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Certain events change the course of history, or at least the trajectory of the global economy. To name a few: the Black Death, the invention of the steam engine and World War II, and now the scourge of Covid-19. It’s been nearly three years since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic that changed the world as we knew it. You can’t pause economic and social activity for more than a year and go back to normal. It’s hard to know in the moment, or even a decade later, what will change for good. In 2020 people thought they might never go to the office again, or leave home without a mask, or that they’d finally maintain their sourdough starter. Now many of our pre-pandemic behaviors have returned, but we’re also starting to see what’s unlikely to ever go back to the way it was.
Lingering changes that probably won’t last much longer
Some of our habits are still different from before the pandemic, but they may eventually revert. For example, Americans and Brits aren’t eating in restaurants as much as they did in 2019. That may because they still fear disease, or inflation has made it too expensive, or people have just rediscovered the joys of home cooking. But eating out, which had been trending upward over the years, will probably come back. People enjoy it too much to stop.
How we work also is still different. Americans have never had so much power in the labor market. Between the great resignation and quiet quitting and an ongoing labor shortage, workers are demanding more, including more flexibility in where they do their jobs. Moving so many people out of the office to their homes during the pandemic did change work. Before Covid about 5% of workdays were at home, during the pandemic it shot up to 60% and it’s now leveled off to 30%. In the fall of 2022 about 29.2% of all full-time employees were working from home part of the time, and 13.3% were fully remote. Right now this seems to be a permanent change. Maybe even as monumental as when workers moved off the home farm and to the factory — a change that had a major impact on our society, culture and economy. So in some ways it seems natural that we are moving work back home.
Another major change is inflation. The pandemic awoke inflation and it will be very hard to get rid of it. The rate of inflation is starting to fall, and in the next year it will probably drop further. But there is a good chance the sub-2% inflation we’ve taken for granted for years won’t be back for a long time. People are now getting used to higher inflation, which means they’ve started to include it in their behavior and expectations. Longer term, the world’s population is aging and countries are less open to trade, and both of those trends will put upward pressure on inflation. That some economists are now arguing 4% is a better target for the Federal Reserve suggests we’re already giving up on a 2% inflation world.
Higher inflation and less trade following the pandemic also mean higher interest rates. The Fed only has so much control over interest rates; longer-term rates are set in the global market. A pullback on globalization would mean foreigners will buy fewer US bonds to manage their currencies, reducing demand and increasing rates. And a period of higher inflation with more uncertainty around the future will also increase rates, because fixed-income investors need to be compensated for inflation and inflation risk. This all adds up to higher rates, so say goodbye to cheap mortgages and very cheap financing on the goods we buy.
• Cooling Economy Is Giving US Workers a Lift: Conor Sen | 2022-12-21T13:42:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | We’ll Return to the Office in 2023 But Not to Stores - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/well-return-to-the-office-in-2023-but-not-to-stores/2022/12/21/348651d0-8130-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/well-return-to-the-office-in-2023-but-not-to-stores/2022/12/21/348651d0-8130-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
The police chief of Adair, Iowa, has been charged with conspiracy to make false statements and defraud the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. (KCCI)
Police Chief Bradley Wendt had a long shopping list for his department in Adair, Iowa. Between 2018 and 2022, he requested around 90 firearms, including rifles, submachine guns and a .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun, an indictment alleges.
Prosecutors say Adair’s police department never staffed more than three full-time officers during that period to serve the small town of around 800 people about 50 miles west of Des Moines. Nevertheless, Wendt, 46, allegedly declared to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that the entire arsenal was intended for police use or weapons demonstrations so the department could evaluate them for future purchase.
Wendt is accused of using the weapons, some of which prosecutors say he obtained through a gun store that he also owns, for his own personal gain. He sold several rifles to individual buyers across the country, charged patrons to fire police department weapons in a public “machine gun shoot” he advertised on Facebook and intended to sell other firearms in the future, according to the indictment. He’s also accused of mounting a heavy machine gun on top of his personal vehicle, a Humvee.
On Dec. 14, a federal grand jury charged Wendt and an associate, Robert Williams, with conspiracy to make false statements and defraud ATF. Wendt was also charged with illegal possession of a machine gun.
“Brad Wendt is charged with exploiting his position as chief of police to unlawfully obtain and sell guns for his own personal profit,” FBI agent Eugene Kowel said in a Department of Justice news release.
Wendt “adamantly denies these charges and will plead not guilty,” Nicholas Klinefeldt, Wendt’s attorney, told The Washington Post.
Court records do not list an attorney for Williams, who did not respond to an email seeking comment. The Adair Police Department also did not respond to requests from The Post.
In a statement to KCCI last week, Adair City Attorney Clint Fichter said none of the alleged conduct involved city money or oversight.
Wendt was placed on paid leave after authorities searched his house, office and business in August, the Des Moines Register reported. Klinefeldt said Wendt was reinstated by the Adair City Council shortly afterward, but was placed on paid leave again on Friday. The city’s website, as of Tuesday night, listed him as police chief.
Federal laws generally prohibit the sale, transfer and possession of machine guns manufactured after 1986 — with the exception of those sold to law enforcement agencies for official use. Certain licensed dealers may, with a letter of request from a law enforcement agency, acquire machine guns solely to provide a weapons demonstration to those agencies.
In addition to being Adair’s police chief, prosecutors say, Wendt owns and operates one such business, BW Outfitters, that is licensed to acquire weapons for law enforcement agencies.
In total, Wendt purchased 10 weapons for his police department, attempted to buy 15 more and requested the demonstration of 65 additional firearms from various licensed dealers, the indictment alleges. Thirteen of the weapons requested for demonstration were allegedly obtained by his own gun store. Twenty-seven more were acquired by other licensed dealers, whom prosecutors allege were friends or business associates of Wendt’s, including Williams.
BW Outfitters did not immediately respond to a request for comment. State records still list Wendt as the registered agent of the business.
In July 2021 and February 2022, Wendt allegedly sold four submachine guns purchased in 2020 and 2019 and registered to the Adair Police Department to buyers in Florida and Alabama. For selling the four lightweight, fully automatic guns, Wendt turned a personal profit of almost $75,000, the indictment alleges.
Klinefeldt said Wendt was reselling old Adair police weapons for market price after acquiring newer models for the department.
In January 2021, Wendt signed a demonstration request for a .50-caliber machine gun for “special operations and high-risk prisoner transportation details” — despite Adair police not conducting such operations — that allowed a Las Vegas-based dealer to acquire the machine gun, the indictment alleges.
In April, Wendt is accused of hosting a “machine gun shoot” with Williams in western Iowa, where he allegedly charged patrons to fire weapons registered to or requested for the Adair Police Department. He charged $5 per round of ammunition for patrons to fire the machine gun mounted on his Humvee, according to the indictment.
In February, Wendt posted videos on his Facebook page of someone firing a Humvee-mounted machine gun at two empty cars in a field and a woman at a range firing a submachine gun — one that the indictment alleges is a police-registered firearm — with the caption “come shoot mp7 April 16th,” punctuated with a smiling emoji.
Klinefeldt said Wendt did not profit from the shooting event and charged patrons to recoup the cost of ammunition fired, and that it is legal for gun dealers to use firearms that they acquired through demonstration requests from law enforcement, then retained in their inventory.
Not all of Wendt’s requests were approved. In November 2020 and January 2021, he allegedly sought permission to purchase a minigun, a powerful six-barreled gun typically mounted on military helicopters that fires 3,000 rounds per minute, according to the indictment.
Upon being turned down by a manufacturer, he obtained a quote to have a minigun built from a second manufacturer and, as police chief, requested a demonstration of the gun through BW Outfitters, his own business, writing that the weapon was “suitable for engagements and suppressive fire,” according to the indictment. The second request was rejected by ATF.
If convicted, Wendt faces a maximum term of 10 years in prison, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. He is due in court on Jan. 5. | 2022-12-21T13:42:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iowa police chief charged with fraud in machine gun resale case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/21/iowa-police-chief-machine-guns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/21/iowa-police-chief-machine-guns/ |
Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks on Nov. 19 in Las Vegas. (John Locher/AP)
What limited imaginations the DeSantis legal team seems to have! I find it quite easy to imagine public health officials working from a combination of desperate hope and humanity’s past experience developing vaccines to virtually eliminate many deadly diseases. I also find it easy to imagine that their initial hopes might have been dashed by the emergence of more transmissible covid variants.
But then, I don’t really need to imagine it, since — apparently unlike whoever drafted this document — I was alive in 2020 and 2021 and watched the process in real time. Presumably their extreme youth also explains the poor quality of their research, their out-of-context quotations and … but no, there’s no point in dissecting it further because the purpose of this document isn’t to make an argument. It’s to make DeSantis president by exploiting populist rage about the pandemic.
And so, ironically, DeSantis is ignoring a somewhat plausible covid conspiracy theory, the possibility of a lab leak and a Chinese government cover-up. Instead, he is asking a grand jury to investigate the pharmaceutical companies over which he actually has some jurisdiction (and no matter that they gave us what is still our most potent covid-fighting tool). It is the best — and the worst — metaphor for our era: a triumph of proximity over plausibility, of politics over policy, and of pandering over patriotism. And very possibly it will become the launching pad for America’s next president. | 2022-12-21T13:42:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | In pursuing vaccine makers, DeSantis puts pandering before governing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/desantis-investigation-vaccine-makers-pandering/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/desantis-investigation-vaccine-makers-pandering/ |
Rep. Katko worries CISA will become a 'regulatory behemoth'
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! Cripes, I hope none of our holiday travel plans get wiped out by this inconsiderate storm.
Below: An inside look at what TikTok is offering the U.S. government as part of a potential deal, and prosecutors accuse two men of working with Russian hackers to manipulate the line of taxis at a major U.S. airport. First:
Rep. John Katko talks about what’s done and still undone as his congressional career wraps up
After an eight-year career as one of the leaders on cybersecurity in Congress, the thing Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) is proudest of — helping to build up the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — is the same thing he’s most worried about now that he’s departing Capitol Hill.
The retiring top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee touted the evolution of CISA, an agency responsible for improving the defenses of both government agencies and the private sector, in a sort of exit interview with me this week on his cybersecurity work. The direction CISA goes next is his colleagues’ foremost mission, he said.
“CISA didn’t exist when I started in Congress,” Katko, 60, said about the agency that Congress created within the Department of Homeland Security in 2018 that succeeded another, now-defunct agency. “We helped stand up CISA and we helped make CISA a young but mature agency that is becoming more and more effective by the minute. That’s huge.”
One way Katko did that, he said, was with his legislation setting up CISA’s role in protecting industrial systems common in energy and manufacturing plants, enacted last year.
He also played a role in shaping a law that requires critical infrastructure owners and operators to report to CISA when they suffer a major cyberattack or pay ransomware hackers.
The agency is now at a “philosophical fork in the road,” Katko said. Bipartisanship still rules in Congress on cybersecurity issues, he said, but there’s been an increasing divide between the two parties over how much regulation the federal government should impose.
“As CISA matures as an agency and becomes more firmly established and better funded, whether or not to turn it into a regulatory behemoth or continuing to work the way it’s working very well now, that’s a natural progression of ideas and discussions,” Katko said, preferring a model that is about “bringing industry to the table and building trust.”
In October, Katko released a long-term plan for the agency that he dubbed “CISA 2025,” which includes other priorities like expanding its workforce.
Cyber changes on the Hill
The existence of CISA isn’t the only change Katko has witnessed since his election to the House in 2014. He came to Congress with a background in law enforcement at a time when foreign-inspired domestic violence was a big topic.
“We’ve got a grip on that, to some extent,” Katko said. “I naturally gravitated toward developing expertise in cyber because I had to, because I probably viewed it as one of the top threats to our country. There’s no doubt in my mind now that cyber is the No. 1 threat.”
The scariest threat these days is potential cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, he said, coupled with the growing sophistication of state-sponsored hackers in places like China, as well as criminal gangs who operate with impunity out of Russia. He pointed to cyberattacks before Russia invaded Ukraine that were meant to make it harder for Ukraine to respond to physical attacks, and the potential for Beijing to do the same thing in Taiwan.
Katko also isn’t the only pending personnel move from the Hill. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), who also are retiring, represent other major departures this year among cybersecurity-focused lawmakers who have emphasized bipartisanship.
“Early in his time on this committee, ranking member Katko became a leader and innovator on aviation security, and more recently, he has made his mark on the committee’s cybersecurity work,” House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), said at a hearing last month. “The ranking member and I did not always agree, but we agreed when we could. And when we disagreed, we tried not to be disagreeable about it.”
Katko is not worried about a cyber leadership “brain drain,” he said.
Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.) and Mark Green (R-Tenn.) are the leading potential successors to Katko as incoming chair of the Homeland Security panel. Both are focused on cybersecurity, Katko said.
Others, too, like Cyberspace Solarium Commission co-chair Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), “are ready to pick up the mantle,” Katko said.
Shoring up border security and potentially impeaching DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas are two top priorities for aspiring House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (D-Calif.). But Katko said, “I do think there’ll be room for cyber” for whoever replaces him atop the Homeland Security Committee.
“Look at what the Democrats have done as far as investigations into [former president Donald] Trump, right? Justified or not, they spent an extraordinary amount of time on that,” Katko said. “Now the pendulum swings the other way. We’re going to see a lot of Hunter Biden stuff and a lot of things about the border. And those are righteous areas to investigate, but I think we cannot take our eye off the ball with respect to cyber.”
As for Katko’s future career plans? “I’m definitely ready to see what’s next in life, no doubt about it,” he said. “I really am going to do everything I can to stay involved in cybersecurity issues going forward. I really, truly believe that’s where the fight is that I want to continue to try to make a contribution.”
Congress pushes TikTok limits as company seeks to allay privacy fears
TikTok has agreed to separate decision-making from Chinese parent ByteDance, and it also says it will give U.S. authorities the power to veto appointments on its proposed three-person board and its top executives. U.S. officials would also set hiring standards for TikTok’s U.S. staffers. The details were outlined by four people with knowledge of the discussions between TikTok and the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
TikTok last presented the plan in August, and officials still haven’t approved it, the people said. TikTok has started to outline the blueprint to Biden administration officials, and a CFIUS working group expressed some initial support for it, they said.
Biden administration officials say an agreement isn’t imminent, and that government agencies are still looking into what the best approach would be. TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter called the decision to include a TikTok ban on government devices in the bill a “political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests.” Oberwetter said the company was “disappointed” that Congress made such a move “rather than encouraging the administration to conclude its national security review,” and that TikTok continues to brief lawmakers on its plan.
Prosecutors accuse two U.S. citizens of working with Russian hackers to control airport taxi lines
In an indictment, prosecutors accused the two men — Daniel Abayev and Peter Leyman — of working with hackers in Russia to breach John F. Kennedy International Airport’s taxi dispatch system, allowing drivers to skip taxi lines for $10. The hack enabled as many as 10,000 trips in which drivers jumped to the top of lines, according to the indictment.
Abayev and Leyman transferred more than $100,000 of the profits to the hackers, according to the indictment. The two men were charged with two counts of conspiring to commit computer intrusions.
Interviews with taxi drivers on Tuesday suggested that the system was like an open secret, the New York Times reported. Abayev’s lawyer, Matthew Myers, told the outlet that Abayev would plead not guilty. “A proper investigation must be conducted before anyone jumps to conclusions about the involvement or role Mr. Abayev did or did not play in this international matter,” he said. Leyman’s lawyer, Jacob Kaplan, declined to comment to the outlet.
Two top former Twitter executives — former chief security officer Damien Kieran and former chief information security officer Lea Kissner — have spoken with Federal Trade Commission lawyers about whether Twitter will be able to obey a 2011 consent order with the FTC, Bloomberg News’s Kurt Wagner and Leah Nylen report. The FTC began probing Twitter after former chief cybersecurity officer Peiter “Mudge” Zatko filed a whistleblower complaint this year.
“The probe marks at least the third time the FTC has scrutinized the social media platform over its privacy and data security practices,” Wagner and Nylen write. “The review could lead to millions of dollars in fines and a new FTC order imposing obligations on [Elon] Musk himself that would apply across his companies and remain in effect even if he steps down as chief executive officer or leaves Twitter.”
The man behind Trump World’s myth of rigged voting machines (Reuters)
Nio blackmailed for millions in bitcoin by data-stealing hackers (Bloomberg News)
Facial recognition wielded in India to enforce covid policy (Associated Press)
Give me back my stick.. 😂 pic.twitter.com/8XzfmDctDH | 2022-12-21T13:43:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rep. Katko worries CISA will become a 'regulatory behemoth' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/rep-katko-worries-cisa-will-become-regulatory-behemoth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/rep-katko-worries-cisa-will-become-regulatory-behemoth/ |
Rules for major NYC climate law turn heads among developers, environmentalists
Analysis by Vanessa Montalbano
with research by Maxine Joselow
Good morning! Vanessa, the Climate 202 researcher, wrote the top of today’s newsletter. Today we’re preparing for the wintry weather that is expected across much of the nation this week. But first:
The New York City Buildings Department on Tuesday released the first set of final rules for a landmark climate law passed in 2019 that aims to significantly slash emissions from buildings that are larger than 25,000 square feet — the city’s biggest source of planet-warming pollution.
“Getting implementation of this law right is critical to the future of our City, which is why the Adams Administration is committed to a smart and carefully considered approach to this game-changing sustainability policy,” acting New York City Buildings Commissioner Kazimir Vilenchik said in a statement, referring to Mayor Eric Adams (D).
The finalized guidelines for Local Law 97 come after three years of uncertainty among property owners over how to comply with the law’s ambitious targets, which begin in 2024 for about 20 percent of buildings. The rules are meant to help determine each individual building’s yearly emissions allowance and energy use. By 2030, the regulations become much more stringent, with an expected 40 percent drop in buildings’ emissions citywide.
In October, the city agency released a draft version of the rules, immediately sparking criticism from environmentalists, who said the proposals risked weakening the intent behind the law, and real estate developers, who argue the rule is not specific enough.
But the final rules remain substantially unchanged from the original draft. The agency said it will be publishing more rules in the new year to address many of the concerns brought up during the public comment period and to further clarify what efficiency standards buildings will need to meet by 2024.
Already, the Real Estate Board of New York, or REBNY, has warned that about 13,500 commercial buildings are on track to miss strict 2030 compliance deadlines if energy consumption remains the same and if owners don’t purchase offsets, which is meant to compensate for on-site pollution via investments in land restoration or carbon storage elsewhere but is largely criticized by climate advocates as being ineffective.
Zachary Steinberg, REBNY’s senior vice president of policy, said that his company has been advocating throughout the rulemaking process for tools to help owners comply. He said there are two main concerns:
“What is the pace at which we’re demanding the reductions?”
“How does it reflect the economic activity that’s going on in those buildings?”
If building owners miss the deadlines, they could face a fine of $268 for each ton of emissions above the established limit, according to the city agency. However, Laura Popa, deputy commissioner for sustainability, told the Climate 202 that the agency is working on updated rules to address how the penalties will be assessed, “including consideration of mitigating factors like what constitutes a building owner’s ‘good faith efforts’ towards compliance.”
RECs on RECs on RECs
When the law was first approved, under Mayor Bill DeBlasio (D), an advisory board was created through the agency’s Bureau of Sustainability to help guide it and the mayor’s office on how to best reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve performance requirements under the law.
But now Pete Sikora, a member of the board and the climate and inequality campaigns director for New York Communities for Change, said it is unclear whether the current mayor, who did not appoint the people sitting on that board, will follow their suggestions.
“The question for the mayor is, is he going to side with working people to create jobs and cut pollution and fully implement the force of the world’s most important local level climate and jobs law, or is he going to side with the real estate lobby?” Sikora said.
He added his main issue involves relaxed rules around the “unlimited” use of renewable energy credits, or RECs, that the new rules say can be bought to offset the pollution caused by electricity use, as opposed to fossil fuels.
“If that’s the only limit, then the majority of office buildings don't have to do anything at all through 2035. Literally nothing, but buy RECs,” Sikora said, adding that “that means the pollution would not actually be reduced, you just buy a REC.”
But, the agency said that those RECs are written directly into the law, so it can’t simply do away with them. Sikora and other environmentalists are proposing stricter limits on their use in the next set of rules to prevent wealthy property owners from “buying their way out of cutting their pollution,” he said.
Meanwhile, Steinberg said the RECs are critical to getting buildings on track for the more rigorous standards that will be enforced by the end of the decade. For one, he said, the construction needed to make most of those upgrades is very invasive and time consuming, especially at occupied buildings.
Plus, he said RECs are especially important right now while New York City still has a carbon intensive electricity grid, making it almost impossible for building owners to achieve 2024 targets without using them.
Once a reliable clean power market is established in New York, then Steinberg said the city should consider further limiting the RECs. Otherwise, the agency would just be holding owners accountable for what they can’t control, he added.
“We’re not sitting here saying there shouldn’t be climate regulations and we shouldn’t advance these goals of building decarbonization,” Steinberg said. “It’s about how are we going to do that and how do we do it in a cost-effective, rational way.”
Postal Service will electrify truck fleet by 2026 in climate win for Biden
The U.S. Postal Service will buy 66,000 new electric delivery trucks to build the biggest electric fleet on America’s roadways, marking a major achievement for a White House climate agenda that leans heavily on cutting emissions from vehicles, The Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage scooped on Tuesday.
The agency’s plans call for purchasing 60,000 delivery trucks from defense contractor Oshkosh, of which 45,000 will be electric. The Postal Service will also purchase 46,000 models from mainstream automakers, of which 21,000 will be electric.
President Biden has ordered the federal government to buy only zero-emissions vehicles by 2035. With more than 217,000 vehicles, the Postal Service has the biggest share of the government’s civilian fleet. The agency will spend $9.6 billion on the vehicles and charging infrastructure, officials said, including $3 billion from the landmark climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act.
Last year, the Postal Service initially intended to make only 10 percent of its fleet electric. But John Podesta, White House senior adviser for clean energy innovation, said he told Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that “the original plans were completely inadequate,” adding that DeJoy was open to discussing and revising the agency’s plans.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday unveiled a final rule aimed at curbing harmful tailpipe pollution from new trucks, delivery vans and buses, although the regulation does not go as far as many advocates had hoped, The Post’s Anna Phillips reports.
The Climate 202 scooped last week that the rule is not as stringent as California’s pollution standards for trucks, which many activists have hailed as a model for federal policy. Still, EPA Administrator Michael Regan told The Post that the regulation represents a “very aggressive action to protect the health of 72 million Americans and people living in these truck freight routes.”
Regan said the rule is the first step of a three-part plan to slash pollution and planet-warming emissions from trucks and buses. In the spring, the administration plans to release a separate set of greenhouse gas standards for heavy-duty vehicles.
However, in a setback for California’s ability to set tailpipe pollution limits that are tougher than federal standards, the EPA also announced Tuesday that it would not decide until next year whether to issue the state a waiver under the Clean Air Act to enforce its own policies.
Spending deal includes climate-friendly agriculture bill
The government funding bill released Tuesday includes a bipartisan measure that seeks to help farmers sequester carbon on their land and verify the resulting emissions reductions, Marc Heller reports for E&E News.
The Growing Climate Solutions Act was introduced in April 2021 by Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and other lawmakers. The measure passed the Senate last year by a 92-8 vote but stalled in the House amid opposition from Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), the incoming chair of the House Agriculture Committee, as well as Democrats who wanted bolder climate policies.
The version of the bill that was included in the omnibus would create a registry of vendors who could help farmers measure the carbon reductions from conservation practices. But it would not require the Agriculture Department to certify these vendors as the original bills proposed.
The modified language reflects a compromise with Thompson, who sought to ensure that farmers would benefit financially from selling carbon credits, according to House Republican aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private negotiations.
Ben Pendergrass, vice president of government affairs at Citizens Climate Lobby, a group that advocates for carbon pricing, told The Climate 202 that the measure will boost the credibility of carbon offset programs by getting the government involved.
“Right now, it’s kind of like the Wild West,” Pendergrass said. “This will put some guardrails around carbon markets, giving people who are buying these credits more assurance that what they’re buying is actually sequestering carbon.”
Cutthroat competition and state support power China’s electric car revolution — Christian Shepherd and Lyric Li for The Post
3M will cut off dangerous ‘forever chemicals’ — Allyson Chiu for The Post
Congress poised to torpedo Biden’s climate finance commitment — Jennifer A. Dlouhy for Bloomberg News
A ravaged Quebec coast fights climate change by retreating — Calvin Woodward, Lynn Berry, Christina Larson and Carolyn Kaster for the Associated Press | 2022-12-21T13:43:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rules for major NYC climate law turn heads among developers, environmentalists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/rules-major-nyc-climate-law-turn-heads-among-developers-environmentalists/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/rules-major-nyc-climate-law-turn-heads-among-developers-environmentalists/ |
Ski resort insiders share their stories of private ski lifts, helicopter rides and six-figure lunches
(Kaitlin Brito for The Washington Post)
The distance from Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport to the Yellowstone Club, where billionaires ski and golf across 15,200 exclusive acres, is about 50 miles. For most people, that’s an hour’s drive through a windy Montana canyon. But if you’re a member — along with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg — it can be a much quicker jaunt.
Instead of getting to Bozeman on a commercial flight and grabbing an Uber at the airport, they arrive by jet and hop on a helicopter “so that it’s only a 10-minute ride to the club instead,” said Adamo Vullo, a former Yellowstone Club employee turned caretaking manager for Outpost, a luxury property management company in Jackson, Wyo.
Opulent? Yes. Out of the ordinary? Not so much. Vullo said it was common for guests to arrive at the club in such fashion — or shell out thousands to helicopter to lunch.
Such is life for the ultrawealthy who frequent luxury ski destinations — and not just private clubs. You can still find the type of travelers who belong on “The White Lotus” on mountains that are technically accessible to the everyman, including Aspen, Jackson Hole and the Alps.
Despite the price of lift tickets, ski gear and luxury accommodations for the group, “the biggest cost of those kinds of trip is to fly,” said Leona Qi, VistaJet’s U.S. president.
The company’s hourly rate ranges from $12,000 to $25,000, and it may take 100 hours to get multiple planes in place to pick up family members in different locations, then fly them to each place and back home — a line item totaling beyond $1 million.
The more ski industry people you talk to, the more you’ll hear about wealthy families rolling into ski towns, spending tens of thousands of dollars on brand-new clothes and equipment and leaving it all behind when they’re done.
Some of the world’s wealthiest travelers still rent their gear, but you won’t find them at the local outfitter. That’s where on-demand rental services like Ski Butlers come in.
“We go to their accommodations, whether it’s a vacation rental, a hotel, and fit them in the comfort of their living room by the fire,” says Mike Cremeno, the chief revenue officer at Ski Butlers.
Once a customer is done skiing or snowboarding for the day — or they merely want to swap their skis for a different pair — a Ski Butlers employee will find them whether they’re at the bottom of a chairlift or the middle of an aprés party. Cremeno has had clients request new equipment 15 times during their five-day booking.
“It’s part of the service,” Cremeno said. “Some people are very picky and really want to dabble in everything that we carry — and we will facilitate that.”
Beyond gear requests, Ski Butlers also handles one-off errands for clients, like the time a woman in Park City was worried her group’s ski passes hadn’t arrived yet. Instead of waiting to see if her Epic Passes came through in time for their ski morning, Cremeno went to the resort and dropped nearly $10,000 for 13 duplicate passes.
Of all the luxuries the ultrawealthy enjoy, skiing untouched snow is what Cremeno finds most enviable. Paying for “first tracks,” or early access to a ski resort, is a common but expensive experience that’s “worth every single penny,” Cremeno said. “You can get a half-hour to an hour of skiing with you and your 10 buddies and there is no one else on the mountain.”
Many resorts offer reservations for first tracks, but sometimes that’s not enough. Before he joined the new Six Senses Crans-Montana as general manager, Christian Gurtner worked at other ski resorts around the world where the staff would close some ski lifts to the public for guests to ski privately, or opened them at night for after-hours shredding.
“We have operated ski lifts at the time zones of the guests so they can ski on their home time zone,” Gurtner said.
If resort snow won’t do, there’s heli-skiing to fresh powder.
“We have a helipad about 300 yards away from the hotel,” said Bryan Woody, general manager at Madeline Hotel & Residences in Telluride, Colo. “The more experienced skiers will generally go out with a professional in a helicopter to ski the backcountry.”
Michael Friedman, COO of the luxury vacation rental company Onefinestay, arranges those services in Aspen. The package costs $19,000 to $27,000 for groups of one to four.
And for a truly off-the-grid experience, Manabu Ainai, director of Hoshino Resorts’s properties in Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan, says they’ve taken clients to ski in places you can’t find on Google Maps.
For the 1 percent, a ski instructor isn’t someone you see once a season for an afternoon crash course. Some tutors collect more than $1,000 a day to work with a single client for weeks at a time.
“I might just be one-on-one for 40 days with a person,” said James P. Ruddy — a former elite ski instructor who worked at the Yellowstone Club for 16 years, as well as other premier resorts like Park City’s luxury Deer Valley Resort. “You truly become part of their family. You’re an integral part of someone’s vacation.”
“They’ll pay $1,300 dollars a day, plus the tip, just so they don’t have to wait in the lift line.”
A big trend in the industry is setting up private sessions with Olympic skiers. At Onefinestay, Friedman says they get a lot of requests from clients who want to work with Olympians at a rate of $2,800 per person, for a full day, or $1,700 for a half day.
Some travelers hire professionals to share the special privileges resorts give to instructors, not their expertise.
“They’ll pay $1,300 dollars a day, plus the tip, just so they don’t have to wait in the lift line,” said Berkely Tolman, who has worked for 16 years at the ski-in, ski-out Stein Eriksen Lodge, a section of Utah’s Deer Valley resort where nightly rates average $2,000 most of the winter.
Skipping the line may seem valuable at a huge ski resort where lifts may have 30-minute waits, but Deer Valley doesn’t allow a ton of skiers at a time.
“At the busiest times, I’ve never once in my life waited more than maybe 10 minutes to get on a chairlift,” Tolman said.
It can be a hassle to interrupt precious travel memories by taking your own photo, and even more so when you’re trying to ski down a mountain. But the ultrawealthy have a solution.
“A lot of people like to have a photographer and a videographer with them to capture the moment,” said Naomi Mano, president and CEO of the Tokyo-based luxury travel company Luxurique Inc. “They don’t want to be the ones holding a selfie stick; they want somebody to photograph every moment of their experience.”
Mano said these professionals have filled a job that used to be left to butlers, nannies and other helpers. Many task Luxurique with hiring people to document their entire trip, which can cost more than $1,000 a day per photographer. After the vacation, it’ll cost another couple thousand to put together a photo book.
“It’s for those people who wouldn’t hesitate to put an extra twenty, thirty thousand dollars on their trip,” Mano said.
Patrick Davila, general manager of Aspen’s Hotel Jerome, remembers a couple who requested a staff member follow them around on a snowmobile to carry their champagne. Alexandra Vesin, general manager at Aman Le Mélézin in Courchevel, France, says the property has arranged a marriage proposal in a hot-air balloon over the Alps.
Tolman’s most memorable request came from a Stein Eriksen regular who wanted to have Deer Valley blow pink snow out of snowmakers while he and his wife took a nighttime chairlift ride for a mountaintop dinner and private evening ski session.
Unfortunately for the guest, “there are just so many reasons this wouldn’t work,” Tolman said. For starters “the water for the snow-making comes from a pond.”
It’s no fad for the rich to spoil their lovers at high altitude. Marijana Jakic, brand manager for the iconic Swiss ski resort town St. Moritz, says decades ago a guest of Badrutt’s Palace hotel (where Alfred Hitchcock spent his honeymoon) had staff bring in a live elephant as a birthday gift for his wife.
$100,000 to redecorate a hotel room
Brian Pentek, owner of LuxeLife Travel, says there’s a massive difference between the displays of wealth in the United States and Europe. While there’s a ton of money in Aspen, it doesn’t hold a candle to what he coordinates in the Alps. “It’s easy to see lunch bills top [100,000],, 200,000 euros,” Pentek said.
Pentek once had an ultrahigh net-worth client staying in a European ski town for a few weeks. She loved the hotel, but she didn’t love her room, “so she had her designer go over, and they redecorated the room to be a little more like her home,” Pentek said, estimating the request cost to be more than $100,000.
Back in 2004, you could still find celebrities and royalty checking out gear in places like the Four Seasons Resort in Jackson Hole — which opened that year. That opening season, Matt Wolfe, now a real estate adviser for Engel & Volkers Salt Lake City, says he was working in the Wyoming resort’s ski shop when he was asked to wax custom skis for Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud.
“The men in the entourage wouldn’t wear our maroon ski boots because they thought that color was feminine or something,” Wolfe said of the prince’s traveling party. “We actually ended up putting them in women’s boots because they were black.”
For the richest skiers, preferences vary when it comes to accommodations. Some want fully staffed mountain mansions, like the $30,000-a-night chalet that the luxury travel company Remote Lands books for clients in Niseko, Japan’s premier ski resort.
“It’s just massive and it has everything you can possibly imagine in it,” Remote Lands CEO Catherine Heald said.
Other people prefer to book an entire resort. Nadine Paulo of Travel Edge buys out the whole Sheldon Chalet in remote Alaska for clients willing to pay between $35,000 and $40,000 for the week.
“We have several billionaires who own here,” Tolman said of Stein Eriksen, where all rooms are individually owned.
Some skiers stay at their rooms all season; some rent them out part of the time. Tolman knows of one owner who bought the property without seeing it, remodeled it and has still never been.
“Just probably had to park $5 million somewhere,” he said.
No one’s too big for a condo
At the Yellowstone Club — where some property sells for more than $1 million an acre — Vullo says members are willing to spend exorbitant amounts for townhouses and condos with easy access to resort amenities and ski runs instead of bigger, stand-alone homes on ranches.
He was fascinated by his clients, two brothers, who bought a pair of three-bedroom condos next to each other despite their penchant for hosting big groups. “You see friends and family sleeping on the couch of your $12 million condo when you could have had a badass ski house somewhere else, but people pay that for being in there,” Vullo said.
“We get a lot of country music artists in [Steamboat Springs, Colo.] and they love staying in condos,” Friedman said. “It’s close to the lift, they can walk to the lift. They just don’t want big homes.” | 2022-12-21T13:43:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How the rich take luxury ski trips, according mountain resort insiders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/12/21/luxury-ski-travel-yellowstone-club/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/12/21/luxury-ski-travel-yellowstone-club/ |
Ukrainians are choosing an unusual date for Christmas: Dec. 25
By Christian Caryl
Op-ed Editor/International
A woman sings a carol in front of a Christmas tree in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Wednesday. (Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)
Ukrainians are about to celebrate Christmas for the first time since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24. But which Christmas, exactly?
Earlier this year, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine (OCU), which represents tens of millions of worshipers, announced that member churches would be free to celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25, the same as Western Catholics and Protestants.
That would place many of Ukraine’s Orthodox faithful at odds with the practice of other members of Eastern Orthodoxy who celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7 (according to the old Julian calendar). But that is precisely the point.
“Many Ukrainians are now moving toward celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25. And that’s only natural, because it’s part of our European choice,” Serhiy Prytula, a Ukrainian philanthropist and TV personality, told me. “We were always part of Europe before Soviet rule, so it’s obvious and logical that people in Ukraine are ready and willing to celebrate Christmas together with the European family of nations to which we historically belong.” A recent poll shows that the number of Ukrainians willing to adopt the Western date has risen from 26 percent to 44 percent over the past year.
For Prytula and others, Jan. 7 symbolizes a version of Orthodoxy they would rather leave behind — the kind represented by the Russian Orthodox Church, the pet denomination of Vladimir Putin, that self-appointed scourge of Ukrainian national identity.
Over the years, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Moscow-based church, has developed a symbiotic relationship with the Russian president. Putin showers the church with money and favors and holds it up as the ideological core of the “Russian world,” his vision of an imperial culture uniting Russian-speakers across national borders. In return, Kirill gives Putin a valuable sheen of legitimacy — never more visibly than during the current war. The minions of the Moscow Patriarchy have justified the invasion by describing Ukraine as the “Antichrist,” the embodiment of demonic opposition to Putin’s rule. Meanwhile, members of the Russian officer corps have taken to calling the invasion a “holy war.”
Ukraine’s Orthodox churches, which together claim the allegiance of some 80 percent of the country’s 43 million people, are no longer willing to let Kirill call the shots. The OCU, which issued the finding on Christmas, has long steered an independent course. But the rival Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which accounts for the largest share of the country’s Orthodox believers, has gone from acknowledging Moscow’s supremacy just a few years ago to breaking off all ties in May. (That hasn’t spared it from coming under scrutiny from Kyiv’s security services, which worry that the church might be acting as a fifth column.)
And yes — religious politics in Ukraine can be mind-bendingly complex. Alfons Bruening, a scholar of Eastern European Christianity at Radboud University in the Netherlands, says that the country’s religious diversity means that East-West distinctions are sometimes blurred. “Quite a few in Ukraine celebrate Christmas twice,” he writes in an email. “It is a matter of pragmatism quite typical for Ukraine, as a multi-religious country.”
Yet it is striking that Russian propagandists choose to depict this diversity as a vice, mocking Kyiv’s army as a collection of "fighters against Orthodoxy” whose leaders include (horrors!) “Protestants, Uniates [Greek Catholics] and atheists.” The same writer denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s offer of a truce around Dec. 25 “because the leadership of the Russian army is Orthodox and for them Christmas is Jan. 7.”
Ukrainians respond with a shrug of contempt. “My family made the shift [to Western Christmas] 10 years ago,” says political consultant Yevhen Hlibovytsky. “And many other friends have since. This is the year when many, many others will follow.”
The embrace of Dec. 25 mirrors a larger cultural, political and economic reorientation. In 2013, tens of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets to protest then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to scrap an economic cooperation agreement with the European Union. Yanukovych’s subsequent downfall prompted Putin to seize Crimea and send Russian troops into eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Since then, however, the Kremlin’s aggressiveness has only accelerated Ukrainians’ determination to reject everything it stands for. Close economic and political ties with Europe are now taken for granted. Once ardently pro-Russian politicians have morphed into Ukrainian patriots. And Ukraine’s once-tentative military cooperation with the West has attained a scale unimaginable just 12 months ago.
The war has also driven nearly 8 million Ukrainians to seek refuge in places across the European Union and beyond, which is likely to further cement pro-Western sentiment.
So pay attention as Ukrainians gear up for the holidays amid the cold, the darkness, the death and the suffering imposed on by them by Putin’s regime. This year, Christmas won’t be a routine holiday. It will give Ukrainians one more occasion to make an emphatic statement about who they are — and their determination to survive as a nation.
The latest: President Zelensky is expected to meet Wednesday with President Biden at the White House and with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The trip to Washington will be his first public international appearance since the invasion. Biden is also planning to unveil a new $2 billion package of weapons that includes the Patriot missile system. | 2022-12-21T14:21:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Some Ukrainians are choosing an unusual date for Christmas: Dec. 25 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/22/ukraine-western-christmas-orthodox-church-russia-putin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/22/ukraine-western-christmas-orthodox-church-russia-putin/ |
Benin bronzes that were returned to Nigeria on Tuesday. (Olamikan Gbemiga/AP)
Germany returned 20 Nigerian sculptures looted by British troops 125 years ago, taking the first step in fulfilling an agreement to return all of the Benin bronzes held by its museums.
Most of the objects were looted by British troops in what was then known as the Kingdom of Benin, in the south of present-day Nigeria, during an expedition in 1897, according to the German government.
“Today we’re taking a step that was long overdue: We’re returning 20 #BeninBronzes to their homeland Nigeria,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock tweeted on Sunday, ahead of the Tuesday transfer. She had traveled to Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, for the handing over of the first batch of artworks from five collections.
“It won’t heal all the wounds of the past. But we’re showing that we are serious about coming to terms with our dark colonial history,” she added.
The Benin bronzes date back to the 16th century onward and include brass and bronze sculptures, as well as objects made of ivory and other materials.
In July, Germany signed a deal with Nigeria to return the estimated 1,100 bronzes held in its museums, which are among more than 5,000 pieces believed to have been stolen during the British campaign.
“Officials from my country once bought the bronzes, although they knew that they had been stolen and looted. Afterward, we ignored Nigeria’s request for them to be returned for a very long time,” Baerbock said in a speech Tuesday. “It was wrong to take them. But it was also wrong to keep them.”
Nigeria’s information and culture minister, Lai Mohammed, thanked Germany for the move, saying in his address: “Twenty years ago, even 10 years ago, nobody could have anticipated these bronzes returning to Nigeria, because the obstacles to achieving repatriation were seemingly insurmountable. But today, with the pioneering gesture of a friendly nation, Germany, the story has changed.”
Some of the artifacts will remain on loan to German museums, Baerbock said.
Mohammed called on other countries and institutions to follow Germany’s example, specifically mentioning London’s British Museum, which holds more than 900 objects from the Kingdom of Benin.
“The British Museum and all those holding on to our artifacts must understand that repatriation is a cause which time has come,” he said, noting that the institution has yet to respond to an official Nigerian request from last year to return the antiquities. “They must also understand that many of these cultural objects are not mere art to us but the true essence of our being.”
In a statement to The Washington Post, a spokesperson said the British Museum “understands and recognises the significance of the issues surrounding the return of objects,” and that it “remains committed to thorough and open investigation of Benin collection histories.” It added it is working with the Nigerian government, among other groups.
Other Western museums have taken steps to transfer bronzes in their collections.
In August, the Horniman Museum and Gardens in London agreed to return 72 items, including Benin bronzes, while the Smithsonian transferred the ownership of 29 bronzes to representatives of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments in October.
Germany has its own colonial legacy to reckon with. Last year, officials acknowledged for the first time that their country committed genocide during its occupation of what is now Namibia, in southwest Africa. The admission came more than a century after the crimes took place and followed more than five years of negotiations between the two nations.
However, Germany refused to pay direct reparations and instead pledged more than $1 billion in development projects in communities inhabited by the victims’ descendants.
Germany acknowledges colonial genocide in Namibia and promises development projects | 2022-12-21T14:47:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Germany returns Benin bronzes to Nigeria, looted by British - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/21/germany-nigeria-benin-bronzes-return/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/21/germany-nigeria-benin-bronzes-return/ |
Martha and James Matlock stand near tornado damage in Keithville, La. (Henrietta Wildsmith for The Washington Post )
Martha Matlock was checking on a cake in her Keithville, La., home last Tuesday afternoon when the strong, loud whoosh of a storm reverberated across her roof, rattling her mobile home. She jerked up, terrified, and quickly thought about her tenants on the next street over — a mother and son. She sprinted to her landline to call them, knowing her cellphone would be useless — because it always is where she lives.
“I couldn’t get her. It just kept ringing and ringing,” Matlock said of her tenant, Yoshiko Smith, who was home with her 8-year-old. Matlock said she tried the sheriff’s office, which hung up because her connection was so poor, Smith’s husband on his cell and the sheriff’s office again and again. “I couldn’t get through because our home phone and cell service wouldn’t go through.”
The whoosh turned out to be a powerful tornado, one of many that ripped through the South last week, ravaging communities like rural, woodsy Keithville in Caddo Parish. Matlock, a retired 69-year-old, said she and her husband did not get any emergency alerts on their cellphones and “had absolutely no clue that it was coming.”
Matlock’s frantic attempts to reach her tenants and authorities during the violent storm and her lack of alerts underscore the dangers that people in neighborhoods with little to no cellphone service face as severe storms approach, especially in rural areas. The lack of connectivity has become particularly risky as climate change has made weather more volatile. The National Weather Service has already sent out 62 cellphone emergency alerts to Louisiana residents about tornadoes this year — the highest number in a decade, compared with 10 at this time last year.
While America’s digital divide has been improving, large chunks of the country, especially rural and tribal lands, are still lagging behind in connection, according to research and experts, and that significantly hampers their access to vital, potentially lifesaving information. Without cell towers, urgent emergency alerts can’t get to phones and it is more difficult for residents to warn one another of danger or contact authorities.
About 25 million homes and small businesses nationwide are unserved or underserved, according to CostQuest, a broadband consulting firm that is working with the government on a new access map. Other experts say that number is probably much higher since it’s difficult to track exactly how many Americans have inadequate service. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated connectivity problems in more densely populated neighborhoods with lower incomes, with more demand for data greatly overloading already aged infrastructure and poor service. It also led to more people moving to and working from home in areas where carriers have not upgraded or invested in for a long time, experts said.
“This is a widespread issue across the U.S.,” said Rob Dale, a public alert and warning expert and the deputy emergency manager for Ingham County, Mich. “These areas, where cellphone coverage isn’t there or reliable, tend to be left out of our easiest, most reliable alert system. Emergency managers have no way of enhancing what is not there.”
In an emergency, the access to and flow of information is paramount. Ample research has found that a “lack of available crisis information or poorly managed information flow” can lead to its own crisis. In 2017, when historic disasters bore down on the United States, the Wireless Infrastructure Association pointed out in a report that “the reality is that lack of robust infrastructure can lead to a significant disparity of available emergency services for rural residents.”
Not receiving emergency alerts has been a problem in other past disasters. In August, some northern California residents said they never got a notice that they were in the direct path of a massive wildfire, despite having signed up for them. Some survivors of the historic 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., said they did not get alerts as the fire raced toward the town.
The federal government has been improving tools and expanding funds to try to get emergency messaging to more people. State, local, and tribal officials and authorities can use Wireless Emergency Alerts, known as WEAs, to buzz phones about dangerous weather, missing children and other potentially life-threatening situations. Officials can target a specific area and send a message to any mobile phone, if the carrier agrees to be part of the system, even if service is throttled. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and Federal Communications Commission made upgrades to the system in 2019, allowing messages to be longer and sent in Spanish, fall into more specific categories, be better geo-targeted and include links.
“WEA is the easiest, most reliable system we have,” Dale said. “People don’t have to sign up for it, you don’t need an app. Even with issues, we can still get 90 percent of phones, and there’s nothing else that gets that kind of reliability for us.”
However, these warnings are essentially useless if the impacted area does not have the adequate cellphone tower infrastructure to disseminate them, like Keithville, Dale and other officials said. And since this system is voluntary, emergency managers don’t have a lot of power when it comes to fixing cell-dead zones. When people do not receive alerts, Dale said he and others share that information with carriers and “hope they move with it.”
The tornado in Keithville obliterated Smith’s trailer, killing her and her son, Nikolus Little. Her husband, Jamie Little, had to show officers where their mobile home once stood in the Pecan Farms neighborhood, Matlock said. The widespread damage was shocking, but Matlock and others said they were not surprised they did not receive alerts about the developing storm and could not get in touch with authorities and people when they absolutely needed to.
Cell service in the town about 20 minutes south of Shreveport is consistently shoddy, and Pecan Farms is notorious for being a dead zone, residents said. In 2017, one man started a GoFundMe to try to get expensive tornado sirens for Keithville, because of the “spotty cellular and data coverage,” but he had no luck. A tornado damaged his home the next month.
To use her cellphone, Matlock says she has to walk out to a certain spot in the middle of her yard or down the street, or wait until she gets into town. Matlock said she has spent years begging national carriers to upgrade and bolster infrastructure. Since 2015, she says she has been fighting with AT&T — a battle that, she said, became more urgent last year when a neighbor was having a heart attack and the Matlocks couldn’t get an emergency call through.
“Corporate said, ‘No, it’s too expensive,’” she said. “Now we have lost lives.”
AT&T did not respond to questions about Matlock’s complaints. The company said that since 2019, it has placed nearly 60 new small cells in Caddo Parish and a macro cell in Keithville. A spokesperson advised customers who are experiencing service interruptions to call the helpline.
The FCC said it was “looking into any potential issues with the tornado alerts recently sent to Caddo Parish.” Verizon did not respond to questions sent by The Washington Post.
A spokesperson with Louisiana’s Public Service Commission said it often gets complaints about poor service and “throughout most of the state there are dead spots because cellphone companies don’t want to spend the capital since there aren’t a lot of folks out there.”
Robert Jump, the Caddo Parish director of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said in an interview that after surveying the tornado devastation, he had to drive about 20 minutes before he could get anyone on the phone.
Like all emergency managers, Jump says his office uses several layers and methods to warn people about threats, including radios and door-knocking, which are key in rural areas. But not having the access to and reliability of cellphone infrastructure is “a challenge.” And Matlock and other residents in Keithville said not only did no one knock on their door, they didn’t know a tornado was coming toward them.
“Our connectivity needs to be updated,” Jump said. “The notifications were there, but if you don’t have cellphone coverage and you signed up for alerts, you would not have gotten them.”
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) brought up the issue at a news conference last Thursday in New Iberia, where an EF2 tornado with up to 135 mph winds injured at least five people, overturned mobile homes and ripped the roof off a hospital. Residents in this community received multiple tornado warnings from the National Weather Service, the main agency responsible for sending out wireless emergency alerts, buzzing their cellphones and instructing them to take cover. But about 3½ hours away, he said, parts of Caddo Parish did not.
“Unfortunately,” Edwards said, “it was in a rural area where cellphone coverage is so poor that warning wasn’t available for people yesterday. And it may or may not have made a difference. The point I’m trying to make is: Cellphones are not just a matter of convenience for communications, they’re actually public safety instruments, as well.”
The afternoon of the storm, Matlock said she couldn’t reach Jamie Little by phone as he drove to work. Around 6 p.m., Little showed up on the back of a sheriff’s four wheeler, asking if she’d seen his wife. It took authorities hours to comb through the downed trees and debris. They found Nikolus’s body shortly before 11 p.m. and that of his mother a half-mile away at 3:30 a.m.
Yoshiko was the “love of his life,” Little, who declined a request for an interview, wrote on a GoFundMe. His 8-year-old “was bright and charming.”
“His death truly put a scar on my heart that won’t be healed,” the father wrote.
Bolstering service
It’s a tough sell to get private companies to spend the time and money to build towers in rural areas, according to reports and experts. The federal government has launched several initiatives to help improve access to reliable service and spur investment. They include working with AT&T to create and expand the First Responder Network Authority, which recently added sites in West Virginia. In 2020, the FCC created the 5G Fund for Rural America, a $9 billion program aimed at bringing the broadband service to underserved areas. President Biden’s recent Infrastructure Act is also helping bolster other connectivity programs for residents with lower incomes.
Because millions of households may have difficulty getting an emergency message, officials often rely on a patchwork of federal, public, private, and media systems and methods to disseminate information. But there is no perfect strategy, and there are often holes. In 2020, Caddo Parish switched to a new alerting platform called Everbridge, which enables officials to send messages to residents using landlines, cellphones, emails and other methods. The catch, though, is that people have to sign up for it. On average, Dale said, only about 30 percent of residents sign up for these types of services.
When asked whether she signed up for Everbridge, Matlock said she didn’t know what it was, thinking it was a social network.
“I’ve never been on any kind of social media ever. No Facebook, nothing,” she said.
That’s where the national WEA system comes in: Emergency officials can get information to an at-risk area no matter what. But some communities are not aware they have access to it. Jump said he recently learned from a fellow emergency management peer that his department could use FEMA’s online wireless alerting tool called the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System. IPAWS exists so that the president can alert the public about a critical national security threat, but federal, state, territorial, tribal and local authorities can also tap into this national wireless emergency alert system to send warnings to their specific jurisdictions.
“I thought it was just a federal tool, not for local entities,” he said. “Then I learned that all I have to do is submit an application and to through training and they will let me be certified.”
When the cold front that spawned the tornadoes approached Louisiana, Jump said he was in the middle of the IPAWS certification process. Once he gets through that, he said, he and his team will be able to ping phones about dangerous events, like floods — if they have the service.
Living surrounded by tall trees right outside Keithville’s city limits, Jess Adams has gotten used to her coverage having a mind of its own. If a storm’s coming, the 24-year-old mother of three can count on her phone cutting out. Sometimes her WiFi works, “sometimes it doesn’t,” she shrugged. And the further into her community you go, the worse it gets.
Like Matlock, who lives about eight miles away, Adams said she had no idea that the tornado was coming. She found out about the looming danger when her daughter’s school called informing families that they were sending children home early because of it. Shocked, she looked up the impending storm on a radar app.
When her children got home, the family walked out on their front porch and saw a dark funnel twirling above the trees. In the whirl, they thought they spotted a cat but realized it “was actually the attic insulation and shingles from someone’s house.”
It was a terrifying and mesmerizing image, she said.
But she didn’t even bother pulling out her phone. She knew she wouldn’t have service. | 2022-12-21T15:13:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A dangerous side of America’s digital divide: Who receives emergency severe weather alerts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/21/weather-alerts-storms-disasters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/21/weather-alerts-storms-disasters/ |
Judge dismisses case against son accused of killing 82-year-old dad
Talat Hassanein and Samy Hassanein at a Ramadan dinner in May 2020. (Adel Hassanein)
A Fairfax County judge on Tuesday dismissed the second-degree murder charge against a man who had been accused of fatally assaulting his 82-year-old father, ruling that investigators had not gathered adequate probable cause to move the case forward.
After a hearing in Fairfax County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court, Judge Jonathan D. Frieden threw out the case against 36-year-old Samy Hassanein, who had been arrested and charged in connection with the death of his father, Talat Hassanein, in late September.
“The evidence fails to meet the burden required for this hearing,” the judge said.
Sherif Hassanein, one of Samy Hassanein’s brothers who had previously expressed skepticism over the murder allegation, said after the hearing that he was happy his brother would be released from custody. He noted, though, that Samy Hassanein had significant mental health struggles, which authorities had not addressed.
“Most of the weight just came off my shoulders,” he said.
A son was charged with murdering his father. His brothers have doubts.
Police had previously alleged that Samy Hassanein fatally assaulted his father, whose body was found at the bottom of a basement staircase in the Rose Hill-area home where both men lived.
Terry Leach, a crime scene technician with the major crimes unit of the Fairfax County Police Department, testified at the hearing Tuesday that investigators found blood traces on the basement stairs, and bloody shoe prints leading up to an area outside of one bedroom. A detective said Samy Hassanein stayed in that room.
Kenner Fortner, with the Fairfax County police, said investigators also found a red-stained sock in the front seat of Samy Hassanein’s white 2015 Toyota Camry, and it later tested positive for blood.
In her closing argument, prosecutor Kennedy Nyhoff pointed to the footprints that led to Samy Hassanein’s bedroom, and noted that no shoes were located with traces of blood.
“The question is, ‘Where did those shoes go?’ The only person who had the opportunity of leaving the home to dispose of such shoes is the defendant,” Nyhoff said. “The only person that the evidence points to is this defendant. The defendant in this case did kill his father.”
But Amy Jordan, Samy Hassanein’s defense attorney, countered that the evidence didn’t connect Samy Hassanein to a killing, and perhaps didn’t suggest a killing occurred at all. Investigators found blood about four feet away from Talat Hassanein’s body — which Jordan argued might have been consistent with him having fallen down the stairs.
“There’s nothing that connects any of this with my client other than the fact that he lived in that house,” Jordan said.
Detective David Vesser testified that Samy Hassanein conceded in an interview that he went down the basement stairs, but stopped at the last step and did not step onto the floor. Frieden, the judge, said that prosecutors had not presented evidence to contradict that story.
“If I had evidence as to the actual location of the accused at a time that was inconsistent with what he told police, that might be a different story, but I do not,” he said.
Talat Hassanein, who was born in Egypt in 1940, loved tailoring, a trade he first took up as a soldier in the military in Cairo, his family said previously. He came to the United States in 1971 and worked on his uncle’s farm in Waldorf, Md., for a few years until returning to tailoring in the mid-1970s, when he opened a store in D.C., Sherif Hassanein said.
Talat Hassanein and his wife retired around 2000 and split their time between the United States and Egypt. He tried to instill in his sons the value of hard work and a good education, Sherif Hassanein said.
Sherif and Tarik Hassanein, another of Samy Hassanein’s brothers, said that their father tried to have Samy Hassanein admitted to an institution to treat his mental health problems in January, but Samy insisted that he was fine. The pair were nonetheless dubious about the police account of what happened to their father.
“Do I think my brother is capable of doing something bad? Absolutely. I will never lie about that,” Tarik Hassanein said in a previous interview. “But do I think, in this particular instance, that this was my little brother? Absolutely not.” | 2022-12-21T15:14:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fairfax judge dismisses case against son accused of killing father, 82 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/judge-dismisses-fairfax-murder-case/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/judge-dismisses-fairfax-murder-case/ |
Think America is a ‘Christian nation’? George Washington didn’t.
The National Menorah is lit near the White House on Dec. 18. (Tom Brenner/Reuters)
At the White House’s Hanukkah celebration Monday night, President Biden attested to the “permanence” of the Jewish people in the United States. As did past presidents, he welcomed the holiday that seeks to “re-create the wonder of the Maccabees and the oil with a blessing that recalls the miracles performed both in the days of old and at this time.”
But he did not ignore the cloud of antisemitism hanging over the joyous holiday season.
“I recognize your fear, your hurt, your worry that this vile and venom is becoming too normal,” Biden said. He added, “Silence is complicity. We must not remain silent. … Today, we must all say clearly and forcefully: Antisemitism and all forms of hate and violence in this country can have no safe harbor in America. Period.”
Biden’s remarks provoke an interesting line of inquiry: Just how “permanent” a home do we Jews have in the United States? How connected to the American story are we? Here, history enlightens.
The Jewish community in the United States is as old as its democracy. In August 1790, George Washington sent a letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, R.I., thanking them for their well wishes.
He wrote: “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy — a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.” He added, “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
To a people long denied citizenship in the Old World, kept as a people apart from Christian neighbors, Washington was explaining something quite revolutionary: The United States does not simply forbear Jews; Jews are part of the United States. As the Touro Synagogue in Newport explains on its website: “The letter reassured those who had fled religious tyranny that life in the new nation would be different, that religious ‘toleration’ would give way to religious liberty, and that the government would not interfere with individuals in matters of conscience and belief.”
From the start, defense of religious liberty and rejection of state-established religion were two sides of the same coin. Together, they allowed not only relief from sectarian strife but also fellowship among all Americans. Without religion as a defining feature of citizenship, pluralism and comity were possible.
Those who view the United States as a “White Christian nation” would do well to ponder Washington’s letter. Its closing passage, which speaks in terms familiar to the people of the Torah, stands as an eloquent rebuke to that notion: “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Washington was fully aware of ancient prejudices against Jews, but here he declared that the United States was different. Every American has their own vine and fig tree — their own faith and their own road to the pursuit of happiness. He concluded, “May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.”
The Founding Fathers are often criticized (or excused) on matters of race and gender as men trapped in the blinkered vision of the past. But in this case, the most esteemed American of his time plainly saw beyond the common prejudices of his era. For that reason, he earned a special place in the hearts of American Jews.
It was no small thing to be included in the American family under the protection of the rule of law. Jews remain as central to the American experiment as any other group of Americans. That’s not a Hanukkah miracle; it is a consequence of Washington’s wisdom, of the First Amendment and of Americans’ enduring belief in “we the people.” We Jews will remain part of the American experience so long as Americans of whatever faith or no faith heed Washington’s admonition. | 2022-12-21T15:14:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Think America is a ‘Christian nation’? George Washington didn’t. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/hanukkah-george-washington-jews-antisemitism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/hanukkah-george-washington-jews-antisemitism/ |
7 STELLA MARIS (Knopf, $26). By Cormac McCarthy. A companion novel to “The Passenger” consists of conversations between a woman at a psychiatric hospital and her doctor.
10 THE BOYS FROM BILOXI (Doubleday, $29.95). By John Grisham. Two childhood friends grow apart as one becomes a prosecutor and the other a mobster.
2 AN IMMENSE WORLD (Random House, $30). By Ed Yong. A science writer describes different ways sensory perception can be experienced in animals, including humans.
8 WHAT IF? 2 (Riverhead, $30). By Randall Munroe. Munroe, a former NASA roboticist and creator of the webcomic “xkcd,” responds to ludicrous questions using research and science
10 SURRENDER (Knopf, $34). By Bono. The Irish frontman for the rock band U2 recounts his upbringing and the influences on his music and activism. | 2022-12-21T15:26:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Post hardcover bestsellers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/washington-post-hardcover-bestsellers/2022/12/20/ccb6b740-8092-11ed-b59c-12f5d8400d7b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/washington-post-hardcover-bestsellers/2022/12/20/ccb6b740-8092-11ed-b59c-12f5d8400d7b_story.html |
Spending bill funds kids’ summer meals by cutting emergency food stamps
Provisions in the omnibus legislation would expand summer feeding options but also reduce food assistance bumped up during the pandemic
WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 25: Ketcham Elementary School third graders from left, Dionna Hardy, Aaliyah Bonner, Zo’Nique Green and Trinity Armstron discuss the snack and meal provided to them after school May 25, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The $1.7 trillion spending bill being debated in the Senate Wednesday is a big win for child nutrition advocates, but it comes at a price.
The measure would give millions of children easier access to healthy food during the summer months. But to pay for the new benefits, Congress will reduce pandemic-era investments in food assistance programs for food-insecure Americans.
The compromise included in the spending bill, which must pass this week to avert a government shutdown, is one of many tradeoffs Democrats and Republicans made as they cobbled the bill together in the narrowly divided Congress.
Lawmakers in the Senate voted 70-25 on Tuesday to begin debate on the 4,155-page measure, known in congressional parlance as an omnibus, which would fund key elements of President Biden’s economic agenda. It would boost defense programs, extend Medicaid, help Americans save for retirement and provide an additional $44.9 billion in emergency military and economic assistance for Ukraine, among other provisions.
The child nutrition benefits would be the first new, permanent federal food assistance program of this magnitude enacted in nearly 50 years, advocates say. They would create a debit card program beginning the summer of 2024 that provides low-income families with a $40 grocery benefit per child per month, adjusted for inflation. Kids would be eligible for these benefits if they qualify for free or reduced-price school meals and can be automatically enrolled.
Pandemic expansion of school lunch program appears slated to end suddenly
The bill also would allow families in rural areas to get school meals delivered during the summer rather than having to pick them up on site, which can be difficult in regions where schools draw students from many miles away. And rather than requiring meals be consumed at school, kids can take home or get delivered up to 10 days’ worth of meals at a time.
Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign estimates that 6 out of 7 children who participate in free or reduced-price school meals are unable to access the summer meals program because of cumbersome logistics, which puts many at risk of hunger.
But while advocates lauded the changes, they criticized the eliminations of pandemic-era bumps in food stamps, or SNAP, and school meal benefits aimed at helping families through the health emergency. Lawmakers said the cuts were necessary to pay for the new benefits. The reductions, advocates said, will particularly hurt the elderly poor, who often have smaller household sizes and greater savings and thus qualify for smaller food-assistance benefits.
“Cutting SNAP to pay for child nutrition is not the right choice,” said Crystal FitzSimons, a child nutrition programs policy analyst at the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center. “The emergency allotments for SNAP were aligned with the public health emergency, which is not over. We still are in a public health emergency. These allotments have been a huge benefit to families to make ends meet at a time when we’re still reeling from the impacts of the pandemic.”
Recipients of all ages would lose benefits beginning as early as March 2023, she said, with families on average losing $82 per person, per month. But the steepest loss would be for older adults at the minimum benefit level who will see their monthly SNAP benefits fall from $281 to $23.
Biden renewed a free program to feed needy kids. Most states haven’t even applied.
Lisa Davis, senior vice president of No Kid Hungry, described the tradeoff as “a little bit of a Sophie’s Choice,” but that it is still “a big sleeper win” for food security in the United States.
“I don’t want to downplay that ending the pandemic allotments will create hardship for some people” at a time when inflation is making it harder for many to make ends meet, she said. “As hard as it is to prematurely end or scale back temporary pandemic programs that help families put food on the table, using those temporary funds to create permanent programs is a tradeoff worth taking.”
Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and John Boozman (R-Ark.) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Virginia) pushed for these provisions in the spending bill. The bill also includes new protections for families whose SNAP benefits have been stolen in the wake of a spate of thefts. This legislation gives the U.S. Department of Agriculture and states the authority to reissue nutrition benefits to victims of this fraud and to increase security measures.
The child nutrition language included in the bill incorporates parts, but not all, of the House’s reauthorization of the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act, Scott said in a statement. This was a House bill released in July aimed at increasing access to free school meals for children in high-poverty schools while strengthening nutrition standards.
"This proposal falls far short of a comprehensive reauthorization that America’s children and families deserve, although I am grateful we will be able to make some progress toward our ultimate goal of eliminating child hunger,” Scott said in the statement. Stabenow said in a statement that she remains committed to passing a comprehensive child nutrition reauthorization, and also to protecting the SNAP program as legislators begin work crafting the next Farm Bill, which determines funding for all food assistance programs. | 2022-12-21T16:19:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Omnibus expands summer school meal assistance but cuts emergency SNAP - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/21/school-meals-pandemic-snap/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/21/school-meals-pandemic-snap/ |
The FBI was initially reluctant to investigate Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents, and cautious when it did so
A supporter of former president Donald Trump drives past his Mar-a-Lago estate on Aug. 8 in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump said in a statement that the FBI was searching his Mar-a-Lago estate. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)
FBI officials had a lot to worry about in late July as they discussed whether to search one of Donald Trump’s homes for evidence of crimes. Two concerns were paramount: Any search warrant should be authorized by the attorney general himself, and they did not want the former president to be at Mar-a-Lago when it happened.
It is standard FBI practice to remove and detain a homeowner while their property is being searched. And while the nation’s top law enforcement officials were willing to take the once-inconceivable step of getting a court order to search not just Trump’s office but also his residence, they wanted to avoid doing anything that required them to physically remove Trump from his home, leaving the 45th commander in chief standing in his driveway like a suspected drug dealer or white-collar crook.
The FBI also was wary of the remote possibility of a “blue on blue” confrontation — between the federal agents searching the location and the Secret Service agents who guard the former president, according to people familiar with the matter, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
“Executing a search like that is sensational enough. Doing it without the former president there is probably the best good-faith effort you can make to reducing the probability of it becoming even more sensationalized,” said Jeffrey Cortese, a former FBI supervisor. “They would want to get in and get out without any complications.”
While the Jan. 6 investigation was drawing more headlines, fueled by closely watched prime-time hearings on Capitol Hill, the Justice Department’s decisions about the Mar-a-Lago case put the agency more directly on a collision course with Trump. The nation’s top law enforcement officials knew any misstep could have devastating long-term consequences for the Justice Department, the FBI and the country.
This account of the documents investigation, described by people familiar with the internal workings of the case, shows key and previously unreported moments when authorities decided they had no choice but to take action, and describes the attempts they made to minimize legal risk and avoid mistakes. Their path — from the realization early this year that some classified documents taken to Mar-a-Lago contained nuclear secrets to Garland’s decision last month to appoint a special counsel — illustrates the stark challenges of conducting a criminal probe when the person under investigation is a former president.
Just reaching the decision to seek a court-approved search warrant had presented difficulties. In mid- and late July, lawyers at the Justice Department’s national security division were frustrated with FBI agents at the Washington Field Office, some of whom still weren’t certain there was enough legal justification to conduct a search, people familiar with the situation said. To those lawyers, the doubts expressed by some agents marked another instance in which FBI officials seemed skeptical or gun-shy about investigating Trump in the documents case.
Inside the top echelons of both the Justice Department and FBI, these people said, everyone understood that a search of Trump’s home would be a fateful step — an acknowledgment that the department, which still bore the political scars of past Trump cases, was conducting its most intrusive investigation yet of the real estate developer turned politician.
Garland, who had vowed to keep partisan politics out of Justice Department decisions, kept close tabs through his senior deputies on what the FBI was doing. Conscious of painful rifts between Justice Department leadership and the FBI during the Trump and Obama eras, he hoped to ensure there was no daylight between the investigators and the prosecutors on this case — and that prosecutors, not investigators, were the ultimate decision-makers.
But given Trump’s many prior battles with the Justice Department and the FBI over investigations into links between Russian officials and members of his 2016 campaign, his transition team and his administration; and possible obstruction of those investigations, officials had little doubt they would come under sustained public attack from Trump and his supporters if they moved forward, people familiar with the situation said.
‘Love letters’ — and a nuclear discovery
In May 2021, with Trump a few months out of office, Archives officials grew worried that some of those records — which legally belong to the public — appeared to be missing. Items widely reported about in the news, such as correspondence from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, were nowhere to be found when archivists looked through their cache of Trump documents.
Trump lawyer Alex Cannon notified the Archives by late December that Trump’s legal team had identified a dozen boxes of material, including a letter from President Barack Obama and letters from the North Korean leader, that would be returned to the government. Upon opening what turned out to be 15 boxes, archivists immediately spotted highly classified papers.
15 boxes: The long, strange trip of the boxes sent to the archives from Mar-a-Lago
Agents were also persuaded that it mattered if there were sensitive government documents in the boxes, including what one person described as information classified under the Atomic Energy Act, which covers secrets related to nuclear weapons. Some of the paperwork in the boxes was designated as formerly restricted data — a clunky bureaucratic term that also describes secrets related to nuclear matters. Even though the label contains the word “formerly,” such information is still classified.
The FBI knew “as early as the end of February that there were documents at the secret level that were designated as formerly restricted data,” one person familiar with the matter said.
That was a key distinction. Trump has claimed he could declassify things at will — “even by thinking about it. ... There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it.” Many national security lawyers have publicly disputed that claim. But while a president does have the power to carry out a declassification process for certain documents, the situation is different for material covered by the AEA. Declassifying such documents requires formal approval from other parts of the government.
For the FBI to look at the material the Archives was describing required approval from President Biden’s White House counsel, according to the Presidential Records Act. That took until April, and it wasn’t the only procedural hurdle. Archives officials also had to notify Trump of their intention to let agents go through the classified documents.
Law enforcement officials initially saw little point to launching an investigation in which, even before the case was opened, the potential target of the probe would be notified. Once that did happen, Trump’s lawyers argued for more time and were able to put off the FBI review for a number of weeks, to the frustration of both the Archives and the Justice Department.
Trump's secrets: How a records dispute led to the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago
In mid-May, FBI agents finally reviewed the boxes sent to the Archives and confirmed the agency’s findings: They contained 184 classified documents — more than 700 total pages worth of secrets.
So the FBI dove in, if only to control a leak or “spillage” of classified material and get the sensitive papers back under government lock and key. To that end, prosecutors secured a grand jury subpoena to Trump’s office demanding the return of all manner of classified documents, including a category for any secrets about nuclear weapons.
When intelligence officers, military officials or special agents get security clearances, they have to sign documents swearing they will follow classification rules and not mishandle sensitive material. Prosecutors often use those signed statements when they charge people for mishandling classified information. But presidents don’t go through that same paperwork process.
To investigators, the vast property presented security concerns beyond the storage of highly classified information in a private home rather than a secure government facility. As a private club, it welcomes not just members but also their guests, often with little or no vetting. The estate is a popular venue for weddings and political fundraisers, with Trump often on hand to welcome guests and eat — including his infamous dinner last month with antisemitic rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes.
How Donald Trump jettisoned restraints at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House
Bratt’s team was handed a tightly taped envelope that contained 38 classified documents and a sworn statement signed by Christina Bobb, a lawyer who had only very recently taken on the role of custodian of records for Trump’s office. The statement insisted that a “diligent search” had been conducted for any material with classified markings.
But there were signs that Trump’s team might be concealing something. When Bratt’s team visited the basement storage room where many of Trump’s White House boxes were kept, they were not allowed to open the containers and look inside, according to court papers.
Agents had interviewed Walt Nauta, a former White House valet who followed Trump to Florida to continue working for him. Nauta told the agents when first approached that he knew nothing about classified documents, or the boxes that contained them. But the more people the FBI spoke to, the more they doubted that claim. When agents interviewed Nauta a second time, he told a much different story: that he’d moved boxes from the storage room to Trump’s residence, after the subpoena was served, and that he’d done so at Trump’s request, according to people familiar with the matter.
With Nauta’s account, the investigation that had sputtered to life months earlier started barreling forward, gathering evidence and momentum, according to people familiar with the case.
For a significant stretch of mid-2022, Garland received almost daily updates on the investigation’s progress, these people said. He relied on staffers with experience as Supreme Court law clerks and litigators to scrutinize legal papers for any potential vulnerability. Early in his tenure as attorney general, Garland’s trademark attention to detail struck some Justice Department officials as unnecessary micromanaging. But when it came to Mar-a-Lago, people familiar with the situation said, that degree of care seemed like an advantage.
During the Obama administration, Garland had been considered to succeed Robert S. Mueller III as FBI director, a position ultimately filled by James B. Comey in 2013. Three years later, Comey would play an outsize role in the presidential contest between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Trump, announcing just days before voters headed to the polls that Clinton — for the second time in a little over a year — was under investigation.
In doing so, Comey broke with law enforcement traditions surrounding investigations and elections, and was harshly criticized. The 2016 investigations of Clinton and Trump were marred by the FBI’s distrust of Justice Department leaders, and reflected a growing distance between the two key arms of federal law enforcement.
As spring turned to summer, and the Justice Department concluded that Trump probably had not turned over all the secret documents he possessed, prosecutors began to contemplate adding to the list of potential charges against Trump: obstruction of justice, if he deliberately flouted the subpoena; and destruction of government documents, if that’s what he’d done rather than return them.
That meant considering whether to get a search warrant for the former president’s home and office — an unprecedented action that was sure to enrage Trump, his supporters, and his most ardent backers in Congress, and risked tarnishing the Justice Department’s reputation in exactly the way Garland had feared.
Over many weeks of discussions, senior FBI officials made clear that they would only do a search if it was authorized by the attorney general himself. If the Justice Department and FBI were going to take the giant leap of sending agents into Trump’s home to seize documents, they were going to make that leap together, hand in hand. Senior Justice Department officials agreed, according to people familiar with the conversations.
But there were, these people said, tensions at that time between the Justice Department’s national security prosecution team, which was led by Matthew Olsen, and some agents at the FBI’s Washington Field Office, which was led at the time by Steven D’Antuono. The lawyers, these people said, felt they had amassed more than enough probable cause to ask a judge to approve a search of Mar-a-Lago. Some agents at the field office weren’t certain. Eventually, the Justice Department lawyers prevailed.
Around that time, some law enforcement officials still held out hope that they would not have to conduct a search if Trump’s legal team changed course and was more forthcoming. Prosecutors were also still working to get security footage from Mar-a-Lago — footage that would ultimately confirm some of what Nauta, the Trump aide, had said about moving boxes.
“We had been talking for a long time, asking for a long time. At some point, you’re not asking anymore,” one person familiar with the investigation said about the decision to seek the warrant.
Three days later, deliberately dressed down in khakis and polo shirts to try to lower their profile, agents showed up at Mar-a-Lago with the warrant. They spent hours combing Trump’s storage room, residence and office, finding 103 classified documents — some in Trump’s desk, according to court papers. They also took about 13,000 nonclassified documents as part of the investigation.
Combined with the documents previously recovered from the boxes sent to the Archives and the envelope turned over in June, the former president had kept at least 325 classified items at his private club and resort. Sixty were marked top secret, according to court papers. Some included highly classified information about a foreign country’s nuclear capabilities, Iran’s missile program and U.S. intelligence-gathering aimed at China, according to people familiar with their contents.
Trump denounced the “raid” as a violation of his rights, and political targeting of a likely presidential candidate. As the news of the operation consumed public attention, Trump escalated his attacks on the investigators, suggesting — without any supporting information — that the FBI had planted evidence, and that as president he had declassified “everything” found by agents. National security experts noted that declassified documents usually have additional markings indicating they are no longer secret.
Three days after the search — amid a marked increase in threatening statements about federal law enforcement across the country, much of it in response to the Mar-a-Lago operation — a gunman tried to attack the FBI office in Cincinnati. The 42-year-old Navy veteran, who had previously been on the FBI’s radar as a possible far-right extremist, was fatally shot by police after a chase led to a six-hour roadside standoff.
“The men and women of the FBI and the Justice Department are dedicated, patriotic public servants,” he said. “Every day they protect the American people from violent crime, terrorism and other threats to their safety while safeguarding our civil rights. They do so at great personal sacrifice and risk to themselves.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke Aug. 11 about a search warrant executed at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence. (Video: The Washington Post)
In the aftermath of the search, Trump’s lawyers fought to have an outside legal expert, known as a special master, review the documents taken by FBI agents to see if any should be withheld from investigators. That demand, initially granted by a federal judge in Florida before an appeals court overruled her, delayed some elements of the investigation.
A review of the seized classified documents did not reveal an apparent financial motive for taking them. As best as investigators were able to determine in the months following the search, Trump’s motive in refusing to return the material seemed to be primarily ego, and petulance, according to people familiar with the matter.
Jan. 6 House panel asks Justice Dept. to charge Trump with four criminal counts
The Justice Department’s special counsel regulation was originally designed to give the public confidence that prosecutors could fairly investigate a case even when there is a political conflict of interest for leaders of the agency. By 2022, however, many senior law enforcement officials had privately expressed doubts that the role carries much credibility with the American public anymore.
Two special counsels were appointed during the Trump administration — one who investigated connections between Russia and the Trump campaign, as well as the president’s own conduct, and another to investigate the people who investigated those things. In the beginning, each appointment was hailed by partisans as a political death knell for high-profile figures. But both disappointed their biggest fans when they failed to topple those targets.
With Trump running, and Biden saying he would likely seek reelection, Garland said he had little choice but to appoint a special counsel, citing “extraordinary circumstances” and the need to maintain public trust. He chose Jack Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor who once headed the Justice Department’s public integrity section and has spent recent years as a Kosovo war crimes prosecutor at The Hague. | 2022-12-21T16:19:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How FBI, Garland's Justice Dept. came to launch Trump Mar-a-Lago probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/trump-doj-garland-mar-a-lago-january-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/trump-doj-garland-mar-a-lago-january-6/ |
Analysis by Garfield Reynolds | Bloomberg
The Bank of Japan’s tactic of buying government bonds to cap interest rates on longer-term debt has been a pillar of its effort to suppress borrowing costs and stimulate the economy. On Dec. 20, the bank adjusted the policy, known as yield curve control, allowing long-term yields to rise more. The move blindsided investors, sent the yen soaring and stoked speculation that the country’s policymakers may be preparing to align with other major economies by allowing rates to climb further.
1. What’s a yield curve?
Bond yields are an expression, in annual percentage terms, of the rate of return you expect to get on a particular fixed-income security. And the gap between yields on different maturity instruments is known as a yield curve. Most of the time, investors demand higher returns for locking away their money for longer periods, with the greater uncertainty that brings. So yield curves usually slope upward.
2. What’s the point of yield curve control?
The policy, introduced in 2016, was aimed at keeping yields very low to encourage consumers to spend and businesses to invest, and to head off the risk of deflation that could destabilize the economy and make it harder for the government and large companies to pay off their towering debts. More recently, however, the appearance of negative interest rates had the effect of flattening the yield curve.
It led investors to doubt the credibility of the BOJ’s ultra-loose rate policy. A flatter curve generally signals caution about a country’s growth prospects. It can also cancel out the stimulating effect of lower rates as it hammers the profitability of commercial banks and makes them more reluctant to lend. If the curve inverts — such as when 10-year yields fall below three-month ones — an economy may be heading into a recession.
4. So what did the BOJ do?
It decided to allow 10-year yields to rise to around 0.5%, up from a previous limit of 0.25%, while keeping both short- and long-term benchmark interest rates unchanged. BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said the decision was aimed at improving the functioning of the market. The bank also signaled it wanted to create the conditions for higher yields on long-term debt. However, Kuroda pushed back against the idea that the BOJ was shifting toward the rate-tightening policies being pursued by the US Federal Reserve, which this year has raised its benchmark rate from near zero to more than 4%, and other big central banks.
5. How significant is it?
Kuroda spearheaded the most ambitious monetary stimulus program of modern times, with measures that have turned the bank into the largest owner of stocks and government bonds in Japan and made it the last major anchor of ultra-low interest rates in the world. The policy has failed to boost the world’s third-largest economy in a sustainable way. It’s also undermined the value of the yen, sending inflation toward a four-decade high. That’s contributed to a sharp decline in popularity for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Furthermore, there were signs that Japan’s debt market, the world’s second-largest, was no longer functioning as it should: With more than half of government bonds now the property of the central bank, trading in what should be an easily-available asset has thinned. After Kuroda widened the yield band, economists and investors said they expected the BOJ to take further steps to allow higher bond yields in the coming months.
6. Is this the beginning of the end of Japan’s easy-money era?
Kuroda says it isn’t, but he is only in the job for another three and a half months or so. The December policy shift may make it easier for his successor to move in either direction once they take office. The front-runners are current Deputy Governor Masayoshi Amamiya and former Deputy Governor Hiroshi Nakaso. Amamiya is widely regarded as the architect of yield curve control and of Kuroda’s early “shock and awe” campaign of massive bond purchases. He is seen as hewing closer to existing policy than Nakaso, who has spoken of the limits of prolonging the BOJ’s ultra-loose monetary policy.
7. What does it all mean for the yen?
The currency was the key pain point for the government in 2022. Even after a 4% surge following the relaxation of yield curve control, the yen was set for its biggest annual drop since 2013, when Kuroda started the BOJ’s mass bond buying. Bearish yen trades that were all the rage for much of the year looked under threat. Japanese bond investors could sell more of their overseas holdings and bring the money back home if local interest rates move higher, giving a further boost to the yen.
--With assistance from Masaki Kondo and John O’Neil. | 2022-12-21T16:45:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why BOJ’s Small Tweak to Bond Yields Was a Bombshell - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-bojs-small-tweak-to-bond-yields-was-a-bombshell/2022/12/21/069366a4-814a-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-bojs-small-tweak-to-bond-yields-was-a-bombshell/2022/12/21/069366a4-814a-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Man fatally shot in Northeast Washington, D.C. police say
A 34-year-old man was fatally shot Tuesday night in the Kenilworth neighborhood of Northeast Washington, D.C. police said.
The shooting occurred about 9:40 p.m. in the 1500 block of Anacostia Avenue NE, near Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens.
Police identified the victim as Rynell Bradford of Northeast Washington. Police said he was pronounced dead at the scene.
There have been 198 homicides in the District this year, 10 percent fewer than at this time in 2021, according to police statistics. | 2022-12-21T16:45:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man fatally shot in Northeast Washington, D.C. police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/shooting-homicide-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/shooting-homicide-dc/ |
School strike pioneer Barbara Johns blazed a path for desegregation
The teen persuaded fellow students to strike for better conditions at their all-Black school. Their demands became part of an important U.S. Supreme Court case.
By Patty O'Connell Pearson
A civil rights memorial in Richmond, Virginia, honors 16-year-old activist Barbara Johns, who helped desegregate schools in the 1950s. Her efforts started with persuading fellow students at the all-Black Moton High School to walk out of class to demand better conditions at the school. (Christopher Spadone)
Barbara Johns was a junior at Robert Russa Moton High School in 1951 in Farmville, Virginia. She liked learning, but she didn’t like the school’s overcrowded classrooms, dangerous wood-burning stoves and leaky ceilings. It wasn’t fair. Nearby Farmville High School was spacious with modern heat, a cafeteria and no leaks. Black students attended Moton. White students attended Farmville. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, that explained everything. Could one 16-year-old change it? Barbara had to try.
She asked trusted classmates for help with a secret plan. On April 23, 1951, they lured Principal M. Boyd Jones out of the building with a false story and then sent teachers a note about an assembly. More than 400 students crowded into the too-small auditorium. To everyone’s surprise, the teachers were asked to leave and Barbara took the stage.
Usually quiet and cheerful, Barbara was now fierce. She told students it was time to challenge injustice. That if they stuck together, they could make a difference. Students cheered. When Barbara asked them to strike with her — or leave the building and refuse to attend school — they all did.
Nothing like it had ever happened in Prince Edward County or anywhere else. Cainan Townsend is director of education at the Moton Museum. Cainan says that several years before Rosa Parks, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and others became civil rights leaders, Barbara Johns led her fellow students to demand equality.
Virginia looks to preserve former school that’s part of segregated past
With help from the NAACP (a civil rights organization), the Moton strikers sued Prince Edward County, demanding desegregation. While their lawsuit went to court, they went back to class. However, Barbara faced threats because of the strike and spent her senior year with relatives in Alabama.
The lawsuit continued all the way to the United States Supreme Court as one of five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education. Townsend says that the Prince Edward case was the only one started by students. The court ruled in 1954 that racial segregation in public schools violated the U.S. Constitution and must end. But the struggle wasn’t over.
White officials in Prince Edward refused to desegregate. The county’s Black families continued the battle in court. When the court insisted that the county desegregate in 1959, officials closed the county’s public schools — for five years. Most White children went to private school. Black children and some White children had no education until 1964, when newly desegregated schools reopened.
Flint Hill fourth-graders studying history find the school's first Black student
For years afterward, no one talked publicly about the strike or closings. But many people who grew up at that time had what Townsend calls “unfinished business.” Eventually Black and White residents of Prince Edward came together to discuss their past and move forward.
Today state-sponsored scholarships help long-ago “locked-out” students continue their education, a memorial stands on the state Capitol grounds in Richmond and the old Moton high school is a museum.
Barbara Johns demonstrated the strength of one voice. She understood the power even young people have when they stand together. Soon a statue will honor Barbara and represent Virginia at the United States Capitol. In Barbara’s words, “All I had to do — was do it.”
The Moton Museum offers information on Barbara Johns and the effort to desegregate schools in Prince Edward County. Visit motonmuseum.org. | 2022-12-21T16:45:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | School strike pioneer Barbara Johns blazed a path for desegregation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/12/21/school-strike-pioneer-barbara-johns-blazed-path-desegregation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/12/21/school-strike-pioneer-barbara-johns-blazed-path-desegregation/ |
Nearly 70 million people are under winter storm watches or warnings, and 90 million are under wind chill alerts
Visualization of a bomb cyclone over the eastern Great Lakes and powerful winds wrapping around it on Friday. (earth.nullschool.net)
An exceptionally powerful winter storm is set to unleash dangerous weather across the eastern two-thirds of the country into the holiday weekend, disrupting air and land travel during one of the busiest times of year.
Some snow will break out in the Upper Midwest and Plains on Wednesday, but the most severe conditions are anticipated Thursday and Friday across the Great Lakes.
“Brief bursts of heavy snow, strong wind gusts, and rapidly falling temperatures will likely lead to sudden whiteouts, flash freezing, and icy roads,” the National Weather Service wrote. “Even in areas unaffected by snow, dangerous cold is expected.”
Nearly 70 million people are under winter storm watches or warnings in the Midwest, Great Lakes and Appalachians, and blizzard warnings have recently been hoisted in Minnesota.
Snow and strong winds could affect major airport hubs, including Chicago’s O’Hare International and the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County airports. The combination of snow and winds gusting over 40 mph will result in blowing and drifting snow that reduces visibility to near zero at times, particularly in a zone from western Kansas and Nebraska northward to Minnesota extending eastward through western New York.
“Whiteout conditions are expected … with travel becoming very difficult or impossible,” wrote the National Weather Service in Minneapolis. “This event could be life-threatening if you are stranded.”
Cities that could deal with blizzard conditions between Thursday and Friday — at least for a short interval — include Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit and Buffalo.
In some places near the Great Lakes, including Buffalo, wind gusts could reach 50 to 65 mph, causing significant tree damage and power outages amid dangerously low temperatures.
Locations from the Rockies eastward that avoid snowfall will not escape near record-cold temperatures running some 40 degrees or more below normal. Wind chill watches, advisories and warnings affect about 90 million people, extending from the Canadian border to Texas and as far east as Tennessee, with subfreezing temperatures likely to plunge down to the Gulf of Mexico. In some places, temperatures will be the lowest in decades during the month of December.
Over the north central United States, actual air temperatures of minus-20 to minus-40 are expected, and wind chills could flirt with minus-60. The National Weather Service in Bismarck, N.D., is calling the cold “life-threatening.”
“The dangerously cold wind chills could cause frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 5 minutes,” it wrote.
That cold will make it to the East Coast on Friday, abruptly arriving as a flash freeze that could send temperatures plummeting 25 degrees or more in just a few hours. Coming after a morning of heavy rainfall and perhaps a short burst of snow, the flash freeze may turn some roadways into treacherous sheets of ice, potentially leading to extremely hazardous travel on major thoroughfares like Interstates 95, 84 and 81.
In the Northeast, the same storm system — which will intensify so rapidly it will qualify as a weather “bomb” — will push water against the coastline, causing coastal flooding.
A bomb cyclone develops
An upper-air disturbance, characterized by a pocket of high altitude cold air, low pressure and spin, will dive out of British Columbia and Alberta over the central Plains on Wednesday and Thursday. It will explosively strengthen a surface low pressure zone pushing across the Plains, transforming it into a powerhouse storm system that will sweep up the Ohio Valley. By Friday night, it’ll be cruising into Quebec and Ontario en route to the Hudson Bay.
The storm will rapidly intensify as a bomb cyclone, a designation given to the most intense mid-latitude weather systems. Its pressure will drop from 1003 millibars Thursday night near the Indiana-Ohio border to 968 millibars Friday night — which is the approximate pressure of a Category 2 or 3 hurricane — over southern Quebec. Mid-latitude storms whose pressure falls 24 millibars in 24 hours are considered meteorological bombs — this storm’s pressure is projected to fall 35 millibars in that time. The lower the pressure, the stronger the storm.
Dangerous winter weather
In the Mid-Atlantic
Since low pressure systems spin counterclockwise, the system will draw in a tongue of mild air on its eastern side. That will keep most of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast predominantly rain. The exception will be in the Appalachians, specifically the Alleghenies of western Maryland, western Virginia and eastern West Virginia, where cold air entrenched in the mountains will be difficult to scour out.
The National Weather Service is warning of 4 to 7 inches of snow east of the Allegheny front, in addition to a quarter inch of ice from freezing rain. This will occur the first half of Thursday. That’s just round one of the storm before the flash freeze arrives Friday — not just for mountains, but also areas toward the coastal plain — including Washington and Baltimore.
A major Plains and Great Lakes blizzard
Farther west, however, the Plains, Upper Midwest and even parts of the Mid-South, perhaps as far south as Nashville, will see snow — and for some, a lot of it. The jackpot, which could feature a foot or more, looks to fall in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with a secondary maximum downwind of Lakes Erie and Ontario.
Even in areas that only see a few inches of snow, travel is expected to still be extremely dangerous because of high winds that will limit visibility.
St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha and the Twin Cities are under winter storm warnings, with a general 2 to 6 inches of snow likely to fall — lesser south, more north. West of Minneapolis, a blizzard warning is in effect; the combination of 40-50 mph winds and moderate to heavy snow could make for whiteout conditions during the height of the storm Thursday night into Friday, while the wind and cold could lead to wind chills below minus-30.
In Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis, a winter storm watch is in effect. That’s where confidence is lesser on just how much snow will fall. In the Windy City, totals will likely range between 3 and 6 inches, but will walk a steep gradient; accumulation will quickly climb as one drifts toward Michigan, with a foot or more likely falling in parts of the mitten.
In the storm’s wake, cold air blowing out of the west-northwest across Lakes Erie and Ontario could brew some lake-effect snows, although it’s not a classic wind direction for extreme accumulations, since it doesn’t blow lengthwise down the lakes. Instead, a foot or so is likely over the weekend, though meteorologists are still fine-tuning the details.
“Travel for the holiday weekend, including Friday, could be very difficult to impossible at times” through Monday, wrote the Weather Service in Buffalo.
Extreme cold on the way
Behind the storm, a plume of Siberian air will be shunted southward into the United States, lasting about 72 hours and affecting nearly everyone east of the Rockies. It will first creep across the Canadian border into early Wednesday, blasting south as a cold front that will drop temperatures 40 degrees or more in just under six hours.
The biting chill will blast into Denver on Wednesday night, dropping temperatures from 40 degrees to zero in just a matter of hours. By Thursday morning, it will be near minus-10 with wind chills around minus-30.
“Life Threatening Cold Arrives Late Wednesday,” tweeted the Weather Service office serving Denver. “We promise that’s not an exaggeration. This is likely to be the coldest day in 32 years in Denver so many people have not experienced a cold snap like this.”
Over the Dakotas, temperatures could dip to near minus-30 on Friday night. In Bismarck, they’ve been below zero since Sunday, and will stay that way until Christmas. Wind chills of minus-40 are likely. Breaking down in a vehicle without an emergency kit on hand could very quickly become deadly.
That cold will plunge southward, arriving in St. Louis on Thursday. Highs will peak in the mid-30s with snow, quickly falling to around minus-3 at night. Friday won’t climb above the single digits.
In Oklahoma City, Thursday won’t make it above 11 or 12 degrees. In the Texas Panhandle, temperatures could drop from highs near 50 on Wednesday to the teens by midnight. Locally, such fronts are known as “blue northers.”
The cold will blast all the way to the Gulf Coast by Thursday afternoon, transforming the ocean into a seemingly smoking lagoon. That will be due to “Arctic sea smoke,” or a unique type of fog which forms when frigid air blows over warmer waters.
Flash freeze in the eastern U.S.
The cold will reach the East Coast on Friday, but will do so abruptly. That will spell a danger for those driving on area interstates, particularly between Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Conn.
Temperatures on Friday morning will be in the 40s to near 50, with rain likely to fall as moisture swirls into the parent low pressure system to the northwest. As the cold front comes through around noontime, readings will plummet into the 20s, with temperature drops of 25 degrees or more likely in a three-hour window. At the same time, a very brief period of snow is possible.
Crews won’t be able to pretreat the roadways due to the rain, and any lingering moisture and puddles could quickly turn to ice. That could leave roadways highly treacherous. There’s some chance strong winds help dry roads before they can ice over, but pockets of dangerous travel are a risk. | 2022-12-21T16:46:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bomb cyclone blizzard to unleash Arctic blast, freezing temperatures - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/21/bomb-cyclone-blizzard-arctic-blast/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/21/bomb-cyclone-blizzard-arctic-blast/ |
After 35 years of Final Fantasy, what’s next for composer Nobuo Uematsu?
The video game composer shares the three main pillars shaping his work and his ambition to get a video game funded
Composer Nobuo Uematsu. (Washington Post illustration; Courtesy of Dog Ear Records Co. Ltd; iStock)
If Nobuo Uematsu’s career was a video game, he beat it a long time ago. The world’s most prestigious orchestras have performed his music from the Final Fantasy series to cheering crowds. Grammy-winning hip-hop producer Knxwledge has flipped his MIDI melodies into slick beats. Musician Jon Batiste has transformed his favorite Final Fantasy songs into big band jazz arrangements and played them to millions of viewers on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” (Batiste’s favorite video game soundtrack is “Final Fantasy VII,” in case you’re wondering.)
What does Uematsu do next? It’s something that the veteran video game composer has finally found some time to reflect on in light of the famed JRPG series’s 35th anniversary. The last game he composed a complete soundtrack for was 2021’s “Fantasian,” an Apple Arcade exclusive created by his friend and Final Fantasy creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, and it might be his last.
Uematsu devoted all of his “body and spirit” to the project. A typical working day involved waking up at 5 a.m. with music already in his head and composing until 6 p.m. It’s hard to believe that it was only in 2018 that Uematsu announced via a blog post that he was taking an “extended leave of absence” due to the fatigue from wrapping a hectic touring schedule around his composition work. Uematsu worked so hard that he was hospitalized. Sakaguchi had doubts as to whether he’d be able to work on “Fantasian.”
Despite the health concerns, Uematsu told The Washington Post over a video call that he’s now fully recovered. Has his output slowed down at all? Not exactly. His schedule is as busy as ever, and he’s still working similar hours now as he was before the leave of absence.
“The thing is, I don’t really have any downtime. All I do is work!” he said through an interpreter.
That said, Uematsu has spent time reflecting on his legacy and where he invests his creative time.
The man who saved Final Fantasy is forging its future with ‘FFXVI’
“My work has three main pillars at the moment,” Uematsu said. “The first: synthesizer-based solo performances. The second: live performances of theme songs that I wrote for different games with a small group of artists. I play the piano, another member of the group plays percussion, someone else plays the guitar and we have a vocalist as well. The third: writing music and stories by myself and having a voice actor perform the live reading with my music.”
The diversity of the self-taught composer’s music in the Final Fantasy series has led to it being arranged and performed in a variety of different genres over the years. There is a vibrant scene of musicians creating covers and arrangements on YouTube and online communities such as OverClocked Remix, whether that’s ’60s surf big band versions of “The Chocobo Theme,” lofi hip-hop remixes or classical guitar renditions.
Square Enix, the game studio responsible for Final Fantasy, is no stranger to the demand for Uematsu’s music either. It has released several arrangement albums of its own, such as “Square Enix Jazz: Final Fantasy,” “Cafe SQ” and the Distant Worlds orchestral arrangements it tours across the globe. Uematsu has never been directly involved with the arrangements of many of these albums, making his recent synthesizer-based solo performances so unique.
“Modulation” is Uematsu’s first synthesizer-based project, featuring his own synth arrangements of Final Fantasy music modulated from the instruments, sound chips and programs used to record the original tracks. It also marks the composer’s first time releasing an analog vinyl record. Uematsu says the idea for the album was sparked after introducing Final Fantasy music into his solo performances alongside music from other games he worked on, including the Blue Dragon series, “Lost Odyssey” and “The Last Story.”
“A representative of Square Enix heard them and asked me if I’d like to turn them into an album, and I accepted,” Uematsu said. He was able to choose which tracks from Final Fantasy he wanted to feature on the album.
Creator of ‘Final Fantasy’ reflects on his last game, his career and the puppetry of his works
Uematsu has always been passionate about performing the music he’s written for video games onstage. While video game concerts have been taking place in Japan since 1987, when Koichi Sugiyama filled the Suntory Hall in Tokyo with his music from Dragon Quest on the NES, it wasn’t until 2003 that Uematsu’s music was performed onstage in the West. The success of Thomas Böcker’s Symphonic Games Music Concert in Leipzig, Germany, spawned a symphony concert series that awakened Uematsu to the global popularity of Final Fantasy music concerts.
“Hearing my music performed outside of Japan was a great experience and a huge honor,” he said. “At the time, orchestral performances of Japanese game music weren’t really common outside of Japan. When I was young, Japan was strongly influenced by American and European culture, but not the other way around. To think that Japanese culture has now left an impression on American and European children makes me realize that times have changed.”
Uematsu was 10 years old when he heard music from the Vienna Boys’ Choir. This was the first time in the young composer’s life that he was moved to tears, he recalled.
“It really was a formative moment in my life. It was the first time I got a taste of how moving music can be,” he said. There’s a reason the tissues come out at Final Fantasy concerts whenever the orchestra drops “To Zanarkand” from “Final Fantasy X” or “Aerith’s Theme” from “Final Fantasy VII.” “The emotional impact that hearing the Vienna Boys’ Choir had on me is definitely an experience that I wanted to re-create, but I wanted to do it in my own way.”
Later, American and European bands greatly influenced Uematsu’s musical output. Kraftwerk fans will be able to recognize the three-note melody in “Final Fantasy VII’s” “Anxious Heart,” and there are obvious similarities between Deep Purple’s “Maybe I’m a Leo” and “Final Fantasy VIII’s” “Maybe I’m a Lion.” Uematsu cites Elton John, Kraftwork and Sparks as his biggest influences, and there’s no escaping how the composer’s love for progressive rock bands permeates his video game scores.
A new trophy for video games: A Grammy
“At the beginning of the ’70s, progressive rock was very popular in Japan, except Genesis, maybe,” he said, although he cites “Foxtrot” by Genesis as one of his favorite albums. “Not a lot of people were listening to Genesis. But Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, and Pink Floyd were very popular.”
Of course, you can probably imagine Uematsu’s delight when Sony Music presented an opportunity to collaborate with Deep Purple’s vocalist, Ian Gillan, for a boss theme in “Blue Dragon,” one of the first games that Uematsu scored after leaving Square Enix in 2004. “I’m definitely a big fan of Deep Purple, so I was very happy that this collaboration came about!”
In 2002, Uematsu’s passion for prog-rock music led to him forming The Black Mages, a band featuring original Square and Square Enix members performing prog-rock and metal versions of Final Fantasy music. When the group split in 2010, Uematsu carried the concept forward with a new band, Earthbound Papas, adding music from “Lost Odyssey,” “Lord of Vermilion” and “Blue Dragon” to the setlist.
The group is still active, but nowadays, Uematsu is more interested in playing stripped-back versions of his music.
“Right now, I’m not playing rock music like I did in the days of Earthbound Papas and The Black Mages,” he said. “I’m trying to shift toward a kind of music that you can relax to. I’m not after playing music that’s all about great rhythm and big beats at the moment. I want to move people with melodies and harmonies. That’s why I’m currently focusing on simple acoustic setups instead of a full-on rock band.”
The acoustic setups of Uematsu performing with other musicians are currently being streamed in Japan as part of the conTIKI shows, with live performances scheduled for Europe next year. These performances and his solo projects are taking up most of Uematsu’s time right now, and he seems content not to be heavily involved in writing music for video games for the time being.
In ‘The Last of Us Part II,’ music often speaks louder than words
In fact, when we asked Uematsu about his favorite modern-day video game scores and composers, he struggled to name any soundtracks that have impressed him in recent years:
“I feel that everyone, including myself, I guess, is simply making music that you’ve already heard somewhere else. That’s not very exciting to me. I understand that video games are meant to be fun, of course. But they’re also the cutting edge of entertainment technology.
“That’s why I’d like to see people take a more experimental approach to them. In that sense, nobody comes to mind when you ask me if there’s a composer who I’m a big fan of … But wait, I just remembered something. There is a Czech developer named Amanita Design. What they’re doing is extremely interesting to me, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of the music.”
That said, he told The Post he has an idea for a video game he’d like to make. While this wouldn’t be the first time Uematsu has crafted a narrative experience (“Blik-0 1946” is his story of a weaponized robot released as an e-book on iOS in 2013), it would be his first time making a video game.
“If I find a company that’s willing to fund it, I would like to work on that.”
Mat Ombler is a freelance journalist specializing in the intersection of video games and music. | 2022-12-21T18:12:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After 35 years of Final Fantasy, what’s next for composer Nobuo Uematsu? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/12/21/final-fantasy-composer-35/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/12/21/final-fantasy-composer-35/ |
Are your kids mean — or are they just acting their age?
A guide to how empathy develops from birth to the tween years.
Parents worry about whether their kids are empathetic - but a lot of seemingly-unkind behavior is developmentally appropriate. (iStock/Photo illustration by Alexis Arnold/The Washington Post)
A little brother falls down and starts crying, and his big sister laughs maniacally. A kindergartener roughly shoves a friend who reaches for a coveted toy. An 11-year-old has a thoughtful conversation with his mom about bullying — and then makes fun of a classmate the very next day.
There are infinite variations to these scenarios, all of which prompt the same questions from many distressed or mortified parents: Is this normal? Am I raising a kind child?
But a lot of the warning signs that parents think they’re seeing aren’t warning signs at all, these experts say, and many behaviors that might seem unkind, indifferent or erratic are developmentally appropriate, part of the work of developing the very sense of self and empathy that parents want to cultivate.
We spoke with author Tovah Klein, a child development psychologist who directs the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development in New York, and Erin Walsh and her father, developmental psychologist David Walsh, co-founders of the Spark & Stitch Institute, which provides research-based resources to parents and educators. They offered an overview of what happens in the brains and lives of children as they grow from birth to the tween years, so that parents might be better able to understand how a capacity for empathy evolves, and to correctly interpret their children’s behavior.
One of the earliest building blocks of empathy is evident even in the first 24 hours of life, says David Walsh: “Newborn infants in a nursery, for example, will show signs of distress when other babies are very distressed. Of course they have no cognitive ability to understand what’s going on, but this is evidence that the underlying wiring, the architecture of the brain, enables us from the very get-go to be able to respond emotionally.” David cites renowned psychologist Daniel Goleman, who drew on the work of psychologist Paul Ekman and identified three distinct components of empathy: Cognitive, emotional and compassionate. “The emotional component emerges first," David says. “The capacity is there.”
Two bowls are placed on the table in front of an 18-month-old. One contains goldfish crackers, the other contains pieces of broccoli. “Say I reach into the bowl of goldfish crackers and I put it into my mouth and say ‘Oh yuck! I don’t like that!’ And then I put a piece of broccoli into my mouth and I say ‘Oh yum, I like that.’ Then I ask the 18-month-old to give me a ‘treat.’ The 18-month-old will give me a goldfish cracker," David Walsh says. "Because when I’m 18 months old, if I like goldfish crackers, you like goldfish crackers. But if I do this same experiment with that same child at the age of 24 months, they’re much more likely to give me the broccoli because at that point, they realize that ‘what I like and what you like’ might be different. And that’s a very, very important developmental stage, when we’re talking about empathy — the realization that we have different likes, we have different needs.”
Building empathy in children takes practice. Parents can help.
But a 2-year-old is still primarily interested in their own likes and needs, says Tovah Klein. “What emerges in this time is an awareness of ‘Oh, I am my own person! I have ideas, I have thoughts, I have needs!’ They are still getting to know themselves. It’s not that they’re mean, even if we don’t like the behavior, it’s that they’re focused on What do I need? And at this age, that’s appropriate.”
At this age, she says “they’re not good at waiting, they’re not good at recognizing other people’s needs, too. If we let them be self-focused — it’s not selfish, it’s self-focused — that helps them get to know themselves, even if it’s embarrassing to adults.” If a 2-year-old snatches a toy car from a playmate, Klein says, it isn’t intended as cruelty; it’s simply them responding to the impulse that they need that car. It takes a little longer, she says, for a child to realize that their playmate might feel that same way, too.
“These are steps that take a long time, and they’re not consistent,” she says. “If you’re 3, you might be really forgiving and really oriented toward the person who is crying one day, and you might be really fed up with them the next and walk away.”
“At this age, kids are starting to move into a space of ‘I have my needs, but I want to play with you, so we’re going to have to work this out, and sometimes it’s going to go my way and sometimes it’s not,’” Klein says. But this realization is messy, and that’s where parents often get concerned. “None of us want to see our child being the selfish one or mean on the playground — even if that’s part of normal child play. This is what we call theory of mind,” she says — the growing cognitive awareness that other people have their own thoughts and ideas and will behave accordingly. A 3 or 4 year old might be starting to grasp this, but they are also still very tethered to the sense of their own immediate needs.
“Socialization is a very slow and long road. And they keep getting better in time if we don’t shame them, if we don’t punish them, we don’t panic every time they do something that to an adult seems not nice,” Klein says. “Kids do all kinds of bizarre things. They hit each other, they take things from each other, they say ‘I don’t want to play with you.’ It’s slower than any of us want, and it’s embarrassing,” she says. But it’s also normal.
In the later preschool years, Erin Walsh says, the cognitive components of empathy start to become stronger, and a child’s executive function skills are starting to mature: “We can see some pretty extraordinary abilities for children to take the perspective of others during this time,” she says. “But this age group is also really into fairness, they can be really black-and-white, and sometimes there are competing developmental tasks happening.” This might present as ‘selfish behavior’ when it really isn’t, she explains. “A moral awareness of fairness is really going to help with our empathetic responses later in life, but when you’re 4 and you’re like ‘I didn’t get the same size cracker, so I don’t care that you’re crying’ — that’s the kind of thing for parents to take into account.”
Early elementary years
This is when the theory of mind begins to develop more strongly, says David Walsh, and the cognitive element of empathy begins to evolve to keep pace with the emotional component, which means that children are far more able to understand what another person might be experiencing. This can sometimes be really striking for parents and educators, Erin Walsh adds; kids at age 6 or 7 might be able to think meaningfully about more complex moral issues, but they’re still learning to regulate their emotions and impulses.
“This can seem like a mismatch,” Erin says. “You can have an amazing conversation about racism with a 7-year-old and then they can walk over and pile drive a sibling, and that can leave parents thinking, ‘But they know better!’ But a lot of it is not about smarts. We can gain the cognitive skills to have quite sophisticated moral conversations, but our ability to always put that into practice is not about smarts, it’s about impulse control and emotional regulation. And those skills are still very much under construction and very much a work in progress at this age.”
Later elementary years
“I think the way to envision what happens as you go through those elementary school years is they keep building on these abilities — just as they’re advancing in terms of their math skills, they’re hopefully advancing in terms of their ability to take another person’s perspective, identify with another person’s feelings, they get better able to do it effectively,” David Walsh says. Around this age is also when the third element of empathy — compassion — can become more consistently evident, he notes.
But not always, and he still emphasizes to parents: “There are so many individual factors that can come into play in a particular instance, so what you want to do is look at the overall trajectory: Do our kids seem to be developing in the general direction where they’re able to understand another’s perspective? As parents, we need to be looking at the forest, not the individual trees.”
Middle school/tween years
When it comes to the development of emotional regulation skills, “the next major construction phase happens just as kids hit puberty,” Erin Walsh says. “In those tween years, the part of the brain that helps them think ahead, filter out distractions, consider consequences ... is under construction, and at the same time, the emotional pedal is to the floor.”
Kids this age are capable of being deeply attuned to others, but when they’re in a position where someone’s feelings are hurt or a peer is experiencing great distress, “that’s where we’re more likely to see an accelerated emotional response, because the part of the brain that helps manage that is still a work in progress.” Still, it’s wrong to say that tweens and teens are generally self-centered, she says, even if their behavior might seem that way at times. “There is incredible reconstruction happening in their brain and that sometimes gives them real cognitive superpowers, and at other times it just makes it feel hugely overwhelming to be a tween,” she says. “They might laugh, or minimize something, or pretend they don’t care because they’re actually scared of how much they care.”
And a child at home might be very different from the one who interacts with friends, classmates, teachers or coaches. David Walsh still remembers a moment from his years as a high school teacher and counselor, when he asked a group of kids: If someone gave them half a million dollars, what would they do with it?
“This one boy thought about it, and he said, ‘I would buy my parents a bigger house, because they work so hard for us,” David says. He ran into the boy’s mother the next day and told her, "and she broke into tears.” She was astonished, he said, because her son was constantly arguing with her at home. “He really did appreciate and understand what his parents were going through,” David says. “He would never tell them. But he told me.” | 2022-12-21T18:16:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How empathetic should our children be? Here's an age-by-age guide. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/12/21/children-empathy-by-age/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/12/21/children-empathy-by-age/ |
‘A broken promise’: Maryland college savings plan blocks parents from withdrawing money
Officials say some accounts have too much money and others have too little. They say they need time to sort it out.
Account holders in Maryland expected to be able to use the money for out-of-state or private colleges, such as Howard University. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Aden and Debra Wilkie never expected they’d have to pay their daughters’ tuition with a credit card. The couple has more than $80,000 invested in three separate tuition savings plans with the state of Maryland. But they can’t withdraw a dime.
For months, hundreds of families invested in Maryland’s 529 prepaid plans have been unable to access all of the money in their accounts to pay tuition and fees. Administrators say this spring they discovered a calculating error that may have affected all 31,000 prepaid accounts. So the Maryland Prepaid College Trust suspended interest payments. While many parents have been able to access the principal in their accounts, others say their money has been completely frozen.
“It’s a broken promise,” Aden Wilkie said.
Officials have not answered those questions, shocking parents — who thought their savings would be available — with the absence of transparency or accountability.
Anthony Savia, executive director of the Maryland Prepaid College Trust and the College Investment Plan, was unavailable for an interview Tuesday and Wednesday, but Michelle Winner, a spokeswoman for the trust, pointed to a FAQ on the trust’s website and said, “This is a complex issue that involves detailed calculations and the computer coding of information technology software to fully resolve.”
She added that “tremendous progress has been made toward the resolution”and said the trust is “expecting to post another substantive update that we believe will be good news to account holders.” She did not say when that update would come.
The faces of student debt
Prepaid plans, by contrast, let families lock in future tuition payments at today’s prices. Here, the state bears the risk because it will have to absorb the cost of tuition inflation. It charges families a fee to carry that risk, and officials invest in stocks, bonds and other vehicles, using the returns to pay for tuition. Most prepaid plans cover only in-state tuition, but Maryland also lets families put their investment toward tuition at a private or out-of-state college.
“It seemed like a safer bet [than a traditional 529 plan]. It was backed and guaranteed by the state of Maryland, and that was a big deal for me,” Savoie said.
But administrators informed Savoie in August of a calculation glitch that prevented them from paying out interest on the plan. He should have received $9,000 but was going to get only $5,400. The email landed days before Purdue University expected the first payment for his son’s first semester.
Officials discovered that the calculation to determine an account holder’s minimum benefit was off. Some accounts were now undervalued; others were overvalued. Officials said no person or entity has been identified as the cause of the error, and the focus of the entire team has been a prompt resolution. Spokespeople at Intuition did not return calls for comment.
At a 529 board meeting on Sept. 15, Savia, the head of the trust, stressed, “The funds in the prepaid college trust are secure. This is not a situation where funds are missing. I understand how frustrating this can be, however, I want to make sure we are calculating the amount correctly.”
Who has student loan debt in America?
With more questions than answers, Savoie created a Facebook group in August called “Free Our Interest NOW, Maryland529!,” in search of other parents in the same bind. The group has 311 members who have used the space to vent and organize. Parents have called state lawmakers, urging them to investigate.
But the Wilkies’ request was inexplicably denied, they said. After hours on the phone with various staffers, Aden said he was told there was a problem with the earnings calculation on the accounts that should be fixed in a matter of weeks.
“There is just the anger and frustration that I am now going to be hit with interest charges on a credit card,” Debra Wilkie said. “It’s thousands of dollars that we don’t have in our budget, so we had no choice. Universities don’t want to hear about problems with 529 plans. They want their money.”
Charles Maggio of Ellicott City needed to tap his individual retirement account, and face early withdrawal tax penalties, to pay for his son’s upcoming semester at the University of Delaware. Before this academic year, Maggio had used his prepaid tuition savings to cover his son’s first two years of college.
Maggio said the trust assured him he could take a distribution from the principal amount in the account this year, but representatives there didn’t say what would happen to the earnings on that money.
“I was concerned about depleting the account because if I take the money, they may never pay me the interest,” Maggio said.
What people get wrong about 529 college-savings plans
Maggio feels he’s being left in the dark. The trust has sent monthly updates, but communications reviewed by The Washington Post largely asked account holders for “continued patience” as the administrators worked toward fixing the calculation. When the 529 board held an emergency meeting Monday, it rushed families off the call before they could inquire about the interest payments.
Del. Jheanelle K. Wilkins (D-Montgomery), who remained on the line with account holders, said she is disappointed in the way the 529 board has handled the error and communication with account holders. Earlier in the year, she said, the board told her and others the matter would be resolved by the end of October. But when the 31st came around, there was no explanation about why the deadline was missed.
“There are serious issues around transparency, issues around accountability, and a loss in trust from the account holders, and certainly from legislators,” Wilkins said. “The constant executive session meetings and [Monday’s] meeting … do not lend themselves to confidence in terms of where we are and how quickly this will be resolved.”
Through a spokesperson, Comptroller Peter Franchot (D), who also sits on the 529 board, said he “shares the frustration of impacted families,” but believes the trust is doing everything it can to resolve the matter.
For the spring semester, the Wilkies are using installment plans for their 21-year-old daughter at North Carolina State and their 19-year-old at the University of North Carolina. These plans charge fees. It’s not ideal, but it was the best they could do, Debra said. | 2022-12-21T18:17:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland trust blocks access to college savings plans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/21/maryland-529-college-tuition-savings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/21/maryland-529-college-tuition-savings/ |
Mr. Zelensky goes to Washington in trip packed with symbolism
Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1914, according to the Associated Press, the U.S. government began requiring photographs as part of passport applications.
The United States has said “no” to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before. But he wasn’t in Washington to hear it in person. Today, that changes, as he makes the United States his first foreign destination since Russia expanded its war in his country 300 days ago, on Feb. 24.
In subsequent weeks and months, Washington nixed his request to facilitate getting his air force Soviet-era jets from Poland. President Biden bluntly and publicly rejected Zelensky’s emotional appeals to impose a “no-fly” zone over Ukraine, warning that could lead to World War III.
Still, Biden and Congress found ways to say “yes” to a lot of other requests. The $45 billion for Ukraine in a $1.7 trillion package to fund government operations and avoid a shutdown at week’s end would bring total U.S. military and economic assistance to over $100 billion.
Zelensky will hear more “yes” during his visit.
The United States is expected to confirm it’s sending another $1.8 billion in aid to Ukraine, including the Patriot missile system to defend against air attacks Russia has used over the past few months to cripple its neighbor’s power plants as winter deepens, my colleagues Dan Lamothe and Karen DeYoung reported.
Dan reported last week the administration is poised to give Ukraine “advanced electronic equipment that converts unguided aerial munitions into ‘smart bombs’ that can target Russian military positions with a high degree of accuracy.”
The trip’s symbolism
Zelensky’s itinerary includes face-to-face talks with Biden at the White House and a speech to a joint meeting of Congress. Since February, the Ukrainian leader has addressed countless legislatures the world over — but by video, not in person. That includes Congress, on March 16. (His wife, Olena Zelenska, addressed an informal meeting of Congress in July.)
Biden’s official schedule has Zelensky arriving at the White House at 2 p.m., a meeting with Biden at 2:30 p.m. and a joint news conference in the mansion’s East Room at 4:30 p.m.
“Please be present for a very special focus on Democracy Wednesday night,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) teased in a letter to colleagues Tuesday afternoon, before word of Zelensky’s visit leaked out.
The Ukrainian leader’s visit will be packed with symbolism.
It is his first known trip abroad since Feb. 24.
It will conjure up echoes of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s Dec. 26, 1941, visit to the United States, when he addressed Congress and underlined the strength of the transatlantic alliance just weeks after Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II.
That’ll be something of a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin and to the wing of the Republican Party that has increasingly expressed opposition to more aid for Ukraine, partly due to former president Donald Trump’s documented fondness for Putin.
Zelensky said after visiting Ukrainian troops on the front lines in Bakhmut he would bring a flag given to him by fighters there to “those whose decisions are very important to Ukraine,” The Washington Post reported. “This week is ‘extremely important’ for Ukraine — in order to get through this winter and next year,” Zelensky said Tuesday in his nightly national address.
A commitment to Ukraine
“The visit will underscore the United States’ steadfast commitment to supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes, including through the provision of economic, humanitarian, and military assistance,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a written statement.
“Biden has made holding together a Western coalition supporting Ukraine a central mission of his presidency. Although all of the countries in the coalition are grappling with the economic consequences of the war, they have shown few signs of withdrawing or softening their support even as heat prices rise during the winter,” my colleagues Tyler Pager, Yasmeen Abutaleb, John Hudson and Marianna Sotomayor reported last night, citing a senior U.S. administration official.
“‘President Biden will have the opportunity to reinforce that this support is not just about what we have done before, but what we will do today and what we will continue to do for as long as it takes,’” said the senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules established by the White House.”
The official denied — somewhat implausibly — that Zelensky’s visit was aimed in part at countering Republican resistance to more aid for Ukraine.
“This isn’t about sending a message to a particular political party,” my colleagues quoted the official as saying. “This is about sending a message to Putin and sending a message to the world that America will be there for Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
“After months of investigation, numerous officials privately say that Russia may not be to blame after all for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines,” Shane Harris, John Hudson, Missy Ryan and Michael Birnbaum report.
U.S. aid to Ukraine to top $100 billion once latest package passes
“The latest package of $44.9 billion is included in the omnibus spending bill that Congress is scrambling to pass by Friday to avoid a government shutdown. It is heavy on military assistance as well and also includes economic aid,” John Wagner reports.
“A flagship anti-corruption drive under the tenure of U.S.-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi used incommunicado detention, torture and sexual violence to extract confessions from senior Iraqi officials and businessmen, according to a nine-month investigation by The Washington Post,” Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim report.
“Congress dropped from its $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill an amendment that would have created a pathway to residency for Afghan refugees, dimming the hopes for tens of thousands of people rescued as Kabul fell in August 2021. Advocates of the legislation have described the move as a betrayal that would sour potential allies in future conflicts,” Alex Horton reports.
“Congress is poised to boost funding for the federal agency that protects workers’ rights to organize, at least temporarily averting a staffing crisis that has hampered the Biden administration’s ability to deliver on its pro-union agenda — and that also threatened to cause prolonged labor unrest at the agency,” Lauren Kaori Gurley reports.
Trump’s former White House ethics lawyer told Cassidy Hutchinson to give misleading testimony to Jan. 6 committee, sources say
“The January 6 committee made a startling allegation on Monday, claiming it had evidence that a Trump-backed attorney urged a key witness to mislead the committee about details they recalled,” CNN’s Katelyn Polantz, Pamela Brown, Jamie Gangel and Jeremy Herb report.
“Show up at a border crossing with Mexico and ask a U.S. official for asylum? Sign up online? Go to a U.S. embassy or consulate? The Biden administration has been conspicuously silent about how migrants who plan to claim should enter the United States when Trump-era limits end, fueling rumors, confusion and doubts about the government’s readiness despite more than two years to prepare,” the Associated Press’s Elliot Spagat reports.
“Men and women who worked out at least 30 minutes most days were about four times more likely to survive covid-19 than inactive people, according to an eye-opening study of exercise and coronavirus outcomes among almost 200,000 adults in Southern California,” Gretchen Reynolds reports.
White House looks at benefits to lure Americans back into workforce
“Top White House economic officials are considering a renewed push for a suite of policies aimed at luring more Americans back to work, including enhanced child-care and eldercare benefits, as they hammer out priorities for the coming year,” the Wall Street Journal’s Annie Linskey reports.
“Texas dispatched National Guard troops to the border, and San Diego businesses anticipated a wave of Christmas shoppers from Mexico, as tens of thousands of asylum-seekers at the border waited for a Supreme Court ruling that could allow them to enter the United States,” the AP’s Morgan Lee, Giovanna Dell’Orto and Rebecca Santana report.
“The U.S. government asked the Supreme Court not to lift the limits before Christmas, in a filing a day after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a temporary order to keep the pandemic-era restrictions in place. Before Roberts issued that order, they had been slated to expire Wednesday.”
“President Biden said on the sidelines of a Nov. 4 election rally that the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran is ‘dead,’ but stressed the U.S. won’t formally announce it, according to a new video that surfaced on social media late Monday,” Axios’s Barak Ravid and Hans Nichols report.
The top goal scorers in World Cup history, visualized
“The seven goals Lionel Messi scored in Qatar over the past month helped propel Argentina to its third World Cup. Those goals, two of them in the final, helped Messi win the Golden Ball as the best World Cup player,” Artur Galocha and Adrian Blanco report.
“Just over 28 years ago, Taylor Swift was a precocious Montessori preschooler growing up on a Pennsylvania Christmas tree farm, and Eddie Vedder was the Most Important Musician in America, Kurt Cobain having bequeathed to him the (unwanted) title with his suicide that spring,” Maureen Tkacik and Krista Brown write for the American Prospect.
“Bill Clinton himself called Vedder to the White House to ask him for help with ‘messaging’ around Cobain’s death, and the rock star in turn confided in the president that he was having trouble with a rapacious corporation named Ticketmaster, which appeared to be operating an illegal monopoly. A few weeks later, the Clinton Justice Department invited Vedder’s band Pearl Jam to be the star witness in an antitrust investigation inspired by the case. The band obliged.”
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to continue wielding his political influence in school board races across the state after his campaign helped two dozen conservative candidates win during this year’s midterm elections,” Politico’s Andrew Atterbury reports.
At 2 p.m., Biden will welcome Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House. The two will have a bilateral meeting at 2:30 p.m.
At 4:30 p.m., Biden and Zelensky will hold a news conference.
“A dangerous winter storm and punishing Arctic blast are brewing, but if you’re longing for more sunlight, Wednesday is a day to celebrate: Dec. 21 is the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year — and first day of astronomical winter — in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a sign that longer, brighter days are upon us,” Justin Grieser reports. | 2022-12-21T18:18:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mr. Zelensky goes to Washington in trip packed with symbolism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/mr-zelensky-goes-washington-trip-packed-with-symbolism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/mr-zelensky-goes-washington-trip-packed-with-symbolism/ |
The plea, inspired by a famous World War I truce, comes as Ukraine’s president visits Washington
A Christmas tree sits in Saint Sophia Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images)
Nearly 1,000 U.S. faith leaders are calling for a Christmas cease-fire in Ukraine as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits Washington on Wednesday, 10 months after Russia’s invasion.
The leaders, who represent a broad range of faiths, said in a statement that they hoped a temporary truce could lead to the negotiation of permanent peace.
Live updates: Zelensky visiting White House, addressing Congress
“As people of faith and conscience, believing in the sanctity of all life on this planet, we call for a Christmas Truce in Ukraine,” the statement reads. “In the spirit of the truce that occurred in 1914 during the First World War, we urge our government to take a leadership role in bringing the war in Ukraine to an end through supporting calls for a ceasefire and negotiated settlement, before the conflict results in a nuclear war that could devastate the world’s ecosystems and annihilate all of God’s creation.”
The signers are advocating for a cease-fire from Dec. 24 through Jan. 19, the 12th day of Christmas in the Orthodox calendar.
The statement was sent to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships on Tuesday morning. The signers aim to meet with representatives of that office to urge the Biden administration to spearhead both the temporary cease-fire and long-term peace talks.
More than 6,000 civilians have died in Ukraine since the war began, according to the United Nations, and Ukrainians are bracing for a harsh winter as damaged infrastructure and displacement make heat a rarity.
Among the initial signers of the statement are pastor and activist the Rev. William J. Barber II, Shalom Center founder Rabbi Arthur Waskow, scholar and liberal activist Cornel West and Tarunjit Singh Butalia, executive director of Religions for Peace USA.
The statement was written by representatives of several peace groups, including Fellowship of Reconciliation, Code Pink and the National Council of Elders. They began recruiting signers to the statement in mid-November.
“As the war in Ukraine drags into … its 10th month, the only certainty is that the estimated hundreds of thousands killed and wounded will continue to grow, as will the 14 million war refugees not to mention the humanitarian impacts felt across Europe and the globe,” Ariel Gold, executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation USA, said in a separate news release.
The demand is inspired by the Christmas truce that occurred during World War I. Though national leaders at the time ignored Pope Benedict XV’s plea for an official cease-fire, on Dec. 24, 1914, German and British troops along the Western Front took part in an informal, erratic truce, emerging from their trenches to sing carols and share cigars, food and beverages for a few short hours.
“Negotiation is not a euphemism for capitulation, nor is it a rationalization of Putin’s aggression,” Medea Benjamin, another of the authors of the statement and co-founder of the peace group Code Pink, said in a news release. “It is simply a recognition that the end of this war cannot be achieved by more war.”
Jordan unveils $100 million plan for anniversary of Jesus’ baptism | 2022-12-21T18:18:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Faith leaders call for Christmas cease-fire in Russia-Ukraine war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/12/21/christmas-truce-ukraine-russia-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/12/21/christmas-truce-ukraine-russia-war/ |
These are the most intense mid-latitude storms and earn the designation “bomb cyclone” due to an especially rapid drop in air pressure.
Model projection showing bomb cyclone just north of the Great Lakes early Saturday. The storm's pressure is forecast to drop rapidly as it tracks from the Ohio Valley toward Quebec, earning it the bomb cyclone designation. (WeatherBell)
If that sounds menacing, it’s because it is supposed to be: The term was designed to convey a degree of intensity and danger that is typically associated with hurricanes, but that even winter storms can carry.
Here is what it means, and what it could mean for the millions of people in the storm’s path.
Normal air pressure is about 1010 millibars, a measurement of the force exerted by the weight of the atmosphere. But in stormy weather, air pressure drops well below that — the lower the pressure, the stronger the storm.
The pressure of the storm system sweeping across the country this week is forecast to fall from 1003 millibars Thursday night to 968 millibars Friday night, a drop of 35 millibars. That is more than enough to qualify as what meteorologists call “explosive bombogenesis,” a rapid intensification that warrants the bomb cyclone label.
How to prepare your home for freezing temperatures and winter storms
As with any storm, they develop when drastically different airmasses clash — typically, cold and dry air moving down from the north and warm, moist air rising up from the tropics. The warmer air rapidly rises, creating cloud systems, lowering air pressure and developing into a storm system that circulates counter-clockwise around that center of low pressure.
Rapid storm strengthening is a signal that increasing amounts of warm air are being drawn into a storm’s circulation, spiraling toward its center, and rising out its top. When more air escapes out the top of the storm than is being sucked inward, air pressure drops even further.
The differences in air temperatures that feed this process can be especially pronounced when a polar airmass is as cold as the one surging into the U.S. Air temperatures were dropping to more than 30 degrees below zero in Montana on Wednesday.
Here are the forecasts for 10 cities in the path of the winter storm
“Given their explosive development, it was an easy path to take to just call these systems ‘bombs,'” Gyakum said. | 2022-12-21T18:19:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What is a bomb cyclone and how are they formed? Here's what to know. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/21/bomb-cyclone-explained/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/21/bomb-cyclone-explained/ |
Lawsuit, but no criminal charges, filed in Bethesda bicyclist’s death
Sarah Langenkamp, a diplomat recently stationed in Ukraine, died in Maryland when a truck driver turned into her, police say
A memorial "Ghost Bike" for Sarah Langenkamp marks the area where she was fatally struck while riding her bicycle along River Road in Bethesda, Md. (Dan Morse/The Washington Post)
A State Department diplomat who was struck by a flatbed truck while riding her bicycle in Bethesda, Md., would still be alive had the driver made a safer turn and received better training by the company that employed him, the woman’s family asserted in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Montgomery County Circuit Court.
The driver, who local authorities say will not be criminally charged, was cited for three traffic violations, including negligent driving and failure to yield the right of way to a bike rider, according to court records.
“The investigation into this incredibly tragic incident is complete,” said Lauren DeMarco, a spokeswoman for the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office. “After careful review of the video and additional evidence compiled in the police investigation, it was clear there are no applicable criminal charges in this case.”
Maryland has vehicular manslaughter laws, but they are intended for drivers who are “grossly negligent” or “criminally negligent.”
The Aug. 25 death of Sarah Langenkamp, 42, attracted widespread attention: She had returned to the D.C. area from a seemingly more dangerous life — stationed in Ukraine. On the day of the crash, she attended a back-to-school event at her sons’ new school in Bethesda. Langenkamp was riding home in a marked bike lane along River Road when the large truck — to her left — turned right into the parking lot of a building products company and struck her, according to police. She died at the scene.
Her husband and parents retained prominent D.C. attorney Patrick Regan, whose clients include victims and family members of the 2009 Metro Red Line crash that killed nine. The lawsuit names as defendants the driver and two corporate entities that, according to the filings, employed him and owned the truck he was driving: Beacon Roofing Supply and Beacon Building Products.
David Wooten, an attorney for the driver, said his client cooperated with police.
“He feels horrible that this happened, and prays for the woman’s family,” Wooten said.
While the citations are non-jailable offenses, the driver faces fines of more than $1,000 and a possible implication for his commercial driver’s license, Wooten said. He declined to discuss specifics of the collision or his client’s possible civil liability.
Jennifer Lewis, a spokeswoman for Beacon, declined to comment.
The lawsuit asserts the driver made a series of mistakes, faulting him for among other actions “not yielding the right-of-way to Ms. Langenkamp” and “encroaching into the marked bike lane without first ensuring that it was safe to do so.”
Another traffic tragedy: "For me there is no Christmas"
In an interview, Regan said the driver’s turn was inherently dangerous because he did so across his blind spot. The driver instead should have come to a stop on River Road, turned on his hazards, and had someone act as a spotter to alert others, Regan said. Such a procedure would have allowed the driver to more deliberately back the flatbed truck into the parking lot “without endangering pedestrians or cyclists,” according to Regan.
“They’re supposed to back in with a spotter,” Regan said. “That’s the only safe way you do it to eliminate the blind spots. … He was not following the safety procedures he should have been following.”
The driver also should have used a different vehicle entrance into the parking lot, according to Regan, which would have afforded him more room to use a spotter and back into the parking lot.
Instead, by turning right across his blind spot, the cab of the flatbed struck Langenkamp and knocked her off her bike, Regan said. She was then run over by the cab, Regan said.
Regan said that in the coming months, he will aim to find out what kind of training the building products company had for its drivers.
“We’re going to find out what safety training they provided,” Regan said. “We’ll know a lot more in 90 days.”
According to court records, the driver was cited for three traffic offenses: Failure to yield the right-of-way in a bike lane to the rider of a bike; Negligent driving in a “careless or imprudent manner;” and causing physical injury or death to a vulnerable – in this case a bicyclist – on a roadway. | 2022-12-21T18:38:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lawsuit, but no criminal charges, in death of Bethesda cyclist Langenkamp - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/langenkamp-lawsuit-bethesda-bicyclist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/langenkamp-lawsuit-bethesda-bicyclist/ |
This satellite image made available by NOAA shows cloud cover over North America on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022 at 1:31 p.m. An arctic blast is bringing extreme cold, heavy snow and intense wind across much of the U.S. this week — just in time for the holidays. (NOAA via AP) (Uncredited/NOAA) | 2022-12-21T19:48:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EXPLAINER: Arctic blast sweeps US, bomb cyclone possible - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/explainer-arctic-blast-sweeps-us-bomb-cyclone-possible/2022/12/21/44055604-8164-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/explainer-arctic-blast-sweeps-us-bomb-cyclone-possible/2022/12/21/44055604-8164-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Congress has proposed roughly $1 billion to help poor countries deal with climate change. President Biden had pledged $11.4 billion.
Families travel by boat to move their belongings and get groceries after their homes were submerged by flooding this year in Pakistan. (Saiyna Bashir for The Washington Post)
For weeks, the Biden administration has urged Congress to support climate aid to poor countries, but the funding deal struck by lawmakers includes just a fraction of the spending President Biden has pledged to those nations.
The Senate is now debating a bipartisan, roughly $1.7 trillion deal to fund the U.S. government, but it includes roughly just $1 billion to help poor countries transition to clean energy and fund adaptation programs, a blow to Biden’s efforts on the worldwide fight against climate change. The president had personally pledged more than ten times that — $11.4 billion annually — and made that promise central to his pitch to other countries that all of them should do more to reduce planet-warming emissions.
The shortfall would undercut a White House that has pledged to world leaders that it would be different from prior administrations that had failed to deliver on promises to provide more money to help the developing world. It comes at a time when that funding has emerged as a major sticking point in international climate talks, with the lack of it from the United States and other rich countries helping to weaken a final deal at last month’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, also known as COP27.
Developing countries have pushed for more aid to secure their support on reducing emissions, saying countries such as the United States have a responsibility to pay for the damage caused by their historic emissions that continue to warm the planet.
Pakistan helped lead that effort, after floods overwhelmed the country, causing an estimated $30 billion in damage to infrastructure and unleashing malaria, cholera and other infectious diseases through a population deprived of shelter, clean water and food.
At COP27, flood-battered Pakistan leads push to make polluting countries pay
Republicans — and some Democrats — have long bristled at increasing international climate aid, arguing that the United States is already a world-leading donor to needy countries and would do better to spend on helping American families deal with inflation. And while both chambers of Congress are still controlled by Democrats, congressional leaders jettisoned a larger aid package in part because of the need to enlist Republican votes to pass a bill by the end of Friday and prevent the shutdown of key federal agencies and programs.
The administration said last month that securing the $11.4 billion would be among its top asks in year-end budget talks. John F. Kerry, the U.S. special envoy on climate, was deployed to lobby congressional leaders. Shalanda Young, the administration’s top negotiator as director of the Office of Management and Budget, had made it a top priority.
But the bill Congress made public Tuesday produced far less. Among other smaller pots of funding it includes three major outlays. The largest is $270 million for adaptation programs, especially for Asian and Pacific Ocean countries. An additional $260 million is earmarked for clean-energy programs, especially in Africa. It would spend $185 million on “sustainable landscapes programs.”
Administration officials stressed that their goal is to secure the funding by a year from now, for the next fiscal year, 2024. They said they won’t stop asking for the money, even though Republicans will take control of the House next month.
“The President has made clear that he is going to fight to see this fully funded,” a White House spokeswoman said in an email. “Over the past several weeks and throughout the past weekend, members of the Administration worked to secure funding in (fiscal year 2023) that puts us on a path to achieving this goal. We will continue to work with Congress to make achieving this goal (by next year) a reality.”
Biden pledged $11 billion in international climate aid. Can Congress deliver?
Beyond the new $1 billion Congress is on the verge of approving, the administration has billions from previously funded programs that it can tap into through agencies such as the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and the Export-Import Bank.
The administration may have good intentions, but its failure to convince Congress now is likely to prevent it from hitting its fundraising goal by next year, said Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, an environmental nonprofit organization.
“This is the last chance,” he said. “This was with Democratic leadership, and it’s not going to be easier with Republican leadership of the House.”
Environmentalists had urged Congress to act now, before the GOP takeover of the House. Both environmental groups and negotiators representing poor nations have said the United States has a moral responsibility to fulfill its promises on climate aid and that it is unlikely to lock down the cooperation it wants from other countries on emissions cuts if it doesn’t meet its pledges on financing.
Friction over unfulfilled promises has hamstrung that effort for years. In 2009, at a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, developed countries agreed to provide $100 billion annually to help developing countries transition to greener economies and adapt to mounting climate disasters. But more than a decade later, rich countries are still nearly $20 billion short of what was promised in 2020, according to an analysis from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. | 2022-12-21T19:48:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Budget deal falls far short on Biden’s promise of climate aid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/21/budget-deal-falls-far-short-bidens-promise-climate-aid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/21/budget-deal-falls-far-short-bidens-promise-climate-aid/ |
As climate change threats grow, textbooks aren’t keeping up, study says
Study finds that most college biology textbooks devote fewer words to climate change, and focus less on solutions, than they did before 2010
By Caroline Preston
Science teacher Sarah Ott speaks to her class about climate literacy in Dalton, Ga., on April 25, 2019. Teachers across the country say they struggle to find trustworthy materials to help them teach about climate change. (Sarah Blake Morgan/AP)
Evidence is mounting fast of the devastating consequences of climate change on the planet, but college textbooks are not keeping up. A study released Wednesday found that most college biology textbooks published in the 2010s had less content on climate change than textbooks from the previous decade and gave shrinking attention to possible solutions to the global crisis.
The study, conducted by researchers with North Carolina State University, was based on an analysis of 57 college biology textbooks published between 1970 and 2019. The researchers found that coverage of climate change increased over the decades, to a median of 52 sentences in the 2000s.
But the figure dropped in the 2010s, to a median of 45 sentences. That’s less than three pages, according to Jennifer Landin, an associate professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University and an author of the study.
“It’s really a very small amount of content,” she said. “I certainly think we can go into more detail explaining the relationships between carbon, where this carbon is coming from, how it relates to fossil fuels, where fossil fuels come from. There are all these elements that we can address that I think are being glossed over.”
Landin and co-author Rabiya Ansari provided some hypotheses for the decline in climate change content. One reason could be political backlash: Increased media attention on the topic in the 1990s and 2000s, with the Kyoto Protocol — the international treaty designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — U.N. climate conferences and the film “An Inconvenient Truth” led to growing controversy around climate change and rising climate denialism. Textbook publishers often try to avoid controversy to win approval of their books by education boards, the authors noted.
Another reason could be the expertise of textbook authors. The share of authors with backgrounds in cellular or molecular biology increased over the past decade among the books studied, whereas the share of those specializing in ecology and science communications (who might be more likely to emphasize climate change) declined, Landin said.
In one state, every class teaches climate change — even P.E.
The study identified other trends, too. Coverage of climate solutions dropped to 3 percent of the total content on climate change, from a peak of about 15 percent in the 1990s. Information on climate change was increasingly left to the final pages of textbooks; in books from the 2010s, that material didn’t appear until readers had made it through nearly 98 percent of the text, compared with 85 percent in books from the 1990s.
“That was probably the most depressing part of this study,” said Landin. “If the instructors are going over the book in order, there’s a good chance that that gets dropped or glossed over.”
Tyler Reed, the senior director of communications with the publisher McGraw Hill, whose textbooks were among those studied, wrote in an email that titles published before 2020 are now outdated and have been updated. He wrote that introductory biology classes must cover a “tremendous amount” of material on a range of topics and that the company has strategies, including a peer-review process, to ensure that it is using up-to-date data on climate change.
Ansari, who helped to write the study while an undergraduate student at North Carolina State, said she was “shocked” by how little space textbooks gave to climate change, although the study’s findings were consistent with her own educational experience.
As a student attending public K-12 schools in Durham, N.C., in the 2010s, Ansari said, her classes rarely touched on climate change. When she got to college and started talking with peers about global warming, she said, “I realized we all had misinformation or we were lacking information regarding it, in terms of what’s causing it and what actions we can take.”
The study did identify some ways in which content on climate change had improved in recent years, namely in describing the consequences of rising temperatures. Textbooks in the ’70s and ’80s focused primarily on describing the mechanics of the greenhouse effect, whereas books published in later decades contained significantly more information on harms such as sea-level rise, risks to human health, species loss, extreme weather and food shortages.
Landin said she was encouraged by these changes and praised textbook authors for adding information on how rising temperatures are reshaping life on Earth. But she urged publishers and authors to focus more on actionable solutions for climate change — which exist and are helping to rewrite the most dire climate projections.
Ansari, 23, said her generation needs greater awareness of tools for alleviating climate change.
“They are just like, ‘It’s too late,’” she said, referring to peers and their parents. “And I will say, ‘No, no. There’s always something we can do.’ But they weren’t given that information in their education system.”
This story about climate change content was produced in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. | 2022-12-21T19:48:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Information on climate change in college textbooks is meager, study finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/21/climate-literacy-college-textbooks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/21/climate-literacy-college-textbooks/ |
The Taliban strikes another blow to Afghanistan’s women
Empty seats reserved for female students at Mirwais Neeka Institute of Higher Education in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Wednesday. (EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
In the autumn of 2020, during the pandemic’s bleakest days, one of my students at the School of Leadership, Afghanistan drew a picture.
It depicts a tent in a field ringed by mountains. The tent is blue fabric, staked to the ground at its corners with a mesh opening in one of its walls. Behind the mesh, obscured, stands a woman. She holds strings of colorful balloons, the strings extending out through the mesh, and she is releasing them, one by one, and letting them rise into the air.
The girl who drew the picture, this young Afghan artist, explained it this way: The blue tent is the blue burqa. The woman inside is every Afghan woman forced to erase herself beneath that blue fabric or behind the walls of her home. She stands for every woman who is alone and quarantined not just by covid-19 but by elements of society that claim ultimate jurisdiction over her life and future, and who fights back by sending her daughters to school. Daughters like the artist herself.
The woman in the blue tent opens her hand and her colorful balloons float away.
Two years later, in the midst of days bleaker than any I could have ever imagined for my country, the men of the Taliban sit comfortably in Kabul and take aim with their weapons and casually blast the balloons of our hopes out of the sky, one by one.
The latest shot came on Tuesday, when the Taliban decreed that women are now barred from attending universities in Afghanistan, effective immediately and indefinitely. It’s a project that began in March, when it banned girls from attending school past sixth grade yet kept universities open.
That’s over now. What remains in my country is this: Girls can attend school through sixth grade — or, said another way, more or less until they enter puberty. And then nothing.
In the Taliban’s Afghanistan, there is no need for adolescent girls to study. There is no need for young women to learn. Women have their purpose. The relentless codification of control over their futures, their ambitions, and their bodies has unfolded across 2022 with slow brutality.
Almost since the day the Taliban seized power last summer, I have asked the world not to look away from Afghanistan. I have asked you not to look away from Afghan women and girls, and from the men who are the judges, juries and executioners of dreams.
I ask this for the same reason that Rina Amiri, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan women, girls and human rights, wrote on Twitter last month: “Those who fear a radicalized Afghanistan should be alarmed by the Taliban’s policies against women & girls, denying them education, work in most sectors, even small joys such as the right to go to a park. This extremism will lead to instability, poverty & more population flight.”
Yes. It absolutely will. It already has. So look, and see, and act.
Act to boldly support and publicly advocate for Afghan women — women who are beaten and shot at, and whose bodies appear cast away at roadsides and in dumpsters and who still call even now for freedom and the right to work and to learn. To Muslim-majority nations I say: Act and speak out in the strongest terms against the Taliban’s utterly un-Islamic decrees.
I personally benefited from the bravery of Afghan women in the 1990s under the Taliban’s first regime. I am who I am because they did what they did for girls like me, risking their lives to teach us in secret. It’s in their honor that I continue our fight for dignity and justice, now and forever.
A new generation of Afghan women is being pushed off the pathway toward education and independence. The bright balloons that once filled our sky are punctured and falling to earth.
These women and their hopes are allies against extremism that the world can’t afford to lose. See them, hear them, honor them. Don’t look away.
Opinion|How India can sell hundreds of government-owned businesses | 2022-12-21T19:49:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Taliban's ban on women in university is a massive blow - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/afghanistan-taliban-women-university-ban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/afghanistan-taliban-women-university-ban/ |
Cluster munitions are also a danger to Ukrainian civilians
The remains of a cluster-type munition lie in a field in Cherkaska Lozova, near Kharkiv, Ukraine, in May. (Bernat Armangue/AP)
The Dec. 17 front-page article “The Russians retreated. Their explosives did not.,” vividly portrayed the horror of individuals who are forced to live in proximity to unexploded ordnance, including antipersonnel land mines. The vast majority of those who are killed or injured by these and similar devices, often years after they are deployed, are innocent civilians.
The article did not mention another type of device known as cluster munitions, which are also banned under international law and have also been deployed in the war in Ukraine. There, cluster munitions have been used mainly by the Russian army but also reportedly by Ukraine on several occasions. It is incomprehensible that the United States, which, along with Russia and Ukraine, remains in the minority of nations that have not yet joined the international treaty banning cluster munitions and is considering a request by Ukraine to supply its army with such weapons.
Whatever tactical advantage might be gained would be overshadowed by the potential harm the devices would cause to the population of Ukraine now and in the decades to come as this article clearly pointed out.
Jeff Meer, Silver Spring
The writer is U.S. executive director of Humanity & Inclusion, which assists survivors of land mines and cluster munitions. | 2022-12-21T19:49:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Cluster munitions are also a danger to Ukrainian civilians - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/cluster-munitions-are-also-danger-ukrainian-civilians/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/cluster-munitions-are-also-danger-ukrainian-civilians/ |
What Meghan and Megan tell us about the abuse of Black women
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, left, and Megan Thee Stallion. (Getty Images)
This is a tale of two Megs: Meghan Markle and Megan Thee Stallion, the actress-turned-duchess and the rap superstar. The trajectories of their lives and careers could not be more different. Yet over the past week, both have come to represent how the systematic abuse of Black women works, no matter how rich or famous they are.
First, the Duchess of Sussex. In the Netflix documentary “Harry & Meghan,” Markle takes to the screen to open up about her life before and after marrying into the colonial institution that is the British royal family. The racist abuse Markle received from the media, the death threats and the lack of protection from the royals were so horrendous that she and Harry up and left Britain and the family fold.
Next, the rap songstress. Megan Thee Stallion (whose real name is Megan Pete) was in court last week to testify against Tory Lanez (real name Daystar Peterson), whom she accuses of shooting her in the foot in 2020. For two years, Megan Thee Stallion has endured allegations that she made up the episode, that it was her fault for getting involved in a relationship with Lanez (who has pleaded not guilty), and for all manner of other nonsense.
Nesrine Malik of the Guardian is not impressed with the kind of attention Markle has drawn, arguing that the focus on one rich woman’s plight distracts from conversations we ought to be having about racial inequity and how it harms genuinely vulnerable people. “If there’s one thing that is apparent from their recent documentary,” Malik writes of Harry and Meghan, “it is that they are not renouncing their unearned right to royalty, but are angry that they could not claim it.” They become, she says, “informal ambassadors” for British race relations anyway, even though they’re “not a reflection of the country’s successes or a resolution of its crises.”
Karen Attiah newsletter: With Tory Lanez on trial, where’s #BelieveBlackWomen now?
Malik is dismissive on the grounds that Markle is too privileged to be taken seriously as a symbol. As for Megan Thee Stallion, her personal history with Lanez and other men has been used to undermine the seriousness of her accusations. As Jemele Hill wrote in the Atlantic, “The implication was that Pete was both promiscuous and a bad friend — notions likely to erode sympathy for a woman who, in her raps, glories in her sexual freedom.”
Meghan’s and Megan’s critics miss an important point: It matters to pay attention to their testimonies, because they give us an opening to talk about the specific jeopardy Black women face, at the nexus of White racism and male sexism.
Both Megs have said the abuse they absorbed drove them to wish they were dead. In the Netflix documentary, Harry says he blames the stress from the media pressure for Markle’s 2020 miscarriage. Megan Thee Stallion, attempting to prove what had happened to her, went so far as to share pictures of her wounded foot on social media.
The Megs’ stories also show how Black women are caught between a rock and a hard place as victims of abuse.
When the police, responding to a disturbance call, arrived to find Megan Thee Stallion bloodied, her first instinct, she said, was not to ask for help but to shield Lanez. “He shot me and I still tried to protect him,” she said in 2020, “because the police be killing us.” Markle recounted in the documentary that she and Harry were expected to remain mum and to preserve the institution of the royal family at all costs, even while the family was actively contributing to the harm. As Harry said, “We were being fed to the wolves.”
When it comes to the abuse of Black women, the real conversations we’re afraid to have are those about the actual foot soldiers of misogynoir. In Markle’s case, the documentary noted that a large number of the social media accounts launching and amplifying the most attacks against her belonged to White women. In Megan Thee Stallion’s case, most of the jokes and vilification have come from Black men in the hip-hop industry.
The people who should be Black women’s allies against sexism and racism are often the ones inflicting the most damage.
If a light-skinned, mixed-race duchess and a Grammy Award-winning Black woman artist are not safe from White women or Black men, what about the rest of us? Most women don’t have the resources to sue the media or to hire high-powered lawyers to confront those we have accused of hurting us. And we’re not going to #SelfCare or talk-therapy our way out of systemic mistreatment.
Meghan and Megan offer high-profile proof of the multitudes of violences against Black women. Time after time, in a world determined to break us, our survival is nothing short of miraculous. | 2022-12-21T19:49:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Meghan Markle, Megan Thee Stallion and the abuse of Black women - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/meghan-markle-megan-thee-stallion-black-women-abuse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/meghan-markle-megan-thee-stallion-black-women-abuse/ |
From “From Yonder Wooded Hill,” published by Fall Line Press. (Riley Goodman)
This photographer explores Appalachian folk tales through vividly poetic images
There’s just something about Appalachia that draws photographers and writers to it. And, to be honest, much of the work that is produced about it treats the area as some kind of zoo to be visited to gawk at its inhabitants. Poverty, snake handlers, coal miners, meth-addled trailer parks—these are the revolving tropes we’ve been handed over the years.
And the people of Appalachia have rightly felt maligned. Who would like to be treated like a freak show side attraction? This is why it’s always a refreshing and welcomed thing to have people who are from there, raised there, give us their perspective. In truth, this is a welcome approach from anywhere, having the people who are from there share the voices of their neighbors, coworkers and families.
Photography can never provide a completely accurate representation of a place and people. But having the story or the project come from “one of them” adds much needed nuance to the stories we’ve already been told and expands and enriches our understanding. Riley Goodman’s book, “From Yonder Wooded Hill,” (Fall Line Press, 2022) falls squarely in that category.
And instead of taking us on a tour of black smudged coal miner’s faces and dilapidated trailer parks, Goodman’s book investigates the regions folk tales. As he says in an afterword to the book:
“From my ancestral West Virginia and North Carolina where to the Patapsco River Valley of Maryland where I was raised, my family conjured superstitions and stories to make sense of their world. Walking on opposite sides of a pole splits two people’s souls; it’s customary to pray over floodwaters, and proper etiquette in the presence of a ghost involves asking, ‘What in the name of God do you want?’ Growing up, I accepted this folklore as common place but came to understand with age that these stories were unique to a working class, Appalachian culture.”
“From Yonder Wooded Hill” is quite different than a lot of the work coming out of Appalachia that I’ve seen. This is a very personal exploration of life there, intertwined with intimate knowledge of the stories its people have told themselves to help make sense of life. It’s something that we all do, not matter where we are from. We’ve all inherited stories and superstitions that have encircled whatever socioeconomic background we are from that have helped us plumb the depths of life.
I very much appreciate Goodman’s perspective and approach in this book. He gathers, and presents, archival images alongside collected ephemera and artifacts to form, as the publisher’s description of the book says, “a narrative that rather than noting a specific period, creates an ever-occurring amalgamation of time. By establishing this crafted world, Goodman invites the viewer to question the tenets of authenticity, leaving the idea of ‘historical truth’ in an undisclosed middle ground.”
The book itself is a pleasure to look at, from its green velvet cover (which has been proven to be a magnet for my cats’ hair!) to it’s excellent printing. It’s a multimedia tour de force that I would love to see in a gallery setting. The work seems to naturally lend itself to an installation where the tactile nature of the work would really stand out. Still, the book does a nice job of pulling the material together. | 2022-12-21T19:50:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos of Appalachia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/12/21/this-photographer-explores-appalachian-folk-tales-through-vividly-poetic-images/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/12/21/this-photographer-explores-appalachian-folk-tales-through-vividly-poetic-images/ |
This undated U.S. State Department photo shows Ambassador Lynne M. Tracy. The Senate has voted overwhelmingly to confirm the new U.S. ambassador to Russia. The vote to confirm Lynne M. Tracy as the new ambassador came hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was expected to arrive Wednesday in Washington for a historic visit. (U.S. State Dept. via AP) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-12-21T19:50:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Senate confirms new U.S. ambassador to Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-confirms-new-us-ambassador-to-russia/2022/12/21/c88e32e0-815c-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-confirms-new-us-ambassador-to-russia/2022/12/21/c88e32e0-815c-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, like the one seen here, are vectors for diseases such as dengue, yellow fever and Zika. (Shinji Kasai)
The insecticides that target disease-spreading mosquitoes are running into nature’s ultimate defense mechanism: evolution. Scientists reported Wednesday that mosquitoes in Cambodia and Vietnam increasingly carry a mutation that makes them resistant to a commonly deployed insecticide.
The report, in the journal Science Advances, tells the story of Aedes aegypti, a vector for dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, Zika and other diseases. The researchers found that in Cambodia and Vietnam, 78 percent of sampled mosquitoes had a mutation that, in laboratory studies, shows resistance to permethrin, which is part of a class of insecticides known as pyrethroids.
That mutation has been seen previously, but never at such high frequency in a mosquito population. The new study also found extreme resistance to two different insecticides sprayed in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, where mosquitoes had more than one mutation conferring resistance. One insecticide sprayed there killed only 10 percent of mosquitoes, while the other didn’t kill any.
The research also carries an echo of the pandemic, and the evolution of SARS-CoV-2. The coronavirus has repeatedly mutated in ways that enhance its transmissibility and allow it to evade antibodies produced by vaccination or prior infection.
“I believe our work will help us understand that evolution is a powerful force,” Shinji Kasai, lead author of the study and director of the department of medical entomology at Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases, said in an email.
“Aedes mosquitoes can inhabit anywhere. They like artificial water containers including jars, used tires, plastic cups, basins and pods,” he said. “I think it is impossible to eliminate such water containers.”
The report notes that, although the mutation has never been detected anywhere in Southeast Asia other than Vietnam and Cambodia, it may be spreading to other areas of Asia, where it could become an “unprecedentedly serious threat to the control of dengue fever” and other mosquito-borne diseases.
Kasai noted that the mosquitoes with this mutation are unlikely to thrive in areas that do not use pyrethroid insecticides. And he offered a big-picture view of the long war between humans and mosquitoes — one that does not presume the bugs will somehow be entirely eradicated.
“All organisms live as cogs on this planet and may be necessary to sustain the planet,” he said in the email. “I think the most desirable world is one in which mosquitoes can be controlled to the extent that people do not have to feel the risk of mosquito-borne diseases.” | 2022-12-21T19:50:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | High number of mosquitoes found with mutation that resists insecticides - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/12/21/resistant-mosquitoes-mutations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/12/21/resistant-mosquitoes-mutations/ |
He’s perfect, except he doesn’t like dogs. Carolyn Hax readers give advice.
Dear Carolyn: Do you think someone can truly be a good person if they don't love dogs? I have a boyfriend whom I could really see a future with — except that he doesn't love dogs. I have such a problem with that.
— Must Love Dogs
Must Love Dogs: A partner will not — and cannot — have all the same interests and enthusiasms as you. This does not necessarily mean they are the wrong person for you, much less that they have a breakup-worthy character flaw! If your whole life revolved around dogs (your work, your hobbies, your home decor, your friendships) and your partner refused to express even a begrudging interest in them, that might be a problem. Even then it wouldn’t be a character flaw, just a compatibility issue. You don’t paint him as hostile or resentful, just indifferent. I’d say let yourself be slightly sad to not have a partner with the same love of dogs as you, and then give your funny, kind, smart, successful partner a hug.
— Loves Dogs, But My Partner Doesn’t Need To
Must Love Dogs: “Indifferent” to dogs and hating dogs are two separate and distinct mindsets. It sounds like your boyfriend is uncomfortable with dogs because he does not know them; essentially, he doesn’t speak their language. The larger question is would he be willing to get to know your dog enough to care for it and include it as you need him to in the context of a family? Yes, I know it is your dog and your responsibility, but partner illness, work obligations, veterinary emergencies, and child-raising have a way of making sure that all family members are on deck for a pet.
It’s worth asking if fear of dogs is part of your boyfriend’s story. I have a parent who was very afraid of dogs after having been bitten on multiple occasions by a neighbor’s dog. They always had a healthy respect for working dogs and their role in society, but personal interactions with dogs were uneasy. After almost 50 years from their trauma, watching my parent take the risk just to pet my new, calm dog was something really special. (Their mutual hatred of squirrels aided a bond.)
Must Love Dogs: It’s an age-old conundrum: Can I change my partner? What boundaries do we each have? What are my non-negotiables? You suggest that someone’s comfort level with pets could be a character flaw; surely that’s hyperbole, right? Because if you mean it, do this man a favor and let him go. If your non-negotiables include must currently love dogs, throw this partner back in the sea and try again!
But really, this is probably an issue worth talking about: If he’s just indifferent to your dog, can you live with that if it never changes? Is he opposed to things you might expect or be comfortable with such as: dogs on the couch or bed, taking dogs on trips in a car, or basic tasks of feeding and caring for a dog? If so, a long-term partnership could be a challenge.
If, on the other hand, he’s great boyfriend material and just indifferent to dogs, make peace with that. It’s fine to hope that he changes. I say this as a husband who was a “no pets inside, well okay, maybe a cat, oh look a dog, I-am-not-a-dog-person” person, who now has two daily walks with one of my best friends, our dog. I’m a dog person. But, still no dogs on the bed!
— Tim Wheeler
Must Love Dogs: I married a man who was indifferent to my dog, and I have to say that, in his case, it was a red flag that I wished I’d heeded. Over time his indifference actually turned into annoyance whenever my dog sought his attention — which was often because she desperately wanted him to love her like I did. Also, as my dog got older and her care needs increased, he had no interest in helping me with her. This was difficult because she was a large dog and lifting her was a challenge for me.
In the end, my husband and I separated for various additional reasons, but they all basically revolved around the themes of lack of empathy and selfishness. I realize there are legitimate reasons for some people to dislike or fear dogs, but I do think it’s important to parse out what those underlying reasons are and determine if it’s something you’re willing to live with for the rest of your life.
— Penny Otrera
Every week, we ask readers to answer a question submitted to Carolyn Hax’s live chat or email. Read last week’s installment here. New questions are typically posted on Fridays, with a Monday deadline for submissions. Responses are anonymous unless you choose to identify yourself and are edited for length and clarity. | 2022-12-21T20:14:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | He’s perfect, but he doesn’t like dogs. Carolyn Hax readers give advice. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/21/carolyn-hax-boyfriend-doesnt-like-dogs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/21/carolyn-hax-boyfriend-doesnt-like-dogs/ |
How the release of Trump’s taxes blows up a big GOP myth
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), center, talks to the media after the committee voted to release Donald Trump's tax returns during a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Also pictured are, from left, Democratic Reps. Steven Horsford (Nev.), Judy Chu (Calif.), Mike Thompson (Calif.) and Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands). (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
When the House Ways and Means Committee voted on Tuesday to release Donald Trump’s recent tax returns, one thing became clear: A major GOP claim about the quest for these returns has been exposed as bogus. The release of summary data also highlights a deeper argument between the parties about the legitimacy of congressional oversight, and even the functioning of government.
For years, Republicans insisted the Democratic demand for Trump’s returns — which started when he was president and continued after voters sent him back to his Mar-a-Lago estate — was nothing but a fishing expedition. When the Supreme Court ruled that Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee could access them, GOP outrage grew even louder.
But now that the committee has voted to release them, the big news isn’t just what will be found in the full returns when they are released. It’s also that longtime Democratic assertions about the need to access them have been vindicated.
Beyond showing that Trump paid no federal income taxes in 2020, the initial report revealed that the IRS violated its own rules, which require auditing of the president and vice president’s returns every year. Trump’s returns were not audited in 2017 or 2018, and the agency moved to begin audits only after Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), the committee chair, began requesting them.
It would be naive to claim Democrats’ quest for Trump’s taxes wasn’t political, at least in part. But in seeking them, committee Democrats also articulated a legitimate oversight goal: to determine whether the president was being properly audited.
As Neal noted in 2019, the question was whether the IRS was applying the law to the president “in a fair and impartial manner.” It should be self-evident that this is important public knowledge — exactly the sort of thing that judicious oversight should seek to determine.
“Neal conducted a basic oversight function to determine whether the IRS properly audited the president,” Steven M. Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, told us. “The answer is no.” Rosenthal added that this is something “the Congress and the public should know.”
Of course it is. But Republicans have opposed the release of this information as an awful precedent to set. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) warned that it “will jeopardize the right of every American to be protected from political targeting by Congress.” Others have wielded similar language.
But in warning of this weaponization, Republicans seem to be openly declaring that they themselves will now use the release of tax returns as a political weapon, in revenge for this terrible affront to Trump’s privacy.
This highlights a genuine disagreement between the parties. Republicans are inclined to treat oversight as something that is inevitably political to its core, because they believe that government is bad or corrupt by default. In this telling, oversight was weaponized by Democrats, and Republicans will weaponize it in response.
Democrats, by contrast, operate from a different starting point. They are politicians, so the political benefits of oversight will of course tempt them, but they also tend to believe that oversight can and should be conducted in good faith, with a genuine public-interest rationale, and usually seek to meet that standard (while also behaving as politicians).
This episode is a case in point. House Democrats are seizing on the fruits of this oversight to try to improve the system: They are set to vote this week on a bill that would codify the requirement that the IRS audit the tax returns of presidents, and make that information available to the public.
“There’s every reason to put this into law and make sure it’s in place for every president going forward,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a member of the committee, told us.
We don’t know why Trump’s returns were not audited. Beyer notes that it could simply be that the IRS was “under-resourced.”
But this highlights another difference between the parties. Democrats look at this episode and resolve to give the IRS the money it needs. That’s why the big climate and health-care bill increased IRS funding by $80 billion.
Republicans, meanwhile, think the IRS should be under-resourced, which is why they opposed that bill. As it happens, that money will fund more auditing for wealthy people (such as Trump), which also explains GOP opposition.
Surely Congress should determine why the IRS didn’t audit the president, whatever the reason. The Republican position, in effect, has been that Congress and the public should not know whether the IRS properly audited the taxes of the president of the United States, nor why it didn’t.
As Trump has demonstrated, norms are insufficient to make the system work. Every major-party nominee back to the 1970s voluntarily released their tax returns, and you can read them all online. Every nominee except one: Donald Trump.
The immense power of the presidency comes with immense potential for corruption. We need to know exactly where presidents get their income, whom they owe money to, and all the details of their finances. | 2022-12-21T20:18:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How the release of Trump's taxes blows up a big GOP lie - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/trump-tax-returns-irs-congressional-oversight/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/trump-tax-returns-irs-congressional-oversight/ |
At long last, Zelensky gets his White House meeting
President Biden meets with President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House on Dec. 21 in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine on April 21, 2019. He defeated incumbent president Petro Poroshenko by a wide margin, a function both of questions about Poroshenko’s ethics and Zelensky’s popularity as an actor on television.
That same day, Zelensky took a congratulatory call from the president of the United States. His desired outcome was obvious, asking his U.S. counterpart multiple times to attend his upcoming inauguration.
“We in Ukraine are an independent country and independent Ukraine,” Zelensky said — an unsubtle reminder of the existing conflict with Russia. If the American leader could be there, it would be “a great, great thing for you to do,” a physical manifestation of the U.S.'s commitment to Ukrainian independence.
President Donald Trump didn’t attend the 2019 inauguration. Neither did Vice President Mike Pence, who’d originally been slated to. The impeachment investigation that began a few months later revealed that Pence’s attendance was spiked after an aide to Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani allegedly told the Ukrainians that the vice president’s attendance was contingent upon Zelensky announcing an investigation into Joe Biden, Trump’s presumed and eventual opponent for reelection.
That investigation stemmed from Zelensky’s second call with Trump. By that point — July 2019, two months into Zelensky’s term in office — the Ukrainians were pushing for a different demonstration of American unity: a meeting at the White House.
“I am very hopeful for a future meeting,” Zelensky said in that call. The impeachment inquiry revealed that such a meeting was contingent upon an announcement of a Biden investigation, as transmitted to Zelensky’s team by a Trump appointee.
“I also wanted to thank you for your invitation to visit the United States, specifically Washington, D.C.,” Zelensky told Trump. “On the other hand, I also wanted (to) ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation.”
“Whenever you would like to come to the White House,” Trump said a bit later, “feel free to call.” It was his first mention of a direct invitation.
Behind the scenes, Trump and his allies continued to pressure Zelensky for an announced investigation. The supposed predicate, you’ll recall, was that Joe Biden’s son Hunter worked as an adviser to a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma. When Biden, then serving as vice president, joined other international leaders in 2015 in calling for the ouster of a prosecutor accused of corruption, the prosecutor alleged that he’d been targeted by Biden because he’d been about to expose corruption at Burisma. There’s no evidence this was the case, but for Trump, elevating the idea that it might be promised to reap political rewards. With no announcement from Zelensky, the Trump administration halted planned military aid for Ukraine — until a whistleblower drew attention to the effort to leverage governmental power to benefit Trump’s reelection.
All of this came to a head in September 2019, just as Zelensky and Trump met for the first time on the sidelines of the United Nations’ general assembly in New York.
Between the time that Zelensky won his election and Trump was impeached, the American president hosted more than a dozen other foreign leaders at the White House.
On Wednesday, Zelensky is finally getting his meeting — in a very different context and with a very different American president. The Ukrainian left his home country in secret, making his way by train to Poland, where a U.S. military aircraft flew him to Washington. The need for the secrecy is obvious. Since Russia expanded its invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, Zelensky’s been a prime target. His trip to the United States is intended to bolster America’s commitment to supporting Ukraine’s defense — and once again, to send a signal to Russia about the strength of the U.S.-Ukrainian alliance.
It’s also, in part, probably meant to put pressure on Republican legislators who’ve been using aid to Ukraine as a point of attack against the Biden administration. The far right has expressed more open sympathy with Russia since the conflict escalated, with politicians such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) disparaging the Ukrainian president and criticizing the scale of American aid. That latter complaint has gained some traction; Zelensky’s visit is clearly meant to increase its political cost.
In broad strokes, though, it’s a reflection of the way in which motives and intended outcomes have and haven’t changed since 2019. Then, Zelensky wanted a demonstration of American support — something manifested clearly in the wake of Russia’s expanded attack on his country. Now, he wants an international demonstration that the support is ongoing — and even expanding.
For his part, Biden wants to demonstrate the solidity of the relationship in part as a way of keeping Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, in check. The U.S.-Ukraine partnership has led to humiliating losses for the Russians. What Putin apparently expected to be a rapid capitulation has, instead, been a 300-day conflict in which Russia has made little progress. Biden, who has made the fight between democracy and autocracy a central part of his presidency, is eager to demonstrate America’s strength, even if only indirectly.
And then there was Trump. That the U.S. had committed support for Ukraine was secondary to his own desire to boost his reelection bid. His motivation was personal, not national. Zelensky’s wish to show how the U.S. and Ukraine were allied was simply a point of pressure Trump could put to his own uses.
But Zelensky’s presidency outlasted Trump’s. The new American administration has been the partner that Zelensky always wanted. | 2022-12-21T20:27:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At long last, Zelensky gets his White House meeting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/biden-zelensky-white-house-ukraine-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/biden-zelensky-white-house-ukraine-trump/ |
Mike Lindell turns his ‘stolen election’ fantasies on new target: DeSantis
A guest reacts as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is shown on a monitor during an election night party at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 8. (Phelan M. Ebenhack for The Washington Post)
For the past few years, Republicans have largely stood by as various figures have sought to raise their profiles in the conservative movement by advancing baseless allegations of voter fraud — from Trump-aligned lawyers such as L. Lin Wood, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
An apparent obstacle to the party taking action: Such figures were saying much the same thing as Donald Trump (and some were directly working for him, to advance his stolen-election cause in public and in court). So the GOP simply offered its own watered-down reasons for questioning the 2020 results, while sidestepping the actual claims made by Trump and these emerging thought leaders.
Now one of them has trained his “stolen election” claims on a new target — and a Republican, at that: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
On his show Tuesday, Lindell indicated that he’s going to turn his crack team of voter-fraud investigators on DeSantis’s win in the 2022 midterms. The purported reason? The margin of victory was just too big — particularly in Miami-Dade County. (The unstated but more likely reason? DeSantis is a growing threat to Trump.)
Lindell previewed his case on air after initially pausing while he got some advice from his lawyer about what he was about to say. (Lindell is being sued over his false claims about voting machines in the 2020 election.) He went on to repeatedly reference “Dade County” even though it has been called Miami-Dade County since 1997.
“I don’t believe it,” Lindell said, of DeSantis’s win there. “So it’s just going to show everybody — just like we always tell you about Democrats where they stole their elections … I’m going to find out if Dade County — what happened there.”
In an interview, Lindell told the Bulwark that, “A Republican hasn’t won Dade County like DeSantis did,” calling it a “deviation” and saying he wanted to find out “if there was problems with the election, things with the machine or whatever.”
This claim — as is typical of Lindell — has virtually nothing behind it.
It’s true that it’s rare for a Republican to win Miami-Dade County. But despite the county’s blue status in most recent elections, elections there have swung substantially over the past quarter-century.
In fact, Republicans have won the county in four other statewide races since 1997: the 1998 and 2002 governor’s races, when Jeb Bush won; the 2004 Senate race, when Mel Martinez narrowly carried it; and Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) win alongside DeSantis this year.
Most of those took place about two decades ago, of course. Then the county seemingly shifted toward Democrats, with Republicans taking less than 40 percent there in most top-of-the-ticket races in the 2010s. But Miami-Dade County has always been capable of huge swings and has proven willing to vote for the right kind of Republican.
For example, even as Bush carried it in 1998, the GOP actually lost Miami-Dade County in the Senate race that same day by more than 56 points. Bush also won it despite the GOP having taken just 38 percent there in the previous presidential election.
Perhaps most importantly, Miami-Dade appeared to drift back toward the GOP even before DeSantis’s win. While Trump didn’t win the county in 2020, he did take 46 percent — the best showing for a Republican at the top of the ticket since 2004. Trump also shrank his deficit in the county from 29 points in 2016 to just seven points in 2020.
Trump literally went from the worst showing for a Republican in the county since 1998 to the best one since 2004 — the same guy, in a span of just four years. And he did so even as the GOP lost ground nationwide. This massive “deviation” didn’t raise Lindell’s suspicions.
It remains to be seen how hard Lindell pushes this rhetoric against DeSantis, but the effort would be in keeping with Trump’s halting attempts to go after his would-be usurper as the party’s leader. DeSantis’s 19-point victory bolstered the case he could make in challenging Trump in 2024 — that he, unlike the former president, is a winner. So it follows that questioning it, no matter how baselessly, would serve Trump’s purposes.
This would also mean, of course, targeting the politician who looks like the GOP’s most formidable candidate in 2024. And the shift in the margins might seem superficially plausible to the many people who have been duped into believing conspiracy theories based on far less.
If nothing else, perhaps this might instill some courage in certain Republicans to do something about this guy. | 2022-12-21T20:27:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mike Lindell baselessly calls DeSantis's win into question - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/lindell-desantis-miami-dade-win/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/lindell-desantis-miami-dade-win/ |
The Pittsburgh Steelers' Franco Harris eludes a tackle by Jimmy Warren of the Oakland Raiders after Harris's “Immaculate Reception” in Pittsburgh on Dec. 23, 1972. (Harry Cabluck/AP)
Franco Harris, a Pittsburgh Steelers running back whose shoestring grab of a deflected pass in 1972 became one of the most storied moments in National Football League history, a 42-yard run for a last-second playoff victory over the stunned Oakland Raiders in what became known as the “Immaculate Reception,” died at his home in Sewickley, Pa. He was 72.
The death was announced by the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where Mr. Harris was inducted in 1990. Mr. Harris’s body was found by his family on Dec. 21, but it was not immediately clear when he died. No cause was given.
The play on Dec. 23, 1972, grew to almost mythical proportions in NFL lore — studied, debated and picked over with forensic scrutiny — and turned Mr. Harris into a lifelong hero in Pittsburgh while spawning a cottage industry of memorabilia. Celebrations had been planned for Dec. 24 in Pittsburgh for the 50th anniversary and to retire Mr. Harris’s No. 32.
To some fans, Mr. Harris’s improbable catch marked the beginning of what would become a Steelers dynasty in the 1970s, giving a city a needed point of pride as the decline of Rust Belt manufacturing started to bite. Others still question whether the referees made the wrong call.
The pass, some contend, may have hit only Steelers running back John “Frenchy” Fuqua and not touched the Oakland defender, safety Jack Tatum. That would have ended the play right there — an incomplete pass — under the rules in those days prohibiting a pass to be tipped from one offensive player to another.
“It’s still hard to say what really happened,” Mr. Harris once said.
But there’s no dispute over Mr. Harris’s contributions during his career as a cornerstone of the Steelers. At 6-foot-2 and 230 pounds, he was not known for speed, but he compensated with quick moves and an ability to slip tacklers.
Mr. Harris was part of four Super Bowl victories, including being named MVP in the 16-6 Super Bowl IX win over the Minnesota Vikings in 1975. In that game, Mr. Harris ran for 158 yards — more than the entire Minnesota offense — and scored a touchdown.
He amassed a total of 12,120 yards, with Pittsburgh from 1972 to 1983 and a final season with the Seattle Seahawks before his retirement.
None of those yards will be remembered more than the ones covered at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh on that 40-degree afternoon in late December. The Steelers were down 7-6 and facing fourth-and-10. There were 22 seconds left and the goal line was 60 yards away.
“Bradshaw, trying to get away,” said NBC play-by-play announcer Curt Gowdy.
Bradshaw heaved a pass to Fuqua, who was closely covered near at the Oakland 35-yard line by Tatum. They collided just as the ball reached them.
“And his pass is … broken up by Tatum,” said Gowdy.
“Picked off!” he then cried. Five seconds were left on the game clock.
Mr. Harris, who was running toward the play, reached down and snatched the ball inches from the turf near the 42-yard line. He barely broke stride. Some of the Oakland players were clapping, thinking it was incomplete. They were caught flat-footed as Mr. Harris raced toward the left sideline, just ahead of Oakland’s Jimmy Warren as he tried to push him out of bounds.
“Franco Harris has it, and he’s over,” Gowdy gasped. “What?”
One ref had signaled it was a touchdown. It took a few minutes to confer with others. The question was whether the ball touched only Fuqua or if it hit the ground before Mr. Harris pulled it in.
The ruling on the field stood. Steelers 13, Raiders 7. The Steelers, however, lost the AFC championship game to the Miami Dolphins, 21-17. Mr. Harris rushed for 76 yards in that game.
Even with the football world still buzzing about the catch, no name for the play immediately stuck. Some sportswriters called it a “miracle reception” or simply “the catch.” By 1974, the “Immaculate Reception” took hold, a bit to the dislike of team owner Art Rooney, who thought it was too irreverent.
“Once it was dubbed the ‘Immaculate Reception’ it kind of took on a life of its own,” said former Steelers public relations director Joe Gordon in a 2012 documentary “The Immaculate Reception” as part of “A Football Life” series.
It also became a point of fixation for those wondering if the refs blew the call. Tatum, who died in 2010, always said he never touched the ball. Fuqua remained cagey. When asked if the ball hit him, he had a stock reply: “Maybe, maybe not.”
Jack Tatum dies; Oakland Raiders 'Assassin' was 61
A former CIA director, Michael Hayden, even devoted some personal time to examine footage and photos. He had no problems with the touchdown call.
“The Raiders can see it as a crime, and the Steelers can see it as the hand of God,” said Neil Zender, who produced the 2012 documentary.
Mr. Harris’s career-defining moment haunted Oakland Raiders coach John Madden for decades. “That play bothered me then, it bothers me now,” he said in 1986, “and it will bother me until the day I die.”
Italian American heritage
Franco Harris was born in Fort Dix, N.J., on March 7, 1950, and grew up in Mount Holly, N.J. His Italian mother met his father, an Army sergeant, when he was stationed in Italy during World War II. Mr. Franco’s Italian American lineage later spurred a famous Steelers fan entourage known as “Franco’s Italian Army,” whose headquarters was a Pittsburgh pizzeria.
Mr. Franco was a star at baseball and basketball but did not concentrate on football until his sophomore year in high school after his older brother, Mario, received a full football scholarship to play at Glassboro (N.J.) State College (now Rowan University).
When his own scholarship offers poured in, Mr. Harris chose Pennsylvania State University in part, he said, because the school did not have athletes’ dormitories. That appealed to his sense of personal independence. Mr. Harris’s work ethic was prized by Coach Joe Paterno, but Mr. Harris’s habit of running late — what one sportswriter called “Franco Time” — frustrated the coach.
Mr. Harris was dropped from the starting lineup of the 1972 Cotton Bowl after he showed up late for practice. Penn State crushed Texas, 30-6.
The Steelers selected him with the 13th pick of the 1972 NFL draft. In 1984, after 12 seasons in Pittsburgh, Mr. Harris signed as a free agent with the Seattle Seahawk but appeared in only eight games and rushed for a total of 170 yards.
After retiring from football, Mr. Harris became involved in food-related business ventures, including acquiring Baltimore-based Parks Sausage Co., one of the oldest Black-owned companies in the country. He sold his interest in the company in 1998.
He later was involved in community and philanthropic activities in the Pittsburgh area. In 2008, he became chairman of Pittsburgh Promise, which provides scholarships for graduates from the city’s public schools. He lost the position, however, after publicly defending Paterno amid a child sex-abuse scandal involving former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.
Mr. Harris is survived by his wife, Dana Dokmanovich, and a son, Dok.
At Pittsburgh International Airport, two lifelike statues stand side by side. One is George Washington. The other portrays Mr. Harris, crouching over to make the “Immaculate Reception.” It makes perfect sense in Pittsburgh.
“To people who aren’t from here, they are like, ‘What?’” Bill Crawford, a host on Pittsburgh’s WDVE radio, said in the “Immaculate Reception” documentary. “The father of our country and a guy who caught a football off somebody’s helmet.”
Cindy Boren contributed to this report. | 2022-12-21T21:15:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Franco Harris, who caught 'Immaculate Reception' for Steelers, dies at 72 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/21/franco-harris-immaculate-reception-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/21/franco-harris-immaculate-reception-dies/ |
Youngkin gears up for the make-or-break year of his governorship
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) announces a plan for transformational behavior health care at Parham Doctors' Hospital in Henrico, Va., Dec. 14. (Daniel Sangjib Min/Richmond Times-Dispatch/AP)
When a politician spends 2022 campaigning for a lot of Republican candidates, meeting with top GOP donors and even getting swiped by former president Donald Trump over a surname that allegedly sounds Chinese, it would be easy to suspect that a presidential run — in this case, by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin — is in the works.
But Youngkin insists he isn’t running or exploring a bid, and he’s “laser focused” on his duties as governor. When asked in a phone interview this week whether he thinks about being president, Youngkin replied: “I don’t.”
It’s easy to scoff at a Republican governor of a once consistently Democratic state who enjoys a job approval rating of 52 percent — including 31 percent of Democrats! — suggesting he never looks in a mirror and hums “Hail to the Chief.” But Youngkin might well be too busy with Virginia in 2023 to spend much time in Iowa or New Hampshire.
When you’re a governor limited to one consecutive term, time moves fast and opportunities are reduced. With his just-released budget, Youngkin wants to get the narrowly divided state legislature to enact a sweeping overhaul of the state’s behavioral health and substance abuse programs, recruit 2,000 new police officers, hire more teachers and nurses, spend an additional $685 million on conservation and preservation focusing on the Chesapeake Bay and investing in nuclear and other zero-carbon technologies.
While Youngkin won’t say one initiative is more important than another — “we’re going to get it all done” — it’s clear that the behavioral health-reform proposal, called “Right Help, Right Now,” is his most ambitious proposal. The plan includes $20 million to fund at least 30 new mobile crisis teams to respond to 988 suicide and crisis hotline calls; $58 million for new crisis centers; $15 million for mental health programs in schools; and $15 million in opioid abatement initiatives including a campaign to address the risk of fentanyl poisoning among kids and teens.
Youngkin also aims to pass $1 billion in tax cuts, atop the $4 billion he signed into law last year. That would lower the state’s top individual income-tax rate from 5.75 percent to 5.5 percent. (Virginia’s highest income bracket kicks in on taxable income over $17,000, meaning most earners pay the highest rate.) Youngkin also wants to reduce the state’s corporate income-tax rate from 6 percent to 5 percent.
While he’s fighting fresh battles in 2023, Youngkin might find himself in a renewed scrap that goes back to his election campaign last year. The topic is what most animated the usually even-keeled Youngkin during the interview.
Last fall, the governor issued guidance to schools for dealing with transgender and gender-fluid students. Under the proposed rules, students would be required to use restrooms and locker rooms according to their biological sex, and schools would need to get parental approval before altering a student’s name or pronoun used in official records.
Several Northern Virginia school districts immediately announcedthey would reject the guidance. The draft policy is not official yet, as the state reviews an avalanche of public comments. The guidance might also be revised to make sure it doesn’t clash with federal law.
“We’re still working over 70,000 comments, where huge number of those were literally manipulative robocalls,” Youngkin said. “We’re going to go through those comments, and we’re going to issue the final guidance. And I fully expect schools to comply. It’s the law.”
The concern over gender issues, school restrooms and parental rights in education played a prominent role in Youngkin’s campaign for governor. A particular flash point: Loudoun County school administrators who, when confronted with a student who had sexually assaulted a girl at one high school, transferred him to another, where he attacked a second student five months later. Matters were further inflamed by reports that the assailant was wearing a skirt and committed the first assault in a girls restroom.
A special grand jury investigating the school district’s involvement in the case released a scathing report this month that said “throughout this ordeal,” Loudoun County Public Schools administrators “were looking out for their own interests instead of the best interests of LCPS.”
Superintendent Scott Ziegler was fired following the report’s release. Soon after, the grand jury’s indictments of Ziegler and schools spokesman Wayde Byard were unsealed. Ziegler faces three misdemeanor charges, including false publication; Byard was charged with felony perjury. Both men have vowed to fight the charges.
Youngkin is watching Loudoun County to see whether the district adheres to his guidance on gender matters and parental notice once the policy is finalized. Jeff Morse, the school board chair, has denounced the proposal as “anti-family,” anti-privacy” and “anti-teacher.”
The governor said he finds opposition coming out of Loudoun “ironic”: “We’ve got indictments coming down from a grand jury. They turned a blind eye to clear violations, to literally sexual assault, going on in the school district, and then they hid it.”
The policy could end up in court. That would be one more item on the to-do list in a make-or-break year for Youngkin’s governorship — when there’s too much at stake to spend time touting himself to Republicans in early presidential primary states.
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Opinion|A Richmond restaurant was wrong to refuse to seat a Christian group | 2022-12-21T21:21:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Glenn Youngkin's Virginia governorship make-or-break year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/youngkin-plans-budget-loudoun-schools-policy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/youngkin-plans-budget-loudoun-schools-policy/ |
Ukrainians, mainly women and children, pass through the Przemysl train station in Poland on April 9 after fleeing war-torn Ukraine. (Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)
It’s been 300 days since the start of the war in Ukraine. And since that war began, millions of Ukrainians have fled their homes to seek safety in Western Europe.
Back in March, the leaders of European Union countries pledged to help Ukrainians by enacting their Temporary Protection Directive for the first time. This gave refugees access to housing, health care, education and the labor markets of the countries they arrived in.
But temporary protection has been far from a golden ticket.
Today on “Post Reports,” we hear from producer Rennie Svirnovskiy about how refugees have fared at a transit center on Ukraine’s border with Poland. And we hear from Rick Noack about why many Ukrainian refugees scattered across Europe are still waiting for the help they were promised. | 2022-12-21T21:21:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Ukrainian refugees were promised - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/what-ukrainian-refugees-were-promised/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/what-ukrainian-refugees-were-promised/ |
A unique class teaches the seemingly powerless how to make changes
Clockwise from right: Chearie Phelps-El, Martin Smoot, Alice Scales (with dog Diamond), Shana Potter, Joan Williams and Patricia Harris. (Photos by John Kelly/The Washington Post)
I met Chearie Phelps-El on a cold morning in Southwest Washington so she could show me that she practices what she preaches. And what she preaches is organizing.
“I just think everybody needs to work together,” she said.
It’s what Phelps-El and her neighbors in the Greenleaf Senior Building did when the construction of a new church at Delaware and M streets SW removed a nearby bus stop. The bus stop didn’t come back after the construction ended in 2019, forcing residents to walk another two blocks.
“I didn’t think that was fair,” Phelps-El said. “The bus stop was there longer than the church.”
Phelps-El is an instructor at a fascinating program run by the charity Bread for the City: the Terrance Moore Organizing Institute. With the nonprofit’s advocacy director, Aja Taylor, she and others train their fellow Washingtonians in the skills needed to get things done.
If you’re rich — in wealth or in political connections — you may find it fairly easy to get things done. But Phelps-El and her neighbors aren’t rich. That’s where the Terrance Moore Organizing Institute — named in honor of a Bread for the City client killed by gun violence in 2015 — comes in.
“If we go down to the Wilson Building, the power isn’t in the money,” Phelps-El said. “The power is in the numbers. We’re trying to teach people in the community how to organize.”
The organizing institute is a six- to eight-week class that meets twice a week at Bread for the City’s Michelle Obama center on Good Hope Road SE. Students learn how the District works — the council, the mayor, the advisory neighborhood commissioners, etc. — and get trained in the different tools organizers can employ, such as petitions, protests and “walk-throughs.” (That’s when a group walks through the Wilson Building during budget season, knocking on the doors of council members to make their case.)
“A lot of folks don’t know how to voice their opinions or allow their voices to even count,” said Joan Williams, one of Phelps-El’s neighbors and a participant in the institute.
Shana Potter is another Greenleaf neighbor taking the class. The three women have formed a group called the Ward Warriors to spread their activism around the city. The bus stop was an early effort.
“We started by joining forces,” Potter said. They circulated a petition and enlisted other residents in their cause. They contacted the powers that be.
Success came quickly. Within a month, a new bus stop was constructed.
Students at Bread for the City’s organizing institute are introduced to a mnemonic for structuring their approach, CEVA, which stands for connect, engage, vision and ask.
Williams thinks “vision” should come first. Whatever the order, success “makes you feel good inside,” she said. “It makes your spirit happy that you’re learning things that you can teach others.”
A bus stop is a tangible thing — a small thing, even. Phelps-El and her students have their sights set on larger things.
“My first challenge was banning the box on job applications for returning citizens,” she said.
That question — asking whether an applicant had ever been convicted of a crime, before an offer of employment had even been made — stopped many job seekers before they could get a foot in the door. Phelps-El was among those who lobbied to strike the question about convictions, which was removed in 2014.
“I feel like the more organizing we do in this city, the more we can put the fire up underneath the politicians,” Phelps-El said.
Said Williams: “We advocate for the low-income, the disabled, the seniors, the underdog.”
There seem to be more underdogs these days. A big issue in the District is affordable housing. There isn’t enough of it. The three women know that’s their next quest.
“You should be able to live in D.C. whatever your income is,” Phelps-El said.
On the morning I met her, Phelps-El brought some of the neighbors who had worked on that project. Besides Williams and Potter, there were Patricia Harris, Martin Smoot and Alice Scales, with her tiny dog, Diamond.
The new bus stop was different from the old one, they said. It was better: a shelter with a roof to protect people from the rain.
“I’m going to do a training with all the seniors in my building,” Phelps-El said. “They’re rebels. They’re ready.”
Terrance Moore was a returning citizen who first raised the notion of an organizing institute with Bread for the City. He didn’t have a home and was shot while sleeping in his car on North Capitol Street. Moore’s death remains unsolved.
Bread for the City is a partner in The Washington Post Helping Hand. To support its work, go to posthelpinghand.com and click the link that says “Donate Online Now.” | 2022-12-21T22:51:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bread for the City's organizing institute: Power to the people - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/bread-for-the-city-terrance-moore/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/bread-for-the-city-terrance-moore/ |
Vincent C. Gray protests proposed D.C. Council committee assignment
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) unveiled new committee assignments this week, but his proposal to reduce Gray’s responsibilities has upset the longtime lawmaker
D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) in 2019. Gray is objecting to a proposal that would shrink his oversight duties on the council. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) is objecting to a proposal that would shrink his oversight responsibilities through the remainder of his term, a move that Gray said could amount to discrimination based on his physical state.
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) unveiled his proposed committee assignments Wednesday ahead of the legislature’s next two-year council period, which will begin in January. But one of his potential changes would remove Gray as chair of the council’s important Health Committee and instead give him oversight of a new committee focused exclusively on hospitals and “health equity” — a comparatively smaller portfolio.
At a meeting to announce the new committees, Mendelson said his intent was “to accommodate [Gray’s] recovery and facilitate robust oversight while his hours and mobility are limited.” Christina Henderson (I-At Large), who was elected to the council in 2021, would chair the Health Committee under Mendelson’s proposal, an assignment that includes oversight of agencies like the Department of Health and Department of Health Care Finance.
Gray, 80, suffered a stroke last December and tore his Achilles’ tendon in August. As he continues to recover, the former mayor has been seen at public appearances moving gingerly, at times using a walker or cane to get around. And Gray was not able to fully participate in a council meeting that stretched into the late evening two weeks ago, leaving early under the guidance of his physician who instructed him not to work more than eight hours per day.
In an email to the full council on Tuesday, Gray, who has chaired the Health Committee since 2017, said the stroke did not leave him with cognitive damage even though it has affected his speech. He was cleared to work by his cardiologist and neurologist in June and is also seeing a speech therapist, Gray said, “who is optimistic that I will continue to improve.” He questioned his colleagues’ qualifications to assess his health and capacity.
“To be clear, my only limitations are physical and they are temporary. Changing my Committee assignment or any other aspect of my role in the workplace due to health reasons is a clear violation of the DC Human Rights Act,” Gray wrote before asking Mendelson to reconsider the plan, pointing to his successes chairing the Health Committee. “I am disappointed in my colleagues who have attempted to leverage my health challenges for a power grab or political gain.”
Henderson declined to comment on Gray’s email. Mendelson said in an interview he reached the decision after speaking to the council’s other members and found “there was virtually unanimous sentiment that it would be best if Vince had a lighter load and worked on his recovery.”
He rejected Gray’s claim of a possible Human Rights Act violation, calling it “unfortunate.”
“This is not punishment, it’s about recovery. [Gray and his staff] are taking it the wrong way,” Mendelson added. “Members are not happy about the situation and they want Vince to recover. To send an email that implies there can be a legal challenge is … completely out of place when it comes to a matter like a political body reorganizing itself.”
Under D.C. Council rules, the chairman decides how committees are structured and selects who oversees them; the council will vote on his changes when the next council period begins in January. Committees generally contain five members including a chair, though freshman lawmakers are traditionally not assigned as committee chairs.
Most bills are introduced and scrutinized at the committee level before they are considered by the full council; committees also conduct performance- and budget-related oversight of any city agencies that fall under its purview. In addition to a new hospital and health equity committee, Mendelson is also proposing a host of new and modified committees, including committees for “executive administration and labor,” “public works and operations,” “facilities and family services” as well as a dedicated Housing Committee. Right now, the Housing Committee is paired with oversight of executive administration.
Mendelson also proposed significant changes to committee leaders. Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large), who previously chaired the committee on government operations and facilities, would instead lead the Housing Committee. Current Housing Committee Chair Anita Bonds (D-At Large), who has faced attacks from critics and housing advocates in recent months for her oversight of the city’s beleaguered public housing authority, would instead chair the new committee focused on executive administration and labor.
Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) — previously the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee chair — would head the committee on transportation and the environment under Mendelson’s proposal. The Judiciary Committee, which includes public safety and oversight of the city’s elections, would be chaired by Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), but oversight of elections agencies including the Board of Elections and Office of Campaign Finance would shift to Bonds’s purview.
A detailed list of the proposed changes can be viewed here.
In January, the legislature will welcome two newcomers to the council. Community and education activist Matthew Frumin will take over the Ward 3 council seat held by longtime legislator Mary M. Cheh, who announced her plan to retire earlier this year. In Ward 5, Zachary Parker, who served on the D.C. State Board of Education, was elected to the council seat held by Kenyan R. McDuffie (D), who won an at-large seat after changing his party affiliation to independent.
On Tuesday, toward the end of the council’s final meeting of 2022, lawmakers took turns praising Cheh as well as departing council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), who lost her reelection bid in November. | 2022-12-21T22:52:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vincent C. Gray protests probosed D.C. Council committee reassignment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/dc-vincent-gray-committee-health/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/dc-vincent-gray-committee-health/ |
D.C. officers convicted in connection with moped rider’s death
Karon Hylton-Brown suffered fatal injuries in October 2020 after a police chase ended with his moped colliding with an SUV. (Courtesy of Khali Brown)
Two D.C. police officers were convicted Wednesday in connection with a fatal police chase in 2020 that inflamed community tensions and sparked destructive civil unrest outside a city police station.
A jury found Officer Terence Sutton guilty of second-degree murder, obstruction and conspiracy, and Lt. Andrew Zabavsky – who was not charged directly in the death – guilty of obstruction and conspiracy.
The three-minute pursuit on Oct. 23, 2020, began at 10:08 p.m. when Sutton, driving an unmarked car with three other plainclothes officers as passengers, attempted to stop a moped ridden by 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown in the Brightwood Park neighborhood of Northwest Washington. The chase, along a circuitous route in a four-block area, ended when the moped collided with an SUV, and Hylton-Brown suffered fatal head injuries.
At a time of raw racial discord nationwide following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the crowd that massed outside the 4th District station four nights after the crash was incensed by what it perceived as fatal police misconduct against a young Black man. Protesters broke windows of the station, smashed police cars and shouted epithets at officers clad in riot gear, who countered with pepper pellets and stun grenades.
The verdicts Wednesday came after five days of deliberations. Zabavsky remained motionless as they were read; Sutton lowered his head.
Karen Hylton, Karon Hylton-Brown’s mother, stood up and began screaming obscenities at the officers in the courtroom, as a judge ordered her removed.
“Out! Out! Out!” he bellowed from the bench.
While Sutton conducted the chase, Zabavsky drove a marked police vehicle on parallel streets, trying to get ahead of the moped rider and cut him off, authorities said. Neither officer testified in the trial.
The trial began with opening statements on Oct. 25 and continued through nearly two months of testimony — much of it from experts on D.C. police regulations on vehicular pursuits and the myriad rules for how officers should act toward people suspected of wrongdoing. Jurors were left to answer a few key questions.
Did Sutton violate police policy by chasing Hylton-Brown and, in a prosecutor’s words, did he carry out the pursuit with “a conscious disregard of extreme danger of death or serious bodily injury” to the moped rider? The allegation that Sutton caused Hylton-Brown’s death through illegal recklessness was the basis for the second-degree murder charge against him.
“That man right there,” Prosecutor Ahmed M. Baset told jurors at the start of the trial, gesturing to Sutton at the defendants’ table. “He murdered Karon Hylton-Brown. … He did it with his police car.”
But J. Michael Hannon, Sutton’s defense attorney, argued that the chase was justified because officers had reason to believe that Hylton-Brown was up to no good that night. He argued that the young man could have stopped.
“If he had stopped, he’d be alive today,” Hannon told the jury. “He chose not to. He might have been arrested with a weapon. He might have been arrested with drugs. But he’d be alive.”
Pepper-sprayed, arrested, grieving: The mother who was at the front lines of D.C. anti-police protests
Jurors also had to assess whether Sutton and Zabavsky violated police protocols at the crash scene after the fatal collision as part of a coverup attempt, and later tried to deceive their shift commander into believing that no in-depth investigation of the incident was warranted. That was the basis for the charges of conspiracy and obstructing justice, which both officers faced.
Sutton and Zabavsky were members of the 4th District’s crime suppression team, or CST, an elite unit of plainclothes officers whose job is to prevent crimes before they occur. Hannon said CST officers had been told that Hylton-Brown, who had an arrest record for gun possession, was planning to exact retribution against someone in Brightwood Park.
Referring to the chase in his closing argument, Hannon said of Sutton, “He did his duty.” But Baset said the officers were acting on mere guesswork. “As much as Mr. Hannon tries, he cannot justify his client’s actions … based only on a hunch,” Baset argued.
In the final seconds of the chase, prosecutors said, Sutton slowed behind the moped in an alley, turning off the police vehicle’s siren and emergency lights, then suddenly accelerating toward Hylton-Brown in an effort to “flush” him out of the alley and into oncoming traffic.
“This was a game for Mr. Sutton,” Baset told jurors. “He knew he was playing a game of chicken with Mr. Hylton-Brown,” which caused the young man’s death.
When Hylton-Brown darted out of the alley, the moped collided with a Toyota Scion traveling on Kennedy Street NW. Hylton-Brown was propelled into the air, landing on the pavement and suffering a catastrophic brain injury, according to an autopsy.
At the 4th District station later that evening, Baset said, the officers misled their shift commander by describing the crash as relatively insignificant, downplaying Hylton-Brown’s injuries and omitting any mention of a chase. Sutton also wrote an initial draft of a police report that gave a false account of what had happened, Baset said.
He said the officers’ goal was to forestall an in-depth investigation of the incident, but the plan failed when Hylton-Brown’s injuries proved to be fatal. But Hannon and Christopher Zampogna, Zabavsky’s defense attorney, argued that the evidence in this trial showed the officers behaved properly at the crash scene and did nothing afterward to intentionally conceal their actions. | 2022-12-21T22:52:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. officers convicted of murder, obstruction in moped rider’s death - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/karon-hylton-death-officers-convicted/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/karon-hylton-death-officers-convicted/ |
Pedestrians in the University Village area of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 2019. (Reed Saxon/AP)
Three graduates of the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education are suing the school and its business partner 2U, alleging the two conspired to mislead prospective students with doctored U.S. News & World Report rankings data.
The complaint, filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Court, accuses the prestigious private university of promoting its online education programs, run by 2U, with rankings data that applied only to its in-person courses. What’s more, those rankings were based on inaccurate information the university supplied U.S. News to improve its standing.
A USC spokesperson said the university was still reviewing the lawsuit, while Maryland-based 2U did not respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit arrives months after the Rossier School revealed that it had falsified data provided to U.S. News for at least five years — and withdrew from the rankings.
An internal investigation conducted by the law firm Jones Day found that a former dean told administrators to omit information about its less-competitive in-person and online programs out of concern they would drag down the school’s position on the list. Including data on the hundreds of new online doctoral students would cause USC Rossier to “drop like a rock in the rankings,” the former dean said in a 2016 email, according to the Jones Day investigation.
Attorneys for the three students say USC and 2U used the dubious rankings in marketing materials to enroll students in online graduate programs that cost up to $148,000. They claim the profit-sharing agreement USC had with 2U, which receives a share of tuition revenue, incentivized both parties to peddle false claims about the education school.
Iola Favell, one of the three named plaintiffs, said she was drawn to the Rossier School in 2020 because of its standing in U.S. News. She was switching careers from public relations to teaching and thought a prestigious program would give her an edge, Favell said.
“I always wanted to teach but never pursued it because teaching is hard and teachers are underpaid, but I knew it was my calling,” said Favell, 26, who graduated with $100,000 in student debt from the Rossier School’s Master of Arts in Teaching program in December 2021. “I wanted the best education possible and I thought it would be worth the price tag.”
But by the spring of this year, Favell began second-guessing her decision after learning about the rankings scandal.
“I was infuriated,” said Favell, who works as a fourth-grade teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. “When I applied, they knew how important the rankings were in my decision and never said a word about the truth.”
Congressional Democrats have raised concerns about whether online program managers, commonly known as OPMs, violate the federal ban on incentive compensation. Many program managers help colleges recruit applicants and receive a share of the tuition revenue from those who enroll — a model that lawmakers say might be skirting the law.
Earlier this month, a group of Democrats wrote Education Secretary Miguel Cardona urging him to conduct a formal legal review of the department’s guidance on whether tuition revenue-sharing arrangements are permissible under the ban. A report the Government Accountability Office released in April said the Education Department lacks adequate oversight of the arrangements online program managers have with colleges.
“A lot of students have long known that they need to steer clear of for-profit schools, but these OPMs like 2U have been really flying under the radar,” said Kristen G. Simplicio, a partner at Tycko & Zavareei who is representing the graduates alongside the National Student Legal Defense Network.
“Regulators are starting to look and say, wait a second, incentive compensation ban is supposed to prohibit schools from providing incentives to recruit people. And it seems like that’s what these OPMs are doing,” she said. “We hope this case is really going to shine a light on what’s been happening out there.” | 2022-12-21T22:52:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | USC graduates sue over falsified U.S. News ranking data - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/21/usc-us-news-rankings-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/21/usc-us-news-rankings-lawsuit/ |
Following flight cancellations and delays into the Christmas blizzard
Minneapolis saw significant delays Wednesday, and Thursday flights are already being canceled in Chicago and Denver
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport during a snowstorm on Tuesday. (David Ryder/Bloomberg News)
Across the country, travelers who may have already been bracing themselves for a typically hectic trip to the airport ahead of Christmas are now set to enter the maw of a fierce winter storm that could cancel thousands of flights over a holiday weekend.
Forecasters expect the storm to develop into a “bomb cyclone” that will dump snow and blast Arctic wind across the central United States and Great Lakes region on Thursday and Friday, generating abysmal conditions for air travel.
How to get refunds if your flight is canceled
Airports in Chicago and Detroit are among the major travel centers expected to see some of the worst blizzard conditions. Heavy winds, rain and ice could also affect highways and airports around D.C., Philadelphia, New York and Boston.
On Wednesday afternoon, airline hubs such as Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport were already seeing significant disruptions. Major airlines were already incentivizing customers to change flights and avoid the bad weather by waiving fees.
Here’s a look at flight cancellations and delays at some of America’s busiest airports, and what officials advise for travelers in different locations.
Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (MSP)
Much of Minnesota saw moderate-to-heavy snow Wednesday morning, and MSP was already seeing significant disruptions by the afternoon. According to the flight tracking site FlightAware, the airport had 142 flights delayed before 4 p.m., accounting for 30 percent of its schedule. There were only 11 cancellations, however.
According to the National Weather Service office servicing the Twin Cities, gusty winds and blowing snow are expected to begin around noon Thursday and intensify with dangerous wind chills around midnight. The office is warning of “whiteout” conditions, saying “please don’t travel.”
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA)
Heavy snow in the Pacific Northwest grounded flights in Vancouver and Seattle on Monday, leading to more than 120 cancellations at each airport. Seattle is expected to see temperatures in the teens and low 20s all week. On Wednesday, SeaTac had 128 flight delays around 4 p.m. Wednesday, accounting for 23 percent of its schedule.
The Federal Aviation Administration expected winds and snow to cause delays in the Denver airport. By 4 p.m. Wednesday, DEN saw 187 flight delays — accounting for 19 percent of its schedule — and 58 cancellations, according to FlightAware. As of late Wednesday evening, 114 flights out of Denver that were scheduled for Thursday had already been canceled.
Conditions in Chicago are expected to rapidly deteriorate Thursday, with wind chills potentially dropping to minus-30 degrees by midnight Friday, the National Weather Service said. By 4 p.m. Wednesday, O’Hare saw 189 delays, accounting for 18 percent of its schedule. As of late Wednesday evening, 102 flights out of O’Hare that were scheduled for Thursday had already been canceled.
[2:00 PM 12/21] Here is an estimated arrival time of the wintery conditions. An arctic cold front will sweep across our area from late morning to early afternoon accompanied by a band of snow and dramatic temperature drop. #ILwx #INwx pic.twitter.com/OgV8WMFaou | 2022-12-21T22:55:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tracking flight cancellations and delays as winter storm impacts travel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/12/21/flight-cancellations-delays-winter-storm/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/12/21/flight-cancellations-delays-winter-storm/ |
Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a ceremony during which Israeli President Isaac Herzog handed him the mandate to form a new government, at the president's residency in Jerusalem on Nov. 13. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
TEL AVIV — Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu announced the formation of the most far-right government in the country’s history Wednesday night, marking the return of its longest-serving leader and granting an unprecedented portion of power to his far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies who have vowed to make sweeping changes in the country.
As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict trudges on, members have also advocated changing the status quo on the Temple Mount, the flash point holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City that has for decades been central to both the Israeli and Palestinian battles for sovereignty. | 2022-12-21T22:55:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Netanyahu announces new government with sweeping powers to far-right allies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/21/netanyahu-announces-new-government-with-sweeping-powers-far-right-allies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/21/netanyahu-announces-new-government-with-sweeping-powers-far-right-allies/ |
A day after Afghan women were barred from universities, some female teachers and students said they were turned away from primary schools
Male university students attend class bifurcated by a curtain separating men and women in Kandahar province on Dec. 21. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Afghan women fear further draconian restrictions, including on girls’ education, after the Taliban this week banned female students from all universities.
While the official statement issued Tuesday by the Ministry of Education only covered universities, some female teachers and girls at primary schools in the Afghan capital, Kabul, reported being turned away from classes Wednesday morning.
The decision to ban women from public and private universities came following a meeting of Taliban leadership and represented the latest move by the country’s religious rulers to roll back women’s rights and flout international demands that human rights be respected. The ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the status of primary education for Afghan girls.
“All I see ahead of us is a dark future that is getting closer and closer every day,” said a history student at Kabul’s Education University who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The 20-year-old history student said she hopes the Taliban would reconsider the ban before most public university students return from winter break next year, but she worries the move is a sign that the Taliban movement will treat women the same way it did when it last controlled most of Afghanistan in the 1990s.
At that time, women were barred from education at all levels, forced to conform to a strict dress code in public, banned from working and were not allowed to leave their homes without a male guardian. When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last year after the U.S. withdrawal, many believed the group would rule with more leniency, but Taliban policies on the rights of women, free speech and other human rights have only become increasingly strict over the past year.
With the ban on university attendance, nearly all Afghan women above the age of 12 are now barred from formal education. Most women were formally banned from secondary schools this year in a surprise policy reversal that stoked nationwide protests.
Thousands of women across the country are expected to be affected by the university education ban, especially in urban areas where most Afghan universities are located. In Kabul, women trying to attend private universities were turned away Wednesday morning, according to interviews with students.
At one university, professors who allowed women to sit for their final exam of the year were rounded up and brought to a local police station by Taliban security forces, according to a student who was present.
Restrictions on access to education are expected to have a ripple effect, further limiting the ability of Afghan women to participate in the workforce and other aspects of public life.
“As a woman, I am only expecting worse and worse rulings,” the history student said. “We were anticipating these days, and now the Taliban have proven with their actions that women mean nothing to them.”
As Taliban officials have pushed for international recognition, they have faced key demands from the United States, United Nations and other Western countries that Afghanistan ensure greater respect for women’s rights and expanded access to education for women and girls.
But despite this international pressure, Taliban policies have steadily restricted the rights and freedoms of women.
“It feels like the Taliban are making it a crime to be a woman,” a 20-year-old psychology student at Kabul University said of Tuesday’s ruling. She said the reaction among her fellow students ranged from anger to hopelessness. “What did we do wrong?” she asked.
She warned that the ban would not only hurt women, but would aggravate the country’s economic crisis as women drop out of the workforce. “If women are eliminated from society, Afghanistan will collapse,” she said.
While conditions for Afghans continue to deteriorate, the United States has secured a handful of diplomatic victories from talks with the Taliban by securing the release of detained Americans. Most recently, two Americans were released by the Taliban on Tuesday after being held for weeks. One man held was a filmmaker detained over the summer after filming in the area where a U.S. drone attack killed the leader of al-Qaeda.
The Biden administration welcomed the release but also leveled harsh criticism at the education ban. Thomas West, the special representative for Afghanistan, warned in a tweet that the ban was “indefensible” and called on the world to unite in opposition to the policy.
West and other U.S. officials meet regularly with the Taliban to discuss international recognition, counterterrorism, humanitarian aid, Afghanistan’s foreign reserves and sanctions, in addition to human rights and the rights of Afghan women.
The central issues of U.S. recognition and sanctions remain unresolved, and the Taliban continues to tighten its crackdown on human and civil rights. | 2022-12-21T22:55:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Taliban ban on Afghan women's education at universities stokes fears of end to all schooling - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/21/taliban-ban-afghan-girls-women-education/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/21/taliban-ban-afghan-girls-women-education/ |
D.C. United acquired Brazilian right back Ruan from Orlando City. (Sports Press Photo/Sipa USA/AP)
D.C. United took another step toward a win-now mentality ahead of Wayne Rooney’s first full season as coach by dealing the No. 2 pick in Wednesday’s MLS draft to Orlando City for Brazilian defender Ruan.
The 27-year-old right back is the latest offseason addition to a D.C. defense that also has gained Irish center back Derrick Williams, Iraqi left back Mohanad Jeahze and Portuguese defender-midfielder Pedro Santos, as well as American goalkeepers Tyler Miller and Alex Bono.
United finished last in MLS with a 7-21-6 record in 2022 as it conceded a league-high 71 goals.
“We are thrilled to be getting one of the most dangerous attacking right backs in MLS,” United Sporting Director Dave Kasper said in a statement. “Ruan has been a big success since joining MLS and we are excited to bring him to the nation’s capital.”
Ruan, whose full name is Ruan Gregório Teixeira, was a regular starter at right back over four seasons with Orlando, recording four goals and 15 assists in 101 MLS appearances. He joined Orlando on a one-year loan from Brazilian club Barra da Tijuca before making a permanent move ahead of the 2020 season. Ruan has one season left on a contract he signed last year with an option for 2024.
He joins Andy Najar as veteran right backs on United’s roster. Deployed as a right-sided center back in former coach Hernán Losada’s 3-5-2 system in 2021 and the first half of 2022, Najar played right and left back last year after the club shifted to a four-man defense upon Rooney’s midseason arrival. Plagued by injuries throughout his career, the 29-year-old Honduran ended the season with two assists in 23 appearances.
The MLS draft begins at 5 p.m. Wednesday. United still has selections in the second and third rounds.
United opens the season against Toronto FC on Feb. 25 at Audi Field. | 2022-12-21T23:00:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. United trades No. 2 pick in MLS draft for Brazilian defender Ruan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/21/dc-united-ruan-mls-draft/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/21/dc-united-ruan-mls-draft/ |
The New York Knicks will lose a second-round pick after the NBA concluded they broke league rules in their free-agency pursuit of Jalen Brunson. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
The New York Knicks must forfeit a 2025 second-round draft pick after an NBA investigation concluded that the franchise broke league rules in its pursuit of point guard Jalen Brunson, one of last summer’s top free agents.
The NBA announced Wednesday that the Knicks would be penalized for “[engaging] in free agency discussions involving Jalen Brunson prior to the date when such discussions were permitted.” Per league rules, teams are not supposed to have contact with players until the free agency moratorium period opens on June 30.
Brunson, 26, agreed to sign a four-year, $104 million contract with the Knicks in the opening hours of free agency after spending the first four seasons of his career with the Dallas Mavericks. Brunson’s move to New York made him one of best players to change teams last summer, while also robbing Mavericks star Luka Doncic of his leading sidekick.
The Knicks made no secret of their interest in Brunson before free agency, sending executives to sit courtside during a playoff game between the Mavericks and the Utah Jazz, then hiring Brunson’s father, Rick, as an assistant coach on Tom Thibodeau’s staff.
Brunson has thrived as the Knicks’ starting point guard, averaging career-highs of 20.8 points and 6.2 assists per game this season. Thanks to an eight-game winning streak entering Wednesday’s action, New York sits in sixth in the East with an 18-13 record. Dallas, meanwhile, is in the Western Conference’s play-in mix with a 15-16 record after reaching last season’s Western Conference finals.
The NBA, which in 2019 implemented stricter rules and punishments around improper free agency contact between teams and players, opened its investigation of the Knicks in August. Previous investigations of the Chicago Bulls, Miami Heat, Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers had also resulted in draft-pick forfeitures. The 76ers were docked two second-round picks in October for making improper contact with free agents P.J. Tucker and Danuel House Jr.
After a series of trades, New York possesses a surplus of draft picks, including as many as four 2023 first-rounders. The Knicks also will receive the Brooklyn Nets’ second-round pick in 2025. | 2022-12-21T23:00:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Knicks lose draft pick for free agency violation with Jalen Brunson - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/21/knicks-lose-draft-pick-jalen-brunson/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/21/knicks-lose-draft-pick-jalen-brunson/ |
NEW YORK — Investors found few, if any, places to safely put their money in 2022, as central banks in the U.S. and around the globe raised interest rates for the first time in years to fight surging inflation, stoking fear of a global recession. Uncertainty about how far the Federal Reserve and other central banks would go in the fight against inflation sparked a return of volatility. Large swings in stocks were common on Wall Street as the Fed raised its key interest rate seven times and signaled more hikes to come. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s strict COVID-19 policies also roiled the global economy.
NEW YORK — Sam Bankman-Fried told a Bahamian court Wednesday that he has agreed to be extradited and is expected to be sent to the U.S. later in the day to face criminal charges related to the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The former FTX CEO appeared at a Magistrate’s Court and is expected to head to Odyssey Aviation to return to the United States, according to Bahamian news organization Our News. Bahamian authorities arrested Bankman-Fried last week at the request of the U.S. government.
NEW YORK — Concerns about illness or inflation aren’t stopping Americans from hitting the roads and airports this holiday season. But a massive winter storm might. Forecasters are predicting heavy snow, ice and powerful winds between Thursday and Saturday across much of the country. Delta, United and other airlines say they are loosening their change fee policies so travelers can choose new flights and avoid the bad weather. The weather added uncertainty to what’s expected to be a busy travel season. AAA estimates that nearly 113 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home between Dec. 23 and Jan. 2. That’s 4% higher than last year.
NEW YORK — The holidays are supposed to be a joyful time, but they can also be financially stressful. With gifts, social gatherings and plane tickets home, the costs can start piling up. With inflation still high, 57% of Americans say it has been harder to afford the gifts they want to give. That’s according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Experts have some recommendations for reducing financial stress around the holidays. They include making a budget and being clear about expectations with your family and friends. You can also give homemade gifts or gift experiences rather than things.
NEW YORK — Stocks rose on Wall Street, lifting major indexes into the green for the week as investors welcomed a report showing consumer confidence is holding up better than expected. That’s despite the Federal Reserve’s campaign to fight inflation by reining in the economy with sharp increases in interest rates. The S&P 500 index climbed 1.5% Wednesday and the Nasdaq rose 1.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1.6% with a lot of help from Nike, which soared after reporting better-than-expected results. Treasury yields mostly fell. Technology stocks were among the big winners. Energy stocks gained ground along with rising oil prices.
LOS ANGELES — Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slowed for the tenth month in a row in November, constrained by a tight inventory of properties on the market and mortgage rates averaging more than double what they were a year ago. The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that existing home sales fell 7.7% last month from October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.09 million. That’s lower than what economists were expecting, according to FactSet. Sales plunged 35.4% from November last year. Despite the slowdown, home prices continued to rise. The national median home sales price rose 3.5% in November from a year earlier to $370,700.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — For decades, Wyoming has sought to escape the boom-and-bust cycles of its fossil-fuel-driven economy. Now, many see hope in a new industry to smooth out those ups and downs: crypto. The recent fall of cryptocurrency exchange FTX hasn’t dissuaded the state’s “fintech” cheerleaders. Crypto is here to stay, they say, and the state that gets out front with the tech is one that will win. With a suite of new laws and regulations, Wyoming as positioned itself as arguably the friendliest state for crypto companies. The result: crypto banks, exchanges and businesses that build crypto mining rigs are setting up in the least-populated state. | 2022-12-22T00:23:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Investing in 2022, holiday travel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-investing-in-2022-holiday-travel/2022/12/21/896f8c2c-8188-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-investing-in-2022-holiday-travel/2022/12/21/896f8c2c-8188-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Transparency groups fight sealing of court case testing Anton’s Law
Anton’s Law bill sponsor Del. Gabriel Acevero (D-Montgomery), speaks during a news conference preceding a court hearing involving the law, as Montgomery County council member Will Jawando (D-At Large) looks on. (Steve Thompson/The Washington Post)
A judge deemed some arguments by a Montgomery County police union attempting to block public access to court filings “not very strong,” but did not rule on the issue Wednesday in a case widely seen as an early test of Anton’s Law, passed by Maryland lawmakers last year to ensure public access to complaints of police misconduct.
The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 35 has sought to keep filings confidential in its lawsuit to prevent the release of an officer’s disciplinary files. The FOP’s lawsuit against Montgomery County argues that Anton’s Law is unconstitutional, and that public disclosure of the records would violate the officer’s rights.
The case has drawn scrutiny from transparency advocates who say the original records request — made by a woman concerned about an officer who pulled her over — exemplifies the spirit of the law named for Anton Black, a teen who died in 2018 after an encounter with police in Greensboro, Md. The bill passed as part of a historic package of accountability measures.
At issue during Wednesday’s hearing was not release of the disciplinary files, but whether arguments in the case should be closed to the media and public, and whether to allow the woman who requested the records and advocacy groups to be parties to the case.
FOP lawyers in August obtained a protective order, with the county’s consent, sealing legal filings in the case, leading The Washington Post and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to seek to intervene to obtain public access to the court filings and hearings. Judges routinely permit such limited-purpose interventions.
“If the court needed to see the records to make the decision, we set forth a process and procedure for that to occur, and had there not been the intervention, we probably would have a ruling from the court,” Anthony Conti, a lawyer for the FOP and the officer said during Wednesday’s hearing.
Police berated a boy who ran away from school. They were suspended, sued.
Montgomery County Circuit Court Associate Judge Karla N. Smith appeared ready to allow the intervention, but said she was weighing the protective order, which Conti argued was necessary to prevent exposing the records at issue.
Katie Townsend, the RCFP’s deputy executive director and legal director, said during the hearing that the protective order should never have been allowed. Any decision on a litigant’s wish to seal some portion of a civil proceeding should be preceded by a publicly docketed hearing where opposing arguments can be heard and weighed.
“Public records cases where the question on the merits is whether or not … records should be disclosed or withheld are litigated all the time,” Townsend said. “And I can tell you, your honor, I litigate a lot of them, and they’re done so in public with public briefings, with public hearings.”
A lawyer for the Maryland Coalition for Justice and Police Accountability, which is seeking to intervene to make arguments in the case and obtain the records at issue, agreed. Any sealing of filings, attorney Mary Borja said, should be with “the least restrictive means,” rather than conducting the entire case inside a “black box.”
Anton’s Law, which followed police transparency laws in New York, Illinois and other places, has ushered in uncertain times for unions and officers concerned about what complaints or missteps could stain their reputations. But it also begins a process of accountability that activists have long called for, and that many experts say ultimately is good for both the public’s perception of policing and for officers themselves.
The woman who originally requested the records, Alexa Renehan, is also seeking to intervene, with legal help from the Vanderbilt Law School’s First Amendment Clinic and the Baltimore Action Legal Team. Renehan first requested the disciplinary records of county police officer John J. Gloss in January. More than a decade earlier, she had complained to the department about Gloss after a traffic stop she felt he handled inappropriately.
In July, a day before the county pledged to turn them over, Gloss and Lodge 35, which the county had given time to review the records, sued the county to stop their disclosure.
Court filings in the case refer to Gloss anonymously as “Officer John Doe” per the protective order signed by Montgomery County Circuit Court Associate Judge Bibi M. Berry.
Gloss and the FOP have argued that disclosure of his disciplinary records would violate the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against government depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
“Police officers have a particular, cognizable privacy and liberty interest in not being publicly identified or having their personnel files or disciplinary records made publicly available,” the FOP’s amended complaint says. “Even if their names are redacted, police officers still risk an invasion of their privacy when such records are published because they can often be identified through other, disclosed information and identifying details.”
Police disciplinary records are easily available in many states, including Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin, allowing watchdog groups, journalists and others to identify officers with troubling records and assess whether departments are adequately policing their own. New York a few years ago repealed its law shielding disciplinary records from disclosure, and New York City police made public a searchable database of records that had been secret for decades. Several unions fought vigorously to prevent the disclosure, but a federal appeals court rejected their arguments.
More coverage of Maryland | 2022-12-22T00:23:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transparency advocates fight effort to seal case over police records - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/maryland-police-union-sues/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/maryland-police-union-sues/ |
Counting goes slowly in Virginia’s 4th District Democratic primary
State Sen. Joseph D. Morrissey (D-Richmond) at IBEW Local 666 in Highland Springs, Va., on Tuesday. (Ryan M. Kelly/For The Washington Post)
Results were slow to come in the Democratic primary in Virginia’s 4th Congressional District, in the race to succeed Rep. A. Donald McEachin, who died last month.
More than 26,000 Democrats voted at eight locations across the district in the firehouse primary Tuesday, in a race largely between state Sens. Jennifer L. McClellan and Joseph D. Morrissey, both representing Richmond, plus two other Democrats. Lines stretched around entire buildings, while cars idled for blocks near polling sites. Volunteers began counting the ballots at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
Seven hours later, they were halfway through the process. Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, and Alexsis Rodgers, chairwoman of the 4th Congressional District Democratic Committee, said volunteers were motivated to continue counting all night until they were done.
Eleven volunteers were counting each batch of ballots, then recounting them for accuracy. Initially, only five volunteers were counting, before the party decided reinforcements would be needed. The idea, Rodgers said, was to have as few hands as possible touching the ballots to ensure accuracy.
“We don’t have any fancy machines scanning the ballots. We’ve got hands, we’ve got brains, we’ve got calculators,” she said Wednesday afternoon. “We want to make sure this is done right and we’ll be here until we get it done.”
Obi is just as anxious for election results as you are!
Thank you to the volunteers and election observers who are counting ballots all day and thank you to everyone who voted yesterday. Democracy is worth waiting for. pic.twitter.com/JylG8TNbUo
Tuesday’s turnout defied expectations for the primary election, which was held just seven days after the two major candidates, Morrissey and McClellan, announced their campaigns, and amid the holiday rush. Democrats Joseph Preston and Tavorise Marks were also competing. The party had started with 25,000 ballots but had to print more midway through the day.
The turnaround was fast because of the timetable set by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). Youngkin scheduled the special election for Feb. 21, and under state law, party nominees must be chosen at least 60 days before that, so by Friday.
Morrissey, an anti-establishment candidate with a reputation as a maverick in Richmond, had accused the state party of seeking to limit voting locations and helping McClellan by placing them in areas more favorable to her. Still, “I’ll play by their rules, and I’ll beat them at their game,” he said outside a busy polling place in Highland Springs on Tuesday, blaming the party for the long lines, which he said would have been avoidable with more locations.
Marks, in fact, filed a lawsuit charging that the limited nature of the primary suppressed the vote.
But Swecker and Rodgers, addressing some of that criticism, noted that they only had enough volunteers to staff eight locations and were putting the primary together with little time. Despite those limitations, Swecker said turnout was far higher than the last time the party ran a primary election in 2016, the year McEachin first ran for the seat. In that Democratic primary, 15,728 people voted. She swatted away allegations of suppression.
“Understand the process and what the 4th District was up against to come up with a plan that was open, accessible, easy to vote — and they did it. They met the challenge, and it is historic,” Swecker said. “Is it what we would have planned for? No, but Alexsis and the committee stepped up and met that challenge and came up with a plan that was pretty damn good.”
The one-week run unfolded without any major spending, flashy TV ads or typical campaign infrastructure. But McClellan captured major endorsements from party leaders, including every Democrat in the Virginia congressional delegation and McEachin’s widow, Collete McEachin, which some voters said was important for them to see. On Tuesday she showed up at a Richmond polling location before dawn with one popular Richmond resident, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), to vote with him.
McClellan, vice chair of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, is seeking to become the first Black woman elected to Congress in Virginia. Her profile rose statewide after her unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for governor last year. But she has also been at the center of major legislative efforts in Richmond, such as leading environmental legislation that became law, the Virginia Clean Economy Act, and leading on abortion access bills and women’s rights legislation, including spearheading efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
Support for McClellan from state and local leaders only increased after Del. Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico) dropped out of the race and threw his support behind McClellan.
The consolidation behind McClellan led one political observer to describe the race as Morrissey against “the entire Democratic establishment.”
Morrissey has at times rankled party leaders given he doesn’t always fall in line — including on abortion, which he opposes. But despite several controversies in his political life, from courthouse fistfights to a relationship with a 17-year-old girl who as an adult became his wife, the twice-disbarred lawyer has retained popularity in his district, including among Black voters.
He is known for pursuing major criminal justice legislation, including abolishing the death penalty and seeking to improve conditions for prisoners, and framed his campaign as seeking to continue fighting for marginalized communities.
On Wednesday evening, Swecker and Rodgers said they would not be releasing partial results but promised updates on the progress of the count. | 2022-12-22T00:23:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Virginia's 4th district Democratic primary, counting ballots proceeds slowly - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/va4-results-democratic-primary-counting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/21/va4-results-democratic-primary-counting/ |
Subway shooting suspect Frank James is led away from a police station in New York in April. (Seth Wenig/AP)
NEW YORK — The man accused of injuring 10 people when he opened fire in a New York subway car in April is expected to plead guilty to terrorism charges, according to a federal court filing Wednesday.
Frank James, who had pleaded not guilty and was scheduled to stand trial in February, “wishes to schedule a guilty plea,” his lawyers wrote in a one-paragraph letter to U.S. District Judge William F. Kuntz II.
No other details were offered. Shortly after the letter was filed, Kuntz set a Jan. 3 date for the plea hearing.
On April 12, James allegedly set off smoke grenades, launching a scene of chaos, before firing off nearly three dozen rounds from a Glock 9mm handgun on a Manhattan-bound N train in Brooklyn. He allegedly left the subway station calmly as confused and injured passengers spilled out of the subway car at the next station. No one was killed.
FBI agents and New York police officers led a 29-hour search for James, who was found in Lower Manhattan.
The 63-year-old suspect faces possible life sentences in the case. It is rare for a criminal defendant to plead guilty to serious charges without a negotiated deal likely to yield some benefit.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney declined to comment on the development. James’s attorneys from the Federal Defenders of New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn filed a superseding indictment charging James with 10 counts of committing a terrorist attack and other violence on a mass transit system, one count for each shooting victim. He was previously indicted on two counts — mass-transit terrorism and discharging a firearm during a violent act.
The shooting on the nation’s busiest transit system was “a premeditated violent attack on unsuspecting commuters trapped underground with their assailant in a subway car,” prosecutors said in court papers at the time of his arrest.
Prosecutors said James allegedly had a disturbing online presence in which he engaged in conspiracy theories and made bigoted comments. He also allegedly discussed his desire to engage in violence. | 2022-12-22T00:24:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brooklyn subway shooting suspect set to plead guilty to terrorism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/brooklyn-subway-shooter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/brooklyn-subway-shooter/ |
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said Wednesday a recent review of the state’s investment portfolio found the state did not hold any direct investments in China but has stakes in emerging markets funds that invest in the Asian economic power.
The Republican governor, who is seen as a potential contender for the 2024 White House, has taken aim at China with recent orders. Earlier this month, she gave the state's Investment Council a week to review its $19 billion portfolio for ties to China, arguing that all companies in the country are tied to its Communist government. In letters released Wednesday, she called on Congress and The Vanguard Group to assist the state’s efforts to divest from China. | 2022-12-22T00:24:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gov. Noem: Investment review finds limited funds in China - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gov-noem-investment-review-finds-limited-funds-in-china/2022/12/21/59702580-8175-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gov-noem-investment-review-finds-limited-funds-in-china/2022/12/21/59702580-8175-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Mike Hodges, British director known for ‘Get Carter,’ dies at 90
He was celebrated for his stylish, atmospheric crime thrillers but also ventured into science fiction with ‘The Terminal Man’ and ‘Flash Gordon’
Filmmaker Mike Hodges directs Michael Caine during the making of “Get Carter.” The celebrated 1971 gangster film was Mr. Hodges's first movie. (MGM/Kobal/Shutterstock)
Mike Hodges, a British filmmaker whose varied career ranged from brutal crime movies such as “Get Carter,” one of the country’s most acclaimed gangster films, to the campy space opera “Flash Gordon,” a would-be blockbuster that became a cult classic, died Dec. 17 at his home in Durweston, a village in southwestern England. He was 90.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said his friend and collaborator Mike Kaplan, a film producer and marketing strategist.
Mr. Hodges was a master of the crime film, a genre that gave him the freedom to perform “an autopsy on society’s ills,” as he put it, while examining characters who attained money and power through manipulation, exploitation or the explosive force of a double-barreled shotgun.
“His thrillers are distinctively unsettling: they’re as somber and as menacing as ghost stories,” film critic Terrence Rafferty once wrote in the New York Times, “and their effects are as hard to shake.”
Unlike the ruthless, gun-toting men who populated so many of his films, Mr. Hodges was by all accounts gentle, soft-spoken and consistently good-humored, even when his movies flopped at the box office or were never released to theaters in the first place.
“He always said his films were like messages in a bottle that you’d throw into the sea,” Kaplan said in a phone interview. “And then they’d pop up somewhere, in Japan or the U.S., and people would finally see them.”
Mr. Hodges, who was also a playwright and novelist, wrote many of his own films, beginning with his 1971 debut, “Get Carter,” based on Ted Lewis’s novel “Jack’s Return Home.” Shot on location in Newcastle upon Tyne, the movie followed gangster Jack Carter (played by Michael Caine), who returns to his hometown in northeastern England to investigate the death of his brother.
The film shocked critics with its naturalistic scenes of violence, with Caine portraying Carter as a remorseless criminal who — unlike a more traditional movie gangster — was neither stupid nor funny. Pauline Kael of the New Yorker declared that the film was “so calculatedly cool and soulless and nastily erotic that it seems to belong to a new genre of virtuoso viciousness.”
The movie was later praised by directors including Guy Ritchie, Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright, and in 2004 it was ranked the greatest British movie of all time by Total Film magazine. It also inspired a poorly received Hollywood remake starring Sylvester Stallone, released in 2000 without the involvement of Mr. Hodges.
Mr. Hodges reunited with Caine for his follow-up, the black comedy “Pulp” (1972), which reworked noir tropes while telling the story of a hard-boiled novelist hired to ghostwrite the autobiography of a mob-connected movie star (Mickey Rooney).
His later films included the Michael Crichton adaptation “The Terminal Man” (1974), which went unreleased in British theaters but drew the admiration of directors Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick, and “Flash Gordon” (1980), a comic strip extravaganza that starred Sam J. Jones as the heroic title character and Max von Sydow as the villainous Ming the Merciless.
Produced by Dino De Laurentiis, who hired Mr. Hodges to replace director Nicolas Roeg, “Flash Gordon” featured music by the rock band Queen and was a modest box office success in Britain, despite the fact that Mr. Hodges went into the film having “no idea what I was going to do.”
He settled on a tongue-in-cheek approach that went against De Laurentiis’s vision for a sincere sci-fi and fantasy franchise, and said he had to order his crew not to laugh while watching footage during the producer’s visits to the set.
Soon after the movie came out, Mr. Hodges’s first marriage collapsed, and his health faltered. He became “seriously ill,” he said, and found himself “at rock bottom” after his marriage to Jean Alexandrov ended in divorce.
It would be nearly two decades before he returned to prominence as a filmmaker, following the release of thrillers including “A Prayer for the Dying” (1987), which he disowned after it was re-cut by the studio, and “Black Rainbow” (1989), which was critically acclaimed but never got a full theatrical release in Britain or the United States.
In part, his declining fortunes were self-inflicted, according to his friend Malcolm McDowell, the star of Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange.” “Mike doesn’t like compromising very much,” McDowell told the Guardian in 2003. “Now that’s a great strength as I see it, but it doesn’t help when you’re trying to work within the studio system.”
After Mr. Hodges’s neo-noir film “Croupier” (1998) died at the British box office, he believed his career was over, and decided he would shift his focus from making movies to growing vegetables and baking bread. But the movie received widespread acclaim in the United States and helped elevate actor Clive Owen to stardom, portraying a casino worker struggling to write a novel. “Croupier” got a second life, returning to theaters in Britain.
Writing in the New York Observer in 2000, film critic Andrew Sarris proclaimed Mr. Hodges “one of the most underappreciated and virtually unknown masters of the medium over the last 30 years,” noting his “exquisite craftsmanship.”
Mr. Hodges went back to work, making one last crime thriller — “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” (2003), starring Owen as a Carter-like character looking into his brother’s suicide.
Michael Tommy Hodges was born in Bristol, England, on July 29, 1932, and grew up in Salisbury, frequenting the city’s three movie houses to watch films by Billy Wilder and Elia Kazan. His father was a cigarette salesman, his mother a homemaker, and his parents instilled a conservative worldview in their young son, sending him to a Catholic boarding school in Bath and encouraging him to become an accountant.
For his compulsory national service, Mr. Hodges joined the Royal Navy, serving aboard a minesweeper that traveled between poor fishing communities along the British coastline. The experience left him transformed.
“For two years, my middle-class eyes were forced to witness horrendous poverty and deprivation that I was previously unaware of,” he recalled this year in a letter to the Guardian. “I went into the navy as a newly qualified chartered accountant and complacent young Tory, and came out an angry, radical young man.”
Mr. Hodges went into television, working as a scriptwriter and then a director for the public affairs series “World in Action.” After directing feature-length thrillers for the anthology series “ITV Playhouse,” he was hired in 1970 to make “Get Carter.” He later signed up for paycheck jobs that included an uncredited stint directing “Damien: Omen II” (1978).
As he told it, he left the horror film after one of the producers pulled out a handgun during an argument about the design budget. “I needed the money, and the whole thing was a disaster,” he recalled. “The gun was incidental.”
He later directed “Squaring the Circle” (1984), a TV movie about Polish dissident Lech Walesa, from a script by Tom Stoppard; the science fiction satire “Morons From Outer Space” (1985); and the documentary “Murder by Numbers” (2004), which examined the history of serial killer films. In recent years he was working on “All at Sea,” a documentary about his life.
Survivors include his wife, Carol Laws, whom he married in 2004; two sons from his first marriage, Ben and Jake Hodges; and five grandchildren.
Long after the release of “Get Carter,” Mr. Hodges was still marveling at the film’s success, as well as its speedy production process. The movie took 45 days to shoot and came out the year after he was hired to direct.
“I thought filmmaking was always going to be like that: decisions quickly taken and quickly acted on, instinct always in the driving seat,” he said in an interview with British writer Maxim Jakubowski. “Nine feature films over the next forty years shows how wrong I was. Keeping instinct alive in an industry run largely by committees of incompetent and frightened executives is no easy matter.” | 2022-12-22T00:58:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mike Hodges, British director known for ‘Get Carter,’ dies at 90 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/21/director-mike-hodges-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/21/director-mike-hodges-dead/ |
Beyond the sincere expressions of Ukrainian gratitude and firm pledges of ongoing American support, President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Biden came together Wednesday with specific, and sometimes differing, goals for their meeting.
With a $47 billion U.S. aid package requested by Biden for 2023, both were keen to solidify support from the new, Republican-led House that takes over next month. It was important, a senior administration official said, for Zelensky to use his considerable in-person charisma in making the case to lawmakers “about how this really is a struggle for democracy.”
For Zelensky himself, the objective centered on appeals for more powerful weapons to enhance Ukraine’s ability to launch major offensives against entrenched Russian forces in the coming year. There was little indication that he succeeded, at least in the short term.
In a tweet labeled “My Christmas Wishlist,” posted earlier this month before this week’s announcement of another $1.85 billion worth of U.S. security assistance, Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak’s top five items included four that the Biden administration has declined to offer or help provide — including advanced battle tanks and long-range missiles. The fifth, the Patriot air-defense system, was included in the new aid package.
U.S. defense officials have said that Ukraine has enough tanks already, and that the U.S. M1 Abrams sought by Kyiv are too difficult to maintain and complex to operate. When asked at a joint news conference with Zelensky about the missiles, which would allow Ukrainian forces to strike targets inside Russian territory, Biden warned such weaponry could shatter NATO unity in support of Ukraine.
“They’re not looking to go to war with Russia,” he said of the alliance.
For its part, the administration was eager “to discuss [Zelensky’s] thinking about diplomacy. Where he is, and what he needs to make sure that Kyiv is in the strongest possible position so that we can accelerate the emergence of a negotiating table,” said a senior administration official, one of several who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the historic visit.
The official reiterated the long-standing administration position that “it’s not for us to describe what diplomacy should look like, when it should begin, or what its red lines should be,” decisions that are for Ukraine to make.
But just because there’s unanimity in pushing back Moscow doesn’t mean that Washington and Kyiv are walking in lockstep.
“It was an opportunity for Biden and Zelensky to have a serious conversation about where are we going ... not to tell [Zelensky] what to do ... to make sure we’re aligned in overall objectives and understanding each other,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “Biden remains worried about not pushing too far, too fast, for fear of escalation. Zelensky wants to make clear that he needs this continued support that, frankly, only the United States can provide.”
There are three different models of what a negotiated end to the war could look like, each of which has adherents within the administration. One, part of a peace plan Zelensky proposed last month, includes Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory it currently occupies, including Crimea and areas of eastern Donbas it seized in 2014. Another is withdrawal to the 2014 lines. A third level of withdrawal would include Donbas, but not Crimea.
The latter two options Zelensky has made clear he will not support, noting that peace can only come when the Russian invaders have retreated from all occupied territory.
But in their face-to-face meeting on Wednesday, Biden sought Zelensky’s “current thoughts about what that should look like,” the senior official said, while acknowledging that “it’s sort of an academic discussion at this point,” since there are no indications that Russia is interested in talking.
“What the Russians want is a cease-fire, with time to refresh, regroup and train new forces,” said Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Russia is trying to buy time” following its poor showing against Ukrainian counteroffensives that regained significant territory in the fall.
At Russia’s Defense Ministry end-of-the-year meeting Wednesday, both President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced new initiatives that were an indirect acknowledgment of prior failings. Shoigu proposed increasing the size of the armed forces from 1 million this year to 1.5 million, deploying 20 new divisions and changing the mobilization structure.
Putin said he approved of the changes, but noted problems in combat operations that needed “to be addressed specially,” including communications, command and control, and counter-battery warfare, according to Russia’s Tass news agency. He instructed Shoigu to provide Russian troops, many of whom have been ill-equipped, with weapons, medical kits, rations and footwear “at the most advanced and highest level,” Tass reported, because “there can be no trifles on the battlefield.”
“We have no financing constraints and the country and the government give all that the Army requests,” Putin said. “I hope that the response will be formulated accordingly and the corresponding results will be achieved.”
While Ukraine’s top military leaders have said they expect renewed Russian offensives, perhaps even against Kyiv, within the next few months, a senior State Department official said the United States believes the Kremlin is conflicted, with some Russian officials eager to capture more territory and others concerned about whether their forces are prepared to undertake major military operations.
“Certainly there are some who I think would want to pursue offensives in Ukraine,” this official said. “There are others who have real questions about the capacity for Russia to actually do that.”
Russia is facing “very significant shortages of ammunition,” which is “increasingly a problem” for Kremlin forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine is “alive and kicking” in his address to a joint meeting of Congress on Dec. 21. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
But while there may be some internal haggling over tactics, U.S. officials said, there has been no dissension detected within the Kremlin when it comes to strategy, or indication of serious proposals that the Russians should cut their losses, withdraw and pursue peace.
New U.S. and allied-supplied weapons systems, particularly the sophisticated Patriot air defense, will aid in confronting ongoing Russian airstrikes targeting Ukrainian infrastructure that have left much of the country in the dark and without heat as winter sets in. The goal, senior U.S. defense officials said, is to provide a “layered” defense against strikes by Russian cruise missiles and drones.
“This isn’t a comprehensive air defense solution for Ukraine,” one defense official said of the newly approved Patriot system. “This is another step in many steps that we have pursued. ... With this one [Patriot] battery, we will be offering a formidable capability, but the United States and allies will still be working to round out Ukraine’s air defense.”
But some senior Ukrainian officials maintain that the only way to stop the Russian air assault is to hit it where it originates. That means “combined strikes against the stationary targets of the enemy, first against the airfields of the base of the Russian strike aircraft, and the areas of the launch positions of ballistic and cruise missiles,” Mykhailo Zabrodskyi, deputy chairman of Ukraine’s National Security, Defense and Intelligence Committee, wrote this week in an article for Ukrinform, the state news agency.
To do that, he wrote, Ukraine needs long-range missiles, specifically the U.S. Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS — which appeared on the wish list of Podolyak, the Zelensky adviser.
The other items on his list — Leopard and Marder battle tanks from Germany, and M1 Abrams tanks from the United States — are equally unlikely in the short term.
Citing discovery of mass graves, Ukraine presses case for modern tanks
Germany repeated Wednesday its reluctance to provide tanks until the United States does so first. While it is a German priority to “support Ukraine as much as we can,” government spokesperson Steffan Hebestreit told reporters Wednesday in Berlin, “the other is to keep NATO out of direct conflict with Russia. The third is that Germany will not go it alone. The fact is that no main battle tank of Western provenance has been delivered to Ukraine to date.”
Even without immediate success on the weapons front, the stakes for the Ukrainian president’s visit have been high. “Zelensky is trying to strengthen and thereby extend the political foundations of support for Ukraine in the United States and by extension the whole free world,” said Daniel Fried, who served as a top State Department diplomat for Europe and U.S. ambassador to Poland. “That all depends on the Americans staying the course, and he wants to put a human face on it.”
For now, that goal appears to have been achieved. “What may be different” in the new Congress “is that there will be loud voices, not particularly influential voices, but loud voices, that will make the case that this money needs to be directed elsewhere, that we’re wasting precious resources on overseas adventures,” the senior administration official said.
But “our honest expectation is that we will continue to see strong bipartisan support for Ukraine. We expect to see it in the next Congress.”
John Hudson and Loveday Morris in Berlin contributed to this report. | 2022-12-22T01:55:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amid a showing of unity, Zelensky and Biden differ on war needs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/zelensky-biden-weapons-ukraine-patriots/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/zelensky-biden-weapons-ukraine-patriots/ |
Zelensky’s visit yields remarkable moment for two presidents
Ukrainian leader briefly leaves his war-torn country to meet U.S. counterpart who has rallied nations on his behalf
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with President Biden outside the White House on Wednesday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Capping a year in which they each faced long odds and defied gloomy predictions, the two men stood side by side at the White House on Wednesday — President Biden in a blue suit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an olive-green military shirt and heavy boots.
The stark sartorial contrast was one of the few differences on display as Biden and Zelensky praised one another and presented a united front during the Ukrainian leader’s visit to Washington, his first appearance abroad since Russia’s invasion. The visit underscored how the relationship between the two men — a 44-year-old born in what was then the U.S.S.R. and an octogenarian born in Scranton, Pa. — has unexpectedly become one of the most vital partnerships in global affairs.
“I am standing here in the United States with President Biden on the same podium because I respect him as a person, as a president, as a human being,” Zelensky said Wednesday during a joint news conference. Biden reciprocated, “This guy to his very soul is who he says he is. It’s clear who he is. He’s willing to give his life for his country.”
The visit was significant for both men.
It offered Zelensky, who briefly left a country racked by war, an opportunity to tout his government’s accomplishments in standing up to Russian aggression. It gave Biden a chance to reiterate his “America is back” message and his defense of democracy that has been directed at both domestic and international audiences, and to play the role of savvy global leader he has always ascribed to himself.
“The American people have been with you every step of the way, and we will stay with you. We will stay with you for as long as it takes,” Biden said. “What you’re doing, what you’ve achieved — it matters not just to Ukraine, but to the entire world.”
Analysis: Zelensky finally gets his White House meeting
The meeting came as both presidents confront fresh challenges that could prove even more complex than the trials they faced in 2022.
Zelensky, whose challenges are clearly more existential, faces a grim winter of war made more treacherous by a brutal Russian onslaught on civilian infrastructure and on the Ukrainian electrical grid. Biden is girding for a takeover of the House by Republicans determined to damage him politically and investigate his son.
The change of power in Congress could affect Zelensky’s goals as well, since some Republicans have expressed interest in reining in U.S. expenditures on the war in Ukraine. By design or not, Zelensky’s visit created a powerful moment that his supporters hope will beat back any doubts.
At each of his stops Wednesday, Zelensky went out of his way to express his thanks to the American public for its ongoing support of Ukraine. “Thanks from our ordinary people to your ordinary people, Americans,” Zelensky told Biden during a meeting in the Oval Office. “I really appreciate.”
The visit to the White House was a symbolic victory for Zelensky, who few expected would last when Russian President Vladimir Putin began sending thousands of troops and a barrage of missiles into Ukrainian territory 300 days ago. As Ukraine’s military has fought back, in some cases pushing Russian fighters out of occupied territory, Zelensky, a former comedian, has unexpectedly become a global icon. Time magazine selected him as the 2022 Person of the Year, something Biden mentioned during their Oval Office meeting.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hailed Zelensky in a letter inviting him to address Congress, and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) compared him to Winston Churchill, the British prime minister during World War II.
“It’s always a high honor to welcome a foreign head of state to Congress,” Schumer said Wednesday, his blue suit and yellow tie matching the colors of the Ukrainian flag. “But it’s nearly unheard of to hear from a leader who is fighting for his life, fighting for his country’s survival and fighting to preserve the very idea of democracy.”
While Zelensky has spoken virtually to foreign leaders and governing bodies around the world — including an address to Congress in March — his decision to come to Washington before visiting Europe underscored “the unparalleled importance of the United States to Ukrainian democracy,” said Max Bergmann, director for Europe at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“It signals that America is back — and that’s been Biden’s term — but there’s something real to that,” Bergmann said. “The United States has demonstrated that it’s indispensable to European security.”
Zelensky arrived at the White House in the same gear he wears to visit Ukrainian troops, and his full head of dark hair contrasted with Biden’s wisps of white. Biden, wearing a blue-and-yellow tie, invited Zelensky into the Oval Office and the two were seen walking together along the White House colonnade, a powerful image at home for Zelensky.
Both presidents had something to gain from emphasizing their mutual support. And they made the most of it.
Zelensky presented Biden with a medal from a Ukrainian soldier. “He’s very brave,” Zelensky said of the soldier. “And he said, ‘Give it to a very brave president.’ And I want to give that [to] you.”
Biden accepted it, saying it was “undeserved but appreciated.”
As for Biden, he cited Zelensky’s Jewish background and noted that they were meeting during Hanukkah, which celebrates the victory of a small nation over a powerful oppressor. “I get kidded for saying all politics is personal,” Biden said. “It’s all about looking someone in the eye, and I really mean that sincerely. I don’t think there is any, any, any substitute for sitting down face to face with a friend or foe.”
Beyond the symbolism, Zelensky’s visit included concrete deliverables important to both leaders. Hours before Zelensky arrived, the White House announced that Biden had approved a new $1.85 billion security assistance package including a Patriot missile system. And as the Ukrainian president landed in Washington, lawmakers were working to pass a spending package including $44.9 billion in emergency assistance for Kyiv.
With the GOP House takeover likely to curtail Biden’s legislative agenda, he is expected to sharpen his focus on foreign policy, an area where presidents have broad authority. Since the midterms, Biden has traveled to Asia, held a state visit with France, approved a prisoner swap with Russia and hosted a summit for African leaders. But the fate of Ukraine will probably be the most significant component of Biden’s foreign policy legacy.
“The American people know that if we stand by in the face of such blatant attacks on liberty and democracy and the core principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, the world would surely face worse consequences,” Biden said Wednesday.
At the same time, the American politics undergirding the visit were significant if unstated.
President Donald Trump was impeached in 2020 for withholding military aid and a White House meeting from Ukraine in an attempt to pressure Zelensky into opening an investigation of Hunter Biden. Now that Trump is formally challenging his successor, Zelensky’s visit offered the incumbent another opportunity to contrast his own approach to the embattled country.
While Trump often chastised America’s European allies and called NATO “obsolete,” Biden has extolled the transatlantic partnership and attempted to present the United States as the world’s indispensable leader. The war in Ukraine offers a key test of Biden’s approach, and Zelensky used his Washington visit to thank the U.S. president.
“We really fight for our common victory against this tyranny,” Zelensky said. “And we will win, and I really want [to] win together.”
He paused before correcting himself.
“Not ‘want.’ Sorry,” he said. “I’m sure.” | 2022-12-22T01:55:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Zelensky's visit creates a remarkable moment for two presidents - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/biden-zelensky-visit-two-presidents/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/biden-zelensky-visit-two-presidents/ |
Jonathan Allen, Tress Way and Jeremy Reaves are starters, and Terry McLaurin was selected as a reserve. Daron Payne and Montez Sweat were named alternates.
Commanders punter Tress Way, right, celebrates with Jeremy Reaves during a win against the Atlanta Falcons at FedEx Field. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The Washington Commanders will not lack for representation at the NFL’s reimagined Pro Bowl Games in February. Three players — defensive tackle Jonathan Allen, punter Tress Way and special teams standout Jeremy Reaves — were voted as starters for the NFC, while wide receiver Terry McLaurin was selected as a reserve, the NFL announced Wednesday night. Defensive linemen Daron Payne (first alternate) and Montez Sweat (second alternate) were selected as alternates.
It’s the first time since 2002 that Washington has had at least three starters and the first time since 2016 that it has four players total, including reserves, selected to the Pro Bowl. Fans, players and coaches each count for a third of the vote.
The selection is the second for Allen (2021) and Way (2019) but the first for McLaurin and Reaves, an undrafted player out of South Alabama who was waived by the Philadelphia Eagles in 2019 and bounced on and off Washington’s practice squad before making the initial 53-man roster for the first time this season. Reaves, Way’s punt protector and one of the most well-regarded players in the locker room, has earned the praise of Coach Ron Rivera for his persistence and improved play.
“He’s been on the 53 because of the way he’s done things, how he’s handled things,” Rivera said. “That’s what you look for: that type of guy that’s not a first- or second-round or a top-notch player but a guy that can help bring things together. That’s the perfect kind of guy.”
Way, Washington’s most-tenured player, is having one of his finest seasons. In Sunday night’s loss to the New York Giants, he became the sixth active punter to top 30,000 career yards. He leads the league with 32 punts inside the 20-yard line, including 10 that have fallen inside the 10, tied for the third most in the NFL. Way, 32, is tied for fourth in punts (70), ranks fifth in punt yards (3,284) and is tied for seventh in net punting average (43.1 yards).
Over the past two seasons, Allen has developed into one of the NFL’s finest interior defensive linemen, working in tandem with Payne at tackle. Allen (16) and Payne (15) rank first and second in tackles for loss among interior linemen. Allen is also second in run stuffs (8.5) and third in sacks (7.5) in their position group, while Payne is fifth (5.5 run stuffs) and second (8.5 sacks).
Allen, a team captain, is the first Washington defensive tackle in the common draft era (since 1967) to be selected to multiple Pro Bowls. He needs 2.5 sacks to pass Dave Butz (35.5) for the most in franchise history for a defensive tackle, dating from 1982 when the stat became official.
Payne, Washington’s sack leader this season, last week joined Brian Orakpo, Ryan Kerrigan and Andre Carter as the only players in franchise history to have at least 20 sacks, 50 quarterback hits, 10 passes defensed and 30 tackles for loss. Payne will be a free agent in March.
McLaurin, a 2019 third-round pick projected as primarily a special-teams player coming out of Ohio State, quickly latched on as an integral part of Washington’s offense and has become one of the league’s top wideouts. In June, the Commanders cemented his status as their top receiver by signing him to a three-year contract extension worth approximately $71 million. On Sunday, he topped 1,000 receiving yards, becoming the first Washington player since Henry Ellard from 1994 to 1996 to reach the 1,000-yard mark in three consecutive seasons.
Sweat, a fourth-year defensive end, has developed into a formidable threat on the edge by posting a career-high 26 quarterback hits, including seven sacks. He needs two sacks to pass Bruce Smith (29) for the 10th most in Washington history.
The NFL announced in September that it had altered the format of the Pro Bowl and renamed it the Pro Bowl Games. The week-long event at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas will feature several competitions — football and non-football — between the AFC and NFC that will culminate with a flag football game Feb. 5. Peyton Manning will lead the AFC; his brother Eli will direct the NFC. | 2022-12-22T01:55:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commanders land four players on Pro Bowl Games rosters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/21/commanders-pro-bowl-jonathan-allen-tress-way-jeremy-reaves/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/21/commanders-pro-bowl-jonathan-allen-tress-way-jeremy-reaves/ |
Here’s everything you need to know about Patriot missiles
A Patriot missile launcher at a Turkish military base in Gaziantep in 2013. The United States said Wednesday it would provide Ukraine with the advanced system to help counter Moscow's relentless aerial attacks. (Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images/file)
Fulfilling one of Kyiv’s biggest requests to Washington, the United States will send its most advanced and highly sought-after air defense weapon, the Patriot missile system, to Ukraine to block Russia’s air assault.
President Biden announced Wednesday that the United States would provide the system as part of a $1.85 billion military aid package with training and other munitions — a deployment that follows 300 days of war and an onslaught of Russian missile and drone strikes that have in recent months increasingly targeted Ukrainian cities and towns. One battery is far from a panacea, but the Patriot air defense system could dampen Moscow’s apparent strategy to cripple Ukraine’s power grid and civilian infrastructure.
Standing with Zelensky, Biden promises U.S. support for Ukraine
Biden made the announcement during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s highly orchestrated visit to Washington, his first trip abroad since the start of the war, where he emphasized the value of U.S. military support.
“This could take some time to complete the necessary training, but the Patriot battery will be another critical asset for Ukraine as it defends itself from Russian aggression,” Biden said at a joint news conference with Zelensky.
The Ukrainian president agreed, calling it “the strongest element of this package,” and later adding that Ukraine had asked for additional systems. “We would like to get more Patriots,” Zelensky said. “We are in war, I am really sorry.”
The Patriot battery — with a strike range of roughly 20 to 100 miles — will not protect the entire country, but experts say it does show a strong commitment by the United States.
“It’s a very significant political statement as well as an improvement of Ukraine’s defense capabilities,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Here’s what to know about the air defense system:
The Patriot is a sophisticated surface-to-air guided missile system that can detect and shoot down incoming missiles and aircraft, offering blanket protection to civilians and armies. Conceptualized in the 1960s to protect Europe from the Soviet Union and then deployed in the 1980s, the Patriot has become the Army’s most sought-after air defense system, frequently operated around the world.
It was most famously used during the Gulf War in 1991. The U.S. air defense system intercepted Iraqi Scud missiles aimed at Saudi cities.
“Troops on the ground watched as Patriot missiles arched into the dark skies and collided with incoming Scuds, which exploded in a rain of fiery debris,” reported The Washington Post from Saudi Arabia in 1991.
Now, in Ukraine, the air defense system will be used to fend off a Russian bombardment that has left much of the country without power during a cold winter.
Why is the missile system important to Ukraine?
The Patriot system will fortify and improve the capability of Ukraine’s air defenses, filling in some gaps, Karako said. But the system has a limited range, will require training and must be supplemented by other defenses.
“The problem, of course, is the Russians are shooting a ton of missiles, and they are exhausting the supply of air defense interceptors,” Karako said.
At the same time, Iran has agreed to substantially increase the number of drones it is supplying to Russia, from hundreds to thousands, and Iran plans to provide ballistic missiles that can supplement Russia’s dwindling stocks.
The United States has provided other tools to defend Ukrainian skies. Previous tranches of military aid included long-range rocket artillery systems and advanced electronic equipment that converts unguided aerial munitions into “smart bombs” that can strike front-line targets.
But the battery — which the Biden administration had resisted sending earlier — could be especially useful as the barrage of Russian attacks is exhausting the supply of air defense interceptors, leaving millions of Ukrainians without power. Russian officials have warned that the deployment of the air defense system could be seen as an escalation and “entail possible consequences.”
How long will it take to train Ukrainians to use them?
Ukrainian troops will need months of training to operate the Patriot system, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Wednesday, though the Pentagon is eyeing ways to compress some aspects of the training. The U.S. military typically assigns 90 troops to operate one Patriot battery.
Experts have said training under normal conditions would take about half a year. “This is a complex system to operate and maintain,” the defense official said.
What is Russia’s reaction to the U.S. sending Ukraine these missiles?
Sending the long-range air defense system to Ukraine will escalate the conflict, Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, said at a press briefing on Dec. 15. “We would like to say that the Western weapons supplied to Ukraine are legitimate targets for the Russian armed forces and that they will be either destroyed or seized,” Zakharova said.
“The fact they don’t like it is probably a testament to it being a capable system,” Karako said.
How would the deployment of the missiles affect U.S. troops and operations?
The United States has about 15 Patriot battalions, many of them deployed in Europe and the Middle East, and the U.S. soldiers who operate these systems are already among the most frequently deployed Army units. U.S. troops will also have to train Ukrainian forces on how to use and maintain the system at a base in Germany.
Given the scarcity, Karako said the United States has to be strategic when it considers where it may send its Patriot systems and its trainers, because they’re in high demand across the globe.
“We have to deter attacks in a lot of places,” Karako said. “One can surmise that if a Patriot battery goes to Ukraine it’s probably not going to be going home anytime soon.”
Alex Horton contributed to this report. | 2022-12-22T03:26:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What is the Patriot missile system, and why does Ukraine need it ? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/21/what-patriot-missile-system-why-does-ukraine-need/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/21/what-patriot-missile-system-why-does-ukraine-need/ |
A photo of Bluebell, a black Labrador mix who is about 5 years old now. (Photo courtesy of Madison Miller)
When Madison Miller walked into an office building near Nashville International Airport to pick up her dog from an international flight this month, she knew immediately that something was wrong.
The four people inside froze and looked at her, their faces uneasy.
“Are you here to pick up a dog?” one of them asked.
“I hope so,” Miller responded, worst-possible scenarios passing through her mind at warp speed.
“Well, your dog’s okay, but we think she’s been sent to Saudi Arabia,” the staff member said.
Miller felt like she couldn’t breathe. She and her husband, James, were moving from Britain to Nashville and had arranged for their dog, Bluebell, to be flown in the cargo hold of a British Airways flight. Because none of the Britain-based airlines they considered with flights to Nashville allowed animals in the cabin, it had been their only option. But, instead of putting Bluebell on the plane to Tennessee, crews accidentally shipped the black Labrador mix to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Miller told The Washington Post.
“I was in shock and truly just, like, holding on because I really thought I might never see my dog again,” Miller said.
IAG Cargo, an international airline group that works with British Airways, said in a statement that while Bluebell’s “route was longer than it should have been,” she was put on the first flight back to Nashville after the mistake.
“We are very sorry for the recent error that occurred during Bluebell’s trip to Nashville,” an IAG Cargo spokesperson wrote. “We take the responsibility of caring for people’s loved animals seriously and are investigating how the redirection happened.”
About six months ago, Madison and James Miller began training Bluebell with the kennel she would occupy in the cargo hold.
At first, the idea of Bluebell’s traveling in a cargo hold was stressful, Madison Miller said.
“Honestly, we even looked at how much a private jet would cost, I was that nervous about it,” she said. “And we went, ‘Okay, we definitely can’t afford that.’”
After realizing that the cargo hold was their only timely choice, the Millers, who planned the move from a town outside London to be closer to relatives, worked with a travel agency to get the dimensions of Bluebell’s kennel on the flight and used a crate to get her familiar with the travel experience, which was supposed to be eight hours long.
Come December, the couple had done all they could to prepare Bluebell, who is about 5 years old, for her journey. On Nov. 30, Miller flew to Nashville to ready the dog’s new home. Her husband checked their pet in to fly with him to the United States on Dec. 1 — or so the couple thought.
When Miller went to the IAG Cargo office to get Bluebell and realized she wasn’t there, she and her husband immediately started making calls. Another dog arrived at the office, but Miller said staffers told her they believed it was the dog that was supposed to be in Saudi Arabia.
Over the next couple of days, Bluebell was flown back to London’s Heathrow Airport, where she received a checkup and was taken out for a walk, and then sent to Nashville, Miller said.
In total, Bluebell’s journey lasted 63 hours.
A snake snuck onto a United flight from Tampa. It’s in New Jersey now.
On the evening of Dec. 3, the Millers drove back to the IAG Cargo office. Shaking as she walked through the doors, Madison finally laid eyes on her dog. But once again, she felt something wasn’t right.
Bluebell bolted out of her crate once it was opened, running toward the office door. She was acting “absolutely ballistic” and crying, with a wild look in her eyes, Miller said.
Outside in the parking lot, Madison and James Miller hugged Bluebell from either side, hoping their smell would help her calm down.
But Bluebell’s unusual behavior only continued after they took her home.
“She became our shadow, which she wasn’t before,” Miller said.
Bluebell followed the Millers everywhere they went into the house. The first time they tried to put her in a crate again, she tore through the canvas. And when they tried to leave her alone in the house for an hour, she ripped through the Millers’ laundry hamper and bedding and chewed through the bottom of their bedroom door.
Missy Matusicky, an assistant professor at Ohio State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said responses like those are often seen in animals after they undergo stressful experiences like a trip in a cargo hold.
Even for dogs that have been kept in kennels before, she said, cargo-hold travel is “bizarre” for several reasons, including that the kennel is moving, the dogs are without their owners, and any waste they produce stays inside their crates with them.
“This is a heartbreaking experience for this dog to have to go through,” Matusicky said. “And just what I have seen in other animals, to think about how broken this dog is now for, quite likely, many, many months, if not the rest of its life. It’s a devastating ordeal.”
The Millers have gotten Bluebell a prescription for anxiety medication as they work to make their dog comfortable in her new home.
They’ve also asked IAG Cargo for about $10,000 of compensation for the costs they incurred during the process, including for the medication and destroyed household items.
“The compensation is just the icing on the cake,” Madison Miller said. “It’s the least they could do, which would be to throw us some sort of bone to help us with the cost that we’ve incurred, and the headache and the heartbreak that we’ve dealt with.” | 2022-12-22T03:30:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Couple says cargo company accidentally flew their dog to Saudi Arabia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/12/21/dog-flew-cargo-saudi-arabia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/12/21/dog-flew-cargo-saudi-arabia/ |
An American child born in 2021 could expect to live to 76.4 years, according to the latest government data
The fentanyl overdose death of a 39-year-old woman in San Diego last month is investigated by Homeland Security agent Ed Byrne, right, and Lt. Ken Impellizeri of San Diego Police. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
Even as some peer nations began to bounce back from the toll of the pandemic, life expectancy in the U.S. dropped to 76.4 years at birth, down from 77 in 2020, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. That means Americans can expect to live as long as they did in 1996 — a dismal benchmark for a reliable measure of health that should rise steadily in an affluent, developed nation. (In August, using preliminary data, the agency had pegged life expectancy in 2021 at 76.1 years.)
Notably, every age group in the U.S. — from young children to seniors 85 and older — saw a rise in its death rate. Men, women and most racial groups lost ground. In some previous years, even when overall life expectancy declined, some groups advanced.
“This one, it’s sort of across-the-board bad news,” said Eileen Crimmins, a professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California who studies life expectancy around the world. “We’ve gone since 1996 without improving. That’s incredible, given how much we’ve learned about medicine, how much we’ve spent.”
In all, 3.46 million people died in the United States in 2021 — 80,502 more than the previous year. Covid killed 416,893, and drug overdoses were responsible for 106,699 deaths — slightly fewer than the more than 107,000 the government had cited based on preliminary data. At birth, women could expect to live 79.3 years in 2021, and men could expect to live to 73.5 — life spans that declined sharply from 2020.
The 2021 decline was the second consecutive drop for the United States and the continuation of a trend that began in the middle of the last decade, when “deaths of despair” — those caused by drug overdoses, suicide and alcoholism — rose markedly.
It also contrasted with rebounding life expectancy rates in some other nations as they brought the covid pandemic under greater control with vaccines and masking. A study of 29 countries published in August in the journal Nature Human Behavior found that eight experienced significant life expectancy “bounce backs” in 2021.
“With the vaccine available, and other pandemic control measures, a lot of other countries did recover,” said Steven Woolf, a professor of family medicine and population health at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Medicine. “The fact that it has happened in other countries tells us it’s possible to do.”
Fentanyl did about two-thirds of the damage. The Drug Enforcement Administration reported Tuesday that it had seized 379 million doses of fentanyl in 2022, enough “to kill everyone in the United States,” according to DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. Still, authorities estimate they are catching just 5 to 10 percent of the illegal fentanyl that crosses the southern border.
Magdalena Cerda, a professor in the Department of Population Health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said people who believe they’re consuming cocaine or methamphetamine may not be taking precautions. such as having naloxone, an antidote to opioid overdoses, or fentanyl test strips on hand.
“People think they’re taking just cocaine or just methamphetamines, but they’re taking fentanyl as well,” she said.
“This is certainly heartbreaking,” said R. Kathryn McHugh, chief of psychology at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. “This is 106,000 people with families who aren’t here anymore.”
As they have for years, experts cited the anomalies of life in the United States as they tried to explain the country’s declining life expectancy. These include the lack of universal health care, the huge number of deaths from gun violence, the widening income gap between rich and poor, consumption of unhealthful foods, poor government support for housing and child care and many other social and economic factors.
“My contention is that there are choices we make as a society, and policymakers make in the United States, that other countries aren’t making,” said Woolf, the VCU professor. | 2022-12-22T06:30:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. life expectancy fell in 2021 as covid, drug deaths surged - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/12/22/us-life-expectancy-decline-2021-covid-fentanyl/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/12/22/us-life-expectancy-decline-2021-covid-fentanyl/ |
A brilliant Iranian voice — in film, in translation — is arrested
By Nicole Krauss
Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti arrives for the screening of "Leila's Brothers" during the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in May. (Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images)
Nicole Krauss is a writer of novels and short stories.
On Saturday, Taraneh Alidoosti was arrested in her home in Tehran because she condemned the execution of Mohsen Shekari, who had joined nationwide protests after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini. Alidoosti is one of Iran’s most celebrated actresses and an outspoken advocate of human rights in her country, and for years I have been an admirer: Her emotional performances in two films of Asghar Farhadi’s — “About Elly” and “The Salesman” — left an indelible impression. Two years ago, I learned, utterly by chance, that she was also the translator of my work in Iran. I hadn’t even known that I had one.
When, in 2019, I became aware that my novel “The History of Love” had been translated into Persian, everything about that fact moved me: the unlikelihood of my work — American, Jewish, and sometimes dealing with Israel — finding voice in Iran, a place I’ve dreamed of much of my life; the courage and passion of the translator who made possible a conversation between two cultures whose governments condemn each other. As Iran doesn’t adhere to copyright laws, I never would have known of the translation had an Iranian friend not seen the cover posted on Instagram. It gave me joy, this sense of unbridgeable distances — cultural, political, linguistic, geographical — suddenly collapsing. Only after some months did I learn that the translator was none other than Taraneh Alidoosti.
It took me time to figure out how to reach her. In the end, it was Ahmad Kiarostami — who wrote to me after I published a short story that revolves around a film his father, Abbas Kiarostami, directed — who found a way to put me in touch. One day during the first bewildering spring of the pandemic, I wrote to her. I wanted to express my gratitude and to participate directly in the connection she’d formed between us, and I had a hundred questions: Why this book of all books? How did it find you? What are your days like there? Where do you find the strength to do what you do?
When my letter reached Alidoosti, her translation of “The History of Love” had already gone through 17 reprintings in Iran — a testament to her influence and the Iranian people’s interest in Western culture — and she was about to publish her translation of another of my novels, “Great House.” She had also just received a five-month prison sentence, suspended for the time being, for videos she had posted of young women being mistreated by the so-called morality police. She was living under quarantine with her then-7-year-old daughter; like me, she was divorced and struggling to balance her work with raising a child.
She found the arrival of my letter as unfathomable as reaching her had seemed to me: “But as you said,” she wrote, “is there anything more beautiful than these neat rays of harmony which connect us all from afar?”
She’d read “The History of Love” around 2009 — right after a series of brutally suppressed uprisings in Iran that followed the fraudulent election of that year. Many things had changed since then for her and countless friends, she wrote, and they all became, as if without choice, part of a political opposition — “as far as there can be activism in a country like ours.” She said that having friends in jail or with prison sentences hanging over their heads had become the new normal.
She also told me that literature was a vital part of her life and that she believed all she knew and all she had was somehow based on her close connection to novels. She had published stories herself and had written a popular blog, but as she became increasingly famous as a movie star, it was translation that allowed her to remain close to her passion without exposing herself.
“I’m so sorry there’s no such thing as copyright in Iran for foreign books,” she wrote. “Translators and even writers are not even paid sufficiently. Even publishers are struggling to make ends meet. What I was paid for [translating] the book is ridiculously little, but to be honest, that tiny sum made me happier than many big movie contracts.” She hadn’t known how I would respond to the translation, she wrote, but soon after it was published, when she was mourning the death of Abbas Kiarostami and was reading a story I wrote about one of his films, she “secretly felt the bond. … Through books like yours I am not alone. Through stories like yours I am not powerless, we are not doomed. Not everyone is silenced. Not all lives are in vain. There is time, peace, history, love and more importantly context. There are humans. There is a world that is way bigger than ours. There are women like you somewhere. Women like us. There are stories to be told, for years to come after all nightmares are gone.”
Alidoosti and I continued to correspond in the year that followed. We wrote intimately about our struggles as women, mothers and artists and our hopes, too; we talked about collaborating on an idea I had for a novel, a story about an American actress and an Iranian film director under house arrest. But her letters made clear her pain. “Living in Iran is a suffocating nightmare at this time. Covid and money inflation has brought the people to their knees, and not a word in protest is tolerated. We had executions recently that are not different from the ones before, but hurt more today.”
It was her protest of an execution that provided an excuse for her arrest. But the real reason, of course, is that she is one of the most brilliant, respected, courageous and influential voices in Iran, an artist who has, at every chance, used her fame to draw attention to the oppression of her people and to demand their basic rights. Her nightmare, and theirs, is ongoing. In the words of her last Instagram post, sent to her 8 million followers before her account was shut down on Sunday: “Every international organisation who is watching this bloodshed and not taking action, is a disgrace to humanity.” I, like countless fans, know what it has meant to have her lend her voice and we will not rest until she is released and allowed to speak freely. | 2022-12-22T07:31:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Nicole Krauss: The arrest of Taraneh Alidoosti cannot be tolerated - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/22/nicole-krauss-taraneh-alidoosti-arrested-dissent-translated-my-books-into-farsi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/22/nicole-krauss-taraneh-alidoosti-arrested-dissent-translated-my-books-into-farsi/ |
BOTTOM LINE: Bethune-Cookman hosts the North Florida Ospreys after Joe French scored 27 points in Bethune-Cookman’s 90-69 loss to the UTSA Roadrunners.
The Wildcats are 3-0 in home games. Bethune-Cookman allows 75.8 points to opponents and has been outscored by 9.8 points per game.
The Ospreys are 0-7 on the road.
TOP PERFORMERS: Zion Harmon is shooting 35.2% from beyond the arc with 1.7 made 3-pointers per game for the Wildcats, while averaging 12.6 points and 3.1 assists. Marcus Garrett is averaging 12.8 points and 5.1 rebounds over the past 10 games for Bethune-Cookman. | 2022-12-22T08:02:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bethune-Cookman hosts North Florida following French's 27-point performance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/bethune-cookman-hosts-north-florida-following-frenchs-27-point-performance/2022/12/22/acdefb7c-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/bethune-cookman-hosts-north-florida-following-frenchs-27-point-performance/2022/12/22/acdefb7c-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Central Connecticut State Blue Devils (2-11) at Saint Joseph’s (PA) Hawks (5-6)
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Saint Joseph’s (PA) -11; over/under is 135.5
BOTTOM LINE: Cent. Conn. St. travels to Saint Joseph’s (PA) for a Division 1 Division matchup Thursday.
The Hawks are 4-2 in home games. Saint Joseph’s (PA) allows 72.2 points to opponents and has been outscored by 2.1 points per game.
The Blue Devils are 1-6 in road games. Cent. Conn. St. ranks sixth in the NEC with 7.8 offensive rebounds per game led by Abdul Momoh averaging 1.6.
TOP PERFORMERS: Erik Reynolds II is averaging 18.9 points and 1.5 steals for the Hawks. Charlie Brown is averaging 12.8 points over the last 10 games for Saint Joseph’s (PA).
Kellen Amos is scoring 14.0 points per game with 3.9 rebounds and 1.5 assists for the Blue Devils. Nigel Scantlebury is averaging 10.8 points and 1.6 steals over the last 10 games for Cent. Conn. St.. | 2022-12-22T08:02:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cent. Conn. St. to visit Saint Joseph's (PA) Thursday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/cent-conn-st-to-visit-saint-josephs-pa-thursday/2022/12/22/a876751a-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/cent-conn-st-to-visit-saint-josephs-pa-thursday/2022/12/22/a876751a-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
BOTTOM LINE: Minnesota hosts the Chicago State Cougars after Braeden Carrington scored 20 points in Minnesota’s 72-56 victory over the Arkansas-Pine Bluff Golden Lions.
The Cougars have gone 0-11 away from home. Chicago State has a 3-9 record in games decided by 10 points or more.
TOP PERFORMERS: Dawson Garcia is averaging 13.9 points and 5.5 rebounds for the Golden Gophers. Cooper is averaging 10.6 points over the last 10 games for Minnesota.
Jahsean Corbett is averaging 13.8 points and 8.1 rebounds for the Cougars. Wesley Cardet Jr. is averaging 15.3 points over the last 10 games for Chicago State. | 2022-12-22T08:02:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chicago State visits Minnesota after Carrington's 20-point game - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/chicago-state-visits-minnesota-after-carringtons-20-point-game/2022/12/22/9de516f6-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/chicago-state-visits-minnesota-after-carringtons-20-point-game/2022/12/22/9de516f6-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Fordham hosts Felder and VMI
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Fordham -14; over/under is 145.5
BOTTOM LINE: VMI visits the Fordham Rams after Tony Felder scored 21 points in VMI’s 69-61 loss to the American Eagles.
The Rams have gone 10-0 at home. Fordham ranks ninth in the A-10 with 13.4 assists per game led by Antrell Charlton averaging 4.7.
The Keydets are 0-5 on the road. VMI ranks ninth in the SoCon giving up 74.2 points while holding opponents to 45.6% shooting.
TOP PERFORMERS: Darius Quisenberry is shooting 45.0% from beyond the arc with 3.0 made 3-pointers per game for the Rams, while averaging 18.1 points and 3.3 assists. Khalid Moore is averaging 15.5 points and 5.8 rebounds over the last 10 games for Fordham.
Sean Conway is scoring 15.7 points per game with 5.9 rebounds and 1.3 assists for the Keydets. Asher Woods is averaging 14.6 points and 4.2 rebounds while shooting 40.7% over the last 10 games for VMI. | 2022-12-22T08:03:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fordham hosts Felder and VMI - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/fordham-hosts-felder-and-vmi/2022/12/22/bf1d8434-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/fordham-hosts-felder-and-vmi/2022/12/22/bf1d8434-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Holy Cross faces Sacred Heart, aims to end road skid
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Sacred Heart -7; over/under is 144
BOTTOM LINE: Holy Cross travels to Sacred Heart looking to stop its four-game road slide.
The Pioneers are 2-2 in home games. Sacred Heart is third in the NEC scoring 70.7 points while shooting 41.0% from the field.
The Crusaders are 0-4 in road games. Holy Cross is 0-2 in games decided by less than 4 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Nico Galette is scoring 15.6 points per game and averaging 6.8 rebounds for the Pioneers. Raheem Solomon is averaging 13.2 points and 3.6 rebounds over the last 10 games for Sacred Heart.
Gerrale Gates is averaging 17.1 points, 8.4 rebounds and 1.5 steals for the Crusaders. Will Batchelder is averaging 2.3 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Holy Cross. | 2022-12-22T08:04:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Holy Cross faces Sacred Heart, aims to end road skid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/holy-cross-faces-sacred-heart-aims-to-end-road-skid/2022/12/22/b7e4bdae-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/holy-cross-faces-sacred-heart-aims-to-end-road-skid/2022/12/22/b7e4bdae-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Little Rock visits Arkansas State after Fields' 22-point game
BOTTOM LINE: Arkansas State takes on the Little Rock Trojans after Caleb Fields scored 22 points in Arkansas State’s 72-65 win over the Alabama State Hornets.
The Red Wolves have gone 7-1 in home games. Arkansas State ranks sixth in the Sun Belt with 24.6 defensive rebounds per game led by Omar El-Sheikh averaging 6.1.
The Trojans have gone 0-8 away from home. Little Rock is fifth in the OVC scoring 72.4 points per game and is shooting 42.1%.
TOP PERFORMERS: Fields is shooting 50.9% and averaging 13.3 points for the Red Wolves. Malcolm Farrington is averaging 2.2 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Arkansas State.
Myron Gardner is shooting 44.3% and averaging 13.6 points for the Trojans. D.J. Smith is averaging 12.3 points over the last 10 games for Little Rock. | 2022-12-22T08:04:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Little Rock visits Arkansas State after Fields' 22-point game - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/little-rock-visits-arkansas-state-after-fields-22-point-game/2022/12/22/b46bf264-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/little-rock-visits-arkansas-state-after-fields-22-point-game/2022/12/22/b46bf264-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Saint Peter’s Peacocks (6-5, 1-2 MAAC) at Maryland Terrapins (8-3, 1-1 Big Ten)
BOTTOM LINE: Saint Peter’s faces the Maryland Terrapins after Isiah Dasher scored 29 points in Saint Peter’s 63-56 win against the Quinnipiac Bobcats.
The Peacocks are 1-4 in road games. Saint Peter’s is 1-1 in games decided by less than 4 points.
Latrell Reid is averaging seven points, 6.8 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.6 steals for the Peacocks. Dasher is averaging 13.9 points and 3.5 rebounds while shooting 41.0% over the last 10 games for Saint Peter’s. | 2022-12-22T08:04:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland hosts Dasher and Saint Peter's - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/maryland-hosts-dasher-and-saint-peters/2022/12/22/7397a63e-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/maryland-hosts-dasher-and-saint-peters/2022/12/22/7397a63e-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Northern Illinois takes on Indiana State after Coit's 24-point outing
The Sycamores are 5-0 on their home court. Indiana State is the top team in the MVC with 37.2 points in the paint led by Robbie Avila averaging 6.0.
The Huskies are 1-6 on the road. Northern Illinois is eighth in the MAC scoring 30.2 points per game in the paint led by Keshawn Williams averaging 6.3.
TOP PERFORMERS: Cameron Henry is averaging 12.2 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.5 steals for the Sycamores. Courvoisier McCauley is averaging 17.2 points over the last 10 games for Indiana State.
Coit averages 2.6 made 3-pointers per game for the Huskies, scoring 13.8 points while shooting 35.2% from beyond the arc. Williams is shooting 47.4% and averaging 18.4 points over the past 10 games for Northern Illinois. | 2022-12-22T08:05:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Northern Illinois takes on Indiana State after Coit's 24-point outing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/northern-illinois-takes-on-indiana-state-after-coits-24-point-outing/2022/12/22/c288949c-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/northern-illinois-takes-on-indiana-state-after-coits-24-point-outing/2022/12/22/c288949c-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Portland visits UC Riverside following Pullin's 30-point showing
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: UC Riverside -1.5; over/under is 144.5
The Highlanders have gone 1-1 at home. UC Riverside scores 73.4 points while outscoring opponents by 3.6 points per game.
The Pilots have gone 1-2 away from home. Portland has a 4-5 record against opponents above .500.
TOP PERFORMERS: Flynn Cameron is averaging 11 points, 5.5 rebounds and 1.5 steals for the Highlanders. Pullin is averaging 20.5 points over the last 10 games for UC Riverside.
Tyler Robertson is averaging 15.4 points, 5.7 rebounds and 6.4 assists for the Pilots. Kristian Sjolund is averaging 12.9 points over the past 10 games for Portland. | 2022-12-22T08:05:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Portland visits UC Riverside following Pullin's 30-point showing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/portland-visits-uc-riverside-following-pullins-30-point-showing/2022/12/22/b07086c0-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/portland-visits-uc-riverside-following-pullins-30-point-showing/2022/12/22/b07086c0-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
BOTTOM LINE: Quinnipiac faces Penn State for a Division 1 Division matchup Thursday.
The Nittany Lions have gone 5-1 at home. Penn State scores 76.7 points while outscoring opponents by 10.2 points per game.
The Bobcats have gone 4-1 away from home. Quinnipiac ranks third in the MAAC with 10.9 offensive rebounds per game led by Ike Nweke averaging 3.4.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jalen Pickett is averaging 16.2 points, 7.3 rebounds, 7.6 assists and 1.5 steals for the Nittany Lions. Seth Lundy is averaging 13.7 points over the last 10 games for Penn State.
Luis Kortright is averaging 10.7 points, 3.9 assists and 1.8 steals for the Bobcats. Matt Balanc is averaging 11.3 points over the last 10 games for Quinnipiac. | 2022-12-22T08:05:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Quinnipiac Bobcats take on the Penn State Nittany Lions Thursday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/quinnipiac-bobcats-take-on-the-penn-state-nittany-lions-thursday/2022/12/22/7a79214e-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/quinnipiac-bobcats-take-on-the-penn-state-nittany-lions-thursday/2022/12/22/7a79214e-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: UAB -10.5; over/under is 139
BOTTOM LINE: UAB hosts the Charlotte 49ers after Jordan Walker scored 25 points in UAB’s 92-66 victory over the Southern Jaguars.
The Blazers have gone 7-0 at home. UAB ranks eighth in C-USA in team defense, allowing 69.2 points while holding opponents to 40.8% shooting.
The 49ers are 2-1 in road games. Charlotte averages 68.8 points and has outscored opponents by 10.7 points per game.
Aly Khalifa is averaging 9.6 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.8 assists for the 49ers. Igor Milicic Jr. is averaging 1.8 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Charlotte. | 2022-12-22T08:06:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UAB faces Charlotte after Walker's 25-point performance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/uab-faces-charlotte-after-walkers-25-point-performance/2022/12/22/a168ff9a-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/uab-faces-charlotte-after-walkers-25-point-performance/2022/12/22/a168ff9a-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
INDIANAPOLIS — Nick Foles will replace 37-year-old Matt Ryan as the Indianapolis Colts starting quarterback, interim coach Jeff Saturday announced.
NEW YORK — Aaron Judge was appointed captain of the New York Yankees, becoming the first team captain since Derek Jeter retired at the end of the 2014 season.
NEW YORK — Gregg Popovich has been at the Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony many times over the years, always there to show support for someone on the stage. | 2022-12-22T08:07:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wednesday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/wednesdays-sports-in-brief/2022/12/22/f8f853aa-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/wednesdays-sports-in-brief/2022/12/22/f8f853aa-81cc-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
On Dec. 21, Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the United States marking his first international trip since the start of Russia’s invasion. (Video: The Washington Post)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with President Biden at the White House on Wednesday, followed by an evening address before Congress, where he made the case for support to continue after 300 days of war.
Biden and Zelensky presented a united front during the Ukrainian leader’s first public international appearance since Russia invaded his country in February, with Zelensky calling Russian President Vladimir Putin and his forces “terrorists,” and Biden calling the Russian leader “inhumane,” with “no intention of stopping this cruel war.”
Following his White House visit, Zelensky addressed a joint session of Congress, telling lawmakers he needs more aid and weapons to defeat Russia: “Your money is not charity. It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.”
1. Zelensky visits Washington
Both Biden and Zelensky cast Ukraine’s fight as a broader one that was important for democracies around the world. “We understand in our bones that Ukraine’s fight is part of something much bigger,” Biden said. “The American people know if we stand by with such blatant attacks on democracy and liberty … the world would surely face worse consequences.”
Biden announced a new $1.85 billion security assistance package for Ukraine that will include the Patriot missile system, the most advanced air-defense weapon in the American arsenal and one of Ukraine’s top requests. It brings the total U.S. military assistance for Ukraine to $21.9 billion since the beginning of the Biden administration.
Both Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called on their colleagues to approve additional aid to Ukraine. McConnell said defeating the “Russian invaders” is in “cold, hard, practical American interests.”
A small group of House Republicans critical of the ongoing funding to Ukraine did not clap for Zelensky when he walked on the House floor and rarely stood up throughout his speech. “I attended out of respect, not agreement,” Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told reporters after the speech.
2. Other key developments
President Putin spoke of “new” Russian territories and claimed that what is happening in Ukraine “is not the result of our policies but the result of third countries,” in a meeting Wednesday with the Russian Defense Ministry. He also acknowledged various shortcomings within the Russian military that were revealed by the 10-months-long invasion but said Russia “will continue to build up its military potential.”
Some 300,000 people have been drafted as part of Russia’s partial mobilization of troops this year, said Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who was also present at the meeting. And expansion plans continue, Shoigu said. “It is necessary to bring the number of Russian Armed Forces up to 1.5 million people, including 670,000 contract servicemen,” he said.
Prospects for the swift passage of a $1.7 trillion bill to fund the U.S. government dimmed late Wednesday night, after Republicans demanded a vote to extend a controversial Trump-era immigration policy. The bill includes about $45 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine. Lawmakers have until the end of Friday to fund the government or key federal agencies and programs are set to shut down.
Russian forces continued their assaults near Bakhmut on Wednesday, a day after Zelensky’s visit to the hotly contested area. Ukraine’s General Staff of the Armed Forces reported artillery attacks. Zelensky had posted pictures of himself with soldiers defending Ukraine’s position as Russian efforts to capture the city have intensified.
After Ukrainian gains in the Kherson area, Russian forces are fighting to regain lost positions there, according to D.C. think tank Institute for the Study of War, citing a Ukrainian military spokesperson who said their forces repelled Russian attempts to establish control over the islands of the Dnipro delta.
The Senate voted Wednesday to confirm Lynne Tracy as the new U.S. ambassador to Russia, replacing John Sullivan, who stepped down from the post in September. She was confirmed in a 93-2 vote.
In a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dimitry A. Medvedev in Beijing on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated that China supports a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict and called for all sides to remain “rational and restrained.” While claiming neutrality in the war, Beijing has consistently sided rhetorically with Moscow, including at the G-20 and the United Nations, and blamed the United States and NATO for causing the conflict. It has also, however, been unwilling to provide substantial military or sanctions-busting support.
Here’s everything you need to know about Patriot missiles. The Biden administration on Wednesday announced a $1.85 billion military assistance package for Ukraine on Wednesday, which includes the Patriot missile system, an advanced surface-to-air guided missile system that can detect and shoot down incoming missiles and aircraft — a sophisticated weapon Zelensky’s government has long sought.
With a strike range of roughly 20 to 100 miles, the Patriot battery will not protect the entire country, write Meryl Kornfield and Maham Javaid, but experts say it makes a strong political statement about the United States’ commitment to Ukraine. | 2022-12-22T08:07:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates: Zelensky addresses Congress; U.S. to send Patriot system - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/22/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates-zelensky/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/22/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates-zelensky/ |
Kirsten Luce
A patient with leg injuries is loaded into a Spanish military plane at the airport in Rzeszow, Poland, to be transported to Zaragoza, Spain, for treatment. (Photos by Kirsten Luce)
It was a typical run for Balaban’s volunteer team. Since he started transporting patients out of Ukraine in March, he’s done evacuations like this almost every day. They transport as many patients as their vehicles can fit, usually five to 10 who are stable enough to travel and need surgeries that Ukraine’s hospital system can’t accommodate. In total, his small team has transported nearly 2,000 patients, the vast majority of them injured by Russian attacks in Ukraine.
Balaban and other ground evacuation teams coordinate with the Ukrainian and Polish governments, the European Union and the World Health Organization to determine where each patient will be treated, based on resources available in that country to treat certain conditions. In September, the E.U. and WHO partnered with the Polish Center for International Aid (PCPM) and opened a medical evacuation hub near the Rzeszow, Poland, airport, where patients needing emergency care can be treated or stabilized before the next leg of their journeys — something that might be necessary if winter weather makes the trip difficult.
It took Balaban’s team only a few hours to get their patients from a hospital in Lviv to the tarmac in Rzeszow, where a Spanish air force aircraft was waiting for the transfer. The soldiers they transferred had been injured on the front lines in eastern Ukraine and transferred among hospitals and medical clinics over several weeks until they made their way to one in Lviv. Between Lviv and Rzeszow, the caravan of ambulances bypassed the kilometers-long line to cross the border into Poland. By 11 a.m., several waypoints and weeks removed from the front lines where they were injured, the patients were headed to Grenada, where an E.U. hospital volunteered to provide them with long-term, specialized treatment.
Between bites, Balaban turned his phone to show a video of one of his old rigs, a black skeleton of a vehicle engulfed in flames. It was hit by a missile during an evacuation in Kherson in March, he said, when Russia was hitting health-care facilities. That’s when things were the most difficult. His phone was so full of footage like this — of ruins, fire, carnage and broken medical equipment — that it took a few seconds for each image to load. Then, his finger landed on a picture of a dog, and his deep worry lines gave way to a smile. | 2022-12-22T08:10:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As war rages on in Ukraine, volunteer paramedics evacuate the injured - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/22/ukraine-paramedics-casualties-injuries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/22/ukraine-paramedics-casualties-injuries/ |
McClellan wins 4th District Democratic primary in bid to succeed Rep. McEachin
State Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan (D-Richmond) greets voters at Dogtown Dance in Richmond. (Ryan M. Kelly/For The Washington Post)
State Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan, who has served for more than 16 years in the Virginia General Assembly, has won the Democratic nomination to succeed Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) in the 4th Congressional District after his death last month — putting her on track to become the first Black woman to represent Virginia in Congress.
McClellan (D-Richmond) defeated state Sen. Joseph D. Morrissey (D-Richmond) in a breakneck campaign that ran just seven days, starting with three major candidates and narrowing to two as Virginia Democratic leaders coalesced behind McClellan and left Morrissey to go his own way.
McClellan will face Republican Leon Benjamin in a special election Feb. 21, but the Richmond-based seat is expected to remain blue. Benjamin lost to McEachin by 30 points in the general election last month. McEachin, who had long battled the secondary effects of colorectal cancer treatment, died soon after he won reelection.
McClellan entered the campaign with pledges to continue McEachin’s legacy, and she received the blessing of his widow, Collette McEachin, as well. McClellan had succeeded McEachin in the state Senate after he was elected to Congress in 2016 and had been friends with him for two decades.
“He was a champion for the 4th, a social justice champion who really brought a servant leader’s heart to solving problems and improving people’s lives, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 17 years — fighting for an opportunity for many communities that are often ignored,” McClellan, 49, said in an interview last week.
She pointed to major environmental legislation she led that became law, such as the Virginia Clean Economy Act, as she vowed to pick up McEachin’s work in Congress on environmental justice. And as she framed her campaign in historic terms, she emphasized the value of having a Black woman at the table on women’s issues, particularly those affecting Black women disproportionately, such as maternal mortality. McClellan, the first woman to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates while pregnant, had prioritized women’s and family issues, such as fighting for domestic workers’ rights and spearheading efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
Running in the aftermath of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, she also pointed to her leadership on abortion rights legislation in Virginia — in sharp contrast to Morrissey, who opposes abortion.
“Every issue is a women’s issue. There are some that impact women, and Black women in particular, differently. But every issue impacts us in a way that sometimes our voice and our perspective is not heard, because we don’t have a seat at the table,” McClellan had said in the interview, “and it’s really time that Virginia’s congressional delegation have that voice and that perspective.”
Still just months removed from the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe, scores of women at polling places across the district Tuesday said they were fired up to vote for McClellan to protect abortion rights and women’s rights.
“I’m scared women’s rights are going to go away, by the wayside — it feels like it’s going in reverse,” said 67-year-old McClellan voter Wynne Ntube, who lives in Henrico County.
“I’ve known Joe a long time. He is a fighter for the people as well — but Jennifer is more in touch with women,” said Sharon Broaddus, a 72-year-old Varina resident. Plus, she said, she was turned off by some of Morrissey’s past controversies. The twice-disbarred lawyer was convicted in 2016 for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a 17-year-old girl whom he later married as an adult, and earned the nickname “Fighting Joe” after multiple courthouse fistfights.
“Joe has a history,” she said. McClellan is “sound. She cares about the people. She’s genuine.”
McClellan, vice chair of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, was helped to victory with backing from virtually every corner of the Virginia Democratic Party, securing support from all eight Democrats in the Virginia congressional delegation, plus a host of state and local leaders. In fact, one political analyst, Bob Holsworth, described the race as Morrissey against “the entire Democratic establishment.”
McClellan perhaps got her biggest boost after Del. Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico) — the chair of the Black Caucus — decided to drop out of the race. The dueling candidacies of both Black Caucus leaders had threatened to split the Black vote and tested the loyalties of Richmond political leaders close to both of the lawmakers. The situation reminded some of when McClellan and former delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy each launched bids to become the first Black female governor, but both ended up losing to Terry McAuliffe in the Democratic primary last year.
But Bagby’s exit in this race avoided those tough choices for political leaders and voters, with many of his backers lining up behind McClellan instead.
Morrissey had taken multiple opportunities to accuse Democratic Party leaders of seeking to “anoint” McClellan and block his campaign, including by playing politics with voting locations; none of the eight were in the part of Chesterfield County where Morrissey lives, or other areas where he had support.
Still, as he mounted an outsider’s campaign, the senator was clear-eyed about the political realities.
“I will either go to Congress or I will go right back there to the state Senate, and I will walk into that Senate caucus and I will look at them and I’ll say, ‘I’m back,’” Morrissey said last week.
Turnout across the district Tuesday exceeded expectations, as more than 26,000 voters cast ballots at the eight designated locations in the Democratic firehouse primary. The Democratic Party of Virginia had printed 25,000 ballots to start and needed to print more midway through the day.
Lines wrapped around buildings and traffic backed up for blocks. But Liam Watson, spokesman for the party, said the party did not have the volunteers to staff more than eight locations.
Some who came out had only learned of the election by word of mouth that morning — but were not the kind to miss a chance to vote. “I didn’t even realize until my wife told me today. I was like, what?” said Valentin Rodriguez, a 63-year-old Chesterfield resident standing with his wife and daughter in a line that circled the library. But Rodriguez and his wife typically volunteer as election workers and believe strongly in remaining engaged in the democratic process. So Rodriguez quickly did his research, and, familiar with McClellan’s work in the state Senate, was set on casting his ballot for her.
“She wants to carry the mantle for McEachin and push for a lot of things he had on his agenda,” Rodriguez said.
Gregory S. Schneider contributed to this report. | 2022-12-22T09:33:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jennifer McClellan wins 4th District Democratic primary in bid to succeed Rep. McEachin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/22/virginia-4th-district-mcclellan-wins/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/22/virginia-4th-district-mcclellan-wins/ |
Ali Ahmed Aslam, the owner of the Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow, is pictured with a plate of chicken tikka masala in his restaurant in 2009. (AFP/Getty Images)
Chicken tikka masala is one of Britain’s favorite curries, found on the shelves of major supermarkets like Sainsbury’s and in the restaurants of London’s Curry Mile. Now, fans of the dish are mourning the man who claimed to have invented it.
A Pakistani immigrant restaurant owner in Scotland, Ali Ahmed Aslam, the self-proclaimed inventor of chicken tikka masala, has died at the age of 77, according to his son Asif Ali.
Hundreds of tributes poured in for Mr. Ali, as he was popularly known in Glasgow, where his restaurant Shish Mahal has existed since 1964. Customers recalled him as a “gentleman” who dished out mouthwatering curries.
Born in Pakistan, Aslam moved to Glasgow at the age of 16, ultimately emerging as a star of the United Kingdom’s Indian restaurant capital, according to one review. Ali told The Post that his father came from a very poor background and worked hard to create a better life for his family. “He was a simple man. He loved dal and vegetables,” Ali said.
Chicken tikka masala is similar to Indian butter chicken, with a creamy tomato sauce. In tikka masala, boneless chicken is marinated in yogurt and then roasted in a tandoori oven.
Shish Mahal says Aslam came up with chicken tikka masala recipe by accident in the early 1970s after a customer complained that the chicken tikka was too dry. Aslam pulled together a quick curry sauce with a can of Campbell’s tomato soup and spices that he had been eating for a stomach ulcer.
For many, Shish Mahal became synonymous with the dish. When Lonely Planet featured chicken tikka masala as part of the recipe book on the world’s best spicy food, it noted Aslam’s story.
In 2009, in a nod to Aslam’s claim, Mohammad Sarwar, Labor MP for Glasgow Central, campaigned for the city to be recognized as the home of the chicken tikka masala. While the bid failed, Aslam’s contribution as the inventor was noted in the resolution.
“Glaswegians loved the flavor of Asian spices but still wanted a bit of gravy on their meat. The Shish Mahal pioneered great Asian food with a Glasgow twist,” Sarwar told the BBC at the time.
Chickpea tikka masala: It’s not traditional, but it sure tastes great
However, not everyone agrees and the origin of the dish remains contested among historians.
Peter and Colleen Gove, experts on the history of Indian food in Britain, called the dish the “Cinderella” of culinary creations, given its enigmatic origins. In a piece in 1994 for Menu magazine they concluded that the dish was “most certainly” invented in Britain to suit a Western palate, probably by a Bangladeshi chef.
A similar recipe is found in “Mrs. Balbir Singh’s Indian Cookery,” an acclaimed cookbook published in 1961 by an Indian chef, which some food historians believe to be a prototype for the chicken tikka masala.
For food and culture writer Leena Trivedi-Grenier, chicken tikka masala is essentially the same as butter chicken, and is said to have been created by a Pakistani refugee, Kundan Lal Gujral, who moved to India during the partition at the end of British colonial rule.
Rana Safvi, a food and culture historian in India, told The Post that food from Mughal dynasty that ruled the country between 16th and mid-18th century had undergone several such innovations.
“Just as the famous kakori kabab,” a northern Indian delicacy, “was invented because some British officer considered seekh kabab too chewy, the chicken tikka masala was invented for a customer who found the tikka too dry in U.K.,” she said.
Regardless of its origin, the dish came to represent the multicultural British identity. Foreign secretary Robin Cook called the dish a “perfect illustration” of how the country adapted to external influences.
“Chicken tikka is an Indian dish. The masala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy,” he said in a 2001 speech.
Hundreds of chicken tikka masala fans noted Aslam’s starring role.
One fan on Twitter said he was “more important than Edison.”
It’s the “best dish ever created and RIP to this absolute god,” wrote another. | 2022-12-22T09:55:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ali Ahmed Aslam, self-proclaimed chicken tikka masala inventor, dies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/12/22/chicken-tikka-masala-inventor-ali-ahmed-aslam/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/12/22/chicken-tikka-masala-inventor-ali-ahmed-aslam/ |
European Parliament corruption probe is a gift to the bloc’s critics
Analysis by Emily Rauhala
Brussels bureau chief
Eva Kaili, right, the Greek parliamentarian who until last week was one of the European Parliament’s 14 vice presidents, will appear in a Belgian court for a pretrial hearing on Dec. 22. (European Parliament/AP)
BRUSSELS — If the corruption investigation rocking the European Union were a script for a Netflix series, it would probably get sent back to the writer’s room. Bags of cash? A bit literal. The casting? Cliche.
But the scandal that has already seen a Greek member of the European Parliament accused of taking bribes from a foreign government and a euro-stuffed suitcase lugged through a local hotel is not an overwrought screenplay, much as it reads like one. It is real. And it is a gift to the bloc’s critics.
In the nearly two weeks since Belgian media broke news of the probe, the affair now called “Qatargate” has given E.U.-watchers much to fret about.
Four people have been charged on suspicion of money laundering, corruption and taking part in a criminal organization on behalf of an unnamed “Gulf State,” widely reported to be Qatar. Police found more than 1.5 million euros ($1.59 million) in cash spread between homes and the now-infamous hotel suitcase. Ten parliamentary offices have been sealed.
On Thursday, Eva Kaili, the Greek parliamentarian who until last week was one of the body’s 14 vice presidents, will appear in a Belgian court for a pretrial hearing. Two others — her partner, parliamentary assistant Francesco Giorgi, and a former parliamentarian, Pier Antonio Panzeri — remain in custody. Kaili’s lawyer said she maintains her innocence. Qatar denies involvement.
What are the Qatar bribery allegations rocking the European Parliament?
Critics quickly seized on the mess. Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who has bristled at E.U. efforts to call out creeping authoritarianism in his country and is fighting with the bloc over billions in funding, has had particular fun with it.
On Dec. 12, his Twitter account posted a meme that showed a group of men laughing hysterically, with the words: “And then they said the [European Parliament] is seriously concerned about corruption in Hungary.”
He also retweeted a picture of the cash seized by Belgian police, commenting: “This is what rule of law looks like in Brussels.”
Brussels is not particularly interested in Orban’s crowing. But it would be unwise to underestimate the damage this type of scandal — and rhetoric — can do, experts said.
“This is very damaging for the European Union, both internally, in terms of the legitimacy of the European project to citizens, and to the image it has in the outside world,” said Alberto Alemanno, a professor of European Union law at the business school HEC Paris and an advocate for transparency in government.
The E.U., under fire from the likes of Orban, has a tendency to rebuff good-faith criticism, he said, rather than look within.
In her first remarks on the scandal, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola seemed to cast this very European scandal as an outside job, the work of “malign actors, linked to autocratic third countries.”
“The enemies of democracy for whom the very existence of this parliament is a threat will stop at nothing,” she said.
Some members of parliament at first seemed to downplay the significance of the charges, with one reportedly saying that a few bad apples would not spoil the rest. One political group tried to pin the blame on the other.
Others point to systemic problems. “While this may be the most egregious case of alleged corruption the European Parliament has seen in many years, it is not an isolated incident,” Michiel van Hulten, director of Transparency International E.U., said in a statement last week.
The European Parliament “has allowed a culture of impunity to develop,” thanks to lax financial rules and the absence of independent ethics oversight, he said, noting that parliamentarians have themselves blocked attempts to change that.
Van Hulten called for the European Commission to publish its “long-delayed proposal on the creation of an independent E.U. ethics body, with powers of investigation and enforcement.”
Although top E.U. officials have expressed concern, there are few signs significant reform is imminent. Well before “Qatargate,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, called for an E.U. ethics body, but progress has been modest.
Officials here have seemed eager to talk about anything else. When E.U. leaders gathered in Brussels last week, the widening investigation was not officially on the agenda.
If the E.U. stays mum, it risks letting its critics speak for it, potentially fueling euroskepticism and undercutting the bloc’s effort to lead on rule of law and human rights.
Alemanno said Brussels needs to find its voice, quickly. “If the E.U. can’t provide a strong institutional response to this now,” he said, “then when?” | 2022-12-22T10:17:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | European Parliament corruption probe is a gift to the bloc’s critics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/22/european-parliament-corruption-probe-qatar/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/22/european-parliament-corruption-probe-qatar/ |
Anosmia or “smell blindness” — loss of the ability to smell — is one of the possible symptoms of covid-19. (Ljubaphoto/Getty Images)
When coffee smells like gasoline: Covid isn’t just stealing senses — it may be warping them
Carol Yan, an otolaryngologist and head and neck surgeon at the University of California San Diego as well as an author of the new study, has treated patients with persistent smell loss. “It’s quite devastating for them. And a lot of times, at this point, it’s been over two years of smell loss,” she says. “They’re wondering, ‘Why me? Why do I still have smell loss compared to so many of my friends, colleagues, family members who have recovered?’”
What it’s like to suffer from the coronavirus’s weirdest symptom
And the stakes are high. With smell, Yan says, comes your ability to enjoy food and the environment around you. It even affects how you connect with others. “I’ve had patients actually come to see me and say ‘I’m a little embarrassed to come see you. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I just lost my sense of smell, but it’s actually impacted my quality of life significantly.’” | 2022-12-22T11:05:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why does covid cause long-term loss of smell? Scientists have a theory. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/12/22/covid-loss-of-smell-cause/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/12/22/covid-loss-of-smell-cause/ |
A pickleball player prepares to hit a shot during a game at Cpl. John A. Seravalli Playground. New York City officials in November banned pickleball at the playground after players and other parkgoers got into clashes over space. (Courtesy Lydia Hirt)
If you build it, pickleballers will come. But they’re not always welcome.
Earlier this year, New York City’s Department of Parks and Recreation tried to accommodate the influx of people playing America’s fastest-growing sport — part tennis, part ping-pong and all the rage. To do so, officials in the spring painted two pickleball courts at Cpl. John A. Seravalli Playground, a one-acre park in the heart of Manhattan’s West Village.
Less than a year later, parks officials have now banned pickleball from Seravalli after repeated clashes between players and other parkgoers, especially parents with young children who’d come to Seravalli for years to ride bikes, inline skate and toss a baseball. The battle at Seravalli is but one example of pickleballers stepping on toes as more people decide to play and seek an ever-increasing number of courts on which to do so. Some 10,000 facilities registered with USA Pickleball, the nonprofit governing body of the sport, with an average of three new ones opening every day.
“A year ago, it was like the wild west,” one industry insider told The Washington Post earlier this year. “Now it’s like World War III.”
Pickleball is exploding, and it’s getting messy
That includes New York City’s parks department, which offers its 8.8 million residents about 68 pickleball courts.
“We saw around the country, just an … explosion of interest in the sport coming out of the pandemic,” New York City Parks and Recreation CEO Mark Focht told The Washington Post, adding that “it went from almost nowhere to 90 miles an hour in a matter of months.”
To try to keep up, the department painted the lines for two courts at Seravalli in the spring, Focht said. While officials heard “low rumblings” about conflicts in the early months, those murmurs quieted in the summer as people left town for vacation. But clashes exploded as people returned in late summer and school restarted.
Parents, branding themselves “Families United For Open Play,” started a petition in the fall to “Save NYC’s Seravalli Playground (a.k.a. Horatio Park) from the Pickleball Takeover.” The park had been created 60 years ago as a place for kids to play and for generations served as “a vital community gathering place and the heart and soul of life for many West Village children and families,” according to the petition.
Then, pickleballers took over the park in a “sudden land grab,” parents said in the petition, which had racked up nearly 3,300 signatures by Wednesday morning, short of its goal of 5,000.
A pickleball player, 71, drew marks on a public court. He faces a felony.
Parents pushing for a full ban on pickleball complained that players dominated the space, endangering children as they lunged to hit wayward balls. Two courts quickly became five, then 10 — as many as 12, one parent told committee members. Parents tried to urge players to contain themselves to the two official courts in a “constant cat-and-mouse game,” but pickleballers often overran the playground. Some parents just gave up, she said.
“Our children go into the park, they feel unwelcome and they walk away. It’s to the point now where the confrontations are so frequent that my children don’t even want to go there anymore.”
Pickleballers acknowledged that rogue players had created ad hoc courts, something one of them called “disgusting” at the October meeting. But a full ban wasn’t the answer, they argued. Lydia Hirt, a volunteer ambassador for USA Pickleball, pushed parks officials to increase the number of courts at Seravalli from two to four and enforce a partial ban. She suggested allowing play on the proposed four courts at all times and prohibiting play on other courts during peak times — 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends.
Hirt said she often plays early in the morning before work. There’s no reason pickleballers couldn’t play at the park when children are in school and then skedaddle in the afternoon, she said.
“To me the bottom line is coexistence,” she said. “Pickleball is so inclusive, accessible and democratic. It really is a sport for the city of New York, where everybody in all shapes, colors, backgrounds is really welcome to play and participate.”
The parks department delivered its verdict on Nov. 30 when officials removed the pickleball lines at Seravalli as they posted a sign at the playground entrance: “Pickleball is no longer allowed in Seravalli Playground.” The sign directed players to three nearby places where they could play.
“We were able to come to this what we consider a win-win solution,” Manhattan Borough Parks Commissioner Anthony Perez told The Post.
But Hirt, who also moderates an online group of more than 1,100 pickleball players in the West Village, doesn’t think she and the pickleballers won — and she’s vowed to keep working with officials and parents to get courts back at Seravalli. She said she thinks players, parents and other parkgoers can coexist if they strike a balance somewhere between a ban and pickleball free-for-all.
Focht acknowledged the roughly 70 pickleball courts that the department has created isn’t enough to accommodate the sport’s meteoric rise in America’s largest city. He said he and his colleagues will keep looking for other “underutilized spaces” like J.J. Walker to add courts.
“We serve 8.8 million people and we have limited space, so we have to make strategic decisions on balancing needs amongst all of our constituents and users and patrons,” Focht said.
But, he added, that takes time. “Everybody wants everything where they want it, right?” | 2022-12-22T11:05:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pickleball banned at NYC park as players, parents tussle for turf - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/22/pickleball-ban-new-york-city/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/22/pickleball-ban-new-york-city/ |
A class in Maine created a blanket for the homeless as part of a lesson last year. (Courtesy of Maire Trombley)
Elementary school teacher Maire Trombley faced a formidable task last year as winter approached: She had to teach Maine fifth-graders a basic introduction to geometry. To keep things interesting, Trombley combined these math lessons with quilting, teaching her students the basics of the craft and having them design their own squares.
After two blankets came together, Trombley donated them to the Homeless Remembrance Blanket Project, which solicits handmade blankets for distribution throughout the country. Trombley, who picked up quilting as an adult, planned to participate in the project anyway but was happy that she had “dragged the kids into it.”
Her students weren’t just learning math and sewing. They were learning to care about homeless people.
“The kids that did the project are the next generation of voters,” Trombley said. “By thinking about this as children, they will realize that these are humans who need sympathy just as much as everyone else.”
On Wednesday, this growing project uniting quilters for a cause came to Washington. The Homeless Remembrance Blanket Project, in its second year, brought hundreds of blankets to Capitol Hill for display before they returned to their states of origin to be distributed amid the holidays.
Pat LaMarche, an advocate for the homeless from Pennsylvania, said she created the project last year after she met a 35-year-old woman on permanent disability. The woman said she would be “the happiest person alive if they just let me crochet all day.”
LaMarche seized on the idea, putting out a call on social media for handmade blankets for the homeless. She ended up with more than 200 from a few states. This year, she put out the call again and decided to bring the blankets to D.C., where legislators — who she says have the power to help fight homelessness — would see them. Her plan is for up to 1,000 blankets from 47 states and the District to cover 19,000 square feet of Capitol Hill.
The effort is about more than keeping people warm, LaMarche said.
“There’s an amount of love in that handmade blanket that did not come from a store,” she said, “that whole idea that somebody made you a handmade blanket just because you matter.”
On Wednesday, an unseasonably warm day ahead of a predicted cold snap, LaMarche helped other advocates spread the blankets on the Capitol’s West Lawn, pulling them from piles of donations nearby. The coverings of many colors and fabrics made a carpet along Third Street NW. An occasional whoop erupted when an advocate recognized a blanket they had made.
Ann Laliberte, a quilter from Maine, said the effort reminded her of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was first unfolded on the National Mall in 1987. But while there was no solution to AIDS at that time, homelessness, she said, has a solution: more housing.
“We hope this whole thing will motivate the people with the power to build housing ... so we don’t need to make more blankets,” she said.
The blankets adorned the Hill as the White House has put a focus on homelessness — and ways to end it — and as the D.C. region braced for what could be the coldest Christmas since 1989.
On Monday, President Biden announced a plan to reduce homelessness by 25 percent in the next two years. Among other measures, the plan laid out ways to battle racial inequity and build more affordable housing — at a time when more homeless people are unsheltered than sheltered for the first time since data collection began.
The plan was released days after New York’s mayor said he would force homeless mentally ill people into treatment and the mayor of Los Angeles declared a state of emergency amid the rampant growth of encampments in the city. D.C., meanwhile, held its annual vigil Tuesday to honor homeless people who died in the city.
“Every American deserves a safe and reliable place to call home,” Biden said in a statement Monday. “It’s a matter of security, stability, and well-being. It is also a matter of basic dignity and who we are as a Nation.”
As policymakers debate how to get homeless people off the streets, the quilters visiting D.C. poured their energy into a the blankets, which may have limited impact but can each help someone.
“It’s magical,” LaMarche said. “And for a cynical old atheist to use the word ‘magical’ means something.”
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D.C. Housing Authority in turmoil as HUD deadline approaches
D.C. homeowners wait for financial aid as foreclosure notices pile up | 2022-12-22T11:26:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Homeless Remembrance Blanket Project displayed near U.S. Capitol in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/22/homeless-remembrance-blanket-project-capitol/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/22/homeless-remembrance-blanket-project-capitol/ |
‘It brought them happiness during a stressful time,’ said Robert Sinkin, who is Jewish but has played Santa for 40 years, and is now hanging up his boots
Robert Sinkin has dressed as Santa every year for almost four decades, including nearly 17 years at the University of Virginia Children's Hospital. (Sanjay Suchak/University of Virginia)
Robert Sinkin was a doctor in training the first time he donned a fake white beard and a red velvet Santa suit in 1984.
One of his colleagues in the newborn intensive care unit at Strong Memorial Hospital at the University of Rochester was stepping down from his role as Saint Nick. He wondered if Sinkin, then 30, would like to try playing the part.
As a skinny Jewish man, Sinkin had never played Santa. But he thought he’d give it a try.
“I put on the suit and padded it with a pillow, posed with the families and loved it,” he said. “It was wonderful to give families the precious photo they couldn’t get at the mall because their babies were in the NICU.”
The following year, Sinkin was again asked to suit up as Santa Claus. This time, he was all in.
“I don’t celebrate Christmas, but it was obvious that a visit from Santa was filling an important need for a lot of families,” he said.
For nearly four decades, from his post-residency fellowship in Rochester, N.Y., to his current position as a neonatologist at the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital in Charlottesville, Sinkin has looked forward to visiting families as Santa every December.
For the past eight years, he grew a beard to appear more authentic in the role, and one year, he coated his eyebrows in zinc oxide when somebody told him his eyebrows were too dark.
This year, Sinkin, now 68, made a difficult decision: He figured it was time to step out of his boots and give another doctor a chance to carry on the beloved holiday tradition in the NICU at U-Va.
“I’m going to be retiring in the not so distant future, so I think it’s reasonable for somebody else to enjoy playing Santa,” he said.
He asked another neonatologist, Peter Murray, to handle the Santa duties next December, noting that Murray grows a nice beard.
“I’ll be giving him my Santa suit, and I know he’ll get as much joy with this as I have,” Sinkin said. “It’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve done.”
On Dec. 15, his last day as Santa Claus, Sinkin posed for photos with 51 NICU babies, including a set of triplets and a set of twins. He was accompanied by Naomi Rademeyer, a neonatal nurse who has acted as Mrs. Claus for the past several years.
“People at the hospital said, ‘We’ll miss you,’ but I don’t see it that way,” Sinkin said. “To me, it’s the idea of passing it on to somebody else to keep the tradition going.”
Kaitlyn Key, the mother of the triplets he visited, said it was immediately apparent to her that Sinkin wasn’t going through the motions as Santa.
“He was so natural at it — you could tell it was something he enjoyed and was good at,” she said. “It’s hard to have my babies in the NICU, so seeing Santa Claus making his rounds brought a lot of joy.”
Key, 25, and her husband Tucker Key are from Big Island, Va., and have spent every other day in the NICU since their three sons were delivered prematurely at 33 weeks.
“My water broke early, and they’ve been in the NICU since Thanksgiving Day,” Key said, noting that she lives two hours from the hospital.
“The boys are all doing well and gaining weight, and we hope to be home by New Year’s Day,” she said. “Someday it will be fun to show them their Santa photos and tell them about the day he visited after they were born.”
Sinkin estimated that in nearly four decades he has posed with more than 1,500 babies and is probably featured in an equal number of photo albums.
“There are families who don’t want a picture with Santa, and we’ve always respected that,” he said. “But for those who do, it provides a way for them to have that special photo during a time they’d normally be out picking out a Christmas tree or going shopping.”
The majority of parents ultimately take their babies home, he said, but for some parents of critically ill newborns, a picture with Santa might be among their only treasured photos.
“Over the years, I’ve gotten thank you cards from parents whose child didn’t survive,” Sinkin said. “They wanted to tell me how much they treasured that picture and thank me for the memory. That means a lot.”
Others have sent him updates about a child’s high school graduation or wedding, he said.
“Their kids are going off to college and they’re remembering that time their baby was held by Santa in the NICU,” Sinkin said. “I love hearing from them.”
Sinkin’s own holiday memories revolved around celebrating Hanukkah with his parents and two younger brothers when he was growing up on Long Island, he said.
“I went to Hebrew school, and I really enjoyed having time off to celebrate Hanukkah and enjoy family traditions with my family,” he said. “But I also have fun memories of helping my friends decorate their Christmas trees.”
His movie scripts were rejected for 40 years. His Christmas film just aired on Lifetime.
“To me, it was always about that feeling of togetherness,” Sinkin added. “Some might feel that Santa is a religious thing, but to me, Santa has always been about emphasizing the love and spirit of the season.”
When he came to U-Va. in 2006, he said, he noticed the hospital didn’t have a Claus with a cause on the staff.
“I asked if anyone would mind if I started the tradition of having Santa come to the NICU, and they got onboard with it,” he said. “It was fun to see the smiles when I stepped out of my office as Santa.”
Sinkin’s colleagues said they soon learned to look forward to the sound of jingling bells in the halls every December. They were delighted when he grew his own beard, but Sinkin said it wasn’t his choice.
“I’d had rotator cuff surgery, and during that time, I couldn’t shave,” he said. “When my beard came in white, a nurse practitioner told me I could never wear a fake beard again.”
His new look was an instant hit with the medical staff and the parents of wee patients.
“I think [Robert] just created a joyful moment, which is really what the season is about,” said neonatologist Jonathan Swanson, 47. “For families in a difficult spot, having their baby in the NICU, it’s a wonderful way for him to give back.”
Murray said he is happy to continue Sinkin’s tradition next year, but he knows he will have some big boots to fill.
“To follow in Rob’s footsteps is humbling,” said Murray, 40.
For Erika Jeffrey, the mother of an infant son who has been in the NICU since Sept. 25, seeing a doctor in a Santa suit brought a moment of humor during a difficult time, she said.
Jeffrey’s son Mason had to be delivered early at 23 weeks after she developed complications from preeclampsia, she said.
“We’ll probably be here another two months until his lungs are more developed, so we wouldn’t have a Christmas photo without the hospital Santa,” she said. “It’s a fine and compassionate act that he’s doing.”
When Jeffrey learned that Sinkin would be posing for photos with babies in the NICU, she went to Build-a-Bear Workshop to pick out a tiny Christmas outfit for Mason.
“It was a beautiful day to see Santa and Mrs. Claus come by and take pictures with all of the babies here — it’s something I’ll always remember,” she said. “We can’t take Mason home for Christmas. But Santa came to him.”
Sinkin said he’ll always treasure his last day of wearing red velvet in the NICU.
“To know that I’ve brought some joy and happiness to families concerned about the well-being of their babies means everything,” he said. | 2022-12-22T11:26:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | University of Virginia doctor plays NICU Santa - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/22/sinkin-santa-nicu-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/22/sinkin-santa-nicu-virginia/ |
As Corporate America prepares for a possible recession in 2023, companies big and small are axing thousands of positions amid the holidays
The strangely timed box of holiday cheer was sent by Facebook parent company Meta, which laid him off, among 11,000 others in November. (Meta told The Washington Post that these were sent to Motyl “under the assumption they were his personal items.”)
The spike in recent layoffs is playing out differently from the pandemic-era cuts that fell heavily on hourly workers in leisure and hospitality and entertainment, while many white-collar professionals, who could work remotely, were spared.
Layoff spree in Silicon Valley spells end of an era for Big Tech
In early December, David Weinstein learned he was being laid off from his job as vice president of productions with Complex Networks, as part of a larger restructuring by its parent company, BuzzFeed. In a note to employees affected by the cuts, BuzzFeed chief executive Jonah Peretti said the move would help the company “weather an economic downturn that I believe will extend well into 2023” and adapt to changing consumer appetites.
Overall, layoffs remain near historically low levels in the broader economy. Employers are still struggling to attract and retain talent, especially in health care, restaurants and retail. More than 10.3 million positions remained unfilled at the end of October, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But there’s a growing sense of dissonance as the announcements keep coming in certain sectors, even as the labor market remains hot. Inflation has been straining business margins all year, and now higher interest rates are also whiplashing rate-sensitive industries like finance and tech. Companies have been turning to cost-cutting mode as they reckon with the effects of the Federal Reserve’s fight to control prices.
Goldman Sachs is expected to cut thousands of positions and ax some bonuses as it pares back its retail banking business and prepares for a slowdown, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. The CEO of Google, which has seen slower growth this year while the company’s workforce continued to expand, sent warning signals recently of cuts to come.
“It’s really tough to predict the future,” Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said in a December all-staff meeting, declining to rule out the possibility of job cuts, according to reporting from Business Insider.
The layoffs also coincide with rising tension between white-collar employers and employees over how work is done, and could signal yet another crackdown on flexibility. Offices are still less than half as full as they were before the pandemic, according to security swipes in 10 major metro areas tracked by Kastle Systems.
Some pullbacks are to be expected at this time of year, according to Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. On average, 1.9 million people are fired or laid off each month. But there has been a “definite softening” in white-collar fields compared to others, Pollack said: Six of the seven sectors that have seen the biggest declines in job postings since midyear are white-collar industries, with major drop-offs in tech, finance, law and engineering. The businesses that depend on in-person visits, in contrast, are finally recovering from drop-offs during the pandemic.
Back in September, Ceren Kalyon was on the beach in Italy, enjoying a vacation from her job at the software firm Twilio, when her phone pinged with an all-staff email from the CEO announcing 11 percent corporate layoffs and warning that targeted staff would be notified in the next 60 minutes.
“Twilio has grown at an astonishing rate over the past couple years. It was too fast, and without enough focus on our most important company priorities,” chief executive Jeff Lawson said in the email, which was shared with The Post. “I take responsibility for those decisions, as well as the decision to do with layoff.”
Panicked, Kalyon texted her manager to ask for some clarity. She never heard back, not even after she received an email saying her position had been eliminated. It left her feeling “worthless.”
“It just makes you feel like a number,” Kalyon said.
Employers say they have been increasingly concerned about worker productivity, which plunged sharply in the first half of the year. Tech executives such as Google’s Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Salesforce’s Mark Benioff have been calling out low performers and asking their workers to do more. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said his company coined the term “productivity paranoia” to describe employers’ anxieties about whether their employees are working hard enough.
“We know that there’s a disconnect between employers who want employees back in the office more than employees want to be back,” said Andy Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Up until recently, the balance of power had been tilted toward employees, thanks to the white-hot labor market. But the gathering economic storm clouds and layoff announcements have given bosses a bit more leverage, Challenger said. Now, some CEOs might be tempted to use it as a way to either bring employees back to the office or get rid of them.
“That seems like a good way to kill two birds with one stone,” Challenger said, adding that layoffs are a “very blunt tool” in the eyes of human resource professionals, who consider it a risky strategy for reducing head count. “In some ways, you lose the people who have the best ability to find new jobs.”
In December, on what ended up being her last day of work, Marisa Mena clocked in at Nextiva like it was any other day. But a few hours later, she got a message from the company’s director of sales, asking if she had time to chat. She’d never spoken much to him, so she feared bad news.
She was right to worry: Mena was told her position was being eliminated. Little explanation was offered. It was a week after her 30th birthday, right before she was about to go on vacation to celebrate. (Nextiva did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Her financial goal for 2023 had been to put away money for a down payment so she could buy a house, but now that’s on hold. She’s doing Lyft and DoorDash, but she hasn’t thrown herself back into the job hunt yet.
“I wish I could have a great idea and be able to work for myself or own my own business so I don’t have to be under all of these big corporations,” Mena said. “I don’t feel like they care about us at all.” | 2022-12-22T11:39:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White-collar workers are being gutted by layoffs ahead of holidays - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/22/layoffs-white-collar-recession-economy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/22/layoffs-white-collar-recession-economy/ |
Cody Johnson leaves Beulahland Baptist Church in Beulah, Ga., where he voted in the state’s Dec. 6 runoff election for U.S. Senate. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Why didn’t the Republican red wave materialize in the midterms? The life of Cody Johnson offers one answer.
By Stephanie McCrummen
BEULAH, Ga. — As he pulled into the parking lot of Beulahland Baptist Church on Election Day last month, nearly everything about Cody Johnson suggested he would vote a certain way.
He was White. He was 33. He was an electrician with no college degree. He had a beard and a used pickup with 151,000 miles, and he was angry at what the country was becoming. Most of all, he was from northwest Georgia, a swath of rural America where people who looked like him had voted in large majorities to send Donald Trump to the White House and Marjorie Taylor Greene to Congress, many of them swept up in the emotional appeal at the heart of the Trump movement, which Greene now deployed in her own rallies.
“They hate you,” she would say, casting politicians as elitists, conspirators, communists, pedophiles and enemies of America — by which she always meant a certain kind of America, one that created the kind of person Johnson was expected to be.
Now he took a last inhale on his vape, walked into the polling place and voted against all of that. He voted against Greene, whom he called “an embarrassment.” He voted against the Trump-backed U.S. Senate candidate, Herschel Walker, because he didn’t want “some stupid s--- to happen.” He voted against every single Republican on the ballot for the same reason he supported Joe Biden in 2020, which had been the first time he voted in his life.
“I don’t want extremists in office,” he said, walking back to his truck. “And I have some small glimmer of hope that maybe things aren’t as screwed up as I think they are.”
All across the country, a similar uprising was underway as an unexpected tide of people showed up for midterm elections, turning what was supposed to be a rout for the Republican Party into a repudiation of Trumpism. In Arizona, voters rejected candidates who embraced white nationalist ideas and conspiracy theories about election fraud. In Pennsylvania, they rejected a candidate who said America is a Christian nation. Similar results had rolled in from New Mexico, Nevada, Virginia and other states including Georgia, where Walker would lose in a runoff earlier this month. Even in the deep-red 14th Congressional District, Greene saw her winning margin from 2020 slip by 10 percentage points, and one reason was Cody Johnson.
How Johnson became an unlikely part of an emerging voter revolt against Trumpism is not so much the story of some political strategy, or even the policies of the national Democratic Party, which has long been accused of ignoring places such as northwest Georgia.
For Johnson, the process was one of slow accumulation, and to explain this, he took a drive one day, tracing a childhood across the 14th District, an area that stretches from the Appalachian foothills to the outermost edges of Atlanta’s sprawl, encompassing farms and factories and one small town after another including the one where Johnson’s first memories were formed.
He drove past the prim shops of downtown Jasper, past the gas station where his mother had worked, and the marble quarry where his father had worked for 20 years. He stopped in front of a weedy lot where his house used to be. He remembered two things.
One was his parents’ fighting, which left him with an urge for escape. The other had to do with his father, who, Johnson remembered, had him carry heavy marble blocks from one corner of the yard to another, back and forth for hours.
“I was always in trouble,” Johnson said, explaining that this was such a constant state of being that it became the bedrock of an identity. “I was the troublemaker. I guess I just always remember kind of not going with the group, no matter what.”
He continued driving down a narrow, pine-shaded road until he stopped at a cluster of low brick buildings that was a housing project where he lived after his parents divorced, and where his neighbors were White and Black and poor. He remembered two more things.
The first was the image of his mother putting away groceries in the kitchen as he tried out a racial slur he’d picked up on the playground. He remembered the box of macaroni and cheese she had in her hand at that moment, and the feeling of the box slapping his face, and the sound of her yelling, “You’re not better than anybody,” and the shame he felt as he cleaned the noodles off the floor, thinking of his best friend, who was Black, and his friend’s father, who was always helping his mother out.
The second was his elementary school principal, a woman Johnson’s wife, Aliya, now refers to as “one of those blessed souls,” who noticed that he got in trouble all the time, and instead of punishing him, gave him the first book he ever read, “The Hobbit.”
“I remember there were all these themes about fighting the Dark Lord,” Johnson said, recalling how engrossed he became in stories of characters and their moral dilemmas, which had the effect of making him think about his own.
He was driving north now through brown and yellow fields, past two gun shops, four churches and a sunken barn with a cluster of flags — the American, the Confederate, the Trump — and soon he reached the outskirts of a town called Fairmount.
He turned onto a switchback, winding higher and higher along the mountain road until it narrowed and became dirt. He stopped in front of a long, overgrown driveway leading farther up the mountainside to a shack barely visible through the trees.
He remembered having to haul plastic jugs of water to the house, which had no running water. He remembered watching rocket launches on an old television with a rabbit ear antenna. He remembered wanting to be outside all the time, away from his father, reading about someplace else.
“See that tree right there?” he said, pointing into the woods at an oddly formed, L-shaped trunk where he’d sit for hours reading his fantasy books, and looking out over the blue mountain ridges.
“Everything on the outside seemed bigger and more complex than I could imagine,” he said, and soon he was winding down the other side of the mountain, accelerating onto a two-lane headed south, leaving behind a kind of place and a kind of life he might have had.
It was the sort of town that dots the northern part of the 14th District toward the Tennessee line, a barely surviving place where Trump ran up 80 percent of the vote in 2020.
Fairmount had streets named for deceased factory owners, a shuttered college and the town’s last practicing doctor. There used to be carpet mills, but now there was a plant that makes powdered chlorine, and another that made bricks. An IGA grocery anchored one end of town, an American Legion post the other, and in between were three gas stations, one diner, and an intersection where locals reliably shot out the one traffic light the county kept trying to install.
“People here do not like change,” said Connie Underwood, the clerk at the Citgo, explaining life in Fairmount one day. “Like if I moved the beef jerky, they’d get mad.”
She looked out the window at the 18-wheelers growling by. Another thing about Fairmount, she said. People never escaped their nicknames. She herself would forever be known as Tractor for an incident in a farm field a decade ago. Quaalude, Zipperhead, DoNo, Whitey, Big’un, Outlaw — all were grown men still answering for their youth.
“Whatcha need?” she said now to a regular, though she could anticipate the answer.
A pack of 24/7s, a Red Bull and a Fantasy 5. A pack of Pyramids, a Yoo-hoo and a Mega Millions. “Listen,” said a woman rushing in, breathless. “I want you to call him and see if I can get some gas,” she said as the clerk texted the owner about a credit. “Please. Tell him please.”
At the diner across the street, two men were talking about a huge cattle farm on the market, which led to a discussion of their changing world, which led one of them to say, “Sometimes I think they want this whole town to die.”
At another table, a 17-year-old was scrolling on his phone, saying, “I want to go to L.A. All the famous and all the important people live out there.”
At another, a man was saying to his friend, “Did you get to hurtin’ or what?”
“Yeah, I got to lay on that thing,” said the friend, referring to an MRI machine.
“I had to go for my liver. I get paranoid. Lady said, ‘You’re going to be okay.’ I said, ‘I am not.’ I said, ‘Back this thing out.’ They backed me out of there.”
At the Marathon gas station, a clerk named Sheila Balde was trying to think of the biggest thing to ever happen in Fairmount, something involving the whole town.
“Probably the Lomax murder was one,” she said, referring to an incident in 1978, in which an intruder one morning asked to use the phone of a couple named John and Ethel Lomax, then shot and killed the husband, and shot and injured his wife. “Will never forget it, either. Everybody was terrified. I was terrified.”
She tried to think of what else. She stared out the window.
“I guess the next thing was Trump,” she finally said.
She remembered how it felt when he first came on the scene — the pickups flying Trump flags, the freshly energized conversations over morning coffee.
“It was like people woke up around here,” she said. “Bunch of people would go to the rallies and come back and talk. It just felt like he was for all of us. With Trump, it was like we could breathe.”
She thought about how it felt in Fairmount now.
“Can’t afford groceries, can’t afford gas, heating fuel is ridiculous — us poor people are dying. We’re stifled, smothered, sinking quick,” she said, turning to a regular. “What else for you, son?”
Johnson was speeding away from all that now, past billboards for disability lawyers and worn-out yards heaped with old appliances, and soon, he arrived in a speck of a place called Rydal, where he lived with his father as a young teenager, during a time he could now see as pivotal to who he would become. He stopped at a plywood-patched house by some railroad tracks.
When trains came, it felt like an earthquake. He felt his father becoming more stressed, so he’d take long walks and think about how he was going to survive this place. He’d walk to a creek nearby. He’d walk to no place in particular. Sometimes he’d walk a mile to a church because the breakfast was good, and finally agreed to be baptized because the preacher promised to bring his grandmother to the ceremony.
He loved his grandmother, who died not long after that. She was the one person who always seemed happy to see him. She’d hook up her oxygen tank and pick him up in her Gran Torino when it was not broken down, and they’d go to yard sales, which she called “loafering,” and she’d tell him how smart he was, and how proud of him she was, which made him want to make her proud. When he found out there were no pallbearers planned for her funeral, he organized five people to help bear her coffin to the grave, a discount plot overlooking a Pizza Hut, her name, Christine Rickman, on a small metal plaque pushed into the grass. He remembered thinking, “That’s what you get when you’re poor,” not in a bitter way, but in the way of realizing that the world would not necessarily bestow honor on the worthy. He remembered that, after she was buried, things seemed to break down further at home, as if the moral center of the family was gone.
“See that hellish thing?” he said now, pointing to an overgrown mound in the yard of the house.
Underneath was a pile of asphalt chunks left over from paving projects, he said, explaining how his father would have him haul pieces of rock to make borders around every tree, until the tension between them got so bad that he left.
“I was like, ‘Well, it’s on me now,’” Johnson said.
He was 15. He spent weeks on this floor or that couch in the homes of friends. He spent as much time as he could in the library, where one day he came upon a pocket-size book whose broken binding, dog-eared pages and rows of checkout stamps made him think it must be as important as any Bible, and so he began reading the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher of self-reliance.
“I remember he said something about the great men of history are no greater than you,” he said.
He remembered reading “whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist,” and “nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind,” and deciding he only needed himself to figure life out. “I realized all my choices were mine, and no one else’s,” he said.
He continued driving, past turnoffs where he had extended family who were versions of what he could have been. He had a relative who was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. He had a few who’d spent time in jail and prison. He had others who died young of heart attacks, respiratory issues, obesity, suicide and desperation he wanted to escape.
He kept going, past a subdivision where he lived for a while with the family of his best friend, whose grandfather was a vegan for moral reasons, a healthy and vigorous walker in his 70s who loved talking about Emerson, and he remembers thinking, “There is a different way to be.”
He passed near the house of another friend, one who died by suicide, and remembered how he learned afterward all the ways that his friend had tried to be a good person — for instance, by buying groceries for people without telling anyone — and he came to think this was another way to be, too.
He graduated from high school. He told the librarian he wanted to keep the Emerson essays, and she did not resist. He enlisted in the Army and got posted to South Korea, where he remembers how it felt telling fellow soldiers about his life for the first time, and looking out his window at the vast city of Daegu, thinking, “I could be on the side of the mountain right now, and I’m glad to be where I am.”
He returned home to northwest Georgia and started a life in which he tried to live according to his own moral compass. He got married. He had a daughter. He tried to help his mom out with money when he could. He became a union electrician and mentored apprentices. He avoided church, which he came to see as a death cult. He avoided politics, too, because he did not want to take part in a system that had only two parties, both of which he saw as geared toward helping the powerful instead of regular people like him and everyone he grew up around, from Jasper to Fairmount to Rydal. “There’s so much that could be done to help people,” he said. But after Trump was elected, and then Greene, politics became almost impossible to ignore.
“You couldn’t turn around without seeing some sticker, some post promoting violence and hate,” he said. It was the red hats, the flags, the conspiracy theories, the bullying, the racism. It was the sheer totality of how the Trump movement seemed to overtake peoples’ minds, he said.
“To me, anything that starts to dominate everything about you — when you can only interact with an ideal instead of have a conversation — I’m skeptical.”
But what was most insulting to him of all was the assumption that he would go along with all of it because of how he looked and where he lived. He started to feel like a spy. He had neighbors who made him aware of a bar near his house that was supposedly a gathering place for people in the white nationalist movement. He got a Facebook invitation to join some militia group, which he blocked. He had White co-workers who flagrantly used the n-word and made racist comments to him, and he came to enjoy their shock when he told them to cut it out.
“It was disgusting that people might think I was okay with that,” he said. “I decided I wasn’t going to just let it slide. Because if you let it slide, you become complicit, and complicity turns into guilt, and guilt turns into shame, and shame turns into fear, and I don’t want to live in fear.”
He came to see the Trump movement rising all around him as built upon exactly that kind of fear, and when 2020 came around, he remembers his wife telling him that all his philosophizing meant nothing if he did not take action. He remembers how it felt to vote for the first time.
“There was this well-dressed fellow,” he recalled. “He was pleasant, and as we were leaving, he said, ‘We’ve got to keep them demon Democrats from stealing the election.’ He thought he knew how I was going to vote because of my skin color. I said, ‘Are you serious?’ I said, ‘Nah. And just so you know, I just canceled you out. So, suck on that.’”
And that was who Cody Johnson had become by the time he rolled up to Beulahland Baptist Church on the day of the midterm elections: an Emerson-reading troublemaker who was not going to let things slide, and instead was going to cast a ballot for only the second time in his life.
He had been sick for days before the election, and after he voted, he went home, took Nyquil, and drowsed in and out of sleep as his wife read him the results every few minutes. By the time he was heading to work the next morning, the emerging trend was becoming clear.
He had been part of a minor uprising against Trumpism all across the country — a revolt of contrarians and others who defied expectations of pundits, polls, and even the Democratic Party itself.
Sometimes he and his wife discussed how the Trump movement had ever taken root in this place they loved, and sometimes hated, and nonetheless had chosen to make their home.
“The hardest part is the juxtaposition of knowing these are good, kind, loving, caring people here,” Johnson’s wife would say. “It’s like they put their morality in a box.”
To Johnson, though, it was less about other people and more about the kind of person he wanted to be. And so when it was time to vote again — this time in Georgia’s Dec. 6 runoff for the U.S. Senate — he got into his pickup truck and headed to Beulahland Baptist Church one more time.
He walked across the parking lot, past other pickup trucks and cars with Trump stickers, and through the door. And then a 33-year-old White man from northwest Georgia voted for the third time in his life.
He voted against the Trump-backed candidate, and as he saw it, he voted against all the politics of Trumpism that had been expected to work on somebody like him — white nationalism, grievance, bitterness, bullying and, perhaps most of all, fear of a changing world.
“I have relatives who retreated rather than adapted,” he said, thinking of the life he left behind. “I think of it as, I left the mountain to come into the world, to go out into the world. It’s something I’m kind of proud of.” | 2022-12-22T11:48:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Georgia voter's unlikely choices help explain why GOP red wave failed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/22/red-wave-midterm-elections-2022-what-happened/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/22/red-wave-midterm-elections-2022-what-happened/ |
They were built in the eras of Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevelt. Now, Washington is backing a revamp.
The Reconstruction-era Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel system, the biggest chokepoint between Washington and New Jersey, will be replaced by single-track twin tunnels. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
“I know that may be hard to comprehend, but … that’s why we call it a backlog,” Amit Bose, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, said in an interview. “These projects have been waiting, waiting to get going — for the next hundred years.”
The infrastructure package puts $66 billion into rail. It could power the biggest expansion in Amtrak’s history.
A nearly 150-year-old tunnel is the biggest rail bottleneck between D.C. and New Jersey. Here’s the new plan to replace it.
The nation’s challenged roads, bridges and railways: 10 projects showing the big-ticket needs
He praised the U.S. Department of Transportation for prioritizing investment on the aging bridges and tunnels, which he said are critical for the reliability of trains. The commission’s annual report shows that infrastructure failures represent the No. 1 cause of delays in the system.
A first look at plans for the new Union Station in D.C. | 2022-12-22T11:48:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rail route between DC, Boston will get major update in boon for Amtrak - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/22/amtrak-northeast-corridor-route-overhaul/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/22/amtrak-northeast-corridor-route-overhaul/ |
Police investigate death of man found in Alexandria building
A man was found dead inside a building in Alexandria, police said. (iStock)
A man was found dead Wednesday inside a building in Alexandria, in an incident police are calling suspicious.
The incident happened around 5:35 a.m. in the 5500 block of Ascot Court near Interstate 395. When police arrived they found the man inside a building with trauma to his upper body. He was pronounced dead at the scene. | 2022-12-22T12:06:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man found dead in Alexandria, Va., in suspicious incident - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/22/man-found-dead-alexandria/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/22/man-found-dead-alexandria/ |
One pedestrian dead, another hurt after crash in Montgomery County
One pedestrian is dead and another one was seriously hurt after a crash in Montgomery County.
Police said the incident happened just after 2 p.m. Wednesday near Muddy Branch Road and King James Way in the Gaithersburg area.
An initial investigation found the two pedestrians were hit by an SUV that was headed south on Muddy Branch Road. A man was pronounced dead at the scene and a woman was taken to a hospital with serious injuries, according to police.
The driver of the SUV stayed on the scene, police said. The incident remains under investigation. | 2022-12-22T12:06:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Crash in Montgomery County leaves pedestrian dead - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/22/pedestrian-dead-crash-montgomery-county/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/22/pedestrian-dead-crash-montgomery-county/ |
Her climb through the ranks of GOP leadership in the House and embrace of Donald Trump has come at a personal cost.
Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, one of the highest-ranking Republicans in the House, stands for an interview on Capitol Hill in June. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
There was a time, not long ago, when Elise Stefanik was eager to be understood, sharing parts of herself with the world, as any 30-something might, on Instagram.
Pinned to the top of her page, a row of old stories, archived for anyone to revisit, contained Q&As she used to conduct on the social media platform. Most of the posts were from 2019, when the congresswoman from New York was just beginning to journey deeper into President Donald Trump’s world, but did not quite yet inhabit it. Stefanik liked to share a lot back then: pictures of her mom’s Christmas Day omelets; her dad’s Christmas Eve pierogies, in honor of his Polish heritage; date nights with her husband; her manicure, painted glittering gold for the holidays. The Elise Stefanik on Instagram gave snippets of earnest advice and liked to tag her friends, punctuating inside jokes with laughing-crying and eye emojis. There were posts about the family dog, Nala. Her love of Broadway show tunes. Her favorite restaurants. The first jobs she worked as a clerk at an Old Navy store, as a counselor at an astronomy camp, as a coat check girl at a museum.
“It’s a HOT one today!” Stefanik wrote in the summer of 2019. “Ask me anything.”
Q: What did you want to be when you were 5 years old?
A: Disney animation artist!
Q: Favorite classes in college at Harvard?
A: Shakespeare & Politics … The Politics of War … The English Novel …
There were also signs of the change yet to come. Asked for her favorite Republican colleagues, she cheerily provided a long list of names, including her “friend” Liz Cheney, the woman she would help unseat from House leadership just two years later. Asked for her favorite female role models, she listed teachers from the Albany Academy for Girls, mentors who would later grow distant and cold. One was her old headmistress, Caroline Mason, who in 2017 helped officiate Stefanik’s wedding in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Four years later, in 2021, Mason would tell TIME magazine that something deep inside her friend had been lost to Trump. “She basically abandoned her own core values for a man who had no core values,” Mason said.
When I spoke to Stefanik in November, I mentioned the Instagram posts, not for what she wrote about Cheney or Trump, but because of how much there was to learn in the old Q&As. She didn’t appear to do them anymore. On the phone, Stefanik said she has security and private concerns that didn’t exist back then, not in the way they do now. Capitol Police have identified an uptick in threats against her as a result of her rise in the Republican Party. Now, she was hesitant to post too many pictures of her 1-year-old son, Samuel, “as much as I want to,” she said. When she was nine months pregnant with him last year, she watched with alarm, sitting on her front porch, as a TV truck pulled up to her driveway for no apparent reason. “I was not in the news at that time,” she said. “It’s a different level than I think people realize.”
But she was also on guard for exactly this — the excavation of her past, the calls to a certain set of people who will say they don’t recognize the Elise they once knew. She has come to expect reporters contacting her ex from high school, her old teachers, her friends, her friends who are no longer friends, the members of the Harvard Institute of Politics, a place she once loved that kicked her off its advisory board after Jan. 6, 2021, for making claims about voter fraud that had “no basis in evidence.” She is accustomed to people calling her calculated and craven and driven by a quest for power. She has seen the tweets nicknaming her “Trashy Stefanik” and the ad calling her a “Mean Girl.” She has read the articles charting her “political transformation” — her hard turn from “moderate” to “MAGA.” There is Elise before: the then-youngest woman ever elected to Congress; the promise of a younger, more moderate Republican Party; the open skepticism of Trump. And then there is Elise after: the open loyalty to Trump; the early, unwavering support for his 2024 campaign; the adoption of his rhetoric, his all-caps tweets, his grievances, his lie about the 2020 election results. At a time when other Republicans have taken cautious steps away from the former president, she has plowed ahead in the other direction. The shift is treated as bewildering and sudden — a mystery to be solved.
It is true that Elise Stefanik has changed.
She set aside the posture of a moderate politician and pursued new ambitions inside Trump’s world. She set aside some of her optimism about the potential of politics and replaced it with the language of a hardened partisan warrior. In the halls of Congress, where she was once celebrated in magazines as the face of a more transparent, collaborative government, she now operates from a place of distrust, poised for a fight with the reporters she believes have or will attack her “in vicious, vicious ways.” The more effective she felt she was, the more she felt attacked. And the more attacked she felt, the further the change took hold. “The smears and the meltdown of the media,” she said, “sort of began this chapter.”
The change, and her path to “this chapter,” is what put her at the top of Republican leadership in Congress, where she will serve a second term as House confere.nce chair, the No. 4 role in the GOP majority, climbing where others couldn’t survive in a party defined by its loyalty to one man. In January, when Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) steps down as speaker, Stefanik will become the most powerful woman in the nation’s legislative branch.
It is also true that the change has come at a personal cost. Behind the “moderate to MAGA” shorthand, a human transformation has taken place, too. Stefanik has lost friendships. She has lost ties to institutions that once mattered dearly to her. And she has responded in kind by making her world smaller and more insulated. She keeps her family life closely guarded and her inner-circle small: Outside her congressional offices, she has a set of male political advisers who have helped shape the scorched-earth language she wields with audiences she perceives as unfriendly. In the lingo of Stefanik’s orbit, someone is always “dude,” attacks are always “nasty” and the media is always “shameless.” On a scale of bad to worse, or, as they like to say, “a wipeout” to “a disaster,” someone can be “spiraling,” “imploding” or “combusting,” in that order. During our 40-minute phone call in November, Stefanik used the word “vicious” eight times to describe Democrats and the media. Reporters who sit down with her are advised not to show weakness; it will only bring out her one-word answers. In place of the openness she often once presented, Stefanik has developed a thick armor, smooth and hard, with no grooves or edges there to hold.
The week after we talked about the Instagram posts, I checked her page again. Where the old stories had been, there was now a blank space. Stefanik had deleted them all.
Maybe because it’s so small, with a graduating class of about 37 in 2002, Albany Academy is the place people start when they try to make sense of the story.
The school was really two schools — one for girls and one for boys. The girls’ side was more prestigious in a way, billed as the country’s oldest continuously operating nonsectarian day school for women still in its original municipality, established in 1814. But while the boys attended class in a stately red-brick building, topped by a grand cupola, the girls went to school in a low-slung structure, built in 1959, across the street. There was a military tradition at the boys’ school up until 2005, according to the school archivist emeritus, John T. McClintock, though it was not designed to produce officers for service, but involved students marching with rifles and in uniform for parades and ceremonial occasions.
Otherwise, Albany Academy was a typical regional prep school and Elise one of its typical students. The culture at AAG, as the girls’ school was known, was “working really hard to be good at stuff,” said Anne Conolly, a former Albany Academy teacher. Stefanik did that and did it well. She had a big smile and was nice to everybody. She always wore her uniform, never with her shirt untucked. She was well-liked, with friends on the boys’ side as well as the girls’, former classmates and teachers said. This was a mark of confidence, not shared by some of the cliquier students at AAG. Elise asked lots of questions. She was a senior during the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the tragedy sharpened her interest in government and civic service. She made friends with the teachers and filled her schedule with extracurricular activities. She rose to the top of student council. She played varsity lacrosse, even though it was never her strong suit. She was a committed member of the mock trial team. Lawrence Wiest, a former prosecutor in Albany County District Attorney’s Office who volunteered as a coach, helped prepare the team for a big criminal case against their rivals, a boys’ school, Christian Brothers Academy. Elise was set to deliver the closing statement on behalf of the defense. At practice, Wiest asked the girls if they’d heard of the singer Peggy Lee. Stefanik hadn’t. Neither had her classmates. Wiest said it didn’t matter: Get close to the bench, he told Stefanik, “own that courtroom,” shrug your shoulders and tell the judge, “Well, we all heard the people’s case, and in the words of the late, great Peggy Lee, ‘Is that all there is?’” Elise sold the line with perfect finesse. “She was a born actor,” Wiest said.
But Stefanik’s real skill in high school was her drive. What did not come naturally in class, she made up for with that drive. “I wanted to excel for myself, in the sense that I could,” she told me. “It didn’t come easy. I had to work hard. I was not someone where it just comes easily to you.”
Elise took herself seriously, even as a young girl. In her senior yearbook page, she wrote, “Someone once told me that I have single-handedly altered the Academy experience, and raised the bar not only in the academic realm, but also in the ethical realm.” To read the page, you have to squint. The text is so small — a block of plain sans serif text that stretches across the page, each line containing individualized shout-outs to classmates and teachers. Stefanik’s messages ranged from loving tributes (“Everything you are is an inspiration to me”) to savage parting admonishments (“Our friendship was one-sided. True friendships are undying, ours obviously was not”).
Behind the text, above her handwritten cursive signature — “Respectfully Yours, Elise M. Stefanik” — a giant photo of the White House looms across the page, filling the space edge-to-edge.
She chose the photo, she said, because she wanted to work in the building one day, not run it. “I’m ambitious for this country,” she said. “I always find it interesting that the media focuses on women who are ambitious.” Like other goals Stefanik laid out for herself, this was one she achieved. Her first job was in the George W. Bush administration, working as an aide on his domestic policy council. Her other dream was to go to Harvard, and she met that goal, too, graduating in 2006.
The oldest of two children, Elise was the first in the family to complete college. She looked up to her parents. “It’s not how smart you are. It’s how hard you work,” her dad always told her. “Always maintain your moral compass,” her mom always said.
Ken and Melanie Stefanik lived in Feura Bush, N.Y. Ken started in the lumber and plywood industry after high school. He worked his way up the ladder, first in the warehouse, then as a traveling salesmen and local branch manager. When Elise was 7, he left his job to start his own company, Premium Plywood Products, servicing local businesses across the Capital Region. Stefanik grew up with an awareness that her parents had risked a great deal to start the business, and that hard work had made it successful. She liked to hang around the office, learning to answer the phones by age 10 with a sunny, “Good morning, Premium!”
The business also helped form the foundation for Stefanik’s conservative politics. In October 1998, a young Stefanik got a waiver from school to attend a campaign event for Republican Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, running against Congressman Charles E. Schumer. At the event, a reporter for the Albany Times Union, James M. Odato, approached the young girl in her AAG plaid skirt and blue blazer. “I support the Republican view, especially his,” Elise declared. “He supports all of New York State, not just downstate.” Stefanik sounded straight out of “a D’Amato ad,” Odato wrote in the piece he filed. She was 14.
Elise was always conservative — this her teachers knew. They said they were proud when she worked in the Bush administration — and prouder still when she launched her campaign in New York’s 21st, a 15,000-square-mile district spanning most of the Adirondack Mountains, with a promise to “bring new ideas to Washington.” It was her turn to Trump in 2016, first with many caveats, and then, later, with none at all, that made talk of Stefanik something of a sport in Albany Academy circles.
Certain mentors and classmates still harbor genuine disappointment and confusion toward Stefanik. Some, like Mason, the former headmistress, have said their peace in the press and let it lie, declining to weigh in further. Others address Stefanik as a distant figure from the past. Alisa Scapatici, a beloved AAG English teacher, was one of the female role models Stefanik cited on Instagram in 2019. Classmates said the two were close. Reached by email earlier this year, she wrote, “I am not sure that my insights are all that relevant as they were so long ago. She was an excellent student of literature.”
But among others, even the adult teachers, 20 or 30 years Stefanik’s senior, the speculation can take on a high school quality, with many speaking only on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy. “I just thought, ‘What did we do?’” one former teacher said of mentoring Stefanik. “It’s like a parlor game, sending articles back and forth,” said another. To some members of the Albany Academy community, it’s become a strange piece of social history at the school. Countless Republicans have tied themselves to Trump over the last six years. But the questions behind the malleability of Stefanik’s political identity can take on different undertones compared to her male colleagues. “It’s bizarre,” said a close friend from high school. “If you had a man out there, particularly one who’s older, who decided to support Trump — and I mean, there are plenty of them — you’re not on the phone talking to one of their high school classmates, right?”
Stephen Brown, a member of the history department at Albany Academy, said that while his politics never aligned with Stefanik — “and the gulf has certainly widened over the last several years,” he said — “I always personally liked Elise.”
“Several of my colleagues all but disowned her,” Brown added.
If this is a source of hurt or sadness for Stefanik, she doesn’t say. But it is part of that armor she carries, and a source of clear frustration. On the phone, at the mention of Albany Academy, her voice stiffened on the line. “Just so you know, this is not the first time we’ve done this,” she said. “Some of the names you’ve talked to that you’ve listed so far, I have not talked to those people in a long time.”
In this case, the cause for alarm were two mock-trial coaches, both of whom recalled Stefanik as skilled and hard-working.
“Which mock-trial coach?” Stefanik asked quickly.
One of them, she suspected, might have bad things to say. Neither did.
Alex deGrasse was en route to Mar-a-Lago when he called to talk about his boss. The 29-year-old is Stefanik’s top political adviser, by her side since the beginning, and much like the congresswoman, he has adopted the language of Trump in his years of service.
“There are a lot of people out there that talk about Elise as if they know her, but they don’t and desperately seek relevance through any connection to her,” he said as he made his way to the former president’s Florida estate. “We realize it’s mostly people projecting their own issues” — the main one being “their own anti-Trump hatred,” something deGrasse said he knows firsthand.
“If I post a photo of me with President Trump, people go nuts,” he said. “If people want to have problems with me, then they’re just not a friend. And it makes it easier. And I think she’s had to deal with that.”
This was not the social arithmetic that Stefanik first took to Washington. When she began her career in politics, she was a player of the game of establishment politics and a student of its rules — disciplined and serious, yes, but also eager and open. She was an advocate of more outreach. After three years in the White House, she took on jobs around Washington and tried starting a blog, American Maggie, named after Margaret Thatcher and aimed at reaching an audience of women in conservative politics, though it never got off the ground.
In 2012, she worked for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, helping prepare Paul D. Ryan for his vice-presidential debate against Joe Biden. After they lost, she helped author the Republican Party’s autopsy report, a document urging more inclusivity and openness in the GOP. By 2013, she was back home in New York, working for the family plywood business. She met with Kellyanne Conway, the Republican pollster and Trump’s future campaign manager, as she made preparations to run for Congress. Over lunch in Manhattan, Conway found Stefanik to be “accessible and affable,” “serious-minded without being somber,” Conway recalled. On Aug. 6, 2013, 35 days after her 29th birthday, Stefanik signed the paperwork to become a candidate in the same perfect cursive script that sits at the bottom of her yearbook page. On the trail, she wore out multiple pairs of tennis shoes and documented her stops with daily Instagram posts. She went to Washington as the youngest woman elected to Congress, documenting the touchstones of the institution online (her new business cards; her first office assignment).
The presidential race in 2016 was her first big chance to put down a marker in the party’s national debate. Stefanik stayed quiet about her preference. She didn’t reveal her vote until after the primary, but in the end, she cast her ballot for John Kasich, the moderate Republican best known as an anti-Trump alternative and for giving hugs at his town halls, preaching tolerance.
There was some pressure to get onboard with Trump, but nothing so big that she had to acknowledge it. Carl Paladino, a controversial conservative agitator in New York, criticized her in an email to his supporters in the spring of 2016, describing her silence as “treachery.” “Clearly she’s a fraud,” he wrote. “She never told the people she was a RINO.” Six years later, Stefanik would break with House Republican leadership to endorse Paladino for Congress in the 23rd District. Asked about his comments now, Paladino said he didn’t recall them. “She’s certainly proved herself to me since,” he said.
When Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee in May, Stefanik released a statement that same week to the Albany Times Union endorsing the party’s choice, though she didn’t reference him by name. “Like my Democratic opponent,” she wrote, “I will support my party’s nominee in the fall.” Stefanik found some of Trump’s rhetoric problematic, and for years, she didn’t hesitate to say so. By the fall of 2016, when the Access Hollywood tape came out and the country heard Trump brag about sexually assaulting women, Stefanik spoke out against his “inappropriate, offensive comments,” but she didn’t rescind her endorsement. In recent years, it has become an important proof point for Stefanik’s team, looking back at the arc of her support for Trump.
Another was his visit in 2018 to Fort Drum, the military base in her district, to sign a national defense spending bill. As he introduced Stefanik onstage, Trump mispronounced her last name. “Elise STEF-an-ik,” he said. “She called me so many times. I said, ‘I don’t want to take her calls.’” Stefanik was determined to host him at Fort Drum. He had a scheduling conflict. But no, Trump said, “that didn’t suit her. She didn’t stop. And here I am.”
But it was the impeachment hearings, in 2019, that “radicalized” Stefanik, in the words of her aides. On the House intelligence committee, she became a key voice in his defense, eventually joining his legal team. She believed Democrats were abusing the committee’s institutional powers to advance a political agenda, and her sharp questions at hearings, boosted on cable news, and boosted again by Trump, brought her unseen levels of money online. When Democrats speculated that she had only been given a role in impeachment because Republicans needed the presence of a woman on their side, she developed a new disdain for her opponents. “They’re putting me forward because I ask the best questions,” she said of her GOP colleagues at the time.
Stefanik already believed that young, conservative women had it tough. But as her support for Trump grew and as more scrutiny followed — as the calls to classmates and friends began, as the stories about her political transformation arrived — her view of sexism hardened in step, knitting the two together into a tight knot of resentment.
There had always been little things she noticed. In her first election, as she faced a series of male candidates, newspapers printed her age without fail, even when they didn’t for the men. That little comma bothered her: “Stefanik, 29. Stefanik, 30.” Later, she was criticized for wearing patterned tights on the campaign trail. “They’re very tasteful,” she told Norah O’Donnell in an interview on CBS This Morning. By her second term in Congress, she was recruiting a record number of women, more than 100 candidates, to join her ranks and help fix the problem. After the midterm elections in 2018, she launched her own spending group, E-PAC, with the same goal.
But later, in January 2021, the Albany Times Union published a community blog post mocking Stefanik for being “childless.” The item was a satirical piece that imagined her reading to a group of first-graders and saying, “I myself am childless because I am a rising star in the Republican Party.” Stefanik and her husband, Matthew Manda, thought it was vile. “We have developed a thick skin over many years,” the couple wrote in a statement, but this was “truly heinous and wildly inappropriate.” They went on to demand a retraction and apology from the paper, adding, “Like millions of families, we hope and pray that we will be blessed by becoming parents.” Releasing that statement, seeing that last line, said deGrasse, her top political aide, “was one of the hardest and saddest things I’ve ever had to do in my career.”
Sam was born on Aug. 27, 2021. Stefanik made a point to work until the last possible moment, hosting a call at 8 p.m. with other members of Congress the night before she was due at the hospital at 5 a.m. Later as senior female staffer in her leadership office experienced their own personal milestones, Stefanik helped guide them through the details. When her press secretary, Charyssa Parent, got married this summer, they talked through color schemes and invitations. When her communications director, Ali Black, had her first child this fall, she gave her advice on the final days of pregnancy: “Take some time with your spouse and get some sleep before the baby comes.”
“When you go through the rigmarole with the press, wrestling every day in Upstate New York, you have a skewed vision of the press,” said Parent. “For a while, it was, ‘She couldn’t have a seat at the table because she was the youngest woman.’ Then she couldn’t have a seat at the table in leadership because the local press was saying, ‘How could she do it when she had a baby?’”
In the age of Trump, said Conway, his 2016 campaign manager, conservative women carried a special designation, a quadruple standard. “If you’re a pro-life Republican female who works with President Donald Trump, you’ve got a target on your front and your back and your forehead.”
“Most of the profiles about her connection to Trump — I mean, that’s an obsession with Trump,” said Conway. “Not an obsession with Elise. And the obsession with Trump prevents people from covering her, fairly and completely.”
In January 2020, Stefanik was boarding a plane to Vermont to travel home across the border in Upstate New York. At Reagan National Airport, as he waited to board the same flight, a Democratic strategist named Sam Donnelly saw the congresswoman from across the gate.
At the time, Donnelly was the chair of the Burlington Democratic Party. He had once viewed Stefanik as a moderate, he said, but her role in the impeachment hearings had made him change his mind. Sitting in the gate, scrolling on his phone, he opened a new tweet and attached a GIF of the actor Ryan Gosling, wearing sunglasses and doing a double-take. “I’m sitting next to Eliese Stefanik and I just want to get away,” he wrote, misspelling her name.
Donnelly was the last to board the plane. As he walked down the aisle, an arm reached out and stopped him in his path. It was Stefanik. “Hi,” she said. “Are you Sam?”
She let him know that she had seen his tweet and that she wanted to introduce herself “to have a more pleasant conversation,” Donnelly recalled. He told her it was a pleasure and shook her hand. Within seconds, he said, he saw she had quote-tweeted his original message, amplifying it on her @EliseStefanik account. “Hi Sam! Glad to shake your hand and introduce myself as you boarded! Genuinely nice to meet you. I sometimes take this flight with my friend @PeterWelch,” she wrote, naming her Democratic colleague from Vermont. Later, Donnelly replied in kind: “I don’t agree with your politics,” he tweeted back to her, but it was a pleasure to meet you.” On Instagram, she reshared the tweets in a series of screenshots, showing all three messages: “A #Toxic #Twitter Tale in Ten Seconds,” she wrote in the caption, “with a mind-your-manners happy ending smack down.”
Donnelly wasn’t sure what to make of the exchange. It walked that perfect line — between wanting to be understood, to show an online critic that there was a human on the other end of the screen, and wanting to troll right back, to own a lib from Vermont. She didn’t change Donnelly’s mind that day, and maybe her tweets didn’t change anyone else’s either. Maybe she wasn’t trying to. By all accounts, she doesn’t care anymore — and that in itself may be the biggest change.
There are plenty of things about Elise Stefanik that have stayed the same. She is still ranked among the top 25 percent most bipartisan members of Congress, according to the Lugar Center. She still works to put her name behind bipartisan legislation, including bills to increase the supply of baby formula, expand employer-provided access to child care and help families cover the cost of raising a child. This month, she voted with Democrats on the Respect for Marriage Act, requiring states to recognize same-sex couples. She has been and still is a committed presence in her district. But that’s not the work that has given Stefanik the profile she has today. What has made her a standout in her party, and a force in Trump’s orbit, is everything that did change about Elise Stefanik.
The change has meant her name will be on the VP shortlists all year. It’s meant that her advisers are regulars at Mar-a-Lago and that Stefanik has a direct line to Trump. When the former president announced his 2024 campaign, Republicans who once supported him began backing away, making subtle comments about it being time for someone new. Stefanik was not one of them. “It’s very clear President Trump is the leader of the Republican party,” she said in a statement last month. On Nov. 11, she became the senior-most Republican elected official to endorse his campaign. This means something, but it’s not clear it means everything. “The president likes and appreciates Stefanik,” according to a person who speaks regularly to both Stefanik and Trump, “but he doesn’t mention her often.”
But it does mean she will stay committed to his causes. She will continue casting doubt on the 2020 election results. It means that when Pelosi steps down from her leadership role next month, clearing the way for Stefanik to take her place as the most senior woman in Congress, she won’t commemorate her colleague’s history-making tenure in the House, as she might have when she first arrived in Washington as a freshman in 2014. Instead, in tweets and fundraising emails and media hits, she will celebrate, as she already has countless times, “firing Nancy Pelosi once and for all.”
This is the way things will be. The team around Stefanik believes that the people who say she’s changed come from a place of malice. That the media is “shameless” and “vicious.” That friends who have problems with her are “just not a friend,” as deGrasse said. These beliefs have hardened Stefanik, but they have also become a source of defiance and energy in her world — the “rocket fuel for Elise’s rise,” said deGrasse.
“At this point, to be honest with you, my skin is so thick," Stefanik said on the phone. “What the media says really doesn’t matter.”
Stefanik does still pay attention to her press, asking for multiple updates a day on statements and forthcoming stories, like the former staffer that she is. She does hits on Fox News and talks on conservative podcasts. On Instagram, she still posts glimpses of her life as a congresswoman, at work and at home: a snapshot of the back of her son wearing a “Vote For My Mom” T-shirt, an image of her shaking the hand of a veteran, a photo of homemade chicken and fennel soup. But woven between the posts, there was that new hardness that has elevated Elise Stefanik to the top of MAGA politics: references to the “radical Far Left” and the “#RedTsunami” she hoped would wipe out Democrats this fall.
On the morning of Election Day, hours before she would win her fifth consecutive double-digit victory since 2014, Stefanik posted what she billed in the caption as “TODAY’S FORECAST,” in a now-familiar all-caps: It was the image of an ocean wave, pixelated and tinted bright red, as it crested and came crashing down on the water’s surface. | 2022-12-22T12:14:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elise Stefanik is on the path to top GOP leadership. It came at a cost. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/22/elise-stefanik-trump-gop/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/22/elise-stefanik-trump-gop/ |
Harry Wait ordered ballots in the names of others to show voter fraud is possible. Now facing up to 13 years in prison, he is undaunted in his crusade to change Wisconsin’s voting laws.
By Patrick Marley
Harry Wait, a conservative activist, waits before meeting with other HOT Government group members in October at DeMark’s Bar in Racine, Wis. (Alex Wroblewski/for The Washington Post)
RACINE, Wis. — Harry Wait marched into the courthouse, walked through a metal detector and planted himself on a bench in the ornate lobby. His supporters, some wearing bright yellow “Free Harry” T-shirts, chatted amiably as they followed him inside.
Emboldened by former president Donald Trump’s false election claims, Wait in July had ordered absentee ballots in the names of others for the purpose, he said, of exposing what he considers flaws in Wisconsin’s voting systems. Now, on a warm September afternoon, he was using the resulting voter-fraud charges against him — which could land him in prison for up to 13 years — to amplify his argument that absentee balloting should be severely restricted.
“I’d do it again in a heartbeat because to save the republic, soldiers have to draw blood and blood be drawn,” Wait said as he sat on the courthouse bench.
For two years, a large segment of Trump supporters has embraced discredited claims that the 2020 election was stolen. The strategy of cultivating anger over supposed voter fraud proved politically disastrous this fall, when election deniers lost high-profile races from Arizona to Pennsylvania.
Now some Republican leaders are urging their party to downplay election denialism and shift its focus to other issues to improve its chances of winning the presidency in 2024.
But activists such as Wait are making that difficult, showing how hard it will be to extinguish the grievance and distrust whipped up by Trump and his allies. Undeterred by the November results, Wait in recent weeks has rallied for overhauling election rules, planned a January protest at the state Capitol and pledged to use the charges against him to trumpet his call for new voting laws. For him, the fight over elections continues.
There are others like him. Three months after Wait made headlines, an election official in Milwaukee engaged in similar behavior to bring attention to what she sees as voting vulnerabilities. Election deniers who lost their bids for statewide office in Michigan this fall are running to lead the state’s Republican Party. Former professor David Clements, who spent the summer visiting small towns around the country to spread false claims about the 2020 election, reappeared after the midterms to urge officials in Arizona to defy state law and refuse to certify the state’s results.
Former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon continues to dwell on election issues on his podcast. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, now making a long-shot bid for chairman of the Republican National Committee, remains committed to funding efforts to ban the use of voting machines. Trump himself, running for president once again, has shown no signs of letting up on his false claims about a stolen 2020 election.
Some Republicans worry that the emphasis on electoral fraud will prove self-defeating for the party.
When voters are told “that their vote doesn’t count, they stop voting,” said former congressman Reid J. Ribble (R-Wis.). He encouraged Republicans to push back on the claims of activists including Wait by assuring voters that elections are secure and the results accurate. If they don’t, he said, they risk losing more elections.
“The House wave didn’t happen, because there were too many election deniers,” he said.
But Wait, an ardent Trump supporter who does not consider himself a Republican, isn’t inclined to heed Ribble’s plea to move on.
Wait, 68, is a veteran of fights against officialdom in Racine, a blue-collar city on Lake Michigan 25 miles south of Milwaukee. After receiving a disorderly conduct ticket in 2011, Wait launched a blog to chronicle what he considered the failures of local government. The retired business consultant kept going after he beat his citation and several years later formed a group with others to marshal their energy. They called themselves HOT Government to highlight their support for a form of politics that they describe as honest, open and transparent.
When a school referendum passed by five votes in the spring of 2020, Wait helped organize a lawsuit over the recount — only to lose 7-0 before the state Supreme Court. The experience led Wait to dive into how elections are conducted in Wisconsin, just as Trump was ramping up his complaints about supposedly fraudulent voting.
This summer, Wait discovered that a state website would allow him to request someone else’s absentee ballot and have it sent to any address. Election officials, who designed the site to make it easy for out-of-town voters to obtain ballots, have maintained that the site does nothing to diminish election integrity, saying anyone who attempted voter fraud would be quickly caught.
But Wait saw the potential for something nefarious and set out to prove a point.
He ordered ballots under the names of two officials with whom he has long clashed — one Republican, one Democrat — and asked that the ballots be delivered to his address. Wait checked a box saying he was confined to his home because of age or disability, which allowed him to get around a state law that requires most voters to provide a copy of a photo ID the first time they request an absentee ballot. He also checked a box acknowledging that he understood he could face charges if he impersonated someone else.
The ballots he requested were in the names of Racine Mayor Cory Mason, a former Democratic state representative, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the most powerful Republican in state government. Wait received Mason’s ballot a few days later and quickly turned it over, unopened, to a sheriff’s deputy; the election clerk in Vos’s hometown never mailed Vos’s ballot to Wait.
Shortly after Wait made the requests, he sent an email to Mason and Vos, as well as to Racine County’s top prosecutor and sheriff. “I stand ready to be charged for exposing these voting vulnerabilities,” he told them.
Election officials in Wisconsin and around the country have spent the past two years battling far-fetched conspiracy theories, including debunked ones alleging that voting machine totals were altered by Italian satellites or thermostats connected to the internet. Wait’s tactic raised a new type of challenge — actual fraud that arguably could go undetected if carried out on a small scale.
Jay Stone, a retired hypnotherapist who has filed more than a dozen challenges to Wisconsin’s voting policies, talked to Wait the night he requested the ballots under others’ names. He said he opposed the idea but added, “You can’t talk Harry out of anything.”
“Look up the cingulate gyrus of the brain. It’s the brain’s gear shifter,” Stone said. “If a car goes — an automatic car — goes zero to 50, it shifts from first gear to second and third gear, decelerates, downshifts. Some people have a gear shifter that gets stuck. That’s Harry.”
In September, the judge hearing Wait’s case imposed a gag order that prevents him from talking about his case. But, in interviews, at rallies and at HOT Government meetings, Wait eagerly shares his views on election policies and the officials who oversee them.
He argues that the Republican and Democratic parties have conspired to establish election laws that protect the powerful. He says the 2020 election was stolen through voting machine algorithms and other means, despite a string of reviews and court rulings that found no significant fraud. Wait, whose legal bills are being covered by the conservative Thomas More Society, wants to get rid of voting machines, limit absentee voting and require all residents to re-register to vote.
“I know both sides cheat. The problem is catching them,” he said.
Mason learned of what had happened from Wait’s email but didn’t know at first whether to believe him. “It was disbelief followed by disgust,” Mason said of finding out what Wait had done.
While frustrated, Mason said he thought the ordeal over his ballot showed that Wisconsin’s systems work. Mason was able to cast a ballot and Wait within a month was charged with two felonies over unauthorized use of personally identifiable information and two misdemeanors relating to election fraud.
“It’s not really about my vote or Speaker Vos’s vote specifically,” Mason said. “It’s about whether or not this stunt is going to intimidate people, policymakers specifically, into making changes that will make it harder for people to vote.”
In response to Wait’s actions, the state elections commission mailed postcards to every voter who had an absentee ballot sent somewhere other than their home — nearly 13,000 in all. The commission has received no reports that other ballots were sent somewhere they should not have been.
Ann Jacobs, a Democrat who sits on the bipartisan commission, said few people do what Wait did because they know they are likely to be caught if they try it. If someone casts a ballot in someone else’s name, the victim will discover it when he or she goes to the polls, she noted.
“In all areas, we balance access with security,” she said. “In a situation like this, where it is such a rare occurrence [and] the penalties are severe, the real question has to be whether we need to make it harder to vote to thwart would-be criminals from doing something like this. And my view of it is, I don’t think we should.”
Some Republicans have called for a tightening of the state’s absentee-voting policies, but there is little chance of that happening. Republicans control the state legislature and have, over the past two years, approved election bills only to see them vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers (D), who won a second term in November.
Three months after Wait ordered the ballots, Milwaukee’s deputy elections director used the same website to create three false identities and ask that military ballots be sent in those names to a state lawmaker. The elections official, Kimberly Zapata, later told prosecutors she did so to alert the public to what she considers a flaw in the state’s voting laws. Unlike most states, Wisconsin allows members of the military to get absentee ballots without registering to vote, and the state site makes it easy to request such absentee ballots.
Zapata was fired from her position and charged with a felony and three misdemeanors. She faces up to five years in prison. Wait and his allies held a rally outside a court hearing for Zapata this month, some of them wearing military-style dog tags that say they marks them as members of “Harry’s Army.”
In the coming months, Wait’s legal team will file briefs contending that Wait’s actions amounted to a form of political speech that is protected by the First Amendment. The judge will consider those arguments at a hearing in April.
At a HOT Government gathering in November, in the back of a Racine bar where the group meets, Wait expressed confidence about ultimately winning his case and pledged to take it to an appeals court, if necessary.
“All I can say is, my case is an attorney’s dream,” he told the group, “because they love to bill.” | 2022-12-22T12:14:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As Republicans inch away from election denialism, one activist digs in - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/22/wisconsin-election-denial-activist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/22/wisconsin-election-denial-activist/ |
By Michael Patrick Hearn
William Nicholson's drawing of the Velveteen Rabbit and the Skin Horse, from the 100th anniversary edition of the book. (Blue Sparrow Books)
This year marks the centenary of “The Velveteen Rabbit,” one of those distinctive works for children, like “The Little Prince” and “Eloise,” that appeal to all ages. Just before the book’s publication, Anne Carroll Moore, then the most powerful children’s librarian in America, declared “The Velveteen Rabbit” the best Christmas story in years and predicted that it was “destined to live in the remembrance of every child and grown up.” She was right.
Margery Williams’s book, about a stuffed animal who yearns to be real, is as simple and straightforward as a traditional fairy tale. Nothing in it is too specific. Does it take place in London or Paris or Turin or New York? Yes, all of them — and none of them. It could be anywhere.
The child is never named: He is just “the Boy.”
The toy’s magic tear, which summons the Fairy and the kiss from her that turns him into a Real Rabbit, come from the vast well of fairy lore. Like L. Frank Baum, author of “The Wizard of Oz,” Williams believed in logical fantasy. As a great admirer of Hans Christian Andersen, Williams is particularly fine at capturing a small child’s affectionate but still rough treatment of his favorite toy; and the wit displayed in the conversation between the Velveteen Rabbit and the wild rabbits is priceless.
The book’s message is as relevant as ever. “What is REAL?” the Rabbit asks the Skin Horse. And he sagely replies, “When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become REAL.”
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The story behind the story of “The Velveteen Rabbit” is itself a kind of fairy tale. Much of it was revealed to me during an interview I did with Margery Williams’s daughter, Pamela Bianco, in 1979.
Bianco, born in London in 1906, was an art prodigy, and by the tender age of 12, was one of the most famous children in the world. She was 62 when I met her and working in relative obscurity, as she had done for much of her adult life. During our lengthy conversation, she described the evolution of “The Velveteen Rabbit” and her crucial part in its inception. Bianco was the most childlike person I have ever met. That may well be because her childhood was taken from her. I have never quite forgotten her.
Pamela began drawing at about age 4 — not the usual formless doodles of little kids but remarkably sophisticated faces and figures. She sketched rabbits and guinea pigs and fairies and angels and little girls. She told me she was never interested in depicting grown-ups or boys. The only boy she knew growing up was her brother, Cecco.
Her father, Francesco, did not allow her to alter a sketch, and she never used an eraser. If a drawing disappointed her, Pamela just threw it away. Francesco, a dashing young Italian bibliophile, knew Pablo Picasso, and showed the painter Pamela’s pictures at dinner one night at the Bianco apartment. Picasso was amazed by the grace and charm of this 8-year-old’s drawings.
Pamela told me she was an unusually timid child. “I was very frightened and shy and terrified of the school,” she said. She so hated it that her mother took her out one day and never sent her back. From then on, Pamela was home-schooled so she could devote all of her time to drawing and painting.
In 1911, Francesco Bianco was offered a job with an Italian film company, so the family moved from London to Turin. When World War I broke out, he served in the Italian army as a captain. Margery had to help support the family by teaching English and working in the linen room of the British Military Hospital.
Pamela said she wrote and drew all day long during the war. She never cared much for dolls but deeply loved her stuffed rabbit (inherited from her mother) and the other animals she called “The Tubbies.” She particularly enjoyed sewing clothes for them. “My mother always treated our toys as though they were just as real to her as to us,” she told me.
She recounted that one day when she was about 10, her father packed up the toys and declared that Pamela was now an artist. Her childhood was officially over. The toys were conveniently left behind in Italy when the family returned to London after the war. I could see tears welling in this woman’s eyes when she recalled this still painful memory from her childhood. As the old Victor Herbert song warned about Toyland: “Once you pass its borders, you may ne’er return again.”
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Pamela’s artwork was so unusual for one so young that when the Italian sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi was putting together an exhibit of children’s art in Turin in 1918, he asked her parents to submit several of her recent pictures. Their precision and authority of line as well as their originality of subject stood above the rest. They did not look like children’s drawings. Critics compared Pamela’s work to that of Botticelli, Blake and Beardsley. When word of Bustolfi’s show reached London, the Leicester Galleries contacted Francesco to offer his daughter a solo show.
The show was a hit. The Tate Gallery, the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) and the National Gallery of Ireland all competed for Pamela’s drawings. Only three of the 79 went unsold.
Walter de la Mare was so charmed by the exhibit that he wrote verses inspired by the drawings for an oversized picture book that the Leicester Galleries arranged with William Heinemann Ltd. of London to publish in 1919. Yet reporters said that this wunderkind was just a normal sturdy tomboy with a no-nonsense approach to life and none of the peculiarities of child geniuses.
In 1921, Pamela’s father brought her and her collection of “Babes and Fairies” to the Anderson Gallery in New York, and the family settled in Greenwich Village.
The exhibit of 157 drawings was a huge success. Poets Robert Graves, Marianne Moore and Louis Untermeyer admired the work. Photographer Cecil Beaton and socialites Helen Clay Frick, Gertrude Payne Whitney and Anne Harriman Vanderbilt bought drawings. But Pamela did not let all the attention go to her head. “How foolish they all are over my work,” she was quoted as saying at the time.
With Pamela an established artist on both sides of the Atlantic, Francesco Bianco decided to come up with a project for both mother and daughter. Margery Williams had written three novels before marrying Bianco, but they did not sell well and she had abandoned her literary career to raise her two children. “Father suggested she write something for me to illustrate,” Pamela told me. “I wanted to write again,” Margery Williams once recalled, “but I disliked everything I had written before. I wanted to do something different, but did not know what it should be.”
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Nevertheless she immediately got to work and sold several fairy tales to Harper’s Bazaar. The women’s fashion magazine announced a “fairy story for grown-ups” by “Pamela Bianco’s mother” in the June 1921 issue.
Williams looked to her childhood for inspiration. “I am very fond of animals,” Williams told an interviewer in 1927. “I was very fond of my own toys. I have a feeling for children’s toys, old ones, not new. They become part of family life and have a personality like people.” Because her daughter was so skilled at drawing bunnies, the first of these tales was “The Velveteen Rabbit, or How Toys Become Real,” which the magazine published with Pamela’s exquisitely decorous drawings. “She left the drawings up to me,” Pamela told me. “No rules. I wanted to draw and make it the very way I wanted it.”
Sydney Pawling of William Heinemann Ltd. in London adored the story, calling it “a classic for children,” and agreed to issue “The Velveteen Rabbit” as a full-color storybook in 1922.
George H. Doran of New York published it simultaneously in America. But instead of using Pamela Bianco’s pictures, Pawling turned to the distinguished painter and poster artist William Nicholson for the color lithographs. While everyone thought Pamela’s drawings in the magazine were charming, no one thought she was yet capable of illustrating a book. Nicholson drew the exquisite calligraphic endpapers of hundreds of tiny rabbits in one swooping gesture without lifting pen from paper. Although she wrote the story for Pamela, Margery dedicated the book to Francesco.
At age 41, Margery Williams became famous. She went on to write 20 more books for young readers or young adults, but none of her other children’s books repeated the enormous popularity of the first. She never wrote another novel for adults. She died after a brief illness in New York on Sept. 4, 1944, and was swiftly forgotten for everything but “The Velveteen Rabbit.”
Pamela Bianco’s art branched out into many directions as her tastes changed. Having been isolated much of her young life, she was extraordinarily vulnerable. She suffered a nervous breakdown at age 18. I knew nothing about this troubled time in her life, and nothing in her manner when I met her suggested even the slightest psychological problem. She seemed to me a quiet, delicate, gentle soul.
She finally returned to Italy in 1930 on a Guggenheim Fellowship. She married twice and had one son. She continued to paint when she came back to New York. That was all she knew how to do. She suffered another breakdown and died in an institution in 1994. An illuminating retrospective of her work opened at England and Co. in London in November 2004.
Although her pictures for “The Velveteen Rabbit” have never been reprinted since 1922, numerous newly illustrated editions have appeared since the 1970s, when it was discovered that the book’s copyright had never been properly registered in this country.
Even a young Maurice Sendak took a crack at the famous story when Doubleday included it in an anthology in 1960. Meryl Streep recorded an audiobook of the story in 1986 and received a Grammy nomination.
Why has “The Velveteen Rabbit” survived a century while so many other children’s books of that period landed in the dustbin of history? “The one essential thing the writer must have,” Margery Williams explained, “is a real and genuine conviction about his subject. … It has got to be real to him. He must believe in it himself, or no one else will. He has got to write it out of sheer enjoyment or not at all.”
Yes, the story is sentimental and the language is at times difficult for young readers. Yet it possesses a power unlike the run-of-the-mill children’s book of today and its own day.
“Like so many of the classics of children’s literature, ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ takes up all the great existential mysteries in the safe space of ‘once upon a time,’” explains Maria Tatar, a Harvard professor specializing in fairy tales. “Love and loss, abandonment and suffering, and, yes, even death and resurrection are folded into this compact narrative that shows us how love can conquer darkness and animate us when we feel lost and vulnerable.”
But what of the threat, near the end of the book, to burn the beloved Velveteen Rabbit? Was it going to be for the Boy’s own good, just as Pamela Bianco’s beloved “Tubbies” were put away for her own good?
In the end, could the rabbit be seen as a metaphor for Pamela Bianco herself? This remarkably talented child was no more than a curiosity, an intellectual plaything for art critics, dealers, journalists and parents, until she became a Real Artist. Pamela eventually went off on her own, while Margery remained mired in the world of children. Therein may lie the true transforming and sometimes cruel power of Love.
Michael Patrick Hearn is a literary scholar who specializes in children’s literature and its illustration. His works include “The Annotated Wizard of Oz,” “The Annotated Christmas Carol” and “The Annotated Huckleberry Finn.” | 2022-12-22T12:36:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Velveteen Rabbit at 100: How did the book come about? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/12/22/velveteen-rabbit-anniversary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/12/22/velveteen-rabbit-anniversary/ |
Self-Driving Cars Are a Natural Fit for Rural America
On a recent Friday evening, a white Toyota Sienna minivan with a cylindrical sensor mounted on its roof slowed to a stop in front of the only hospital in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, population 11,000. The door opened, and I took a seat behind the driver: a computer rack mounted in place of the passenger seat. Next to it was a friendly young operator who sits behind the steering wheel and ensures that this self-driving rideshare doesn’t suddenly skid into a snowbank or a pedestrian. Then we were on the way, passengers in the first autonomous vehicle pilot to run in a cold and icy rural environment.
Rural Americans aren’t the most obvious early adopters for robo-taxis. But right now they need transit innovations far more than people in more densely populated communities, and are far more willing to accept them. For autonomous technology companies, that’s an opportunity to establish the reliability and usefulness of technologies that have struggled to gain acceptance in cities and suburbs. In Grand Rapids, one of those companies, May Mobility Inc., is partnering with government and the community to make that market real. If they succeed, self-driving technologies will have earned a powerful business case, and millions of rural Americans will have a ride.
The Demographics Problem
In 2021, 20% of the 46 million rural Americans were over the age of 65, compared to 16% of Americans in urban areas. Those rural Americans were, on average, poorer than their counterparts in urban areas — and more likely to be disabled. However, even rural seniors who can afford a car and are physically able to drive one are disinclined to get behind the wheel as they grow older.
In cities and suburbs, public transit buses can meet some of these needs. But due to their low population density, rural areas are more difficult and expensive to serve well, especially in the evenings and during weekends. For example, the last bus departs Grand Rapids’ only hospital at 3:20 p.m.; anyone with a late afternoon or evening appointment must rely on expensive non-emergency medical transport or a taxi to go home. That intermittent service typically hits those least able to afford it: In the US, 87% of the least revenue-efficient (defined as revenue per passenger mile) bus services are located in rural communities. Of those, 80% are located in communities with median incomes below the poverty line.
Transit Equity
In 2019, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz appointed a council to study and advise on challenges related to new transportation technologies, including autonomous vehicles. Myrna Peterson, a quadriplegic disability advocate from Grand Rapids was one of the first appointments. “A while back I started asking why people weren’t at things like community events,” she told me at a Grand Rapids community center she reached via the city’s autonomous shuttle service. “No transport, especially in the evening and weekends. That’s something we need to be independent.”
Around this time, May Mobility, an autonomous shuttle company based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was looking for a rural community “where we could really demonstrate that we could help,” explains Edwin Olson, May’s chief executive officer, in a phone call. The help, as Olson views it, comes down to replacing or supplementing low-performing buses with May’s on-demand, point-to-point, autonomous shuttles. Olson tells me the cost of May’s shuttles are on par with typically inefficient rural bus services, while providing better service hours and lower wait and trip times.
Much, but not all of the time, that service will be autonomous. GoMarti’s Siennas are equipped with technology (Level 4 automation, in industry parlance) that enables them to drive in most conditions without a human taking over. However, for safety purposes, a human operator remains behind the wheel — mostly observing, not unlike an airline pilot on a highly automated passenger jet — in case conditions, such as iced-over roads, poor visibility, or a roundabout, require it. Over time, performance should improve and the role of the human operator will become less relevant. But even if the vehicles reach a point where they can operate in a white-out blizzard, it’s likely that an operator will remain present to help elderly and disabled passengers access the vehicles. For example, automated securement of wheelchairs remains an extremely difficult technical problem that’s unlikely to be solved soon. For May, the cost of the operator, now and for the foreseeable future, is figured into the model, at least in Grand Rapids.
Minnesota’s Autonomous Rural Transit Initiative (goMARTI), an 18-month, roughly $3.6 million demonstration (half funded by the state of Minnesota with the rest coming from public and private sponsors) began running in September in Grand Rapids. The service offers five specially outfitted Toyota Siennas, three of which are wheelchair accessible and compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The shuttles are free, and can be requested using an app or by calling a dispatch center.
Snowbank Encounters
On a recent evening I took several goMARTI rides around Grand Rapids, getting a look at the town and the service. It was a seamless and often dull experience. I watched the shuttle change lanes, turn, stop at stop signs and even negotiate busy intersections. It really didn’t feel much different from being a passenger in a regular car.
Then there’s the Minnesota weather. On particularly cold days, tailpipe exhaust can look like “mobile obstacles” to autonomous vehicle sensors. Snow and ice present more obvious challenges. Human operators take over when roads are coated. Yet even when the roads are clear, the vehicles struggle with other ubiquitous elements of winter. During one of my evening rides, a shuttle began to veer into a snowy shoulder, possibly confused by the road’s boundaries. Later that same evening, a shuttle dropped me off in a snowbank where, in warmer weather, a sidewalk would be.
Measures of Success
Longer term, questions about affordability will inevitably challenge whether such a program is worthwhile. GoMARTI is a free service, but transit subsidies are not unusual in rural or urban areas (New York City’s subway couldn’t operate without them). If, as May Mobility claims, the cost of providing autonomous services is competitive with the most inefficient transit services already offered in rural regions, the upgrade — even with an operator — is worthwhile. Minnesota and Grand Rapids aren’t the only places thinking this way. In Japan, the government and automakers have long viewed the country’s rapidly aging countryside as an important destination for autonomous vehicles; in France, a consortium of companies is preparing an autonomous shuttle program designed to revive its rural regions.
Meanwhile, in the US, the federal government and several universities have been examining rural autonomous transport for years. GoMARTI’s success or failure won’t make or break any of those programs and pilots. But with each ride, it’s building the case for networks of autonomous vehicles serving residents of rural communities, in the US and beyond.
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• Amazon Will Take Robot Cars to a Whole New Level: Alex Webb | 2022-12-22T12:37:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Self-Driving Cars Are a Natural Fit for Rural America - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/self-driving-cars-are-a-natural-fit-for-rural-america/2022/12/22/f9b18b4e-81f0-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/self-driving-cars-are-a-natural-fit-for-rural-america/2022/12/22/f9b18b4e-81f0-11ed-8738-ed7217de2775_story.html |
Hidden Planet
The frigid air may immobilize cold-blooded animals, including invasive iguanas in Florida and endangered green sea turtles in Texas
A stunned iguana lies in the grass at Cherry Creek Park in Oakland Park, Fla., on Jan. 22, 2020. (Joe Cavaretta/AP)
Watch out for falling iguanas in South Florida this Christmas. Seriously.
This week, a massive storm system is forecast to bring blizzard conditions, wind chills and Arctic cold to the Lower 48. Nearly 70 million people are under winter storm watches or warnings in the Midwest, Great Lakes and Appalachians, while 90 million are under wind chill alerts.
The frigid air is also expected to immobilize coldblooded animals. Iguanas sleeping in trees may lose their grip and drop to the ground. Sea turtles may stun and blow ashore from Texas to New England.
As Arctic air blasts U.S., see how far and fast temperatures will fall
“You change the environment, and the organisms that are going to feel it first and hardest are the ectotherms [coldblooded animals] because their entire fitness is thermally dependent,” said Martha Muñoz, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University.
As temperatures drop, wildlife experts are preparing to rescue and observe the effects of the frigid cold on some of the reptiles that could be affected.
It’s raining lizards — at least until they adapt
This weekend, much of Florida is expected to dip into the 30s. Most lizards in Miami, introduced from warmer climates in Central and South America, find it too cold to move once air temperatures dip below about 45 degrees Fahrenheit.
Sea turtles, snakes and other reptiles are known to experience cold-stunning during frosty weather, but raining iguanas are unique to South Florida.
Sometimes, the National Weather Service in Miami issues announcements for “falling iguanas” to emphasize the severe cold and let people know the lizards are not, in fact, dead. But the freeze is temporary most of the time. When temperatures rise, some wake up and resume their normal activities. In the past, people have loaded the frozen iguanas, thinking they were dead, in the back of a car to harvest their meat, only to have the lizards thaw and attack. (So perhaps, don’t do that.)
“Some other lizards are also known to fall out of trees as iguanas do, but they don’t get the publicity that a five-foot lizard does,” said Jonathan Losos, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
But researchers and animal experts say the cold spells don’t seem to incapacitate the iguanas like they used to, suggesting that animals are adapting to the chilly weather. People may still see iguanas dropping during the upcoming cold blast, but not as many as two to three decades ago, said Zoo Miami’s Ron Magill.
“With each year when we get a cold streak, I see less and less of those iguanas falling out of trees and being cold-stunned … and it’s not because there are less and less iguanas,” Magill said. “It’s just indicative that these animals are, in fact, adapting. Less and less of them are succumbing to this type of temperature differential.”
Iguanas, like all coldblooded animals, cannot generate their own heat; their internal temperature matches that of their surroundings. To help survive colder weather, they slow down body processes including blood flow and circulation and their heartbeat to the point where it might stop. Magill said they turn from a bright green to a dark gray or black, and their eyes will be sunken in. If they don’t warm up soon enough, they could die.
“When you have a big freeze, the iguanas who don’t survive don’t pass on those genes,” Magill said. “Iguanas that have managed to survive, whether it be by getting into the water or getting underground, figuring out a way to kind of insulate themselves from the cold, they pass that gene on.”
Studies confirm that some lizards are getting better at handling the biting temperatures. In one study, a team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis led by Losos collected lizards in Miami after Florida experienced its coldest night in a decade in January 2020. The team found multiple lizard species were able to now tolerate much lower temperatures — about four to 10 degrees colder than previously.
Another study looked at thermal tolerances and genomes of green anole lizards that survived an extreme cold event in Texas during the winter of 2013-2014. The team found the southern lizards possessed gene expressions similar to those of northern populations, which experience cold blasts more often. The green anole lizards experienced rapid selection and evolution to tolerate the cold blast.
“It’s not uncommon to observe rapid physiological adaptation to the cold,” Muñoz said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a universal outcome or a foregone conclusion, but it can and does happen.”
But the rapid adaptations in the iguana population are bad news for Floridians, Magill said. Iguanas, like many invasive species in the state, are pests. They devour native plants and pass on parasites to wildlife and humans. If approached, they can also scratch or tail-whip people. For those reasons, he warned against approaching any stunned lizards.
“A long cold spell is one of the best weapons we have against them,” Magill said. “Let nature take its course.”
Stunned sea turtles are increasing
Other reptiles do not appear to be adapting to the cold temperatures as well as the lizards, though.
In recent years, large quantities of endangered green sea turtles in Texas have washed up on shore during extreme cold blasts. During the historic winter storm in February 2021, around 13,000 turtles were cold stunned, and around 4,000 of those turtles lived. Another 300 cold-stunned turtles were rescued during a cold spell in February.
The sea turtle cold-stunning event this weekend is expected to be at least as bad as February, when hundreds were stunned, but not as bad as the 2021 event that impacted thousands, according to a predictive model by Philippe Tissot at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. The event is expected to start Friday and continue through at least Saturday and Sunday, he wrote in an email. Temperatures in the upper Laguna Madre in Texas as expected to dip as low as 40 degrees; the sea turtles start to lose function below 50 degrees.
“They’re not adapting,” said Donna Shaver, chief of sea turtle science and recovery for the National Park Service at Padre Island National Seashore.
Shaver said more stunning events have occurred in recent years but added that could be due to more green turtles in the area. As populations have grown, she said some of the green turtles around Padre Island may also have traveled from farther south, where they likely aren’t adapted to cold blasts.
Shaver and her team are already preparing for this weekend’s potential stunning event. They look along bays where winds can blow the stunned turtles ashore, enlisting the help of other government partners, volunteers, boaters or anyone in the community who sees one. The turtles are brought back to Shaver’s lab to warm up and then are released when safe. She said if the turtles are not found quickly enough, they could be attacked in their stunned state by birds or coyotes. Those that are severely damaged are euthanized and sent for research.
“We just have to go out there and rescue them and recover as many as we can,” said Shaver, who serves as the Texas coordinator of the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network. | 2022-12-22T12:37:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Winter storm may cause iguanas to drop from trees and stun sea turtles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/22/cold-iguanas-florida-falling-sea-turtles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/22/cold-iguanas-florida-falling-sea-turtles/ |
A mom wrongly said the book showed pedophilia. School libraries banned it.
How misinformation about “Lawn Boy,” a book that was never intended for children, made it the second-most contested book last year.
Parents across the nation took to school board meetings to comment on the book “Lawn Boy,” the second-most challenged book of 2021. (Video: The Washington Post)
Brandi Burkman arrived at the Texas school board meeting with a printed speech, a plastic-sheeted library book and a swelling sense of fury.
The 43-year-old mother of three approached the podium at the Sept. 9, 2021, meeting of the Leander Independent School District board with her 16-year-old son in tow. As Burkman began to speak, the teen hoisted white posters scrawled with sentences in black marker. They were taken from the book he’d discovered a week earlier in his AP English classroom and brought home for supplemental reading: “Lawn Boy,” a novel by Jonathan Evison.
Burkman’s three-minute speech recounted passages that describe a sexual encounter between two 10-year-old boys. Quoting pages 19, 91, 174 and 230, she told the roomful of adults how the boys meet in the bushes after a church youth group gathering, touch each other’s penises and progress to oral sex.
“What sort of diversity are you intending to teach my child with material like this?” Burkman asked, her voice shaking, her son expressionless. “Who normalizes sex acts between fourth-graders?”
She did not wait for an answer: “I’ll tell you who. Pedophiles.”
Burkman’s remarks set off a tsunami of condemnation that, a year later, would see the book “Lawn Boy” challenged in at least 35 school districts spanning 20 states and temporarily removed from shelves in almost half those places, according to a Washington Post analysis. Most of those districts — 63 percent — later returned the text to shelves after a review, while at least four banned the book for good. The plethora of complaints, 87 percent of which were brought by parents, The Post found, rendered “Lawn Boy” the second-most challenged book of 2021, according to the American Library Association.
The complaints against “Lawn Boy” came amid a historic nationwide spike in schoolbook challenges and bans as conflicts simmer over what to teach about race, racism, history, sex and gender. Already, 25 states have passed laws restricting what teachers can say about these topics or limiting the rights of transgender students at school, a Post analysis previously found.
“Lawn Boy” is in many ways the quintessential target for the book-banning movement: It is a coming-of-age novel centered on a gay character of color, Mexican American Mike Muñoz. The thousands of books targeted for school removal in the past two school years were overwhelmingly written by and about people of color and LGBTQ individuals, according to the American Library Association and PEN America.
“Lawn Boy,” and the people who targeted it, also illustrate how misinformation germinates. Days after Burkman’s speech, a Virginia mother inspired by her comments falsely asserted during a school board meeting that “Lawn Boy” depicts a sexual encounter between an adult man and a 10-year-old. Her claim, caught on video, was repeated on social media and in news reports and magnified by prominent politicians, spawning pedophilia claims in nearly a dozen school districts, The Post found.
The saga of “Lawn Boy” further shows how concerns about public education spread, fueled by conservative media coverage, political speeches and advocacy from religious and parents’ rights groups. In response, mothers and fathers across the country scoured their school library catalogues, signed up for public comment at school board meetings and filed challenges against books.
And what happened to “Lawn Boy” reveals the little room left for nuance or forgiveness in the American political debate. Evison, the author, never meant for his book to be placed in school libraries, he told The Post in an interview. He was surprised when the American Library Association gave “Lawn Boy” an award in 2019 for its appeal to teens. Evison believes some librarians who chose the novel did so because of the award — and he says that, if any recommended it to lower- or middle-schoolers, they probably confused it with the children’s book “Lawn Boy,” by Gary Paulsen. (The Post found no documented cases in which this confusion happened.)
Mandy Peterson, a leader of the Nebraska School Librarians Association, said book acquisitions often stem from American Library Association recommendations: “We check those awards lists on the day that they come out.” She said librarians usually cross-reference the association’s suggestions with professional review sites such as the School Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews, both of which gave “Lawn Boy” high marks. Peterson said she does not know of any librarians who confused Evison’s book with Paulsen’s. But a few months ago, she noticed many commenters online giving Paulsen’s book bad reviews for pedophilia.
Evison said his novel, an exploration of racial assumptions and the failures of late capitalism, is meant for adults. If schools want to offer the text, he said, they should restrict access to older students.
“Nobody below a teenager is ready for that book,” Evison said. “It’s got a lot of adult stuff.”
Burkman did not know Evison’s feelings when she stood at the podium in Texas that warm September night. Informed during an interview, she said that she does not much care. What matters is that the book is still available in schools, she said — including in her own district, which never removed the text because Burkman, distrustful of the system, never filed a formal challenge.
Burkman said she did not mean to kick-start a nationwide push to eradicate “Lawn Boy.” But she’s glad it happened. A devout Catholic, she said she sees more than coincidence at work.
“Out of all the kids to bring that one home, out of all of the books ...” she paused. “I’m the mom that he brought it home to.”
‘Is this a problem just in Texas?’
On the Friday before 9/11 last year, Stacy Langton was cooking dinner and half-watching “Spicer & C0.,” a television show hosted by President Donald Trump’s former press secretary. Then something made Langton, a 53-year-old parent of six, pause and stare at the television screen mounted above her pantry.
It was the voice of Brandi Burkman, railing against “Lawn Boy” at the Leander school board meeting.
“Well, what the heck?” Langton, a stay-at-home mother in Northern Virginia, recalls thinking. “Is this a problem just in Texas?”
The next day, Langton checked out the book from her son’s high school library in Fairfax County. She kept the novel locked in her car and brought it out for perusal only after her children — including her youngest, age 7 at the time — had gone to bed.
She zeroed-in on the same scene of oral sex that troubled Burkman in Texas. She became convinced, wrongly, that “Lawn Boy” shows fellatio taking place between an adult and a boy. In fact, the book describes a man in his 20s meeting another man in his 20s and remembering the consensual sexual encounter they shared in fourth grade.
Langton wanted to protect the children of Fairfax County. Inspired by Burkman’s example, she called the school district and asked how to speak at the next board meeting, which she’d never done before. Two weeks later, she was standing at a podium, waving her copy of “Lawn Boy” and shouting.
This “book describes a fourth-grade boy performing oral sex on an adult male,” she said. “Pornography is offensive to all people! It is offensive to common decency!”
Langton later submitted a formal complaint and, after conducting a review, the Fairfax school district denied her requests to yank the book from shelves.
But she had a more lasting effect elsewhere: supercharging the debate over “Lawn Boy” by taking it national.
Her speech received coverage from mainstream outlets, including The Washington Post, and drove an explosion of stories from conservative media. A Post analysis shows that, in the month following Langton’s remarks, right-wing shows and sites produced at least 13 articles or episodes criticizing “Lawn Boy.” Overall, 64 percent of conservative stories and shows produced between September 2021 and early October 2022 that negatively referenced “Lawn Boy” also pointed to Langton’s speech, The Post found. At least 31 repeated Langton’s contention that the book depicts pedophilia.
“The novel ‘Lawn Boy’ contains graphic depictions of sex between men and children,” Tucker Carlson said falsely on his namesake Fox News show in September, shortly after referencing Langton’s efforts to ban the book. “So why are they pushing this on kids? Well, of course to prime them for sexual exploitation.”
And parents nationwide were paying attention.
It is impossible to say precisely how each of the 30-plus adults who challenged “Lawn Boy” became aware of the book. The Post attempted to contact every person who criticized “Lawn Boy” during a school board meeting or filed a formal complaint, additionally analyzing school video footage and documents. Many did not respond.
Still, Burkman and Langton, and news coverage of their activism, played a significant role.
The Post was able to determine the source of concern for 12 complaints brought against “Lawn Boy.” In half of the cases, parents said they grew worried about “Lawn Boy” due to the book receiving “national attention” or by reading “national news reports.” Three of those parents pointed specifically to Burkman’s or Langton’s activism. Three parents mentioned hearing about the book from politicians, one from a neighbor, and two parents, including Burkman, said their child spontaneously checked out the text.
Langton inspired Mary Ellen Cuzela, a 50-year-old mother and substitute teacher in Texas’s Katy Independent School District, to check out “Lawn Boy” from her public library. Deeming the book "well-written but ... R-rated,” she persuaded her school district to permanently yank the novel in October 2021, an account confirmed by local news reporting. The district did not respond to requests for comment.
“This is not about canceling people or being insensitive to someone’s walk in this life," said Cuzela, who had never challenged a title before. “It’s about removing sexually explicit, vulgar material from schools.”
In North Carolina, father of three Chad Slotta said he decided to challenge “Lawn Boy” in the Wake County Public School system after reading about a push to remove the book nationwide and in Virginia — likely including Langton’s efforts, although he cannot remember precisely. He bought and read “Lawn Boy,” which he found graphic and obscene.
“My wife and I heard these stories and were curious about what was going on in our own children’s schools,” Slotta said. (Wake County officials later decided not to remove the book.)
Of the 38 parent speeches and challenges against “Lawn Boy” identified by The Post — some of which were filed within the same district — at least nine include false assertions that “Lawn Boy” depicts an encounter between a man and a boy.
“This one is about pedophilia,” Florida parent Alicia Farrant announced to Florida’s Orange County Public Schools board at a Nov. 9, 2021, meeting. Farrant, who did not respond to requests for comment, repeated the charge in a formal complaint she filed against “Lawn Boy.” Under a question in that document asking what she’d done to review the book, Farrant wrote: “I watched another mom discuss the book.”
Today, Langton acknowledges that she was wrong about the pedophilia. She said it is “unfortunate ... if there are other parents who have gone to school board meetings and repeated that particular misconception.”
But if given the chance, she said, she would do everything again. Exactly the same way.
‘How to blow the whistle’
Conservative politicians and activists were close behind parents.
It began with Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin (R). At a debate five days after Langton’s speech, Youngkin called attention to “Lawn Boy,” listing it as an example of school officials refusing to listen to parents.
“In Fairfax County this past week,” he said, “we watched parents so upset because there was sexually explicit material in the library they had never seen. It was shocking.” The next day, the Youngkin team pasted video of Langton’s board-meeting assertion that “Lawn Boy” contains pedophilia into a campaign advertisement, which appeared on television and YouTube, where it garnered 56,000 views.
A week later, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson in North Carolina posted a Facebook video in which he asserted sexually explicit materials are infecting schools and cited three texts as proof. One of them was “Lawn Boy.”
“These materials,” he said in a clip seen nearly a half-million times, “do not belong in public schools.”
Sixteen days after that, Texas Rep. Matt Krause (R) included “Lawn Boy” on a list of 850 objectionable books he flagged to the Texas Education Agency in late October. The next month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered a criminal probe into “pornography” in school libraries, pointing to “Lawn Boy.” Not long afterward, Oklahoma State Attorney General John O’Connor announced he was reviewing 54 books, including “Lawn Boy,” to see “if they violate the state’s obscenity law.”
And in late March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) mentioned the book while signing a law that grants parents greater control over the selection and removal of textbooks and school library books. Lauding the new legislation, DeSantis repeated a falsehood that had originated several-hundred miles north and six months back with Virginia mother Langton.
“‘Lawn Boy,’ a book containing explicit passages of pedophilia, is somehow accepted as being okay,” DeSantis said.
Youngkin, Krause, Abbott and O’Connor did not respond to detailed lists of questions. DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin sent a one-sentence email: “If you don’t see an issue with the content of the book Lawn Boy being in kindergarten through third grade classrooms, then you have exemplified the problem.”
A spokesman for Robinson said the lieutenant governor first heard of “Lawn Boy” in October 2021, when someone submitted a complaint against the book to an online portal Robinson’s office maintains to uphold classroom “fairness and accountability.” After Robinson “shined a light” on the title, the spokesman said, North Carolina schools pulled the book from online catalogues — but “it is hard to say exactly how many.”
The Post’s analysis shows that at least three school districts in Texas saw challenges of “Lawn Boy” due to politicians’ actions. In November, a mother in the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District argued for removing “Lawn Boy” and several other books after communicating with Rep. Krause about the titles, she said. The next month, school officials in the North East Independent School District said they opted to reconsider “Lawn Boy” after seeing Abbott single-out the book as inappropriate. And this February, two parents in the McKinney Independent School District complained about 282 books — “Lawn Boy” among them — all of which appeared on Krause’s list.
Meanwhile, advocacy groups were spreading the word, too.
The founder and president of parents’ rights group No Left Turn in Education, Elana Yaron Fishbein, said that, over the course of 2021, she communicated her worries about “Lawn Boy” to the several dozen chapters of No Left Turn in Education established across 27 states.
“Our volunteers sought out the books in their local school districts and when they found the book was present in the schools, they demanded they be removed,” she emailed The Post. “Our volunteers challenged this book in approximately 20 school boards including KY, MO, PA, GA, WI, GA, and others.”
She declined to share the names of the 20 school districts or to review The Post’s list of school challenges and say whether her volunteers were responsible.
A spike in threats and sales
Jonathan Evison is not sure how to feel.
In the first days after Burkman’s speech, as video of her remarks accumulated more than 30,000 views on TikTok and YouTube, Evison received a flurry of death threats and messages calling him a “pedophile,” mostly through Facebook. Those didn’t bother him much — but the strangers who vowed sexual attacks on his daughters did. He set his accounts to private.
Evison is not sure he disagrees with all the criticisms of his book. “Too profane? I’ll own that, fine, who cares. My mother would heartily agree.”
But he defends the passages showing the sexual encounter between 10-year-olds. That account, he says, marks a pivotal step in the protagonist’s process of coming out to his best friend Nick, who is racist and homophobic. Muñoz is using coarse language to power himself through a moment of extreme vulnerability, Evison said.
He also questions the motives of some parents. He suspects they “don’t like a marginalized, non-White, non-cisgender character trying to be comfortable and find their place in the culture. I think the end game of these people is they want to keep the status quo, and the best way to do that is not to have these stories told.”
He is heartened, he said, by The Post’s finding that most school districts returned the book to shelves.
He also noted that sales of “Lawn Boy” have spiked massively in the past year: The paperback edition has now sold 100 percent more than it did during its first print run in 2018.
Evison declined to give specific numbers. But, he said, the book has gone into four extra printings since Burkman’s school board speech in Texas.
The Post tallied the number of school challenges, temporary removals and permanent bans of “Lawn Boy” in a roughly one-year period by reviewing public databases compiled by nonprofit groups PEN America and EveryLibrary. The Post also conducted its own independent research by reviewing more than 3,000 news articles, at least 50 school district websites and more than 150 social media accounts maintained by school districts, school employees and parents.
In every case where The Post identified an incident concerning “Lawn Boy,” The Post contacted the school district to verify the details. In every case, The Post also attempted to contact and interview the parent(s), teacher(s) or school administrator(s) who complained about the book. If The Post was unable to verify a book challenge, removal or ban, The Post removed that incident from the tally.
Additionally, The Post tallied politicians’ negative comments about and actions taken against “Lawn Boy” between September 2021 and September 2022, as well as the number of articles critiquing “Lawn Boy” published by conservative news outlets in the same period. | 2022-12-22T12:37:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lawn Boy didn't depict pedophilia. It was widely banned anyway. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/22/lawn-boy-book-ban-pedophilia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/22/lawn-boy-book-ban-pedophilia/ |
With student-debt relief in limbo, borrowers must spend or save refunds
Student-loan activists rally outside the White House the day after President Biden announced his debt forgiveness plan. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Tiffany Wilson had the plan all worked out: request a refund of the $16,000 she used to pay off her student loans during the pandemic. Then, apply for President Biden’s debt-relief program to cancel up to $20,000 in federal student-loan debt. That way, she could keep her $16,000 and still have her balance wiped.
But that plan took a turn as legal challenges threw Biden’s program into limbo. Now as the fate of the program rests in the hands of the Supreme Court, Wilson, 38, said she suspects she will have to return every dollar of her refund.
“It’s a good thing I saved all the money,” said Wilson, a state employee in North Carolina. “I was always a little skeptical [the debt relief program] would happen, and now I have no hope.”
With Biden’s student-loan cancellation policy up in the air, borrowers like Wilson who received refunds are abandoning plans of building their savings or buying homes, and they now are preparing for what many see as the inevitable demise of the president’s program. In interviews with a dozen borrowers, nearly all have stashed away their refunds in savings accounts, hoping to earn interest on the money before sending it back to the Education Department.
Although the federal agency has offered to return money to people who continued to pay since the start of the moratorium in March 2020, the policy went largely unnoticed until Biden announced his debt-relief plan. At the time, the Education Department said eligible borrowers who paid off some or all of their debt during the pause could still qualify for cancellation if they met the income threshold — $125,000 per year or less than $250,000 for married couples.
The confirmation resulted in a surge in refund requests at the companies managing the federal government’s $1.6 trillion in student loans. Those student-loan servicers told The Washington Post in September that they were inundated with tens of thousands of inquiries. The influx of requests resulted in a backlog at some student-loan servicers. Still, checks began rolling in for many borrowers in the past few weeks.
Wilson received eight separate payments refunding her money in October. She had planned to use some of the funds to renovate her home and save the rest, but she is now resigned to start from scratch toward those goals. For the past few years, Wilson has aggressively paid down the $35,000 in student loans she acquired for a bachelor’s degree from the University of Mount Olive in North Carolina.
“I put myself on a strict budget and was throwing every last dollar at that debt,” Wilson said. “The likelihood of having to return the money doesn’t really affect my financial plans too much, since I’m used to scrimping and saving. But I was really proud of seeing that $16,000 in my savings account. I’ve never had that much money put aside in my life.” | 2022-12-22T12:37:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | With student loan forgiveness halted, borrowers are saving their refunds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/22/student-loan-refund-debt-cancellation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/22/student-loan-refund-debt-cancellation/ |
The FTX scandal looks like a new twist on an old problem
There are parallels to the collapse of the Charitable Corporation, a financial scandal that rocked 18th-century London
Perspective by Amy Froide
Amy Froide is professor of history at UMBC and currently on fellowship leave at the Huntington Library.
Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX Trading Limited, speaks during a congressional hearing on "Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States" on Dec. 8, 2021. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The swift collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the arrest of its founder Sam Bankman-Fried could lead one to think that the complexities of crypto are at the root of the company’s collapse. But a closer look reveals that FTX’s implosion could allegedly be nothing more than simple fraud, the type that has flourished in unregulated markets and industries since the dawn of Anglo-American financial capitalism.
The collapse of the Charitable Corporation, a financial scandal that rocked 18th-century London, is an early example of the type of corporate mismanagement and embezzlement that still rears its head with surprising frequency and exemplifies a historical pattern where regulation and oversight are always far behind financial innovation. Corporate power has also stayed concentrated in too few hands, something that the “boy genius” model of entrepreneurship only exacerbates in the present day. And lastly, the continual cozy relationship between politics and capital only serves to abet, rather than root out, fraud.
The Charitable Corporation was established in London in 1707 “for the relief of the industrious poor by assisting them with small sums at legal interest.” This company was created to protect poor tradesmen from predatory pawnbrokers who charged 30 percent interest. Lack of access to easy credit at reasonable rates hurt small tradesmen, which in turn hurt Britain, known as a “nation of shopkeepers.” As an alternative, the corporation provided loans at the average rate of 5 percent in return for a pledge of property for security.
The Charitable Corporation was something new, a Protestant example of the Catholic Monti di Pietà (a charitable fund established to combat usury, or high rates of interest).
In 18th-century Britain, however, the institution was created not as a nonprofit, but as a business venture. The enterprise was funded by offering shares to public investors. Since the trading of public stocks and government securities had emerged as a new avenue for capital, the British were continually looking for new companies in which to invest.
There were two reasons the Charitable Corporation seems to have appealed to investors: The first was that an investor in it could turn a profit while also doing good, and the second was the attractive 10 percent dividends the Charitable Corporation paid out.
But in 1725, a new board of directors diverted the Charitable Corporation from its original mission. These men made the corporation their own piggy bank, taking money from it to buy shares in and prop up their other companies. At the same time the company’s employees began to engage in fraud: Safety checks ceased, books were kept irregularly and pledges went unrecorded. Investigators would find that £200,000 (about $53.4 million in today’s money) went out on loan on fictitious pledges.
In the fall of 1731, rumors began to circulate about the Charitable Corporation, and one of its officers, John Thompson, hid the company’s books and fled to continental Europe.
The General Court of shareholders (held quarterly in this period as opposed to today’s annual corporate meetings) came to find money, pledges and accounts all missing. At this point, the shareholders appealed to Parliament for redress and intriguingly one-third of the petitioners were women. Although women were always a significant minority of public investors in early-18th-century Britain, they represented an impressive third of the investors in the Charitable Corporation, perhaps because it was thought of as a business doing social good.
The House of Commons quickly launched an investigation. While some lip service was paid to the poor tradesmen who may have also been defrauded, the major focus was on the company’s shareholders.
Parliament’s investigation of the Charitable Corporation scandal ended with criminal charges against some of its officers, the estates of all the managers being seized and two of its directors being expelled from the House of Commons.
The British government provided a partial bailout to the shareholders, with creditors and proprietors getting back only 40 percent of what they lost. However, no rules or regulations were put in place to ensure such a fraud would not happen again. It was treated as an isolated incident.
The Charitable Corporation scandal of 1732 and the recent FTX collapse share several elements. The corporation was an 18th-century innovation. No one in Britain was providing low-interest loans to the working poor, and the British were the first to create a for-profit corporation to do so. In much the same way, FTX’s Bankman-Fried enjoyed a reputation as a crypto entrepreneur and a leading spokesman for the new industry on the Hill.
Second, in both cases management was centralized into the hands of a few people with lax oversight. While the Charitable Corporation’s charter called for a committee of 12 managers, in the 1720s a partnership of five took over and began to engage in a confederacy of fraud. The corporation did hold quarterly board meetings, but the shareholders never asked to see the books, or for regular audits or for any inspections of the warehouses that held the pledges.
FTX’s management was even more centralized into the hands of one man, its founder. James Bromley, a restructuring attorney for FTX, notes it was “run effectively as a personal fiefdom of Sam Bankman-Fried.”
Central to the Charitable Corporation fraud was the siphoning of shareholder capital by the directors to speculate in other companies. According to prosecutors, something similar occurred at FTX, where Bankman-Fried allegedly took customer deposits in his exchange and funneled them to shore up his separate company Alameda, which traded in cryptocurrencies.
In both cases, news of the alleged fraud comes as a complete surprise, with little advance warning. Trading on political and social connections may have delayed the alleged fraud’s exposure.
The Charitable Corporation’s directors included moneyed and elite men as well as powerful politicians. FTX’s founder (despite all his tech-bro dishevelment) also enjoyed useful connections — including his Stanford Law professor parents and the celebrities who touted his company.
Bankman-Fried also hobnobbed with politicians on Capitol Hill, where he both testified before Congress and lobbied for the crypto industry. Bankman-Fried’s chumminess with political leaders echoes how the Charitable Corporation put members of Parliament in its directorship, who then helped the company gain a royal license to enlarge its capital.
Finally, it is the philanthropic overtones of these companies that really tie together these scandals separated by three centuries.
The Charitable Corporation’s name announced its purpose. Promoters noted the benefit it provided to the poor who suffered from lack of credit at reasonable rates. However, the “uncharitable” gentlemen, as the press deemed the directors, ending up swindling rather than helping people.
FTX’s founder Bankman-Fried also had charitable aspirations. He is a vocal proponent of effective altruism or E.A., a philosophy indebted to 18th-century utilitarianism, that argues that making money is good because it can then be donated to the most effective causes.
Yet despite such talk and aspirations, in both cases, these operations were accused of having mismanagement and fraud at their core. In fact, fraud has been endemic to unregulated markets and industries since the first years of trading stocks in the coffeehouses of late-17th-century London.
The public has allegedly been duped again, largely due to our captivation with novelty, our desire for quick money and Anglo-American capitalism’s resistance to regulation of new and highly profitable companies and industries.
We treat fraud as an unfortunate (and always surprising) but perhaps acceptable byproduct of our financial system. If most investors are doing well, some will be sacrificed. It has long been, and continues to be, the price for doing business. | 2022-12-22T12:37:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The FTX scandal looks like a new twist on an old problem - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/22/ftx-scandal-looks-like-new-twist-an-old-problem/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/22/ftx-scandal-looks-like-new-twist-an-old-problem/ |
Today’s Santa Claus is rooted in American mythology
America’s Santa Claus combined consumerism, ecumenical religion and the bond between parent and child
Perspective by M.A. Davis
A child meets Santa Claus on Dec. 3. at the La Porte County Fairgrounds in Indiana. (Amanda Haverstick/La Porte County Herald-Dispatch/AP)
Santa Claus is an American. This news may surprise readers who know he lives at the North Pole (where an American artist, Thomas Nast, put him in Christmas 1866) or who remember that the historical St. Nicholas lived in what’s now Turkey. But the modern Santa Claus we know, with his sleigh and his reindeer and his roots in St. Nicholas, was born with the United States in the early republic, when U.S. citizens sought to build a new kind of national mythology.
On Dec. 23, 1773, in New York City, Santa Claus first appeared in print with an announcement by Rivington’s Gazetteer that “St. Nicholas, otherwise called St. a Claus …” had been honored by “a great number of sons of that ancient Saint.” “St. a Claus” was an Anglicization of the Dutch Sinterklass, and the Sons of St. Nicholas one of the many brotherly “saint’s societies” that dotted Colonial America. (While we have no other record of this particular society, fraternal organizations like this one usually functioned as places to socialize, do charity work and drink.)
War and revolution soon broke out, and meetings of the society seemingly ceased, but Santa Claus had already come to town. And in the aftermath of the American Revolution, he stayed, because Americans were searching to build a new identity, and St. Nicholas, a.k.a. “St. a Claus,” was an inheritance from the colonial Dutch past rather than the English — a perfect choice to rally around.
Washington Irving, the most important writer of the Early Republic, most famous today for his stories about the Headless Horseman and Rip Van Winkle, incorporated St. Nicholas into his 1809 “History of New York,” where a character sees “good St. Nicholas … riding over the tops of the trees, in that self-same wagon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children.” St. Nicholas is the mascot and patron saint of Colonial New York in Irving’s fictionalized take on New York history, a piece of beloved historical mythmaking read across the state and nation.
The most famous Santa Claus of the day came from Irving’s acquaintance Clement Clark Moore, who in 1822 wrote “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas,” generally remembered today for its first line — “Twas The Night Before Christmas.”
Moore’s St. Nick smoked a pipe and rode across the treetops with his rotund build and twinkling eyes. Moore’s poem was a hit, and soon became a fixture of American childhood across the country — as did Moore’s particular take on Santa Claus. (Ironically, the poem was reportedly originally published without his permission after a visitor to his home spotted it and copied it down. Perhaps Moore, a seminary teacher and scholar of classical literature, was hesitant to give his name to children’s literature.)
Christmas was changing across the industrializing West in the early 19th century, but Santa Claus wasn’t associated with adult revelry like Britain’s Father Christmas, and lacked the supporting cast of France’s Pere Noel or the Dutch St. Nicholas. So why did the American-born hero of Moore’s poem become such a hit? Because Santa Claus was a potent weapon in the fight to build a new American culture, combining consumerism, ecumenical religion and the bond between parent and child.
In the beginning, the Santa Claus of the early 19th century left a treat or a toy for good children — and a cane for spanking bad ones. In a time when corporal punishment was widely accepted, Santa Claus was no different than other authority figures. In one 1821 story, he tells children that if parents did use his cane to beat them, they were simply honoring the Bible’s message about sparing the rod and spoiling the child.
But by the middle of the century, Santa Claus had lost his edge, reflecting broader shifts in American culture. In the hands of Fanny Longfellow, Santa Claus became a gentle moralizer in the 1850s, telling the Longfellow sons that “I wish I could say you had been as good boys this year as last.” Elsewhere in America, mid-19th century newspaper letter writers urged their fellow citizens to reward even the children that “haven’t been quite as good children as they ought to have been.” The years leading up to the Civil War were a time when corporal punishment was on the decline and sentiment on the rise, where rewarding good children was more important than punishing bad ones. A kinder, gentler Santa Claus was the perfect vehicle for this new age.
If parenting was changing, so too was the population. It was an age when unprecedented numbers of German and Irish immigrants were transforming the ethnic makeup of the new nation. Anglo-Americans often took this badly, with the nativist, anti-Catholic Know-Nothing movement reaching its height in the 1850s, just as Santa was making it big. He was just the man to heal these divisions. Inspired by the Dutch colonial legacy, infused by German sentimentality, gradually stripped of the “saint” title that might have alarmed anti-Catholic nativists, Santa Claus was a figure for almost every American (those who celebrated Christmas, anyway) to appreciate.
The clash between Protestants and Catholics was not the only religious divide in antebellum America. The Second Great Awakening pitted revivalist churches against establishment denominations, with some Americans discarding religion altogether, and others embracing new religious movements like Spiritualism.
Santa Claus had meaning for almost everyone, regardless of their religious outlook. Some, like Spiritualist leader Andrew Jackson Davis, remembered their discovery of the truth behind Santa Claus as beginning their turn to “incorrigible skepticism” — while others, such as future Texas Gov. James Hogg, remembered childhood folk theologies like Santa Claus acting as God’s herald, commemorating a victory over the devil. In a nation divided on matters of faith, almost everyone who believed in Christmas could believe in Santa Claus.
When the Civil War came, Santa Claus assumed different meanings in the North and South. Thomas Nast created a patriotic Santa Claus for Northern audiences, decked out in the Stars and Stripes and bringing presents to the troops at the front. (Nast would later repurpose this Santa Claus with most of the wartime symbolism removed for a united nation after the war.)
Santa was a more controversial figure south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Though Santa was remembered sentimentally by some writers in the Confederacy, other writers took the opportunity of the war to reject old mythology. The Richmond Examiner announced to its readers that Santa was a “dutch toy-monger, an immigrant from England … who has no more to do with genuine Virginia hospitality and Christmas merry makings than a [racial slur denoting Africans].” (Not all Richmonders were so skeptical. The diarist Sallie A. Brock remembered after the war how “kind old Santa Claus” had brought the good works of White Richmond women to Confederate soldiers in the field.)
Santa Claus outlasted the Confederacy. By 1870, Christmas was a national holiday, and by the end of the century, the “dear old boy” was a sentimental favorite for Northerners and Southerners alike. A new national identity had been forged, an ecumenical, sentimental one with its roots in a diverse American past, prosperous commercial present and optimistic view of the future.
In many ways, the United States of today is very different than it was in the decades after the American Revolution — we’re more secular, more diverse and more connected, with a global Santa Claus industry that has long since escaped the world built for him by Washington Irving and Clement Clark Moore. But we’re still wrestling with the power of consumer capitalism in our lives, still trying to figure out how to build national symbols we can all rally around, and still working to teach our children how to be nice instead of naughty.
Maybe we still need Santa Claus today. | 2022-12-22T12:37:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Today’s Santa Claus is rooted in early American mythology - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/22/todays-santa-claus-is-rooted-american-mythology/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/22/todays-santa-claus-is-rooted-american-mythology/ |
Date Lab: The conversation took a macabre turn
By Vijai Nathan
Tom and Taylore met for dinner at Capa Tosta, an Italian restaurant in Columbia Heights. (Danielle Seiss/The Washington Post)
Dating had taken a back seat for Tom, 26, the past few years while he moved for work as a project manager in international agricultural development. When he recently settled in the area, he thought Date Lab would be “a great way to get familiar with the dating scene in D.C.” Authenticity is a trait that really draws him in. “Someone who is upfront and proud of who they are,” explained the Chicago native.
We set him up with Taylore, 26, who is a secretary at a law firm. She signed up on a lark when a group of friends said they would apply to Date Lab. However, she was the only one who followed through. The Long Island native believes in the power of setups because her parents met on a blind date and they’re about to have their 30th wedding anniversary. Previously, she has been set up primarily through friends.
Her dating mantra: “Go in with low expectations. You don’t know if you found ‘the one’ right away. Go on a few dates.” She is drawn to people who stay active. “I’m attracted to people who like to go to the gym a couple of times a week and like to talk about it. A lot of my week is spent working out.”
We sent the pair to Capa Tosta, which serves casual Italian cuisine in Columbia Heights. Tom arrived first, followed shortly by Taylore. His first impression: “She was attractive, upfront and confident right away.” Taylore told me the first thing she noticed was that “he was blond,” and she normally goes for brunettes. However, she was “willing to give it a shot.”
Over cocktails, they got to know each other. “He was funny and quiet. I tend to be a loud person. He got my jokes right away,” Taylore said. “We were able to bond over New York and Chicago rivalries: for example, pizza. I give deep dish a pass since it’s close to Sicilian.” Tom admitted to being on the quiet side when the date started, but eventually he loosened up.
The conversation took a macabre turn when Taylore brought up “bog people,” ancient human remains that were naturally mummified in wetlands. Tom appreciated her enthusiasm for the topic because he felt she was being “authentic.” A discussion on how they would want to be buried followed. “She said in a bog. I joked that I wanted a Viking funeral — put me on a boat and set me on fire,” Tom recalled. From there, they moved on to true crime. Taylore told me that she had a book on serial killer John Wayne Gacy in her purse but didn’t bring it up because “it probably would’ve ruined the ambiance of the date.”
Over dinner, penne alla vodka for her and pasta Bolognese for him, they discussed their childhoods. “I am from a very Irish Catholic community, and we had similar upbringings,” Tom said. “We talked about growing up with Catholic guilt and how we’re trying not to fall into those issues now.” Taylore found Tom’s Catholic humor to be “a really big plus.” “He said, ‘We don’t talk about our emotions. We like to shove it deep down inside.’ I’m pretty sure my mom has told me that,” she relayed with a laugh.
One thing that resonated with Taylore and made her feel connected to Tom was that they both were encouraged to leave where they grew up and spread their wings. “Our parents wanted us to make our own way in the world,” she said. “It’s a Catholic thing.”
For Tom, the only minor disconnect was that Taylore doesn’t do leftovers. “I’ve done projects on food-waste reduction, so my thing is always to try to make food last,” he said. Taylore explained to me: “I don’t believe in getting leftovers. If you aren’t going to finish your meal there, it won’t be fresh, so it defeats the point. It’s like a sadder version of something delicious.”
After more than three hours, the date wrapped up when Taylore mentioned that she had to walk her dog. Before they said their goodbyes, Tom handed her a pre-written postcard with a thank-you note and his phone number, figuring that if she liked him she would text and then he could ask her out again. “She actually collects postcards, so that was a good connection,” he said. I asked him if he regretted not asking for her number while on the date. “I probably should’ve exchanged numbers. I just wasn’t thinking.”
Taylore was delighted with the postcard and “thought it was really funny.” She told me that she planned on texting Tom. “I’m a firm believer that you aren’t going to know on the first date. Just go on a couple of more dates and just see.”
Tom: 4.5 [out of 5]. “It was lively, and we had good conversation for a first date.”
Taylore: 5. “There was no awkward pausing, and we had a lot to talk about.”
Taylore texted Tom. However, they have not gone on another date.
Vijai Nathan is a writer and comedian in Washington.
is 26 and works in international agricultural development. He is looking for someone who likes to be “out and about.”
Taylore
is 26 and is a secretary at a law firm. She is seeking someone “down-to-earth, not too serious, but can understand and respect their partner.” | 2022-12-22T12:37:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Date Lab: The conversation took a macabre turn - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/12/22/date-lab-conversation-took-macabre-turn/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/12/22/date-lab-conversation-took-macabre-turn/ |
Emmanuel Cisneros, 31, has decided to be "more visibly queer" in the wake of anti-LGBTQ vitriol nationwide, hoping to make other LGBTQ people feel safer and to show people that "I exist, I deserve to be here." (Kelsey Brunner)
This year’s surge in anti-LGBTQ legislation, threats and protests — punctuated by the killing of five people at the gay bar Club Q in Colorado last month — has brought grief and exacerbated fear among LGBTQ Americans.
State legislators targeted gay and trans rights, while armed demonstrators threatened drag events and Pride celebrations, and children’s hospitals faced harassment organized by an anti-LGBTQ social media campaign. Politicians and influencers elevated rhetoric falsely portraying LGBTQ people as pedophiles, while school boards banned books addressing gender and sexuality.
After the shooting at Club Q, the Department of Homeland Security warned that LGBTQ people were under threat from domestic extremists. Last week, survivors of the attack testified in Congress about anti-LGBTQ violence.
Some LGBTQ people saw a positive step in the federal law protecting same-sex marriages that was signed last week. But given a broader backdrop of rising extremism and ongoing gun violence, others said this year has fractured their sense of safety. Many are grappling with a tension between protecting themselves and showing resistance; sounding the alarm and avoiding victimization; feeling fear and holding joy.
As the year comes to a close, six people talked to The Washington Post about 2022 — what the year has changed, what it hasn’t and what it means for being LGBTQ in America.
Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric brought violence, shooting survivors tell lawmakers
Emmanuel Cisneros
When people in Emmanuel Cisneros’s conservative Colorado town see him in public wearing the glitter makeup that’s become his “personal brand,” he wants them to know one thing: They can’t put him back in the closet.
For Cisneros, 31, the “huge shift” away from progress for LGBTQ rights this year brought fear, anger and a familiar internal debate about how to react: Should he be less visibly queer in public — or more? But it also pushed Cisneros toward a clear answer.
“Before 2022 … I had the thought, ‘Maybe I’m being a little too much. Maybe I just need to tone it down a bit,’” said Cisneros, of Clifton, Colo., who is nonbinary and uses he/they pronouns. “But now I just feel like that voice isn’t there anymore. And [it’s] just like, put on all the glitter and all the Pride flags.”
Applying the iridescent glitter to his eyes and cheeks in the morning has become an empowering ritual. Cisneros puts it on to send a message that he exists and deserves to exist — and he hopes it might make other LGBTQ people who see him feel less alone.
Some nights, he still pauses before leaving his house, wondering whether it’s really safe to go out. The Club Q tragedy hit close to home; Cisneros went to college and came out in Colorado Springs, where the club is located. And even as he sets an example of resistance and pride for the young LGBTQ people he works with at a local homeless shelter, he worries about the potential consequences.
“I spend my entire life encouraging young people to embrace themselves and to really enjoy being who they are authentically, which in a lot of ways saves their lives. But in another way … it puts a very bright target on their backs,” Cisneros said. “I’m stuck with the guilt of, am I doing the right thing or am I putting them in danger? And that’s just something I’m constantly having to address in my mind.”
Cisneros tracks threats to LGBTQ rights in the news and feels an obligation to talk to their peers about what they see, even if it sometimes “feels crazy” because there are so many concerns that it’s hard to know what to focus on. Cisneros plans to keep organizing in their community, but they’re also worn down, still in survival mode after the Club Q shooting.
“For my entire life, it felt like we were going a specific direction and that we’re making progress. We were gaining rights, people were becoming more empathetic towards our right to just exist, and we achieved marriage equality,” they said. “And then, for the first time ever, it feels like there is a huge shift in direction.”
Cisneros wishes other people understood the sense of threat as keenly as they and others in their community do. At times, they feel like people in more privileged positions think they’re overreacting to what’s going on in the news.
“I feel like sometimes we’re over here and we’re screaming for our lives and nobody’s listening,” Cisneros said. “I just want people to listen.”
Zofia Janusz
Since the mass killing at Club Q, Zofia Janusz has stopped dyeing her hair pink. She avoids wearing bright colors or dramatic patterns. Before she goes outside, she hides her septum ring by flipping it up or donning a mask.
It’s safest, Janusz feels, if no one can guess that she’s a lesbian.
“When I dress myself in the morning I’m like, ‘Okay, I look like a queer person right now,’” said Janusz, 19, a student at University of Massachusetts at Lowell. “‘Am I okay with that?’”
That fear was less pronounced before the shooting in Colorado Springs. Janusz had worried some about the spread of anti-LGBTQ sentiment, but she was “fully out” on campus and felt comfortable discussing issues of sexuality in class. She was also open about having a girlfriend.
Now Janusz is reconsidering how visible she wants to be. She thinks twice about holding hands with her girlfriend in public or attending LGBTQ-focused events on campus, worried about attracting the wrong kind of attention. Plans made before the Club Q shooting to visit a gay bar in Boston no longer feel safe.
Janusz also nixed plans to come out to her extended family at Thanksgiving, days after the Colorado attack. She had seen the shooting suspect’s father suggest in an interview that he was more worried about his son being gay than about him being a suspected shooter. The father said he identifies as politically conservative, just like the family members Janusz was going to spend the holiday with. Suddenly, she didn’t want to broach the subject of her sexuality.
But being less visibly queer is complicated for Janusz. She knows there are a lot of LGBTQ people publicly demanding acceptance and refusing to be silenced. She wants to fight alongside them, but it feels too dangerous.
“Then attached to that fear is the guilt that comes with it, because ‘you have to be brave’ or something,” Janusz said. “But I don’t know that I want to be brave right now. I kind of want to just keep being alive.”
The Proud Boys keep popping up at LGBTQ events | Analysis
Tom Spinella
Tom Spinella remembers going to shabby, hidden places to find other LGBTQ people when he was young. In the 1970s and early ’80s, he and his friends often had to meet in “not-very-uplifting places,” he recalled.
Today, he sees progress represented in the very existence of the Chicago LGBTQ community center where he works — a clean, well-lit, properly funded space where he works at a front desk and welcomes anyone seeking help.
It’s among the reasons Spinella, 73, feels “very optimistic” about the future. He was moved, too, by President Biden’s signing last week of the Respect for Marriage Act protecting same-sex marriage, capped by Cyndi Lauper’s performance of “True Colors.”
“It’s a fight with the boneheads,” Spinella recalled thinking as he watched a broadcast of Lauper performing at the White House ceremony, “but we have come out on top again.”
Yet simultaneously, the alarm he feels in 2022 is more serious than any he has felt before. He has found himself depending more on his daily meditation practice. He has lost a sense of political safety, and he feels grief thinking about the growing number of people in his community who are “vulnerable and scared.”
Spinella has also become more aware of who’s walking through the door of the community center, which has protocols in place for a shooter or an evacuation. But he tries to focus on his mission to help people.
“The aspect of the threat involved, I kind of just work through that to do my job,” he said. “I don’t try to get alarmist about somebody walking in with a gun. I try not to let that in.”
Spinella charges former president Donald Trump with emboldening a new generation of extremists.
“They’re not looking to get along with you or compromise with you or negotiate with you. They want you dead. … Now they are enabled, they are alibied, they are weaponized,” said Spinella, who is bisexual.
“It’s like warfare. They’re lurking, they’re lurking, ready to charge, regrouping. And what do you do? You just keep doing the work you’re doing.”
Eden Villamarin
Eden Villamarin notices skeptical looks from some students when she goes to work as a substitute teacher.
She has long wanted to be an educator, inspired by a high school teacher who supported her at a hard time and the chance to be a positive role model. But as a transgender woman who thinks she doesn’t “pass” as female, she also fears that simply existing as herself in a classroom could spell danger.
Villamarin worries that other states could mimic Florida’s law limiting lessons on gender and sexuality, making it impossible to teach students about historical figures who share her experiences. She fears angry parents physically attacking her or maligning her on social media. Since coming out, she said, she has already lost a job teaching swim lessons.
Living in Stafford, Va., she’s particularly worried by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s moves to severely restrict transgender students’ rights.
“It makes it hard to do almost anything,” Villamarin, 23, said of the nationwide uptick in anti-trans legislation and rhetoric. “There is a part of me that regrets ever coming out.”
The anxiety is relatively new to Villamarin, who started opening up about her gender last year after a trip to the emergency room. Seeing so many seriously ill people at the hospital, she felt an epiphany: If she were to die before sharing who she really is, it would mean losing not only the person she had been presenting to the world, but also the person she truly is inside.
Coming out, she felt relief and euphoria. Since then, though, her own experiences and the national atmosphere have made her fear that she may not be able to pursue her dream career. With districts across the country embroiled in controversy over trans students in sports or acknowledging LGBTQ people in curriculums, Villamarin said she worries that she would be under siege even in a more liberal area. She’s terrified when she goes outside in women’s clothing, she said, and entering schools in those clothes feels even scarier.
But Villamarin said she’s also motivated by wanting to support students who are struggling with their own identities. At the end of her life, she said, she wants to know that she helped young people as much as she could.
“If something was to happen to me, I don’t want to live with that regret of, ‘I stood back and let it happen,’” she said. “I want to say that I was able to go out there and try.”
The climate of fear also spurred Villamarin to action. This year, she cast a vote in an election for the first time — with protecting herself against anti-trans threats and attacks at the top of her mind.
The stakes, she said, were too high to let the opportunity pass by.
Club Q shooting follows year of bomb threats, drag protests, anti-trans bills
Josh Wittge
Two weeks ago, Josh Wittge and his husband drove away from Austin. They crossed the panhandle’s barren miles, passed state lines, and arrived in the Denver suburbs.
The couple had been married quickly in California in 2018, fearful of losing the right after conservative Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Now, they were uprooting their lives and moving 900 miles to ensure their marriage would be protected.
“We needed to get to a state where, in a world where Obergefell was overturned, we would have our rights recognized,” Wittge said, referring to the 2015 Supreme Court case that guaranteed marriage equality.
Wittge, 39, and his husband started talking about leaving Texas in June, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade eliminated constitutional protections for abortion. That decision raised alarm among many that the majority-conservative court could use the same arguments to end protections for same-sex unions. If that were to happen, the couple didn’t want to be in Texas, where same-sex marriage had been banned before 2015.
2022 had brought other safety concerns, too. A few months earlier, the couple had watched Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) order state workers to investigate parents of trans children. They were horrified by a 2021 law allowing most Texans to openly carry guns without permits, followed by the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., in May. They’d started wondering whether they needed to own a gun and what would happen if a shooter targeted one of the gay bars they frequented.
So they made a list of 10 cities. They started looking for jobs. They told their families they planned to leave Texas. By September, Wittge had arranged to relocate with his employer, and they had chosen the Denver area.
In the end, leaving felt empowering, Wittge said. Since arriving in Aurora, Colo., he feels like he’s on firmer ground. He hopes that sense of safety will give him more energy to push for change as an activist. He plans to join the drag performance scene and find community organizations to work with.
Wittge and his husband hope to eventually move to an even more liberal area in the Pacific Northwest, but they feel politically safer in Colorado than in Texas and have been comforted by seeing a higher level of LGBTQ visibility in Denver, Wittge said.
He also thought their move might open acquaintances’ eyes about the threat their community is feeling.
“What I’m hoping is there’s a degree of impact on my social groups — like, I am changing my life because it is this bad,” Wittge said.
Wittge sees a connection between rising anti-LGBTQ sentiment and the rest of the political climate, including far-right extremism, racism and antisemitism, gun violence, and the overturning of Roe. He sees attacks on gay and trans rights as warning signs that fascism is on the rise, and he wants more people who aren’t worried about their own rights to start speaking up for others.
“It’s about seeing it as an ‘us’ problem, as in capital-U ‘Us,’ all of us. Human lives are at stake,” Wittge said. “The question I would ask to anybody: What’s going to be the line that has to be crossed for you to believe, ‘Oh, it’s kind of bad and I should pay attention’?”
Panda Dulce
After members of the Proud Boys stormed her Drag Queen Story Hour in June, Panda Dulce bought a baseball bat. Supporters gave her pepper spray. She took a martial arts class.
Dulce, who identifies as bigender, wasn’t taking any chances as she faced a barrage of death threats. The far-right extremists bursting into the San Lorenzo, Calif., library and shouting anti-trans and anti-gay insults had traumatized her enough.
Little has been the same for her since then.
“I definitely don’t move through the world the same way I did before,” said Dulce, 34, who spoke with The Post on the condition that only her stage name be used because she feared for her safety.
Since the incident, Dulce has started traveling to venues with other drag artists for protection. She changed her passwords in case someone tried to hack into her online accounts. She couldn’t sleep for months, with every noise in her home driving her to lunge for the bat near her bed.
Suddenly in the spotlight, it felt as if every aspect of Dulce’s life were being picked apart by people determined to prove she was a threat to what they view as the nation’s traditional culture. She started scrutinizing everything she said, even when she wasn’t in public.
Dulce believes systemic change is necessary to combat extremists, and the experience underscored her lack of faith in the legal system. She sees it as designed to protect the perpetrators of hate crimes, rather than the victims.
So, recently, she went to a shooting range to learn how to protect herself. She was comforted by the fact that a fellow queer person of color taught her how to fire. But Dulce hated the feeling that she had to pick up a gun to feel safe amid the violence directed at her.
“Even the measures you take to be safe, you have to immerse yourself in this weird, paranoid world,” she said.
Despite the stress, Dulce refuses to hide. She’s still performing, she said, while she and members of her LGBTQ community work to protect one another.
“We’re not just passively awaiting violence,” Dulce said. “We’ve had to be resilient before, and we have the skills.” | 2022-12-22T12:38:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LGBTQ Americans talk about extremism, threats in 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/22/lgbtq-threats-attacks-trans-bills/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/22/lgbtq-threats-attacks-trans-bills/ |
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