the artist calls ‘focused frivolity.’”
Burchard’s only lament was that “the Renwick doesn't supply magnifying glasses to help patrons appreciate the vanishingly small details.”
Though he worked alongside his wife for decades — she made intricate boxes for the pieces he sold — Mr. Brush never employed any assistants or laborers. He never took commissions. He never made the same piece twice.
“I get up and worry about, what’s there to say?” Mr. Brush said at his studio during a 2017 conversation about his work. “Do I have anything to say? Do I know enough? Can I engrave as well as the armourers in Napoleon’s court? I read, I study, I worry. Is it a struggle? Yeah, sure.” | 2022-12-12T23:13:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Daniel Brush, reclusive artist who crossed boundaries, dies at 75 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/12/daniel-brush-reclusive-artist-who-created-masterpieces-dies-at-75/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/12/daniel-brush-reclusive-artist-who-created-masterpieces-dies-at-75/ |
Ken Niumatalolo coached his final game with Navy on Saturday. (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
Navy Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk put it plainly: The firing of the winningest football coach in program history did not come down to a double-overtime loss to Army on Saturday, and Ken Niumatalolo was aware his job was in jeopardy.
Gladchuk spoke with reporters Monday and said the move had been under consideration for some time and Niumatalolo failed to meet “very reasonable goals.” As athletic director for 22 years, he said the goals have been to win the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy and win six games to become bowl eligible. That has been the consistent objective for 20 years, Gladchuk said.
Niumatalolo, who led the program for 15 years with a record of 109-83, was stunned by the decision.
“Without any question of a doubt,” said Gladchuk, when asked if Niumatalolo was aware of the situation. “I spoke directly to his representative, who asked me exactly that question. I conveyed to him, and I also conveyed it … for 20 years to the head coach every year.
“It was clear as a bell. There’s no confusion with regard to what the expectations are. And I think they’re realistic, they’re reasonable, they’re attainable, they’re expected. We resource at a minimum to that. I can’t make it any clearer.”
Gladchuk dismissed the lingering effects from the pandemic in 2020, when the team was forced to go the entire offseason without tackling or blocking. The Naval Academy had stricter measures in place than most institutions, and a significant number of upperclassmen transferred. That, however, was no longer an acceptable excuse. Gladchuk pointed out that Air Force went 9-3 this season and said it was “playing by the same rules.”
“Do I think it affected the BYU game? Yeah, I would agree with that — it did,” Gladchuk said. “From that point forward, however, we had to make adjustments. We had to readdress the way we did business in the short term. But there’s been plenty of time to overcome those obstacles that we had at that time frame and put the ship back on course.
“So the pandemic was a factor at the time, but it wasn’t lingering to the point that it should have affected the way we competed subsequent to us turning the corner.”
The Midshipmen just finished a third consecutive losing season, going 11-23 in that span. The Midshipmen three times reached double-digit wins under Niumatalolo, setting the school record with 11 in 2015 and matching that total in 2019.
Defensive coordinator Brian Newberry was named interim coach, and Gladchuk said he expects him to be a candidate for the job. They will conduct a national search, and previous experience at a service academy will not be required.
He did say the triple option is the “fiber of who we are” and the competitive edge that the program has. The new coach doesn’t have to be “pure triple option” but needs an understanding of the basic philosophy and tenets of the scheme, Gladchuk said.
Mississippi State football coach Mike Leach in critical condition | 2022-12-12T23:31:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Navy fired Ken Niumatalolo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/why-navy-fired-ken-niumatalolo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/12/why-navy-fired-ken-niumatalolo/ |
Modi now holds the baton. (Photographer: Prakash Singh/Bloomberg)
This month’s rotation of the G-20 presidency from Indonesia to India may have met with indifference in much of the world. In India, however, the news has been emblazoned on billboards and front-page advertisements in newspapers, and is breathlessly discussed on television channels.
The common theme of these celebrations is that the “mother of democracy” — in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s phrase — is about to become a vishwa-guru, or teacher to the world. As the winter session of India’s parliament opened earlier this month, Modi asked its members to project a responsible face to the world in the months leading up to the next G-20 leaders’ summit in September 2023.
Nor has Modi seized the intellectual leadership of the Global South — a vacancy that is rapidly being filled by Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Emerging from years in prison, Lula has moved fast to reposition Brazil in the avant garde of the global fight against climate change. He is on his way to affirming Barack Obama’s 2009 characterization of him as “the most popular politician on earth.”
Nevertheless, the current euphoria over India’s G-20 presidency shows that Hindu nationalists still need — and often crave — outside validation. This creates an insoluble problem for them, as their heavily Hinduized idea of India hasn’t been endorsed by many people outside the country. Evidence came only last month, when Israeli director Nadav Lapid, invited to judge an international film festival in Goa, publicly ridiculed a controversial anti-Muslim film that had been zealously promoted by Modi’s government.
• A G-20 Talking Shop? That’s No Bad Thing: Clara F. Marques | 2022-12-12T23:35:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | India Is in Danger of Missing Its G-20 Moment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/india-is-in-danger-of-missing-its-g-20-moment/2022/12/12/840f811a-7a71-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/india-is-in-danger-of-missing-its-g-20-moment/2022/12/12/840f811a-7a71-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
Former Catholic priest convicted in 1985 sex assault in Loudoun
Scott A. Asalone, a rector in Purcellville, was removed from his church in 1993, but not arrested until 2020. The victim went on to become a D.C. councilman.
A former Catholic priest from Loudoun County, who was quietly discharged from his parish after abuse allegations in the 1990s, was convicted Monday in Loudoun circuit court of felony carnal knowledge of a minor for abusing a boy who would go on to become a D.C. councilman.
Scott A. Asalone, 66, who worked as a stockbroker and consultant in New Jersey for nearly three decades after leaving his parish, was arrested in March 2020, and released on bond during the pandemic. Jury selection for his trial was scheduled to begin Monday when Asalone decided to enter an “Alford” plea, in which a defendant doesn’t admit guilt but admits the prosecution has enough evidence to convict. Loudoun Circuit Court Judge James E. Plowman then found Asalone guilty, and set sentencing for April 13. He faces a minimum of two years in prison and a maximum of ten.
Asalone’s victim in the case, former D.C. councilman David Grosso, was present in the courtroom and preparing to testify. After Asalone’s arrest in 2020, Grosso publicly acknowledged that, “The minor he assaulted was me.” Grosso was 14, and Asalone was 29, when the abuse occurred between April and September 1985.
D.C. Council member David Grosso alleges he was sexually assaulted by Va. clergyman
“It felt good for me to be there,” Grosso said Monday, “to see the judge walk him through the charge, and find that he really is guilty of assaulting me … He realized the case was too strong against him.”
Asalone’s lawyer, Barry Coburn, declined to comment after the hearing. Coburn also represents former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in a number of pending federal and state sex abuse cases.
Asalone was the rector of St. Frances de Sales Catholic Church in Purcellville from June 1984 to January 1993. Grosso reported the incident to the Catholic church in the 1990s and received a financial settlement at the time. Asalone was a member of the Capuchin Friars order who was removed from public ministry in 1993 and dismissed from the Friars in 2007, according to records released by the Catholic Diocese of Arlington. Asalone then went on to work for Merrill Lynch, formed his own consulting firm, and most recently owned a bookstore in Asbury Park, according to biographies he posted online.
Virginia has no statute of limitations on most criminal acts, enabling the prosecution of Asalone 35 years later, but it does have a two-year legal window for filing civil suits. The statute of limitations is three years in D.C., so then-Councilmember Grosso helped pass the Statute of Limitations Amendment Act in 2018, which opened a two-year window for victims in the District to file civil claims which were previously barred.
Grosso said in 2020 he decided to identify himself as the victim in Asalone’s case because “we all must find the courage to come forward, tell our stories, and seek justice and accountability from the perpetrator, as well as the church and other institutions that have hidden or excused their behavior.” Grosso stepped down from the city council last year.
The Pennsylvania report on clergy sex abuse spawned a wave of probes nationwide. Now what?
After the Pennsylvania attorney general in 2018 uncovered hundreds of unprosecuted Catholic child sex abuse cases, attorneys general around the country launched efforts to root out similar cases in their state. Asalone was the first person in the Virginia Attorney General’s Office investigation to be indicted. | 2022-12-12T23:35:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Catholic priest convicted in 1985 sex assault in Loudoun - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/asalone-convicted-loudoun-grosso/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/12/asalone-convicted-loudoun-grosso/ |
NEW YORK — New York City is naming a gate in Central Park in honor of the five men who, as teenagers, were wrongfully convicted of the 1989 rape of a jogger and spent years in prison before being exonerated. The city’s Public Design Commission unanimously approved the project on Monday. | 2022-12-12T23:36:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New York City to honor Central Park Five at park entrance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/new-york-city-to-honor-central-park-five-at-park-entrance/2022/12/12/8eabb5ae-7a6b-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/new-york-city-to-honor-central-park-five-at-park-entrance/2022/12/12/8eabb5ae-7a6b-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html |
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